Kanye, Scalito, Condosleeza, Ragin, Belafonte & now Foxx

Was Kanye right to say what he said about Dubya on live TV several months back?

Is calling Judge Samuel Alito -- an Italian-American -- "Scalito" an ethnic slur?

Is calling Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice "Condosleeza" racist? And would calling her "Condoskeeza" sexist?

How about those who think that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is a sock puppet for money interests and are calling him "Ragin" (a la conservative demi-god and icon Ronald Reagan)? Cognizant of this increasing public perception in and beyond New Orleans, do you think Mayor Nagin was being racist for pandering to his MLK Day audience by saying that New Orleans needs to remain a "chocolate city"? Is such a statement anti-white? (FYI, White people: Blackfolk of all political stripes have been saying the same thing about DC for years. And recently, the term I hear is the once "chocolate city" is increasingly "cafe au lait"!)

How about Senator Hilary Clinton's pandering remarks to a Black audience (also on MLK Day) about Dubya's White House being run like a plantation? Was that racist?

Was entertainer and humanitarian Harry Belafonte treasonous when he called Dubya "the greatest terrorist in the world" while addressing tens of thousands of Venezuelans recently? Or how about when he basically said, "Every brotha's not a brotha" when questioned the relevance of Condi and Colin racial identities and stated that there were Jews high up in the Third Reich? Was Belafonte making an anti-semitic remark?

Lastly, I have been inundated with these annoying, anonymous chain e-mails stating that Whitefolk are trying to sabotage Jamie Foxx's upcoming music show because he refused to put token white performers on the roster. And to foil the success of his show due to his insolent Black pride, they've purposely put him up against 'American Idol'. Is this true? Was Foxx acting with conviction or with racial malice? And regardless, so what? After all, of all the things to clog up my inbox with, why moral outrage regarding a televised music show, of the kind that Blackfolk have been disproportionately visible for years? Why is this what people have chosen to be up in arms about and leveraging the Internet to advocate for versus, say, Darfur, Haiti, Katrina, political corruption, corporate greed, the fight for a living wage, etc., etc.?

Regardless of where you come down on any of these issues, it is quite revealing how and why people respond to media-amplified and -skewed issues -- particularly when laced with race.

Do I think folks are kinda missing the point when they choose to carelessly and thoughtlessly forward unsubstantiated information about something as benign as a televised music show? Absolutely. But as my grandmother always used to posit: "If you're Black and not paranoid, you're crazy."

You tell me, is the following situation -- true, exaggerated or fabricated -- worth the attention it's getting in afro-cyberspace?

Please take the time to forward the below message to everyone in your
address book.  NBC is not doing any marketing and publicity on Jamie's Music
Special on NBC because he stood his ground and wouldn't have any white guests as
they requested.  To make it even worse he had two controversial guest stars
that do not fit the "NBC profile" on his show.  Tune in to find out who they
are.  They are purposely putting his show up against the second week of American
Idol in hopes that it will fail.  This will give them the excuse to never give
another black person a music special because "it doesn't work."  Let's show them
that it does work, and that we support each other.  Tivo Idol and watch Jamie.

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[azureblue]

Remember Newt Grinrich's exact same "plantation" comment? You need to talk about that, too. The Republicans have proven their racism over and over again, but they always seem to get away with it.

[Amon]

KANYE WEST IS NO EXCEPTION

Kanye West is no exception.
Judeo-Christian America will stifle his career as a singer (rapper) for pointing out this nation’s transgressions and for putting its business in the street. Kanye West is no exception. He is no exception not because he is Black. He is no exception because America is paranoid.
America is not paranoid because we are Black. America is paranoid not because it is schizophrenic; it is paranoid because it is guilty. America is guilty of the sins of its forefathers, it is guilty for the sins of its forbearers, it is guilty of the sins of its children and its children’s children. Guilt deliberately self perpetuating, deliberately handed down to each succeeding generation. This is a force of its own nature.

