Hamilton County - A teenager who took his own life may have been the target of bullying.
Jamarcus Bell, 14, was a freshman at Hamilton Southeastern High School. He committed suicide Wednesday after his family says he was bullied at school.
While there are many questions surrounding his death, the ceremony is all about celebrating his life. He was the boy who always smiled.
"He had a very effervescent smile. He could be a million miles away you could pick his smile out of anybody's," said Sam Coffee, a dance coach at the school who was also Bell's mentor.
At 14, Jamarcus Bell had already made an impression on friends, family, even people he didn't know.
"He was always happy," said Coffee.
So it is impossible for the community at Hamilton Southeastern High school to understand why the boy who seemed so happy could end his life so tragically.
Sam Coffee coaches the schools "step" squad, a dance troupe that he says Jamarcus was intent on joining. He believes that bullying "had a pretty big impact."
"He would say you guys seem like a family. That's something I want to be part of," Coffee added.
Coffee, a 2008 graduate of Hamilton Southeastern High School, says he was a target of bullying and believed Bell was one too. But any problems he may have had, Bell kept to himself.
"He would never talk about anything anybody did. He would always talk about step team," said Coffee.
Last Monday, Bell indicated to his mentor he did want to talk. Coffee admits he was too busy at the time, but encouraged his friend to call. Two days later, Bell was gone.
"It's kind of hard to make peace with it. But you know he's in a better place; won't have to deal with it wherever he's going," said Coffee.
Bell's parents also say he was a victim of bullying. They reportedly asked the district for a meeting last week before their son's death, but that meeting did not happen.
It's difficult for many to comprehend how the boy with the big smile who made everyone laugh and friends wherever he went could have felt so alone. If bullying did play a part, many are now looking to the school for answers.
Remembering Jamarcus
Visitation for Bell was held Monday evening at Eastern Star Church in Fishers, followed by funeral services. Some who filed through the visitation line knew Bell. Others, like Norma Johnson, did not.
"And I just wanted the family to know that they were not alone in their pain. My heart is broke for this family, they shouldn't have to bury their child," said Johnson.
Johnson lost her teenage grandson, who had heart problems. She said he had been bullied because of his heart condition.
"My heart is broke. I feel like we let that child down," she said.
Friends say they were blindsided by the news of Bell's death.
"He was actually a great friend of mine and just to see him die like that, it was tragic," said friend Alex Akers.
Like others, Akers only heard about bullying, but never saw it or its effects.
"He's one of those who you didn't really expect that he would do that," said another friend, Austin Akers.
"Marcus was a very active kid. He loved everyone he always wanted to be friends with everyone and that's what made everyone happy and it made me happy, too," said Sydney Taylor, who never noticed signs of distress from Bell. "None of that at all."
Other friends continued to remember Bell as a good friend.
"We had fun in class and stuff. He was always the life of the party," said one friend.
"I'd hang out with him a lot. He seemed like he was always happy, never in a bad mood," said another.
"I never seen him sad," said third friend.
Superintendent comments
The superintendent of Hamilton Southeastern Schools held a press conference Monday afternoon regarding the bullying allegations.
"We're deeply saddened," said Dr. Brian Smith, Hamilton Southeastern superintendent.
"I don't know that we'll ever know all the issues that led to this tragic event. But I do want to assure our parents we take bullying very seriously," said Smith.
Although unable to specifically talk about Jamarcus Bell's case, Smith stressed the importance of communication when it comes to bullying.
"We can't react and deal with something we don't know about," said Smith.
As for enforcement of the school's code, Smith says punishment is subjective and handled on a case by case basis.
The parents of Jamarcus Bell are asking the school to take a more active stand to prevent bullying in the system.
"It depends on the degree and extent. How serious is it, is it ongoing, is it repetitive?" Smiths said.
The tragic loss of such a well-loved student has everyone here asking what they could have done differently. While the circumstances leading up to his death remain very much a mystery, the lesson may be to keep the line of communication open.
