Who Died and Made Tavis King? 

By Melissa Harris-Lacewell | TheRoot.com

Does Tavis realize that Obama is trying to win an election?

By Melissa Harris-Lacewell TheRoot.com

Updated: 10:42 AM ET Feb 15, 2008

Who put Tavis Smiley in charge? 

Over the past two months African Americans have emerged as equal partners in a multi-racial, intergenerational, bipartisan, national coalition led by the most exciting political candidate of the past four decades, who also happens to be the first viable African-American presidential possibility in our history.  So why is Tavis Smiley throwing a temper tantrum?

He is mad because Obama has not promised to attend Smiley’s “State of the Black Union” next week in New Orleans.  At last year’s SOTBU Al Sharpton, Cornel West and others joined Tavis is roundly criticizing Obama for not attending.  Where was Barack that weekend? Oh yeah, he was announcing his bid for the U.S. presidency.  This year, Obama is busy trying to win Texas, which has emerged as the firewall state for the Hillary Clinton campaign.  Obama wins Texas; Hillary goes home.  But Tavis & Co. think Obama should spend precious hours chatting with them about their agenda?

(Jimi Izrael wondered the same thing about him and the other Popes of Blackness.) Let me be clear: I respect the importance of the SOTBU. Tavis performs an essential public service by creating and reproducing a critical black counter-public through this event. The event is decidedly democratic because it is open to a true variety of black voices. Every year it showcases black intellect, commitment and ideological diversity. All this is great, but it doesn’t make Tavis the gatekeeper.  It certainly doesn’t give him the right to act as King-Maker, or in this case Queen-Maker.

Tavis and his guests have every right to criticize Obama if they have substantive disagreements with his policy, his approach to politics or his viability as a general election candidate.  They do not have a right to create a false, racial litmus test.  All these black leaders who spent the year telling us that Obama is not old enough, not black enough and not angry enough to earn African American votes must have noticed that Obama can deliver the black vote to himself, by himself, with little help from these self-proclaimed racial power brokers.

I can’t quite figure out what motivates Tavis.  At least I understand the old guard Civil Rights leaders. They are genuinely unwilling to cede power, believing that they have an authenticity claim based on their proximity to Martin Luther King, Jr.  I also understand the frightened Democratic insiders who rely on the remnants of the Clinton machine for their bread and butter.  But Tavis is not in either category.  He is a part of a new generation of journalists who have carved out their own constituency. I am actually surprised to see Smiley join a pile-on led by his former boss Bob Johnson, who tried to silence him with such an ungracious termination a decade ago. 

Maybe Tavis legitimately worries that the policy issues of black America will be lost in the excitement of the multiracial coalition.  That is fair. But I wonder why Tavis does not trust us to vote in our own interests.  Obama won the votes of the people of Louisiana last week.  He stood at Katrina’s ground-zero while Hillary blew off the state, assuming she couldn’t win it. Now Tavis wants to act as a racial super-delegate by claiming he knows what the people need better than the voters.

Maybe Tavis is just jealous.  Maybe it isn’t deep at all, just a replay of the old adage about crabs in a barrel. 

I do think that Obama should attend the State of the Black Union.  I agree with CNN’s Roland Martin (which is rare) that Michelle should go.  She should listen to concerns, answer questions from the audience and take seriously the substantive concerns raised there.  Barack should be in Texas.  I don’t think anybody in the room will claim that Michelle is not a good enough surrogate for Barack. If Hillary can claim Bill’s presidency as her experience, I am pretty sure Michelle can talk to Tavis on the campaign’s behalf.

I usually watch this event every year.  It is fun, enlightening and inspiring. This year I will have to TiVo it. Why? Because I will be phoning Texas voters to remind them to head out to the polls on March 4.

 Melissa Harris-Lacewell is is associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University.

  

The American Presidential Campaign Much Ado About Nothing

                                                     By E. Lee Sullivan

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, or in this case that woman behind the curtain, or the man behind the woman behind the curtain, or the shadow government behind the government, it’s a slight of hand.

It’s my humble opinion that politicians are liken unto a horny man who will say anything or do anything to get laid once he’s satisfied, well.

The American people have not elected a president in eight years.

“We the people” wanted Al Gore, but he lacked the courage to fight for what was rightfully his, not wanting to go the way of Benazir Bhutto and many others who would rather die as warriors than to live as cowards.