Kanye West said “George W. Bush does not care about Black people....” Kanye West was wrong, misinformed, and misunderstood what happened in New Orleans, Louisiana. What happened was a force of its own nature. His comments result from the slovenly response for the victims of a hurricane by national institutions, both government and private, that never fail an immediate response to a major natural or unnatural disaster.
Kanye West, had he waited, could have included the forsaken responses of America’s insurance companies unwilling to pay poor people for damages to their lives and property. Hurricane insurance, the companies claim, does not include flood damage resulting from hurricanes, that is, unless the victims also had flood insurance – another slovenly response. The American insurance companies do not want to pay for flood damage caused by a hurricane. Of course they are wrong too.
But this information was not readily available to Kanye West before he, inebriated from a suffused abhorrence, staggered into American socio-political history. Kanye West is no exception, even if he was wrong. He was wrong and the insurance companies were wrong. But America is going after Kanye West not the insurance companies. Kanye West is no exception.

The hurricane did not cause the massive flooding. Deliberate and intentional neglect caused the flooding. For the past twenty years national, state and local hurricane experts knew a strong hurricane could and would flood out Black residential sections of New Orleans. Local, state and federal institutions charged with protecting against such a reality also knew. They all just waited for it to happen. And when it did happen the public, private and all American response organizations linger(ed) in delivery of remedial services just long enough ensuring most of those affected could not or would not return. Under the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, et. seq. the deliberate removal of concentrations of Black residents by blighting their neighborhoods and replacing the residences with mixed income housing is called spatial deconcentration.
So the insurance companies were wrong for singling out uninsured flood damage. Those national and state persons who control the decision to prevent the flooding knew what could be done to prevent such a catastrophe but they didn’t want to, so they didn’t. This deliberate neglect was an original intent. If the insurance companies want to escape the litigation brought by that state for failure to pay, they merely need point out state and federal complicity in the damages.
But, since the insurance companies represent American interests and are regulated agents of America and regulated agents of the states, they will likely reach a compromise having little to do with the Black victims of that neglect that caused the damage from the flood caused by the hurricane. Similar activities are consistent methodologies of American regulated institutions like banks and insurance companies. They “red line” Black people and Black neighborhoods. They won’t be punished for that which they are regulated to do; this is what helps keep America strong. And, after all, red lining is an expanding opportunity within the American political power structure.

For example, former Vice President Al Gore in his 2000 presidential loss refused to challenge the red lining of Black Floridian voters even though it would and did cost him the election. Even the media thought he’d won because the media thought Black Floridians were allowed to vote. Gore, like the United States Senate, preferred counting the abused chads in a different district rather than abused Black people. Counting chads in the South, historically, was almost the same as counting Black voters anyway; they all look alike, they had no voice in the matter and some had been left hanging.

So Kanye West and the insurance companies were wrong about the same things almost. Kanye West wasn’t heard mentioning the insurance companies not caring about Black people. Had he done so he could have been wrong about that too; insurance companies care about premiums and Black people pay lots of extra premiums – they have to charge us more for red lining.
America wouldn’t go after Kanye West for his mistake about the insurance companies; after all, he never mentioned them live on television. He did mention George W. Bush. He was really very wrong for that. He’s probably too inexperienced to recognize that after tying his shoes, George W. Bush isn’t in charge of anything to do with running America.

Kanye West is probably too young to remember George Papa Bush’s election to the presidency in 1988 with J. Danforth Quayle as vice president. Papa Bush after his second term in office wanted to run J. Danforth Quayle for president so he, Papa Bush, could continue the Bush legacy in the White House. You see, J. Danforth Quayle was similarly accused of being a dunce, just like Baby Bush. That’s why Papa Bush picked him, he was just like Baby Bush, young, fairly attractive blonde and a dumbkoff. But, Papa Bush lost his re-election campaign for lying about taxes on television. In the mean time he solidified his CIA connections with the Middle East and did a couple of electoral dry runs with his blonde haired son for Governor of Texas, then waited.

Just as most white citizens’ councils had predicted, “that nigra music” almost led to the end of the Union. That rock and roll president who defeated Papa Bush morally bankrupted the office of the president requiring Judeo Christian America to restore its former dignity in the name of Baby Bush. But Baby Bush is a dumbkoff and he lacks the capacity to care one way or another about Black people. He can only reiterate what he’s told by people with hard and fast opinions and philosophies, like his mother, Barbara Marie Antoinette Bush. That’s why, in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, he told the nation the head of FEMA was doing such a heck of a job – he’d seen poor people on television trapped in the Superdome eating what looked like cake.

