Google
 
Web Osi Speaks!

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Pimple!


Labels:

Friday, May 30, 2014

Donald Sterling Declared Mentally Incompetent To Prevent Sale Of Los Angeles Clippers By His Family Trust. LOL. Watch News Videos.




Update: donald sterling sues nba, which has withdrawn its complaint against him, after it gets sale and sweetheart deal from wife, shelly. read more here.

Labels:

'Cross!


Labels:

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Sad!


Labels:

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

U. S. SupremeCourt Let's Convictions For Phen Fen Lawyers William Gallion, Shirley Cunningham, And Melbourne Mills Stand.

 — A $42 million judgment against a group of former attorneys will stand after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal in the case.
The justices on Tuesday rejected a request from now-disbarred lawyers William Gallion, Shirley Cunningham Jr. and Melbourne Mills to consider reversing the Kentucky Supreme Court, which reinstated the verdict in favor of a group of 431 people sickened by the diet drug fen-phen.
The former clients sued Gallion, Cunningham and Mills in 2005, claiming the lawyers mishandled a massive settlement stemming from litigation over the diet drug and improperly kept a significant portion of the funds for themselves.
Gallion and Cunningham are serving federal prison sentences after being convicted of bilking their clients out of millions from the settlement.

Labels: ,

VA: What A Shame!


Labels:

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Ha,Ha, Funny.


Labels:

Monday, May 26, 2014

Happy Memorial Day.


Labels:

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Wanted Poster!


Labels:

Saturday, May 24, 2014

U. S. Veterans Administration Hospitals.


Labels:

Friday, May 23, 2014

News: U. S. House Of Representatives Passes Bill To Rein In The NSA!


Labels:

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Now Watch Alison Lundergan Grimes' Primary Election Speech.

Watch Senator Mitch McConnell's Primary Election Campaign Speech.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Racism Is Far More Than Old White Men Using The N-word.

 (Wolfeboro Police Commissioner Robert Copeland)

Racism is far more than old white men using the N-word
Why is there outrage only when epithets are caught on tape? Discrimination is in reality carried out by well-mannered people

Robert Copeland, the police commissioner of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, listens as town residents call for his resignation after he was overheard abusing Barack Obama. Photograph: Jim Cole/AP
Let's hear it for Robert Copeland. The police commissioner of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire (population 6,083) sticks to his principles. Even if those principles are stuck in a previous century and mired in bigotry. In March Jane O'Toole was finishing her dinner at a bistro in town when she heard Copeland, 82, announce loudly that he hated watching television because every time he turned on the TV he kept seeing "that fucking nigger". The "nigger" in question was the president of the United States.

O'Toole had no idea who Copeland was at the time. But when she found out, she wrote to the town manager to complain. Copeland was unrepentant. "I believe I did use the 'N-word' in reference to the current occupant of the Whitehouse," he wrote in an email to his fellow police commissioners. "For this, I do not apologise – he meets and exceeds my criteria for such."

Such candour is rare nowadays, even if the furore is not. Over the last few weeks incidents like this have become tiresomely regular. First came Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher in a standoff with the government over refusing to pay his grazing taxes. His elevation as a Conservative folk hero stalled after he opined on whether the "Negro" shouldn't be back in chains. "I've often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom."

Just a couple of days later a tape emerged of Donald Sterling, the manager of the LA Clippers basketball team, asking his girlfriend not to take pictures with black friends or bring them to games. "Admire him, bring him here, feed him, fuck him," he said of former basketball legend, Magic Johnson. "But don't put him on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me."

A week later British TV host Jeremy Clarkson was caught on camera reciting a version of "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" from his childhood ("before racism was bad" as The Office's David Brent once put it) in which he continues muttering "catch a nigger by the toe".

By the time Copeland's outburst became a matter of national note a week later, the pattern had been set: old white men with mouths writing cheques their status won't cash, in currencies that went out of date decades ago. So far so bad. None are worthy of sympathy.

And yet the magnitude of the response to each incident exemplifies how high the bar is now set for challenging racist behaviour and how distorted our understanding has become of what that behaviour constitutes.

Before there can be outrage, the offending party must be caught red-handed – preferably on tape – using the worst epithets and most egregious insults. Clarkson previously maligning Mexicans as "lazy, feckless and flatulent", or making jokes about "black Muslim lesbians", or Sterling twice being fined by the department of justice for being a racist slumlord, didn't quite cut it.