The district issued this statement:
"This is a tragic loss touching many in our district and community. We have plans in place for these situations and will implement them Monday as we return from fall break to support our students and staff touched by this."
Anti-bullying has been in the news lately, after the suicide of several teens across the country, including 15-year-old Billy Lucas of Greensburg. President Obama posted a video and statement on the White House website encouraging young people to seek support and guidance if they are being bullied.
The school urges any student who is having thoughts of suicide or who is just having trouble dealing with problems to call this hotline.
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November 30, 2011
DEFINIED....GHETTO FABULOUS....
Ghetto fabulous is an expression believed to have originated among African-Americans living in poor urban areas.
It specifically refers to the mentality and lifestyle of some American ghetto inhabitants and vaguely to the mentality and lifestyle of poor African- American urbanites.
Ghetto fabulous is a stereotype in lower income urban America. In this sense, it means individuals who have mentally created an affluent lifestyle while not always having any luxurious possessions or wealth. As a comedic device it often dramatizes and draws attention to life in the ghetto.
For example, in the motion picture B*A*P*S (or Black American Princesses), the protagonists pretend to belong to an upper-economic class, but in reality they live a lifestyle that is full of superficial glamour also known as ghetto fabulous.
It specifically refers to the mentality and lifestyle of some American ghetto inhabitants and vaguely to the mentality and lifestyle of poor African- American urbanites.
Ghetto fabulous is a stereotype in lower income urban America. In this sense, it means individuals who have mentally created an affluent lifestyle while not always having any luxurious possessions or wealth. As a comedic device it often dramatizes and draws attention to life in the ghetto.
For example, in the motion picture B*A*P*S (or Black American Princesses), the protagonists pretend to belong to an upper-economic class, but in reality they live a lifestyle that is full of superficial glamour also known as ghetto fabulous.
TRUTH IN LIFE...
10% of people genuinely care about your problems. The other 90% are glad that you've got them...
November 29, 2011
TRUTH IN LIFE....
Someday, someone will walk into your life and make you realize why it never worked out with anyone else.
November 28, 2011
November 23, 2011
AFFIRMATION OF MANHOOD....
One of the biggest issues in the African American community to date is the absensce of male figures in younger males lives. Boys act out, are disrespectful, and not responsible when they are lacking affirmation from their fathers, uncles, grandfathers or male mentors that they are a young man. I
was blessed to have a beautillion that marked my passage from young boy to young adulthood but that is something COMMON in our communites.
Especially to the fellaz-If you know any young boys/men who are doing what they are supposed to be doing and are responsible, respectful and accountable, let them know you appreciate them and that they are on the right path.
was blessed to have a beautillion that marked my passage from young boy to young adulthood but that is something COMMON in our communites.
Especially to the fellaz-If you know any young boys/men who are doing what they are supposed to be doing and are responsible, respectful and accountable, let them know you appreciate them and that they are on the right path.
November 22, 2011
WHY WE SHOULD NOT SLEEP IN THE SAME BED AT OUR PARENTS HOUSE.....
People in new relationships and some in old relationships are gearing up to visit at least one set of parents for Thanksgiving. Out of all the holidays, Thanksgiving is arguably the most communal, providing the perfect opportunity for many new couples to break bread (literately and figuratively) with the new person in our lives. Some of us will be making this more than just a day trip, spending nights at the parents home for a couple of days.
The sleeping arrangements behind this situation are either a judgement call or an established rule. Some of our parents establish a strict two bed, separate room policy if we’re not married. That’s the rule in my household.
Over the years, I have brought home several women to meet my mom. Since she lives in California and all these relationships began on the East Coast, all the visits involved a few nights stay at Casa De Ms. Rita’s. Under her roof, it is her rules. When it came to sharing a bed, hell, when it came to being in a room with the door closed, Ms. Rita has zero tolerance. I was 27-years-old the last time I brought a woman to my mom’s home, the rule was still in effect.