If Obama becomes the president he will not be the first Black president as the ignorant believe or regardless of that title given to him by Toni Morrison.  John Hanson was the first Black president of the United States he was one of seven moors who were president their symbol was the cherry tree and George cut it down, but that’s another article.

The question is, Are Americans in for another sucker punch despite “vote or die”?  With voting fraud proven, “diebold hack-ability”, black box voting machines (Read Allen Raymond’s How To Rig an Election) and Bush’s right to remain in office as long as we are at war, somewhat liken unto Roman rulers declaring himself emperor, but don’t expect the senate or the congress to put a stop to him.

So we fiddle as American burns, justifying murdering over a million in Iraq, her present extreme foreclosure rates, her boarding recession, her declining dollar, her high unemployment and crime, her abusive klu klux klan police force, her John Q. Esquire racism, her nearly 47 million without health insurance, her homeless and despicable cases of hungry children, her racist injustice system and environmental racism pollution system and non-educational public system, her Russians are coming Russians are coming to, the terrorist are coming, (Iraq) the terrorist are coming (Iran) to the aliens are coming, her Skull-n-Bones dictatorship which continues no matter what puppet is in office controlled by the puppet masters.

“Man doesn’t want to be free because he’s weak and corrupt.” (A quote from The Smoking Man of The X-Files.) Politicians can always pull a house Negro out they back pocket T. D. Jakes in Katrina, see we like Black people, despite what Kanye said, now house Negro Bob Johnson, Charlie Rangle, John Lewis and all the rest who the scripture says “fornicating with the beast.”

It’s sad that Black people especially, continue to embrace what the Caucasians have given them from politics to religion they are tricky dicks who plan to stick it to you in the end with The King Alfred Plan Rex-84 The Extermination of Black Americans.

Bobby Hewitt , check him out on You-Tube says that white people are more spiritual than Black people.  They showed that race is a non-issue, when they voted their conviction in Iowa. They proved that they want “change.”

The David Ike, Dick Gregory, Louis Farrakhan and Fox Mulders of our time believe differently from the masses. They wouldn’t march off blindly into invasion from the word of politicians. Dr. Bill Deagle check him out on google video says they are in Iraq and will go into Iran seeking a portal (remember these are ancient Biblical lands) that will give them advanced technological means and alien communications.

The Mother Ship has been sighted more often lately around our dying planet, most recently in Texas. If you are not among the 14% of Americans who have seen a UFO or believe in them, check out The Disclosure Project on line.  If I see her I’ll be about opening hailing frequencies in order to flag her down to bring my prophetic dream vision into reality, boarding her and hoping that her birth is a place the Staple Singers sing about where there’s no economical exploitation and no political domination.