And so the perception – on both sides of the Atlantic – takes hold that racism is not a system of discrimination planted by history, nourished by politics and nurtured by economics, in which some groups face endemic disadvantage – it's about ignorant old people getting caught saying mean things. By privileging these episodes – outrageous as they are – racism is basically reduced to the level of a private, individual indiscretion made public. The scandal becomes not that racism exists but that anyone would be crass enough to articulate it so brazenly.

The reality of modern racism is almost exactly the opposite: it's the institutional marginalisation of groups performed with the utmost discretion and minimum of fuss by well-mannered and often well-intentioned people working in deeply flawed systems. According to a recent US department of education report, black preschoolers (mostly four-year-olds) are four times more likely to be suspended more than once than their white classmates. According to a 2013 report by Release, a UK group focusing on drugs and drug laws, black people in England and Wales are far less likely to use drugs than white people but six times more likely to be stopped and searched for possession of them. In both countries black people are far more likely to be convicted, and to get stiffer sentences and longer jail time.

This is the soporific, statistical drumbeat to which black children march through our institutions and to which society as a whole has become inured. You are unlikely to find many of these preschool teachers throwing around the N-word or judges reminiscing about slavery. Apparently, until you do, there will be no big story here. It's just the way we do things. The problem is no longer that it's brazen, but that it's banal.

This is what makes attempts to defend a party like the United Kingdom Independence party from accusations of racism so hollow. Of course, that is not the sole nature of its appeal. But its calls for social housing to go first to those whose "parents and grandparents were born locally"; and a recent poll revealed that more than half its supporters believe immigrants and their British-born children should be "encouraged to leave the country".

These are unsophisticated codes for the kind of policies that will entrench inequalities, starting at the border and extending from the classroom to the courtroom. Racism is central to Ukip's meaning, even when it is not explicitly included in its message. Last Friday its leader, Nigel Farage, said: "Any normal and fair-minded person would have a perfect right to be concerned if a group of Romanian people suddenly moved in next door."

It seems only when he is personally caught, on camera, repeating that Smethwick slogan from 1964 – "If you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Labour" – will the doubters be convinced.

Politically, at least, this was always the point. Racism is a hardy virus that mutates to adapt to the body politic in which it is embedded. You can't wipe it out with a single shot because by the time you've dealt with the last strain, a new one has developed resistant to previous remedies. "You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks," President Richard Nixon once explained to his chief of staff. "The key is to devise a system that recognises that while not appearing to." That system is in place, even if some are more skilled at keeping up appearances than others.

Twitter: @garyyounge

Labels: ,

Why Do Millennials Not Understand Racism?

 
Why Do Millennials Not Understand Racism?

They think if we ignore skin color, racism will somehow disappear.

Millennials see racism as a matter of different treatment, justified by race, that you solve by removing race from the equation.

When you hear MTV, you don’t think “research.” But, for the last few years, the music television channel has been building a public affairs campaign to address bias called “Look Different.” Aimed at millennials, it seeks to help them deal with prejudice and discrimination in their lives. And as part of the project, MTV has worked with pollsters to survey a nationally representative sample of people ages 14 to 24 to measure how young people are “experiencing, affected by, and responding to issues associated with bias.”

Overall, MTV confirms the general view of millennials: Compared with previous generations, they’re more tolerant and diverse and profess a deeper commitment to equality and fairness. At the same time, however, they’re committed to an ideal of colorblindness that leaves them uncomfortable with race, opposed to measures to reduce racial inequality, and a bit confused about what racism is.

All of this is apparent in the findings. Ninety-one percent of respondents “believe in equality” and believe “everyone should be treated equally.” Likewise, 84 percent say their families taught them to treat everyone the same, no matter their race, and 89 percent believe everyone should be treated as equals. With that said, only 37 percent of respondents (30 percent of whites and 46 percent of minorities) say they were raised in families that talk about race.

For this reason, perhaps, a majority of millennials say that their generation is “post-racial.” Seventy-two percent believe their generation believes in equality more than older people, and 58 percent believe that as they get older, racism will become less of an issue. It’s almost certainly true that this view is influenced by the presence of President Obama. Sixty-two percent believe that having a black president shows that minorities have the same opportunities as whites, and 67 percent believe it proves that race is not a “barrier to accomplishments.”