I can’t say I have a problem with this rule. As a matter of fact, I find the rule to be so respectable and decent, I have taken to applying it to myself when I have been on the visitor end of a meet-the-parents trip. I have been in a couple of relationships with women who have the cool parents, saying I was more than welcome to sleep in the same bed as their daughter. I have always politely declined.
On a basic level, this is just me carrying on the values my mother instilled in me about this sort of thing. Like all people, I still follow some of my parents rules even if I’m not under their roof. I don’t eat any meals shirtless (the whooping my mom gave me the time I tried to sit at the dinner table without a shirt on still makes my skin crawl, and it was delivered 20 years ago), I don’t sleep in the same bed as my woman at her parents’ home even if they say I can.
But the other reason is, I honestly find such an arrangement kind of awkward. My woman and I sleeping in the same bed isn’t going to be the same in the parents house as it is when we’re back to living our regular lives as a regular couple. When we get back to our own apartments, in our own beds, we can and will do our own thing. But in the childhood bed, I promise you this, nothing is going down. It’s not so much that it’s rude (though I would say it is), it just feels slightly unsavory. To put it more bluntly, We don’t want the parent’s having sex on the couch while we’re visiting for the holidays, do we?
As uncomfortable as it is for me write that and for you to read that, that’s probably what the parents have been doing since the day we’ve moved out of their home. They’ve been doing it on the couch, maybe the kitchen, in the bathroom that you used to call “my bathroom”. Hell, maybe even in your old room. Matter of fact, definitely in your old room if your old room has now been changed into a “guest bedroom”.
From the day you moved out, your old house has become their new sex palace, at least 360 days out of the year. This not only goes for parents who are still together, this goes for many single parents too. Please believe, when the kids are gone at college or living their adult lives in some separate city, mama or daddy are acting like the good looking single people they are doing God knows what with Lord knows who.
But when you come home for the holidays, what do they do? They take a break from the couch sessions for you, the children. And if anything goes down in their master bedroom, they’re keeping it quiet for you, the children. It’s called respect, people. I don’t know what my mom and stepdad do now that they have the whole house to themselves, nor do I want to know (nor do I want you to call and “clear up some facts” with me, mom), but I would like them to keep whatever it is they do out of the common areas just as I promise the next time I bring home a woman to whom I’m not yet married, I promise to leave the doors open and sleep on the couch.
The sleeping arrangements behind this situation are either a judgement call or an established rule. Some of our parents establish a strict two bed, separate room policy if we’re not married. That’s the rule in my household.
Over the years, I have brought home several women to meet my mom. Since she lives in California and all these relationships began on the East Coast, all the visits involved a few nights stay at Casa De Ms. Rita’s. Under her roof, it is her rules. When it came to sharing a bed, hell, when it came to being in a room with the door closed, Ms. Rita has zero tolerance. I was 27-years-old the last time I brought a woman to my mom’s home, the rule was still in effect.
I can’t say I have a problem with this rule. As a matter of fact, I find the rule to be so respectable and decent, I have taken to applying it to myself when I have been on the visitor end of a meet-the-parents trip. I have been in a couple of relationships with women who have the cool parents, saying I was more than welcome to sleep in the same bed as their daughter. I have always politely declined.
On a basic level, this is just me carrying on the values my mother instilled in me about this sort of thing. Like all people, I still follow some of my parents rules even if I’m not under their roof. I don’t eat any meals shirtless (the whooping my mom gave me the time I tried to sit at the dinner table without a shirt on still makes my skin crawl, and it was delivered 20 years ago), I don’t sleep in the same bed as my woman at her parents’ home even if they say I can.
But the other reason is, I honestly find such an arrangement kind of awkward. My woman and I sleeping in the same bed isn’t going to be the same in the parents house as it is when we’re back to living our regular lives as a regular couple. When we get back to our own apartments, in our own beds, we can and will do our own thing. But in the childhood bed, I promise you this, nothing is going down. It’s not so much that it’s rude (though I would say it is), it just feels slightly unsavory. To put it more bluntly, We don’t want the parent’s having sex on the couch while we’re visiting for the holidays, do we?