So Kanye West was wrong in pointing out Baby Bush as some kind of culpable leader. He should have said America doesn’t care about Black people. Better yet he should not have said anything because now America is out to get him, even if he was wrong. This is the land of the freed and the home of the bravado.
America doesn’t tolerate Black people bad talking America, especially in front of company. America had invited the whole world to watch them on television preening and gesticulating for aid for the poor victims of hurricane Katrina. Despite the bald faced neglect America would put its usual smiley face on it all and its global media would focus on all the “heroes” and hard luck stories with happy endings through the generosity of some American little girl or corporate benefactor, or the rescue of Fru Fru the dog and Kermit the frog as proof of its humane decency and generosity. America wanted to show off the generosity of the American public and gloat about it. But Black folks were the victims of American duplicity, duplicity so poignant a young Black man in the name of Kanye West saw fit to proclaim it in front of the world on live TV.

Duplicity is nothing new to America. America likes to point a guilty finger at the likes of Pol Pot, Adolph Hitler and Idi Amin and the atrocities committed under their regimes. These were singular individuals whose singular militaristic rule lasted for short periods of comparative time. With the aid of a tiny fragment of their population and a restricted portion of their military they slaughtered innocent people. But these were short lived regimes run by madmen lasting only as long as their regimes remained in power.
However, not by a singular leader, not by a small fragment of the population, and not by a restricted portion of the military, but by national consensus did the American population as a fabric of its society almost annihilate whole races of indigenous populations in America as part of the American social order. This all American social order dehumanized through murder, rape and slavery a singular race of people. Unlike the singular leaders of singular short lived regimes, America carried on its slave trade in/of terror for a few hundred years. An entire society, generation after generation after generation of Jeffery Dahmer, Rudolf Höss and Josef Mengele in county after county state after state operating legally at their whim committing every vile act under the Sun against an innocent people including the rape of men, women, children and infants as a custom of societal norms. This included burnings, lynchings decapitations, disfigurement, and the selling of body parts and skin into utilitarian objects. Can anyone say Hitler’s posse didn’t borrow a page or two from American history? America’s free trade in human flesh, generation after generation, more than any other activity, made America rich and grate.
Unlike the regimes of madmen the American regime never faltered, it stayed the course; there was no rescue for the indigenous population or the imported one. America points its guilty finger at a madman’s theory of a superior race but loathe the airing of its continuing bureaucracy of white supremacy and here then is where Kanye West standing alone stunted his career in proclaiming the obvious.

Kanye West did not deign to see America in its beneficence as Mother Bush pointed out. For this Kanye West is no exception. None of America’s Top Black Model Leaders dared be so bold. Had we had leaders Kanye West could have stayed home but Black people in America have no Black leaders. America has a bushel of Black leaders, we don’t. They’ve got Black Christian leaders, Black Democratic leaders, Black Republican leaders, Black slivered rights leaders.
Perhaps Kanye West could have said America’s Top Black Leaders don’t care about Black people. That’s why American TV talk-about-the-news shows welcome them so much. They’ve been seen running around trying to explain what Kanye West didn’t mean.

America, however, can tolerate criticism from entertainers. After all Michael Moore, Al Franken, and the Dixie Chicks have all made a few smart remarks toward this president. But of course they are all Americans. Americans tolerate each other mostly, plus they didn’t really get into racial politics except Moore, but his bowling style met with little attention among Black people Harry Belafonte is Black but he’s played off as a kook, so he gets a little pass. Belafonte’s always criticizing inhumanity. Belafonte even called the Secretary of State an Uncle Tom. That was ugly, ugly and wrong. Uncle Tom is a character in a little novel who incessantly acquiesced in his own demise just like most Black men in America today. But Uncle Tom refused to help demoralize others. So, that Secretary doesn’t fit the Uncle Tom profile. Kanye West is not a kook; but he probably thinks he’s American. He like the rest of us suffers from something akin to battered wife syndrome. We’ve never been treated as Americans by America.
The American Constitution, under a strict construction, states he can’t be American. The United States Supreme court wrote in its Dredd Scott Decision we were “outside the jurisdiction” of the United States, not Americans and shouldn’t be treated as Americans. It didn’t say we were 2nd class citizens either; Americans deny such status exists in America. The Fourteenth Amendment to that strictly construed Constitution did not overturn the Dredd Scott decision; it only applies to those “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

We can be American when we’re Black and look white and don’t tell if asked. We’ve always wanted to be American but America won’t let us. If we qualify for the Summer Olympics we get a temporary green card, but not for the Winter Olympics, (might have to wear gloves, they got a thing about Black athletes with gloves). So if we are Olympians representing the United States we get to be Americans until the event is over. Otherwise we’d have to be entertainers for a semblance of acceptance.
America loves entertainment from Black celebrities and artists. That’s why America claims Jazz as an American art form. They loved it so much they didn’t want it to be ours, they wanted Jazz and Blues to be theirs. So they said Blues is an American sound; slaves on those ships were probably singing show tunes from Showboat; that jazz came from New Orleans and that an American coined the idiom “rock and roll”.