It’s no surprise, then, that most millennials aspire to “colorblindness.” Sixty-eight percent say “focusing on race prevents society from becoming colorblind.” As such, millennials are hostile to race-based affirmative action: 88 percent believe racial preferences are unfair as a matter of course, and 70 percent believe they are unfair regardless of “historical inequalities.” Interestingly, the difference between whites and people of color is nonexistent on the first question and small (74 percent versus 65 percent) on the second. But this might look different if you disaggregated “people of color” by race. There’s a chance that black millennials are more friendly to affirmative action than their Latino or Asian peers.

For all of these aspirations, however, millennials have a hard time talking about race and discrimination. Although 73 percent believe that we should talk “more openly” about bias, only 20 percent say they’re comfortable doing so—despite the fact that a plurality of minorities say that their racial identities shape their views of the world.

Millennials have a hard time talking about race and discrimination.
What’s more, for all of their unity on tolerance and equality, white and minority millennials have divergent views on the status of whites and minorities in society. Forty-one percent of white millennials say that the government “pays too much attention to the problems of racial minority groups while 65 percent of minorities say that whites have more opportunities.” More jarring is the 48 percent of white millennials who say discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against racial minorities. With that in mind, it’s worth a quick look at a 2012 poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, where 58 percent of white millennials said that discrimination against whites was as big a problem as discrimination against minorities.

It’s hard to say which is the “true” number, but there’s no doubt that a substantial plurality of young white people believe their race is a disadvantage, which is ludicrous given the small number who say that they’ve felt excluded because of their race (10 percent) or say that they’ve been hurt by racial offenses (25 percent).

But while this reaction doesn’t seem to have a basis in reality, it makes perfect sense given what millennials writ large believe about racism. Let’s go back to the results on colorblindness and affirmative action. Seventy-three percent believe that “never considering race would improve society,” and 90 percent say that “everyone should be treated the same regardless of race.”

From these results, it’s clear that—like most Americans—millennials see racism as a matter of different treatment, justified by race, that you solve by removing race from the equation. If we ignore skin color in our decisions, then there can’t be racism.

The problem is that racism isn’t reducible to “different treatment.” Since if it is, measures to ameliorate racial inequality—like the Voting Rights Act—would be as “racist” as the policies that necessitated them. No, racism is better understood as white supremacy—anything that furthers a broad hierarchy of racist inequity, where whites possess the greatest share of power, respect, and resources, and blacks the least.

And the magic of white supremacy is that its presence is obscured by the focus on race. When a black teenager is unfairly profiled by police, we say it’s “because of the color of his skin,” which—as a construction—avoids the racism at play, from the segregated neighborhood the officer patrols to the pervasive belief in black criminality that shapes our approach to crime. Likewise, it obscures the extent to which this isn’t just different treatment— it’s unequal treatment rooted in unequal conditions.

Millennials have grown up in a world where we talk about race without racism—or don’t talk about it at all—and where “skin color” is the explanation for racial inequality, as if ghettos are ghettos because they are black, and not because they were created. As such, their views on racism—where you fight bias by denying it matters to outcomes—are muddled and confused.

Which gets to the irony of this survey: A generation that hates racism but chooses colorblindness is a generation that, through its neglect, comes to perpetuate it.

Labels: ,

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

"Brain Injury".


Labels:

Monday, May 19, 2014

Pre Election Day Polling For Kentucky. Watch Video.

Labels:

Keep Politics Out Of The Courthouse.

Keep politics out of the courthouse

By Ruth McGregor and Randall Shepard

The chaos surrounding the execution of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett was not just a wake-up call on capital punishment and how it is administered. The final hours also saw political efforts to bully and weaken Oklahoma’s courts. Similar battles are playing out around the country, threatening the ability of our courts to be fair and impartial.

When Lockett’s attorneys filed a lawsuit seeking information about the drug mixture that ultimately failed, the Oklahoma Supreme Court issued a stay to grant more time for review. But the governor announced that she would disregard the court’s ruling. A legislator introduced a resolution to impeach the five justices who had voted for the stay, alleging “a willful neglect of duty and incompetence.” The Supreme Court ultimately dissolved its stay and allowed Lockett’s execution to proceed.

The constitutional crisis may have been brief, but it was profoundly disturbing. As lifetime jurists and former chief justices of the supreme courts of Arizona and Indiana, we believe our treasured American system of checks and balances is harmed when our courts are threatened with intimidation. Our courts were designed to be the branch of government most insulated from politics.