As uncomfortable as it is for me write that and for you to read that, that’s probably what the parents have been doing since the day we’ve moved out of their home. They’ve been doing it on the couch, maybe the kitchen, in the bathroom that you used to call “my bathroom”. Hell, maybe even in your old room. Matter of fact, definitely in your old room if your old room has now been changed into a “guest bedroom”.
From the day you moved out, your old house has become their new sex palace, at least 360 days out of the year. This not only goes for parents who are still together, this goes for many single parents too. Please believe, when the kids are gone at college or living their adult lives in some separate city, mama or daddy are acting like the good looking single people they are doing God knows what with Lord knows who.
But when you come home for the holidays, what do they do? They take a break from the couch sessions for you, the children. And if anything goes down in their master bedroom, they’re keeping it quiet for you, the children. It’s called respect, people. I don’t know what my mom and stepdad do now that they have the whole house to themselves, nor do I want to know (nor do I want you to call and “clear up some facts” with me, mom), but I would like them to keep whatever it is they do out of the common areas just as I promise the next time I bring home a woman to whom I’m not yet married, I promise to leave the doors open and sleep on the couch.
AGE VS. MATURITY....
As I revisit 2008 and consider my approaching birthday a couple months from now (Pisces), I’ve realized I’ve come a long way over the X # years I’ve been on this earth. In certain areas of life, I feel like I’ve matured at a quicker rate than a lot of the people around me. On another level, I’ve been described as immature for things like my blatant silliness, strolling when a certain song comes on, and for writing blogs. Yes, one chick had the audacity to tell me that I wrote blogs for attention and that it was extremely immature. Can you believe that? Being the witty machine that I’ve been conditioned to be, I had a list of reasons explaining why she was a girl instead of a woman. There’s a distinct difference. As tempted as I am to share the list, I’ll save that for another day. Sorry folks.
What I really wanted to talk about were the roles of age and maturity from this Black male’s perspective. One thing I’ve learned is that age and maturity are 2 completely different things. I follow 3-4 blogs pretty closely in addition to running my own, and from what people are willing to disclose about themselves it seems like the average person reading and commenting is like 27+. And the older you get, the more experience you get…at least in theory.
So maybe it’s safe to say that the people who read these types of blogs are pretty mature overall? But what about everyone else? We all know the 28-35 year old dude who is still living at home and playing video games and doesn’t really seem too interested in personal development. We also all know the chick with the OD strict parents that dominated her life until she had a ring on her finger. When it comes to relationships and handling the stuff that matters, they can appear to be “a little bit behind.”
As I go to holiday parties, clubs, bars, mixers, and other social functions it just seems like people really are all over the place with where they’re at in their lives. I’ve dated the late 20’s chick who had the college degree and full-time job. I dated the college chick with all sorts of innocence that came from a really good upbringing. Both of which brought me joy in all sorts of ways, but ultimately didn’t work out for a variety of pitfalls that I failed to notice at the time.
What I once thought was mature and the way to go became the type of sh*t that made me wanna transform into the Black Incredible Hulk. Point here is that age isn’t the end all be all of what maturity is and supposed to be. As we’ve said time and time again…experience, experience, experience. As we get closer to those scary relationships that will become husbands and wives, we need people with a shared sense of experience who understand us and we can understand them.
My question to the faithful and generous readers is multi-layered. What are your thoughts on age of potential significant others and how do you go about handling those who seem real mature but then drop an age on you that isn’t what you expected? And perhaps more importantly, how do you define maturity? We all grown in our own ways. Let’s get it crackin!
What I really wanted to talk about were the roles of age and maturity from this Black male’s perspective. One thing I’ve learned is that age and maturity are 2 completely different things. I follow 3-4 blogs pretty closely in addition to running my own, and from what people are willing to disclose about themselves it seems like the average person reading and commenting is like 27+. And the older you get, the more experience you get…at least in theory.