New Orleans at the turn of their 20th century was one of the few places where an American could have sex with Black girls and nobody cared. Lots of prominent Americans, men of influence and letters flocked to New Orleans. New Orleans specialized in variations of Black girls. So all these important people, in between variations, slumped into night clubs listening to live music of Black people. Since New Orleans is where they first heard jazz they naturally assumed that’s where it must have originated – it’s a Christopher Columbus thing. So now jazz is an American art form and the Blues comes from America too.

Kanye West is an entertainer too. But he’s not from New Orleans he just had feelings for Black people in New Orleans. He’s got a popular CD presently on the market. It contains a song with Ray Charles’ voice on it. Americans liked Ray Charles too, but he was no exception either. Ray Charles was a junkie, but he was a good junkie, that is until he decided not to perform for segregated American audiences. So America attacked him for it. They arrested him for being a junkie and made sure everybody knew about it. The news media loved exposing Ray Charles as a criminal junkie. They tried to run him out the country. He’d embarrassed America by not performing in peaceful segregated auditoriums. In the face of world opinion America had been proclaiming Black people preferred segregation and did not mind slavery when it was all the rage. To make up for his mistake Ray Charles started singing standard Country Western tunes. America liked that. They took it as an apology. It really wasn’t quite clear whether Ray Charles was apologizing or telling America to kiss his ass. Nobody knows for sure, he never looked anyone straight in the eye.

Ray Charles had been treated like Billie Holiday; she was no exception either. She embarrassed America too. So America sent the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the Federal Bureau of Investigation after her. The FBN and FBI made a whole series of very public arrests of Billie Holliday for drug possession. American media loved exposing Billie Holliday as a criminal junkie. They accused her of being a junkie singer; she wasn’t but the accusations stuck. New York City took away her cabaret card, her license to sing for a living in New York. An American wrote a made up a biography about her which portrayed her as a heroin addict. Some Black people later made a movie from that book. They didn’t care if it wasn’t true; they just vilified her after her death for the money. Those Black movie makers forgot about Billie Holliday.
She recorded a song about Black people being lynched in the American South by Judeo Christian Americans. A lot of people loved Billie Holliday; they listened intently to every word she sang. America was embarrassed by that song. The FBN told her not to sing it anymore. So she stopped singing it unless she had a band to play behind her. The New York club owners required her to sign contracts specifically excluding that song. She signed them. And to make sure the club owners knew she understood exactly what they’d meant, she’d sing that song first.
So New York America refused her a license to sing in New York because of a song about Black people being hanged in the secessionist South, the Confederate South, the slave holding South, the Mason-Dixon line South, the Missouri Compromise South, the gentlemen and southern belle South. Apparently the Yankee North, the Blue Belly North, the nigger lovin’ North, the Abe Lincoln North, the liberal North and the South had similar interests in suppressing that song. So they ran Billie Holliday out of New York. Billie Holliday was no exception.