Dating Mistakes that Men Make by Linda Dominique GrosvenorThe relationship was promising. You made the cutest couple ever, but now it’s over and you’re not even sure why. Women tend to beat themselves up when they reflect back on mistakes they’ve made in past relationships. They talk it over with their girlfriends and try to unravel the root cause to get closure, but women aren’t alone. Men make dating mistakes too and they wanted to come clean about their relationship faux pauxs. Here are the top ten dating mistakes men say they make in relationships.Not Being Assertive Enough“I’m not talking about proclaiming my supreme masculinity, but I’ve learned that women appreciate confidence in a man. I always came off a little passive and it proved to be a major turn off. I know women don’t want some overly aggressive jerk, but I failed to find a happy medium between gentleness and assertiveness. I believe that if I had spoken up more in my past relationships, I could have had more control over the direction of it. Not stepping up to the plate and voicing my desires and thoughts made me just as undesirable as a selfish, self-centered idiot.”Being Too Honest“Being too honest doesn’t pay. I say this because whenever I’ve explained to women that I am not looking for a long-term relationship, or marriage, but “just sex” they say they are fine with that. I’ve realized that they lie and have an agenda-plotting to make themselves the significant other in my life. And when the time comes to end it they suddenly don’t understand why, and they feel like I’ve taken advantage of them. I’ve come to realize that if a woman is “just sex” you cannot bring them into your personal life, they should just be there to satisfy the need and that’s it.”Discovering Whether or Not She Has a Man“I’m not talking about asking if she is seeing someone else, that’s easy. In this case, I’m talking about finding out if her heart belongs to someone else. It doesn’t matter if a woman is with the man or not, if she is still in love with him, then she is still his woman. He may have already moved on, be married to someone else or even dead. It doesn’t matter. You will never get a fair chance at getting her until she lets him go.”Becoming Sexually Involved Too Quickly“The biggest mistake or regret that I’ve had is jumping in the bed too quick. I now realize that this always ends up being my biggest downfall. Whether good sex or bad sex, I’ve found that women will completely change afterwards – they will either make more of the sex than was intended or lead me to believe that because of the sex that we are an item, only for me to eventually realize that it was her normal routine. Love isn’t blind, but good sex sure causes it.”Lack of Attention and Common Courtesy“There are times when I can admit that I did not give women the proper attention. I answered the phone when I was good and ready or made up perfect excuses to only see her when it was convenient for me and there was improper cell phone usage ie. at dinner, during a movie and in bed too. I think this derived from me not really being into her the way she may have been into me. This was a major mistake because once word spread on campus it ruined my chances with someone I was genuinely interested in. Nowadays if I’m not into a woman, I don’t drag it out. I just cut my losses so that no one gets hurt.”Being Too Politically Correct“I was once out on a date with a young lady, and for some reason I asked her how she wanted to handle the cost of the date ie. whether I was to pay, or whether we’d go ‘Dutch’. From the moment those words left my mouth, I knew I’d made a mistake. I was just trying to be considerate of the modern times we now live in. I normally pay when I ask women out, but for some reason I decided to change my approach. Never again.”Misreading a Date’s Intentions“I learned that first dates are an opportunity to explore without being nosy. There’s something in it for the man and the woman. My mistake was to mis-read the woman’s reason for going out with me in the first place (be it sex, companionship or curiosity). I no longer engage in the ‘psychological foreplay’ of dating; I try and judge a person based on whether or not they are someone I’d enjoy growing old with and move forward.”Not Making Time To Date“I normally don’t ‘date’ unless I know the lady well enough to want to spend more than an hour with her outside of our traditional boundaries, i.e., work, gym, college friends, folks known over the years through chance meeting via relatives. While I haven’t given up on finding true love, I was no longer willing to venture outside the daily routine to find another special someone. For me, there was just very little ‘free’ time available to step out on a possibility. While I know this definitely limited my exposure, unfortunately I was at the point where if it wasn’t on the must-do schedule, I used that time to simply just enjoy the company of self.”Pretending for Sex“I dated a woman who was sexy, articulate and outgoing, but had a seven date rule. She was fun and outgoing but I wasn’t necessarily into all of the eclectic things she enjoyed doing. My initial goal was to tough it out to get past her seven date rule to get to the intimacy part of things, but I grew tired of making conversation about things that didn’t interest me. Next time I find myself in this situation I’d just sit the woman down and come to some sort of compromise instead of pretending. If it ends up meaning no sex, so be it.”Overlooking the Obvious“One day I was stuck in traffic and started a conversation and exchanged numbers with a young lady and ended up making a date with her. I was driving a SUV and she was driving a car. When I picked her up for the date I got the biggest surprise-she was about a foot taller than me. I don’t have a Napoleon Complex but I don’t like walking down the street holding hands with my date looking like her child. So my mistake was not getting all of the facts. We were both quite uncomfortable.”You have to be proud when men own up to the mistakes they’ve made-take heed and adjust your love accordingly.Linda Dominique Grosvenor has made her foray into non-fiction with the inspirational smash hit The Plural Thing: Spiritually Preparing for Your Soul Mate. Her expertise on dating and relationship issues has been used in articles for publications such as Modern Bride, Jolie, Jewel, Honey and MORE Magazine. To receive her exclusive article Why You Must Understand Past Relationships to Get the Love You Deserve Today for a limited time only, join her mailing list princessdominiqueunplugged-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.” Log on to her official website at www.LindaDominiqueGrosvenor.com for details on how to request a free excerpt of The Plural Thing. 

Where Is The Monument? 

By H. Lewis Smith 

Message to the Black Family

If your children don’t remember,
Who their ancestors were,
Please don’t let them forget,
That they were a Dignified and Spiritual People.
   ~ Gerald W. Deas, M.D., 1988  

Black History Month: A time for African-American slave descendants to reflect, uplift the honorable triumphs attained by ancestors, and pay righteous homage to African-American ascendants whom fought hard for the freedoms in which African Americans are privileged today? Or is it? 