So maybe it’s safe to say that the people who read these types of blogs are pretty mature overall? But what about everyone else? We all know the 28-35 year old dude who is still living at home and playing video games and doesn’t really seem too interested in personal development. We also all know the chick with the OD strict parents that dominated her life until she had a ring on her finger. When it comes to relationships and handling the stuff that matters, they can appear to be “a little bit behind.”
As I go to holiday parties, clubs, bars, mixers, and other social functions it just seems like people really are all over the place with where they’re at in their lives. I’ve dated the late 20’s chick who had the college degree and full-time job. I dated the college chick with all sorts of innocence that came from a really good upbringing. Both of which brought me joy in all sorts of ways, but ultimately didn’t work out for a variety of pitfalls that I failed to notice at the time.
What I once thought was mature and the way to go became the type of sh*t that made me wanna transform into the Black Incredible Hulk. Point here is that age isn’t the end all be all of what maturity is and supposed to be. As we’ve said time and time again…experience, experience, experience. As we get closer to those scary relationships that will become husbands and wives, we need people with a shared sense of experience who understand us and we can understand them.
My question to the faithful and generous readers is multi-layered. What are your thoughts on age of potential significant others and how do you go about handling those who seem real mature but then drop an age on you that isn’t what you expected? And perhaps more importantly, how do you define maturity? We all grown in our own ways. Let’s get it crackin!
November 21, 2011
FOUR LESSONS IN LOVE WE ALWAYS LEARN THE HARD WAY.....
Everywhere we go there are people looking to tell us about relationships. There are the psuedo-self-help books by people like Steve Harvey. There are the preachy movies from people like Tyler Perry and T.D. Jakes. There are blogs like this one here. And then there are our closest friends always ready and willing to impart advice. Sometimes the advice is great, sometimes, not so much. The perpetually confounding nature of relationships between men and women inspires us all to share what we’ve learned in relationship success and failure. Despite our unparallelled access to vicarious experience and wisdom, no matter how many books or blogs we read and no matter how many Tyler Perry movies we watch, some lessons in love are only learned the hard way. Here are a few I’ve learned along the way.
Long Term Long Distance Relationships Don’t Work
Raise your hand if you’ve tried a long distance relationship? Thought so. We’ve all been here. Despite the advice of all of our friends and everyone who’s ever attempted one, at some point in our lives we all try it out. They all have the same beginnings: you randomly and unexpectedly meet someone who is absolutely perfect … except for the little fact that they live far away. When this happens for the first time in our lives, we all tell ourselves the same thing: We can make it work. I’ll visit one month for a weekend and you can visit the next month for a weekend and if we happen to fall in love, we’ll cross that bridge when it comes. Even now, it sounds totally plausible, but if you’ve been in a long distance relationship before, you know it’s not. Most long distance relationships end one of two ways, either the love becomes too much and you decide to separate because neither person is willing to move. Or, more commonly, you realize that doing all of the things one must do to make a serious, committed, long term relationship work is impossible without the day to day inspiration of actually seeing the person you’re working for. At some point, something has to give. In order for any long distance relationship to have a chance, there has to be some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. There has to be an understanding that at some specific point in the future, there will be no longer major distance between the two of you. Absent that, these sorts of relationships are doomed to fail.
The Toughest Break-Ups Are the Ones Without Reason
There are a million reasons why a relationship might end. Sometimes a relationship will end because of infidelity. There aren’t many things more hurtful than when someone betrays the trust that exists in a relationship. Relationships also end because one person treats the other egregiously poor. Some people just don’t make good mates; maybe they’re selfish or mean-spirited, arrogant or abusive – whatever it is, breaking up in these sorts of situations is still hard and still damaging. While relationships ending under these sorts of circumstances are extremely unpleasant, nothing is worse than the relationship that just seems to end without reason. In a matter of weeks, a relationship that was progressing and maturing productively can disintegrate into nothing. One week you’re looking out into the future and seeing the same thing and the next week you can’t remember what it was that initially brought you together. Ending that sort of relationship is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. Sitting around for hours trying to come up with a reason to end a relationship that has no major deal-breaking issues present was for me, much more difficult and emotionally draining than ending a relationship where something unforgivable had occurred. When a relationship ends without reason it’s hard to escape the feeling that the whole thing was just one big waste of time; like there was no point in starting it to begin with. It’s easy to wish that all of our relationships ended without major drama, but the truth is the relationships that end without drama can sometimes be much more painful and much more difficult to get over than the ones that do.