Superman was no exception either. The real superman was a Black guy. He got run out the country too, except they wouldn’t let him leave because most of the rest of the world loved him. They kept his passport. He was a singer; he could sing in over thirty five (35) languages. He was a lawyer, and a noted stage and film actor. He was an All American Football star, he was Phi Beta Kappa, and he was a Rhodes Scholar. That’s pretty much superman.
He sang liberation songs in countries that didn’t care much for free enterprise and laissez faire. America loves laissez faire; that’s what they want in Iraq. They say they want democracy but even the United States doesn’t have a real democracy. They don’t really care if they spread democracy if they can have laissez faire. (That’s why they love Nelson Mandela. In exchange for his freedom he got the Black people in South Africa something they think is democracy; he got the white supremacist to keep their spoils and free enterprise; and after 27 years of struggling for his life and risking life and limb for the liberation of South Africa and after 27 years of public demonstrations and worldwide protests he got Winnie Mandela a divorce. Lord, Peace Be Still!)
Paul Robeson (herein aka Superman) sang inspiring songs all over the world of and for people struggling to overthrow tyranny and oppression. Some of the oppressors were America’s friends, so America attacked him too. They refused to let him make his living singing here or abroad. They managed to turn the public against him; they called him a communist. He was also anti-lynching and favored equal rights for Black people. That pretty much made him a communist. Paul Robeson was no exception. He never sang again.
At one time the sexiest woman in America was a singer, a dancer, an actress. She got run out the country too; they let her keep her passport. America can’t admit it, but even today, her record for being the sexiest woman in America still stands without equal. But, she put America’s business in the street too, so America ran her out the country. She wasn’t a superwoman; I think she only speaks five languages. No ordinary chanteuse she could turn a man on like he was a faucet piped into the Hoover Dam. She had her name in lights in Las Vegas, Monaco and all the upper crust venues around the world, you had to spend money, honey, to see her show. She appeared on all the entertainment TV shows of the day, Milton Berle, Soupy Sales, the Tonight Show, Steve Allen Show, and Today Show. She always managed the same impact on men. She’d do that cat purr/growl and white faces would turn beet red, even on black & white TV. They’d squirm in their seats if sitting or turn from the camera if standing. Men would always lose their composure.
On one particular recurring talk show visit the band leader sat to the right of the announcer who sat to the right of the latest blonde bombshell who sat to the right of Eartha Kitt who sat to the right of the host. Miss Kitt had them all blushing two beets and a cherry red just by body language. Eartha Kitt could cause such reactions with an eyebrow. But she was no exception.
The president’s wife invited her to a White House tea to discuss troubled youth in the inner city. America was still stuttering from calling us Black; that was still too new, so they called Black kids inner city youth. They really hated calling us Black, it sounded too much like we didn’t want to be like them. So Eartha Kit thought the president’s wife and her tea mates really wanted to discuss inner city youth. Eartha Kitt had long been working in the streets with inner city youth; she knew how to deal with a lot of nonsense. But the president’s wife was only planning cake with her tea. I don’t think that made sense to Eartha Kitt. The president’s wife’s started crying in her tea – it got salty. America’s media said Eartha Kitt made the president’s wife cry. Eartha Kitt had a different story but the president said he didn’t want to see Eartha Kitt’s name anywhere. Under a strict construction that meant she had to leave the country. Eartha Kitt was no exception.

Then there was Mr. Dynamite himself, the Godfather of Soul, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business. He was no exception either. He got run out the country too, only he didn’t know it. James Brown had a reputation for socio-political commentary in his lyrics. (“... when some of us make money, we forget about our people....”) A lot of Black people really hated James Brown, almost as much as they despised Martin Luther King, but James Brown was embarrassing. He was known for skipping syllables. He wasn’t a strict constructionist. Some of us didn’t appreciate his lyrics or his grunting – then he started shouting “good god”. So the preachers jealous of King turned on James Brown too.
But James Brown didn’t know how to shuffle, that’s why he introduced the “camel walk”, the moon walk in forward motion. That’s when these guys like Stokely Carmichael and others started saying we weren’t Negro, that we were Black. That sounded alien but it started a huge debate in Negro and colored circles – we were colored before we were Negro and colored was still lingering. Some people wanted to go back to being colored since we came in so many colors; others claimed we weren’t black we were mostly brown; some wanted to call white people colored since they could change so many colors while others argued white people weren’t really white. It was all quite an unfamiliar discussion and scary because Black people, that is, Negroes remained concerned about “what would white people think” if we started calling ourselves Black. Negrophiles and Americans saw it as an affront against the status quo. The NAACP, still colored, gambling with the odds of fate, was up in arms about it.
Then there was the small “b” capital “B” argument. Who wanted to be black with a small “b” when we were Negro with a capital “N” most of the time. Colored, despite this sentence, had definitely been a small “c” so we might be going backwards if we called ourselves small “b” black. In the midst of all the confusion and accusations and points and counter-points the sole and almost exclusive reason we found calling ourselves Black an acceptable moniker was because of that James Brown record. It was in two parts on the ‘45’ just like Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say”. It was the fastest selling single in music recording history. Poor James brown, he didn’t know that was a no no.
He’d purchased a few radio stations around the South, so the FCC paid his stations a visit. I heard he sucked as a DJ anyway, so that was the end of that. The FBI or somebody once started a rumor James Brown was a homosexual. Gay wasn’t quite out the closet. His single “Cold Sweat” was climbing the charts so they rumored he was involved with his drummer. James Brown was no exception.