Descendants of African-American slaves seem to place no value on the valor, courage and fortitude demonstrated by their ascendants. The life and death struggles seem to be unappreciated by these sons and daughters of those once subjugated.  

How is it that some of the most significant moments in Black American History remain ignored and ill-appreciated? For instance, the Middle Passage. African-Americans of today seem to disregard, rather than cherish, the memories of the millions who lost their lives after being forced-shackled and underfed-to walk in slave caravans-sometimes as far as 1,000 miles-to a fate worse than death: 

Ascendants were placed on slave ships bound for the Americas; those too sick or weary to keep pace with the caravans were often killed or left to die. Others that did make the ship either voluntarily jumped overboard as means of escaping the horrific new life, or were deliberately pushed overboard due to failing health. No honoring the memories of these millions who perished during the Middle Passage exists.

As for the countless numbers who survived the Middle Passage, they were met with an even more dismal fate than the voyage to the new world-the harsh realities of enslavement. They were stripped of their identities, given new names, and taught to envision themselves and their African heritage as inferior and barbaric. Their slave masters insisted on total obedience. This led to complete dependence on the master, which cultivated infantile characteristics in many of the slaves. The masters taught slaves to reject their past while adopting the values of their masters. These transformations were achieved in the most heinous and inhumane ways-through torture, maiming, castrating, sodomizing-ever before witnessed by humankind.  

However, in spite of all torturous experiences endured, the resilience of the African-American slave prevailed. Somehow from these ashes of despair, like the mighty phoenix, arose a solid, strong, and magnificent race of people founded on individuality, pride, and dignity. Negro Spirituals, Blues and Jazz are all by-products of African American ingenuity during these trying times, created to maintain a sense of sanity, individuality, and heritage. These innovations also represented their sheer refusal to allow their spirit to be defeated.   

Yet the struggles, sacrifices, and accomplishments of the African slaves have largely been ignored or underappreciated by their descendants. As though to rub salt into one’s wound, no greater evidence exists to support this argument than that of the shameless embracing-by the progenies of African slaves-a word that was used to dehumanize, degrade and demean their ascendants: the N-word.   

This month, rapper Nas will shamelessly release an album entitled, N**ger, and the on-going saga of Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks continues. These entertainment figures, comedians, other rappers and entertainers alike, along with many in the general public, are all byproducts of a dastardly mind-controlling past which has conditioned them to disrespect themselves and the sacred memories of their ancestry. 

The chilling effects of a mind manipulating process that slaves fought hard not to succumb to and African-American civil rights leaders gave their lives to reverse has withstood the test of time, continues to be passed down through the generations, and prevails in this 21^st Century-at the hand of African Americans. Carter G. Woodson said it best:  “When you control a man’s thinking, you do not have to worry about his actions.”

This trickling down effect is highly evident in Nas’s thought process, who has not only elected the word “N**ger” for the title of his album, but deliberately chose to wait until this month, Black History Month, to release the album. Self-respect, honor, dignity and pride are non-existent among way too many descendants of the once proud and self-respecting African slaves.

Black History Month seemingly becomes less significant with each passing year. This year is proving to be no exception. Nas will so obligingly demonstrate that his black voice serves as a ventriloquist from the acculturation of the slavery process, casting further aspersions upon the true significance of Black History Month. 

Instead of erecting a monument to the sacred and cherished memories of their ascendants, a maelstrom of contempt, disrespect and rejection exists in its place.  Centuries ago, blacks were leading other blacks into physical enslavement. Centuries later, history is repeating itself. Blacks are once again leading other blacks into enslavement, only this time, towards mental bondage.  

H. Lewis Smith is the founder and president of UVCC, the United Voices for a Common Cause, Inc., and author of Bury that Sucka, A Scandalous Love Affair With the N-Word.  http://www.theunitedvoices.com/.

Drugs, Murders, Crime and the Special Problems of Males

By Jack Kammer

The most apparent fact about the current plague of drug-related murders racking America’s inner cities is that the vast majority of the people involved are Black. Since most of us are oblivious to the gender-based problems of men and boys, we attach no significance to the fact that they are also male.

If hundreds of Black women were slaughtering each other in a mad attempt to earn illicit money, policy-makers most certainly would inquire into the gender basis of their turmoil. We are accustomed to thinking of women as victims.

