The Best #BlackHistoryMonth Ever! #BlackHistoryMonth2016

Aisha Adams:  5 Reasons This Has Been The Most Unapologetically Black Black History Month Ever

 This has been the blackest and most unapologetic Black History Month ever, and it isn’t even over yet. I am personally here for every melanated moment of it. All this Black excellence and Black power… As much as I love “Lift Every Voice & Sing” and enjoyed writing Black history reports, it could never compare to the ebony joy I have felt since the start of the month as a Black woman. A lot has happened, and I may actually have to do a part two post because we still have 11 days to go. For now, here are five reasons why this has been the most unapologetically black Black History Month ever.

“As the cofounder of Black Lives Matter Chicago, I was issued an invitation to this event, and various news outlets have already listed me as an attendee. But as a radical, Black organizer, living and working in a city that is now widely recognized as a symbol of corruption and police violence, I do not feel that a handshake with the president is the best way for me to honor Black History Month or the Black freedom fighters whose labor laid the groundwork for the historic moment we are living in.” — Aislinn Pulley

RedEye

Pandering to the gun crowd is so not cool

 

What The Field Negro said all the damn way!

I don't like the imagery, O. Pandering to the gun nut crowd is not cool. A picture of you at Hadiya Pendelton's funeral would have been more like what I wanted to see. That, and a stirring eulogy along with a call for all of us in the black community to start taking responsibility for our children. You should be working overtime from the bully pulpit on that issue, but instead you are trying to prove to wingnuts that you actually shoot skeets every now and then. *scratching my very bald head*

Skeet shooting and bowling? Man the things you do to make some folks love you. 

Psst President Obama!  Who ever advised you to release a picture of you shooting a gun to pander to the Skeeters needs to see how it feels to be among the unemployed and the under employed.

They don't like you.

They will never like you.

The gun control debate is not about how well, or even if Obama can shoot. It's about all the fools running around with weapons of war in an alleged civilized society. That's all it's ever been. Except when it turns racial, like now, when the focus is on Obama's “manliness” or when Black Panthers were legally carrying weapons in public, back in the day. Talk about about faces, the NRA nearly gave itself whiplash back peddling on guns in public when black men took to the streets peacefully inside their own neighborhoods. The panthers didn't kill anybody, but the government declared open season and killed them.

It's not about YOU.  It's not about THEM.  It's about our COUNTRY.   The sooner you and your staff remember that, we ALL will be better off.

What we are witnessing in America's cities is what one mayor has called "slow motion mass murder." The response from the federal government to address the daily death toll must be comprehensive and, most importantly, must be backed up with local law enforcement resources so that parents in cities like Chicago bury less of their children every year.

RedEye tiptoeing away from the computer to go pray for little Ethan and his family.

RedEye's Week in Review

 The tears keep coming---for victims and the nation

NEWTOWN, CT - DECEMBER 18: A casket carrying the body of shooting victim Jessica Rekos, 6, is brought out after her funeral at the St. Rose of Lima Catholic church on December 18, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut. Funeral services were held at the church for both Jessica and James Mattioli, 6, Tuesday, four days after 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Photo: John Moore, Getty Images / 2012 Getty Images

I just realized this will be my last Week in Review for for the year 2012.  Time flies when you are having fun!  I do enjoy blogging, and I will be eternally grateful to the Big Cats at Left in Alabama for encouraging me to become a blogger, and for giving me a platform at Left in Alabama.  Unfortunately my posting privileges were snatched away because of the content of my comments and other post  or  something.  In any event, I continue to  respectfully request to be reinstated as a contributor, but to no avail.  Oh well, maybe next year Santa will grant my Christmas wish.

Revenge of the Republicans!   That's what I call the so called fiscal cliff crisis.  The fanatics in the GOP are determined to exact spending cuts from the middle class and keep the tax cuts for the rich, despite being roundly rejected at the polls on election day.  This is payback to all those who dared vote for President Obama because he was giving  out free stuff, like unemployment benefits, agriculture, the military,  law enforcement, disabled veterans, access to quality affordable health care, college aide, and weather forecasting.   Here's the problem, in an attempt to hurt Obama voters, republicans will be hurting their base, and I don't mean the 1%, I mean the 47%. Can you say bite off your nose to spite your face?