This is especially critical when it comes to our criminal courts, which must be allowed to work properly and deliberately in order to protect the innocent, convict the guilty and provide just punishment. If judges cannot make life-or-death decisions based on the law without looking over their shoulders for threats of retaliation, they cannot uphold the Constitution and protect Americans’ rights.

The Oklahoma case is bad enough. But in state capitals across the nation, there are disturbing efforts by partisans, politicians and special interests to intimidate our courts.

For example, a vigously debated bill in the Missouri legislature would have permitted lawsuits against state officials, including judges, for enforcing federal gun laws. In retaliation for court decisions, Kansas lawmakers removed the Supreme Court’s authority to pick chief district court judges and weakened its authority over the judiciary’s budget.

This atmosphere of bullying is reminiscent of an anti-court spasm a decade ago, when cable TV hosts and “Justice Sunday” rallies demanded the impeachment of state and federal judges over controversial decisions. Congress even bowed to interest-group pressure by tampering with a state court dispute between family members of Terri Schiavo during her end-of-life ordeal.

Courts are also under growing pressure from the increasing amounts of money being spent in judicial elections. Interest groups spent more than $1.3 million in a North Carolina primary this month involving a single Supreme Court seat. In Tennessee, because the Supreme Court selects the state’s attorney general, a multi-million dollar effort is being discussed to unseat three justices. These kinds of big-money judicial elections threaten to turn judges into politicians in black robes.

These threats imperil our constitutional traditions, our heritage of rule of law and the strength of our democracy. If our courts are going to be fair and impartial, in Oklahoma and across the country, Americans need to stand up for them when politicians cross the line — especially during an election year, when political posturing will be even greater.

Editor's note:

Ruth McGregor is a retired chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court and Randall Shepard is a retired chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court. They are members of the board of directors of Justice at Stake, a nonpartisan network working to keep courts fair and impartial.

Labels: ,

Words To Live By, Words Of Wisdom, And Words To Ponder,

'The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.' 

- Proverbs 15:3 (KJV)

Labels: , ,

American Exceptionalism.


Labels:

Sunday, May 18, 2014

The Canary Is In On The Hoax!


Labels:

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Yes, He Is!


Labels:

Friday, May 16, 2014

Joel Pett Is Still Funny.


Labels:

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Enjoy Your Thursday!


Labels:

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Kentucky Judge.

if you live in or have kin or friends in any of these counties and in or near these cities and towns, please share the love and pass it on. most importantly, vote for me next tuesday and tell everyone you know to do the same.

vote osi judge. i am number 1 and the ballot and number 1 in your hearts. thanks:

#osi, #onyekwuluje, #judge, #court, #appeal, #bowlinggreen, #glasgow, #munfordville, #hodgenville, #elizabethtown, #fortknox, #shephardsville, #leitchfield, #bradenburg #radcliff, #hardinsburg, #hartford, #beaverdam, #owensboro, #henderson, #morganfield, #cecilia, #mtwashington

#warrencounty, #barrencounty, #hartcounty, #laruecounty, #hardincounty, #bullittcounty, #meadecounty, #graysoncounty, #breckinridgecounty, #hancockcounty, #daviesscounty, #hendersoncounty, #unioncounty, #ohiocounty, #kentucky. #osiforjudge.#osi. #facebook.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20080704/OPINION06/807040386/A-great-American-patriot-Osi-Onyekwuluje

NFL Concussions!


Labels:

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Boko Haram!


Labels:

Monday, May 12, 2014

Nigerian Corruption.


Labels:

#Bringbackourgirls.


Labels:

Saturday, May 10, 2014

#Nigeria!

I have decided to no longer villify Nigeria (or any other country for that matter) by pointing out its corruption. 

Why? 

Because other countries are equally as corrupt, though are more adept at hiding it, or as in #America, where the rich and well politically connected figure out their nefarious ways of fooling the voters in order to pass laws that sanction corruption and, make evil sound good and immorality appear Holy!

Labels:

Welcome To FOX News. Funny!


Labels:

Friday, May 09, 2014

Benghazi!


Labels:

Thursday, May 08, 2014

Who Is Boko Haram's Leader? Watch Video.

Boko Haram!


Labels:

Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Kentucky Legislature!


Labels:

Tuesday, May 06, 2014

Benghazi!


Labels:

Monday, May 05, 2014

U. S. Supreme Court Upholds Christian Prayers At City Council Meetings.

Supreme Court upholds Christian prayers at city council meetings

The Supreme Court said Monday that city councils and other public boards are free to open their meetings with an explicitly Christian prayer, ruling that judges may not act as "censors of religious speech" simply because the prayers reflect the views of the dominant faith.