But we live in a society which can stare directly at desperate, defiant men and fail to see beyond the soothing sham that “it’s a man’s world.” We are blind to the fact that being male can be a problem, especially for poor Blacks. We cannot fathom the frustration of being a man with nothing in a society which tells men they have it all — or are not worth having at all. In a recent song that hit the tops of the Black music charts, a woman cooed, “You gotta have a J.O.B. if you wanna be with me.”

But make no mistake. The problem of evaluating men solely on their ability to perform economically is not confined to the Black community, nor even to America. In Germany, for instance, the same sexist tune is sung with different lyrics: “Women are what they are. Men are what they do.”

In other words, women are valuable merely by virtue of their existence as women. Men are worthless without performance. Denied, as they are, the reasonable expectation of success, young Black men are especially vulnerable to this form of sexism. Without money, they are consigned to the living hell of feeling inferior to and unworthy of their female counterparts.

In anguished, pathetic, violent and illegal ways, they try to compensate. They have nothing; therefore they are nothing. What can they lose?

We cause our cities to decay from their cores when we tell our young urban men that intrinsically they have no value. We rob Black men of their determination and resiliency when we make them feel essentially worthless, and only hope they seek and find productive work as a salve for their psychic wound. We delude ourselves when we think that minimum wage jobs will provide young men with the self-esteem they need to thrive in a world in which men, especially Black men, are expendable.

The problem is not primarily a lack of money. The problem is that contemporary society focuses too much on the connection between men and money. We would do better to affirm to ourselves and to our young men their inherent value as people — every bit as good and noble as women regardless of how much they make — and then to encourage them to build on that foundation of strength and self-esteem. A solid self image will not disappear as fast as a job might.

The cruelties perpetrated upon Black men by White society hardly need to be recounted. But Black society, too, has been unkind. Disturbingly, the recent ABC television mini-series “The Women of Brewster Place,” a much-heralded story of seven Black women in Harlem, carried the clear message that even in Black society Black men are, at best, largely irrelevant. “I don’t have a husband,” a young mother said timidly. “Well, I’ve had five,” an older and presumably wiser woman answered with the kind of disdain that typified the program, “and you ain’t missing much.”

In his stump speech during the 1988 presidential campaign, Jesse Jackson railed against the fact that women earn less than men. He pointed out the injustice of the pay differential by saying, “But women can’t buy bread for less than men can. They can’t buy milk and eggs for less than men can.” True enough, but regardless of their income women can gain access to other invaluable commodities — the love and affection of children, for instance, and the interest of the opposite sex. But men, as we have seen, are generally rewarded with these things in direct proportion to their income.

Before she moved to Chicago and national prominence, Oprah Winfrey was the co-host of a local talk show in Baltimore. On one program she unwittingly helped prove with crystal clarity that there is such a thing as sexism against men — and that it bears down especially hard on Black men.

During an interview with Fred Hayward, director of Men’s Rights, Inc., an organization concerned with sexism and men’s problems, she tried to induce her guest to concede that though Men’s Issues might make interesting conversation; they are insignificant compared to Women’s Issues. Hayward, one of the nation’s most insightful commentators on problems facing men as a result of their gender, was not about to concede any such thing.

Oprah pressed her demand for the ground rule. Hayward responded. “Oprah,” he said, “proportional to the population, there are eight times as many Blacks in jail as Whites. What does that tell you?” As a Black woman proud of her race, Oprah had a quick response. She said it told her that Blacks live under more social and economic pressure than Whites. Hayward agreed wholeheartedly, and then moved in to close his case. “Oprah, proportional to the population, there are twenty-four times as many men in jail as women. What does that tell you?”

Perhaps it is not merely by coincidence that Oprah co-produced and starred in the television mini-series that so achingly empathized with Black women and gave Black men such short shrift.

How many Black men, we should ask ourselves as we ponder our escalating whirlwind of urban crime, are in jail? How many Black men risk everything for the self-esteem drug money can buy?

We should pay attention not only to society’s differential treatment of Blacks and Whites, but also and especially to our differential treatment of Black men and Black women. Racism knocks Black men down. Sexism, plodding heavily on the premise that the value of men is equal to the money they make, comes along to kick them. 

Jack Kammer is a Contributing Editor for Black Men In America.com.  This article was originally published in the Baltimore Sun on March 26, 1989.