Proving they have a short attention span, the media turned it's attention away from the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, and to some extent the gun control debate.  I guess petitions to have Talking TeeVee Pundit Heads deported/arrested for embarrassing the NRA will do that.  We also have to  worry about reactionary lawmakers making laws that trample our civil liberties and enrich the gun dealers.  BTW, did the you know the NRA was inspired by the Black Panthers?

Meanwhile, under the radar, The Senate just passed the FISA Amendments Act Authorization Act of 2012.  The more things change, the more they remain the same.  Sigh. 

Etu Cancer Treatment Centers of America?  Is nothing sacred?  SMH

20 days to sign the petition for President Obama to begin to restore honor and integrity to the Justice Department.

 

"What if the Tea Party were Black?"

In a previous thread Resident Racebaiter FED UP said...
Let's compare ..... NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People .... BET .... Black Entertainment Television ........
NBJC .... The National Black Justice Coalition ..... CORE .... The Congress of Racial Equality .... ACORN ...... The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, .... BIG ....Blacks in Government,.... CBCF ... "The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. ....... Africa Reparations Movement ........ Black Panther Party ....... Nation of Islam (NOI) ....... Rainbow Push Coalition
...... National Urban League (NUL) .......
National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI .......Miss Black USA ..... National Action Network ....., to the TEA PARTY.

I say comparing the NAACP and other Civil Right's organizations to the Tea Party is like like comparing Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to David Duke, but author Tim Wise hits it out of the ball park with his game of "Imagine" Emphasis mine.

Let’s play a game, shall we? The game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure – the ones who are driving the action – we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.


Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Imagine that a prominent mainstream black political commentator had long employed an overt bigot as Executive Director of his organization, and that this bigot regularly participated in black separatist conferences, and once assaulted a white person while calling them by a racial slur. When that prominent black commentator and his sister — who also works for the organization — defended the bigot as a good guy who was misunderstood and “going through a tough time in his life” would anyone accept their excuse-making? Would that commentator still have a place on a mainstream network? Because that’s what happened in the real world, when Pat Buchanan employed as Executive Director of his group, America’s Cause, a blatant racist who did all these things, or at least their white equivalents: attending white separatist conferences and attacking a black woman while calling her the n-word.

Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by “hating black people,” or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn’t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough—“living fossils” as he called them—“so we will never forget what these people stood for.” After all, these are things that Rush Limbaugh has said, about Barack Obama’s administration, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, a fight on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois in which two black kids beat up a white kid, and about liberals, generally.

Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to “suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.” This is, after all, what Pastor Stan Craig said recently at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina.

Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been “destroying” the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to “hang ‘em high.” And what would happen to any congressional representative who praised that commentator for “speaking common sense” and likened his hate talk to “American values?” After all, those are among the things said by radio host and best-selling author Michael Savage, predicting white revolution in the face of multiculturalism, or said by Savage about Muslims and liberals, respectively. And it was Congressman Culbertson, from Texas, who praised Savage in that way, despite his hateful rhetoric.

Imagine a black political commentator suggesting that the only thing the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building did wrong was not blowing up Fox News instead. This is, after all, what Anne Coulter said about Tim McVeigh, when she noted that his only mistake was not blowing up the New York Times.

Imagine that a popular black liberal website posted comments about the daughter of a white president, calling her “typical redneck trash,” or a “whore” whose mother entertains her by “making monkey sounds.” After all that’s comparable to what conservatives posted about Malia Obama on freerepublic.com last year, when they referred to her as “ghetto trash.”

Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies. Because that’s what white conservatives did last year, in reference to Democratic party leaders in Congress.

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Game Over.

Now FED UP, compare THIS to THIS.