The Grass Isn’t Always Greener On the Other Side of the Fence
When I was in 8th grade I had a great girlfriend. We’d gone out for a few months (a pretty long time in junior high) we looked great together and we were pretty compatible. But there was this ninth grade girl that I really liked. I’d always had a crush on her but at that age, it’s nearly impossible for a boy to date a girl who’s older. We’d flirt here and there but nothing ever came of it till one day, fate found us alone in the basement of our school’s auditorium. We made out and it was awesome. I told my best friend and eventually it got back to my girlfriend. She broke up with me. Nothing became of the ninth grader and I. I realized then that when it comes to love, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. While there was genuine attraction between the ninth grader and I, the societal norms and expectations that told me to quell that attraction (the fact that she was older and the fact that I had a girlfriend at the time) only compounded and magnified the attraction. In the end, I was left lonely, wondering where it all went wrong. No matter how happy you are, there will always be other attractive people on this Earth. You can’t let their attractiveness have any influence on your relationship. For some this may mean avoiding people you find attractive altogether, and for others it may just mean not telling your best-friend when you explore that attraction.
“He Who Loves Least Controls The Relationship”
I recently had a conversation with a good friend about this paradoxically confusing but unwaveringly true phenomena. The healthiest relationships are the ones where both individuals love each other so much that they’re both more concerned with their mate’s happiness than their own. But as many of us have learned from experience, not all relationships are like this. Sometimes in a relationship, though both individuals care deeply for one another, one person cares a little more, feels a little deeper, loves a little harder. In a marriage you’ll find that your love has an ebb and flow, sometimes you love each other just the same, sometimes you’ll find yourself loving a little more and other times your partner will be the one loving a little more; in the end it should all balance out. If you’re not married however, recognizing who loves least, when they’re loving least, and how big the gap is between how you’re loving each other is essential. There’s no greater feeling of failure than when you’re the one loving the least and you’re watching this person you care deeply for cling to a relationship you both know is dying. Equally heartbreaking (I Imagine) is the prospect of knowing you harbor unshakeable, unconditional love for someone who doesn’t feel for you as deeply as you feel for them. The complexities of the ebb and flow of love are impossible to understand or comprehend unless you’ve been there, experienced them and learned them the hard way.
I was listening to Miguel’s “Hard Way” when I started writing this post. It’s a really dope song. The lyrics give us a peek into a particularly hurtful point in a relationship while the chorus tells us that for him, this sort of hurt is common; the sort of lesson he only learns the hard way. In my experience lessons learned the hard way have been the most valuable lessons I’ve learned. Have you experienced any of the above? What lessons has love taught you the hard way? Oh… and if you’re not familiar with the song peep it here: Miguel – Hard Way
Long Term Long Distance Relationships Don’t Work
Raise your hand if you’ve tried a long distance relationship? Thought so. We’ve all been here. Despite the advice of all of our friends and everyone who’s ever attempted one, at some point in our lives we all try it out. They all have the same beginnings: you randomly and unexpectedly meet someone who is absolutely perfect … except for the little fact that they live far away. When this happens for the first time in our lives, we all tell ourselves the same thing: We can make it work. I’ll visit one month for a weekend and you can visit the next month for a weekend and if we happen to fall in love, we’ll cross that bridge when it comes. Even now, it sounds totally plausible, but if you’ve been in a long distance relationship before, you know it’s not. Most long distance relationships end one of two ways, either the love becomes too much and you decide to separate because neither person is willing to move. Or, more commonly, you realize that doing all of the things one must do to make a serious, committed, long term relationship work is impossible without the day to day inspiration of actually seeing the person you’re working for. At some point, something has to give. In order for any long distance relationship to have a chance, there has to be some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. There has to be an understanding that at some specific point in the future, there will be no longer major distance between the two of you. Absent that, these sorts of relationships are doomed to fail.