The 5-4 decision rejected the idea that government-sponsored prayers violate the Constitution if officials regularly invite Christian clerics to offer the prayers.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, speaking for the court, said prayers and invocations have been a routine feature of legislatures and city councils throughout American history, and he said the court was unwilling to set specific limits on those prayers.

The 1st Amendment's ban on an "establishment of religion" does not require "that legislative prayer may be addressed only to a generic God," the decision states. To enforce such a requirement would mean judges would have to review the prayers and "act as supervisors or censors of religious speech."

"Once it invites prayer into the public sphere, government must permit a prayer giver to address his or her own God or gods as conscience dictates, unfettered by what an administrator or judge considers to be non-sectarian," Kennedy wrote in Town of Greece v. Galloway.

The ruling upholds the prayers offered regularly at town meetings in Greece, New York. Two women, one Jewish and the other atheist, had sued after attending a series of public meetings that featured a prayer to Jesus Christ.

While Kennedy's opinion upholds these prayers, he said a city would go too far if the prayers "denigrate non-believers or religious minorities, threaten damnation or preach conversion." This "would present a different case," he said.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. formed the majority.

Justice Elena Kagan spoke for the four dissenters and faulted the court for "allowing the Town of Greece to turn its assemblies for citizens into a forum for Christian prayer."

"When citizens of this country approach their government, they do so only as Americans, not as a members of one faith or another. And that means that even in a partly legislative body, they should not confront government-sponsored worship that divides them along religious lines," Kagan concluded.



http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-supreme-court-prayers-approved-city-councils-20140505,0,1655063.story#ixzz30r5zBOau

Labels: , ,

Be Patient. LOL.


Labels:

Sunday, May 04, 2014

He Just Won't Die!


Labels:

Saturday, May 03, 2014

Watch 2014 White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Watch POTUS BELOW:



Joel MvHale:

Labels:

V. "Silly Rabbit" Stiviano: "Donald Sterling Is Not a Racist, Should Apologize for Remarks". It Must Be Nice To Have Money To Buy Some Peoples' Souls! Watch Video. I'm Smh!!

Funny 2!


Labels:

Friday, May 02, 2014

Are Black People Cowards? Yes, Says Homeboy Sandman. Read More below.

 
Black People Are Cowards

In light of the recent decision by a professional basketball team, comprised of mostly black players, to respond to their boss basically saying “I hate niggers” by turning their shirts inside out the next day at work, I have come to the decision that I agree wholeheartedly with the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, and I too do not want black people invited to my events.

It’s not for the same reasons that the Clippers’ owner doesn’t want black people invited to his events. To be honest I don’t really know what his reasons are. Perhaps he recently tuned in to an FM “hip hop” station and after hearing song after drug, sex, and violence-laden song decided that it might be a good idea to keep some distance. Perhaps his media conditioning spans beyond music, encompassing the gamut of stereotype-enforcing media, (media championed and praised by blacks, where the most rich and famous coons are praised and idolized as examples of black “success”). Maybe he’s been hanging out with George Zimmerman, and they’ve been watching Love & Hip Hop, and Basketball Wives, and the Tyler Perry collection, and Katt Williams and Kevin Hart performances (anybody catch that Kevin Hart movie with the ex-rapper who used to have a song standing up against police brutality playing a police officer? Where Hart delivers the line that Zimmerman had no doubt heard a thousand different times in a thousand different ways, shifting his psyche to the point where he could be authentically terrified of someone just because they were black . . . “you’re white. You don’t fight.”)

No, I’m lucky enough to spend enough time with black people to recognize that we’re not the base form of human life that we continue to support ourselves being portrayed as (though admittedly, it definitely rubs off on us. A lot. So much so that it’s very puzzling to comprehend how we could blame anyone who doesn’t get to spend much time with us for fostering a wildly skewed perception. What can people know but what they see?). No, I don’t want black people to stay away from my events because I believe them to be uncivilized, or ignorant, or anything like that.

I don’t want black people at my events anymore, because black people are cowards.

In all the history I’ve ever studied, in all the fiction I’ve ever read, I am hard pressed to find an example of cowardice to rival the modern day black American, and nobody wants to be surrounded by cowards right?

What if lions break out of the zoo and start trying to eat everyone? What if aliens attack? What if the police department decides that they want to grab their batons and blow off some steam? Are cowards really the type of people that you want to be surrounded by?