Finally, the High Priestess of Soul, a trained concert pianist with dark velvet skin, succulent lips and a round non-aquiline nose, who couldn’t find work in her trained profession, became a jazz singer and pianist – a common route for jazz musicians. Nina Simone was extraordinary. Not unlike Billie Holliday, she could make a song her own whether classic pop, rock, blues, jazz, folk or other. Nina Simone truly was what European classical music fans called a diva, a term previously ascribed and limited to opera singers. Now, any lil’ child with a hit record claims diva status.
Like Miles Davis she attracted to her music and concerts musicians, composers, artists, the rich, the wealthy, and the aint- nevuh-gon-be-nuthin-but-po’. She was an internationally recognized artist. But of course she was no exception either. She met her Waterloo with a song titled “Mississippi Goddam” and she meant every word of it. The song vaguely and metaphorically identified the state of Mississippi as a bastion of disgrace of which no words could identify nor define beyond the title of the song. Amazingly, it was written as a show tune. She, like Eartha Kitt, couldn’t find her name on American billboards after that.
Relatedly, Michael Jackson’s crime was more akin to those of Chuck Berry. They more or less affected the American sense of privilege much too distracting for this writing. They too were no exception.

And so, Kanye West is no exception. Whether he regrets it or not America is now out to get him. I know little about the young man, his music, background; in fact I will have to run to Hudson’s Embassy Records to check the spelling of his name. I may even buy his record; passports aren’t free. That may be the least I can do. My generation, the generation called Baby Boomers, the generation that witnessed Malcolm X, Angela Davis & George Jackson, Stokely Carmichael, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee, Nikki Giovanni, Tommie Smith & John Carlos, Sonya Sanchez, the Black Panther Party, Medgar Evers, Amos ‘N Andy, Fannie Lou Hammer, the march on Selma, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Emmet Till, four little girls, three civil rights workers, two marches on Washington and one King, will do nothing to help the young man, except discuss whether he jeopardized his career then settle back into their affirmative action homes, waiting to retire from their affirmative action jobs they got with their affirmative action education so they can handicap or par the latest version of the electric slide.
The only back-up Kanye West has must come from his own generation and those who’ve supported his career. So the generations following the inauguration of hip hop need take a stand. That younger generation is not our future, that is, if they follow the footsteps of their immediate forefathers. If so they will re-live those miserable lives of shame. Their future will be my past just as my socio-political future turned out to be the past of my father and thus their future will be no exception from the past. Their children will repeat the same past without exception. If Kanye West is no exception then this young generation will find itself no exception and languish in the deferred dreams of a raisin in the Sun.

Now, about that hurricane; you know they say it was an exception....

Copyright D. B. Amon 2005 Excerpted and reconstructed from Spatial Deconcentration due the Winter/February of 2006 from Oneigen Publishing Company and Pets of Predators due Summer of 2006

[R.Henry Goins]

I received no less than five of these emails. They were baffling. I wish, as you write, folk would pay more attention to the issues facing black folk in this country and world. I have been trying to read as much as I can about what is going in New Orleans and Haiti; for example, if someone really paid attention to Haiti, they would realize that this turmoil seems to have a pattern which originates during the period when L'overture successfully dismissed the French and British from that country. The United States refused to recognize him as its leader. That was just a little over two hundred years ago and it seems that Haiti is in remains in constant turmoil as long as there are "outside influences." Is it just my imagination or does democracy only exist if sanctioned by a few of the so-called "super powers?" I am still unsure what is really going on in Haiti? Every once and while do I catch something on blackcommentator or Democracy Now!.

[day]

This a really sad commentary on the state of the black community in Amerika. I wish black folks were just as motivated about the fact that there are 35 children in one class in public schools in NYC or the fact that the low interest rate on student loans is in jeopardy, or the fact that black men make up 80% of the prison and only 13% of the US pop. I wish we could pay more attention to the HIV rate, the # of rapes, the illiteracy rate, unemployment rates, etc. etc. etc. in our community. We are so confused.

[Joe]

I've always said: Kill Whitey, even if that means me.

White folks gotta put down their tiny violins and chill the fuck out.

[Kitch]

You forgot to add: was it racist of Tim Russert to ask Barack Obama about Belafonte?

Man, I miss playing "ethnic slur."