The Toughest Break-Ups Are the Ones Without Reason
There are a million reasons why a relationship might end. Sometimes a relationship will end because of infidelity. There aren’t many things more hurtful than when someone betrays the trust that exists in a relationship. Relationships also end because one person treats the other egregiously poor. Some people just don’t make good mates; maybe they’re selfish or mean-spirited, arrogant or abusive – whatever it is, breaking up in these sorts of situations is still hard and still damaging. While relationships ending under these sorts of circumstances are extremely unpleasant, nothing is worse than the relationship that just seems to end without reason. In a matter of weeks, a relationship that was progressing and maturing productively can disintegrate into nothing. One week you’re looking out into the future and seeing the same thing and the next week you can’t remember what it was that initially brought you together. Ending that sort of relationship is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. Sitting around for hours trying to come up with a reason to end a relationship that has no major deal-breaking issues present was for me, much more difficult and emotionally draining than ending a relationship where something unforgivable had occurred. When a relationship ends without reason it’s hard to escape the feeling that the whole thing was just one big waste of time; like there was no point in starting it to begin with. It’s easy to wish that all of our relationships ended without major drama, but the truth is the relationships that end without drama can sometimes be much more painful and much more difficult to get over than the ones that do.
The Grass Isn’t Always Greener On the Other Side of the Fence
When I was in 8th grade I had a great girlfriend. We’d gone out for a few months (a pretty long time in junior high) we looked great together and we were pretty compatible. But there was this ninth grade girl that I really liked. I’d always had a crush on her but at that age, it’s nearly impossible for a boy to date a girl who’s older. We’d flirt here and there but nothing ever came of it till one day, fate found us alone in the basement of our school’s auditorium. We made out and it was awesome. I told my best friend and eventually it got back to my girlfriend. She broke up with me. Nothing became of the ninth grader and I. I realized then that when it comes to love, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. While there was genuine attraction between the ninth grader and I, the societal norms and expectations that told me to quell that attraction (the fact that she was older and the fact that I had a girlfriend at the time) only compounded and magnified the attraction. In the end, I was left lonely, wondering where it all went wrong. No matter how happy you are, there will always be other attractive people on this Earth. You can’t let their attractiveness have any influence on your relationship. For some this may mean avoiding people you find attractive altogether, and for others it may just mean not telling your best-friend when you explore that attraction.
“He Who Loves Least Controls The Relationship”
I recently had a conversation with a good friend about this paradoxically confusing but unwaveringly true phenomena. The healthiest relationships are the ones where both individuals love each other so much that they’re both more concerned with their mate’s happiness than their own. But as many of us have learned from experience, not all relationships are like this. Sometimes in a relationship, though both individuals care deeply for one another, one person cares a little more, feels a little deeper, loves a little harder. In a marriage you’ll find that your love has an ebb and flow, sometimes you love each other just the same, sometimes you’ll find yourself loving a little more and other times your partner will be the one loving a little more; in the end it should all balance out. If you’re not married however, recognizing who loves least, when they’re loving least, and how big the gap is between how you’re loving each other is essential. There’s no greater feeling of failure than when you’re the one loving the least and you’re watching this person you care deeply for cling to a relationship you both know is dying. Equally heartbreaking (I Imagine) is the prospect of knowing you harbor unshakeable, unconditional love for someone who doesn’t feel for you as deeply as you feel for them. The complexities of the ebb and flow of love are impossible to understand or comprehend unless you’ve been there, experienced them and learned them the hard way.
I was listening to Miguel’s “Hard Way” when I started writing this post. It’s a really dope song. The lyrics give us a peek into a particularly hurtful point in a relationship while the chorus tells us that for him, this sort of hurt is common; the sort of lesson he only learns the hard way. In my experience lessons learned the hard way have been the most valuable lessons I’ve learned. Have you experienced any of the above? What lessons has love taught you the hard way? Oh… and if you’re not familiar with the song peep it here: Miguel – Hard Way
November 17, 2011
A WANT VERSUS A NEED....