Not me.

Black People Are Cowards
That’s why I don’t want black people at my events anymore. Athletes that could refuse to perform until a killer is arrested, even until a killer is convicted, who instead opt for taking a picture where they all have their hoods on and then carrying on with business as usual: I don’t want to be surrounded be these clowns. If you’re black, or white, and you go back to work after finding out that your boss is grossed out at the idea of being in the same vicinity with any black person except for the cutie he’s sugar daddy to, I’m pretty sure you’re not who I want in my corner during crunch time. Real crunch time. Life crunch time.

The most common excuse I’ve heard for today’s cowardice is “they need to feed their families,” which of course is a euphemism for “for the money.” You know, the blacks that sold other blacks into slavery, there’s a good chance they used some of that money to feed their families too. So, that makes them cool with all of y’all? Here’s a question, is there anything that we won’t do for money? Is getting paid an excuse for everything? It’s an excuse for looking the other way when innocent people are killed. It’s an excuse for supporting racism by trying to win a championship for an openly racist owner. With regard to hip hop and media it’s an excuse for purposefully, and most often deceitfully, representing yourself and your culture as pretty much scum who can only be validated by money. Thanks in large part to the exceptional (it’s sad just how exceptional) bravery of Michelle Alexander, (author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness) we live in a society where each day more and more people realize the obvious truth that the goals of the criminal justice system have way more to do with black enslavement than rehabilitation or keeping people safe. Facing the reality of modern slavery, we continue to allow ourselves to be enslaved day after day. (Granted, fear of death is a far cry from fear of lack of wealth, but they’re both fear, the currency of cowardice.) As KRS-One (whose “Sound of Da Police” was actually the theme song for the trailer of that ridiculous movie I referenced earlier, which all but brought a tear to my eye), pointed out on his classic “Black Cop,” many policemen and policewomen are now earning paychecks for gathering up their own brothers and sisters, on charges that perpetually lead to a slap on the wrist for whites but somehow manage to be the first domino in a lifetime of enslavement for blacks. These cops get to use the “feeding my family” line too. We accept it, and go about our day, meek, bullied, and afraid to assert authority against anyone but each other, and amongst each other asserting authority with a ferocity that could only be explained by the rage of hundreds of years of being bullied by everybody else. In New York City, where infiltration and displacement are referenced using the the thinly veiled insult “gentrification” (look up the root word. “Gent.” If we accept and use a term the very definition of which suggests that communities are becoming more noble and graceful, what does that say about the people being pushed out?) natives know better than to display any aggression towards white newcomers, but are as quick as ever to stare down an unfamiliar black face who isn’t from the neighborhood.

What do you call people who walk quietly to slavery? Who allow themselves to be insulted without standing up for themselves beyond wardrobe adjustments that in reality are nothing but a public show of shame? What do you call people that pretend that these ridiculous gestures actually hold some weight rather than face the fact that we are the laughing stock of the entire planet, and as long there’s the chance that someday maybe we’ll be rich there’s nothing that we’re going to do about it?

I call us cowards.

It’s almost as if people have forgotten that struggle includes struggling. You might have to lose your job. You might have to lose your life. That’s what it takes for change to happen. There’s no easy way to do this. If you’re scared to stand up for yourself, for whatever reason, all I ask is that you stop pretending. Stop with the Facebook posts. Stop with the meaningless conversations. Just stop. Be honest. About how you behave. About your part in all this madness. About what you are. A coward. Just a coward. No need to put on an act for the rest of us. We can all see right through each other.

One last thing . . .

For those of you who have made it this far without stopping for how furious at me your shame has made you, I want you to know something. I don’t really think black people are cowards. I think humans are cowards. Most of us. I think that regardless of where one’s phenotype places them within the imaginary concept of race, that the majority of us are content to live on our knees rather than die on our feet.

The problem is, we, us, black people, can’t afford to be like everyone else anymore. Not if we want to survive. I don’t know how we got here, but everywhere you look we’re at the bottom of the global totem pole. We need to make history. We can’t be cowards like every one else, not any more. In fact, we need to set a new standard for heroism. For bravery. For courage. Maybe a standard never before seen in the history of humankind. Extreme situations call for extreme measures, and in modern times our inferiority is ingrained in every single aspect of our lives, from our media, to our religion, to our science, to our public education, to our higher education, to Africa appearing to be the same size as Greenland on all of the maps despite the fact that in reality Africa is 14 times larger. It’s harder to see our enemies than it’s ever been. Our enemy isn't white people. It's people who value greed more than human life. Racial division is one of their oldest weapons, and media is their latest. We mustn’t forget how young this weapon is. I didn’t grow up using the Internet. The television itself isn’t even 100 years old. The idea of global celebrity, and global transference of ideas and perceptions of culture, has never existed the way it does today. Just as Howard Beale prophesized in Network in 1976, we’re up against “the most awesome God damned propaganda force in the whole Godless world.”

We’re going to have to step it up.

If you’re down to step it up, let’s step it up. Let’s boycott. Boycott was the foundation of the Civil Rights movement. Do you believe that a cable network exists solely to manipulate the perception of black people? Stop watching it. Don’t put up a post one day praising the episode of Boondocks that never aired and then spend the next day tweeting the entire BET awards. That doesn’t make any sense.

Let’s step it up. If every NBA player who wanted to stand up against racism vowed not to play until the Clippers’ owner resigned, it would be announced that he resigned before you were finished reading this. If he didn’t want to, someone would make him. If we boycotted every night spot that spins music about how much we love killing each other and taking and selling drugs, every single one of them would have new DJs by next week (don’t even get me started on these new DJs. The new drug dealers. Admitting that they know what they’re giving people is bad for them but caring more about getting paid). I went to DJ Spinna’s Michael Jackson/Prince party at SRBs last night and there was more dancing and mirth and free love in that place than every hip hop party in NYC in the last 10 years put together. So when people tell you that we need ratchet nonsense to dance, they’re gaming you. Don’t be so gullible. Don’t act like black people only found out how to have fun when we lost our connection to our own human decency.

Let’s step it up and not buy magazines pushing music designed to glamorize a lifestyle certain to land our youth in prison.

Let’s step it up and take off from work and stay home with our kids until these preposterous tenure rules are revoked from public schools and it’s the kids that can’t be fired, not the teachers.

Let’s step it and use social media to rally each other. Everybody knew about that woman who fired a warning shot and got 20 years (I hear she’s been released now. No thanks to us). Everybody knows about that woman who got however many years for leaving her child in the car while she went to a job interview. Every single week all over Facebook there’s a new video of someone catching a beating as bad as the one Rodney King caught, but I never see a post that says, “Share this if you’ll go on strike from work until these police officers are fired.” “Share this if you’ll strike until this woman is released.” “Share this if you won’t spend a single dollar until Troy Davis is released from death row and granted a new trial.” Can you imagine the impact that that would have? Everybody is always trying to act there’s no solutions. There are plenty of solutions. We're just too cowardly to implement them. Worried about this discomfort or that discomfort, great or small, that might take place as a result. Having to find a new place to party. Or a new show to watch. Isn’t the discomfort of oppression enough? There’s plenty of solutions, just no easy ones, but if we can shift to courage instead of cowardice, there’s more than enough solutions to guarantee our success. Guarantee. Next time you’re complaining about how this country was built on us, take a second to think about the fact that it still is. If we want to, we can shut this whole place down.

So make a decision between cowardice and courage, and if you choose courage, step it up. Step it up in any of the myriad of ways that are available to us. I’ve named a few. Name a few more. Leave a few suggestions in the comments section. Call up your friends. Tweet. Facebook.

Then start doing them. If you can’t convince anyone to do them with you, do them on your own. Start right away because we’re running out of time. I hear some states are fining people for sagging their pants. I’d never sag my pants, but if we begin to allow people to be penalized simply for attributes that we’ve allowed to be associated with being black, we’re going to find the water getting even hotter very soon.

We’ve been cowards for a very long time. We have a lot of catching up to do. Let’s start right now.

For those of you who don’t want to step it up, do me a favor and at least unfriend me.

Homeboy Sandman is a recording artist on Stones Throw Records. He previously wrote for Gawker on the topic of police brutality.

Labels: , ,

Happy Derby Day From Us In Kentucky, Courtesy Of Joel Pett.


Labels:

Thursday, May 01, 2014

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Welcome to the Finger-Wagging Olympics [Over Donald Sterling #donaldsterling].


Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Welcome to the Finger-Wagging Olympics

It's time to look at ourselves — and our collective moral outrage — in the mirror, says former NBA player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Moral outrage is exhausting. And dangerous. The whole country has gotten a severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome from the newest popular sport of Extreme Finger Wagging. Not to mention the neck strain from Olympic tryouts for Morally Superior Head Shaking. All over the latest in a long line of rich white celebrities to come out of the racist closet. (Was it only a couple days ago that Cliven Bundy said blacks would be better off picking cotton as slaves? And only last June Paula Deen admitted using the “N” word?)

Yes, I’m angry, too, but not just about the sins of Donald Sterling. I’ve got a list. But let’s start with Sterling. I used to work for him, back in 2000 when I coached for the Clippers for three months. He was congenial, even inviting me to his daughter’s wedding. Nothing happened or was said to indicate he suffered from IPMS (Irritable Plantation Master Syndrome). Since then, a lot has been revealed about Sterling’s business practices:

2006: U.S. Dept. of Justice sued Sterling for housing discrimination. Allegedly, he said, “Black tenants smell and attract vermin.”
2009: He reportedly paid $2.73 million in a Justice Dept. suit alleging he discriminated against blacks, Hispanics, and families with children in his rentals. (He also had to pay an additional nearly $5 million in attorneys fees and costs due to his counsel’s “sometimes outrageous conduct.”)
2009: Clippers executive (and one of the greatest NBA players in history) sued for employment discrimination based on age and race.

And now the poor guy’s girlfriend (undoubtedly ex-girlfriend now) is on tape cajoling him into revealing his racism. Man, what a winding road she led him down to get all of that out. She was like a sexy nanny playing “pin the fried chicken on the Sambo.” She blindfolded him and spun him around until he was just blathering all sorts of incoherent racist sound bites that had the news media peeing themselves with glee.

They caught big game on a slow news day, so they put his head on a pike, dubbed him Lord of the Flies, and danced around him whooping.

I don’t blame them. I’m doing some whooping right now. Racists deserve to be paraded around the modern town square of the television screen so that the rest of us who believe in the American ideals of equality can be reminded that racism is still a disease that we haven’t yet licked.

What bothers me about this whole Donald Sterling affair isn’t just his racism. I’m bothered that everyone acts as if it’s a huge surprise. Now there’s all this dramatic and very public rending of clothing about whether they should keep their expensive Clippers season tickets. Really? All this other stuff I listed above has been going on for years and this ridiculous conversation with his girlfriend is what puts you over the edge? That’s the smoking gun?

He was discriminating against black and Hispanic families for years, preventing them from getting housing. It was public record. We did nothing. Suddenly he says he doesn’t want his girlfriend posing with Magic Johnson on Instagram and we bring out the torches and rope. Shouldn’t we have all called for his resignation back then?

Shouldn’t we be equally angered by the fact that his private, intimate conversation was taped and then leaked to the media? Didn’t we just call to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen’s privacy in such an un-American way? Although the impact is similar to Mitt Romney’s comments that were secretly taped, the difference is that Romney was giving a public speech. The making and release of this tape is so sleazy that just listening to it makes me feel like an accomplice to the crime. We didn’t steal the cake but we’re all gorging ourselves on it.

Make no mistake: Donald Sterling is the villain of this story. But he’s just a handmaiden to the bigger evil. In our quest for social justice, we shouldn’t lose sight that racism is the true enemy. He’s just another jerk with more money than brains.

So, if we’re all going to be outraged, let’s be outraged that we weren’t more outraged when his racism was first evident. Let’s be outraged that private conversations between people in an intimate relationship are recorded and publicly played. Let’s be outraged that whoever did the betraying will probably get a book deal, a sitcom, trade recipes with Hoda and Kathie Lee, and soon appear on Celebrity Apprentice and Dancing with the Stars.

The big question is “What should be done next?” I hope Sterling loses his franchise. I hope whoever made this illegal tape is sent to prison. I hope the Clippers continue to be unconditionally supported by their fans. I hope the Clippers realize that the ramblings of an 80-year-old man jealous of his young girlfriend don’t define who they are as individual players or as a team. They aren’t playing for Sterling—they’re playing for themselves, for the fans, for showing the world that neither basketball, nor our American ideals, are defined by a few pathetic men or women.

Let’s use this tawdry incident to remind ourselves of the old saying: “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” Instead of being content to punish Sterling and go back to sleep, we need to be inspired to vigilantly seek out, expose, and eliminate racism at its first signs.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a six-time National Basketball Association champion and league Most Valuable Player. Follow him on Twitter (@KAJ33) and Facebook (facebook.com/KAJ).

Funny!


Labels:

You Can Laugh, if You Want. I'm Not Amused By The Subject Matter!