When is comes down to having what you want versus what you need....always go with what you want. You can turn a want into a need based on what need needs to be met at what time. You can NEVER turn a need into a want.
Only that ONE person can fill that want versus ANYBODY can fulfill that need.
Only that ONE person can fill that want versus ANYBODY can fulfill that need.
WORDS OF WISDOM.....
The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest. The first to forget is the happiest...
November 16, 2011
LOVE, LIES AND WHAT THEY LEARNED....
Love, Lies and What They LearnedBy STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
THERE are millions of Americans seeking love on the Internet. Little do they know that teams of scientists are eagerly watching them trying to find it.
Like contemporary Margaret Meads, these scholars have gathered data from dating sites like Match.com, OkCupid and Yahoo! Personals to study attraction, trust, deception — even the role of race and politics in prospective romance.
They have observed, for instance, that many daters would rather admit to being fat than liberal or conservative, that white people are reluctant to date outside their race and that there are ways to detect liars. Such findings spring from attempts to answer a broader question that has bedeviled humanity since Adam and Eve: how and why do people fall in love?
“There is relatively little data on dating, and most of what was out there in the literature about mate selection and relationship formation is based on U.S. Census data,” said Gerald A. Mendelsohn, a professor in the psychology department at the University of California, Berkeley.
His research involving more than one million online dating profiles was partly financed by a grant from the National Science Foundation. “This now gives an access to dating that we never really had before,” He said. (Collectively, the major dating sites had more than 593 million visits in the United States last month, according to the Internet tracking firm Experian Hitwise.)
Andrew T. Fiore, a data scientist at Facebook and a former visiting assistant professor at Michigan State University, said that unlike laboratory studies, “online dating provides an ecologically valid or true-to-life context for examining the risks, uncertainties and rewards of initiating real relationships with real people at an unprecedented scale.”
“As more and more of life happens online, it’s less and less the case that online is a vacuum,” he added. “It is life.”
Of the romantic partnerships formed in the United States between 2007 and 2009, 21 percent of heterosexual couples and 61 percent of same-sex couples met online, according to a study by Michael J. Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford. (Scholars said that most studies using online dating data are about heterosexuals, because they make up more of the population.)
Dating sites and academics have gotten cozy before; the biological anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers, for example, is Chemistry.com’s chief scientific adviser, and she helped develop the site, a sister site to Match.com.
But scholars are also pursuing academic research using anonymous profile content given to them as a professional courtesy by dating sites. Often the researchers supplement that with surveys and in-person interviews by recruiting online daters through advertisements on campuses, in newspapers and on Web sites like Craigslist.
Here’s some of what they have learned, including maxims for singles: why opposites don’t attract and honesty is not always the best policy.
TRUTHINESS
Do online daters have a propensity to lie? Do we really need scientists to answer this question?
If you are curious about numbers: about 81 percent of people misrepresent their height, weight or age in their profiles, according to a study led by Catalina L. Toma, an assistant professor in the department of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wanted to learn more about how people present themselves and how they judge misrepresentation. On the bright side: people tend to tell small lies because, after all, they may eventually meet in person.
Professor Toma; Jeffrey T. Hancock, an associate professor at Cornell; and Nicole B. Ellison, an associate professor in the department of telecommunication, information studies and media at Michigan State University, interviewed online daters in New York City, weighed and measured them, photographed them, checked their ages against their driver’s licenses and studied their dating profiles.
On average, the women described themselves as 8.5 pounds thinner in their profiles than they really were. Men fibbed by 2 pounds, though they lied by a greater magnitude than women about their height, rounding up a half inch (apparently every bit counts).
People were most honest about their age, something Professor Toma said is probably because they can claim ignorance about weight and height. Even so, in a different study she found that women’s profile photographs were on average a year and a half old. Men’s were on average six months old.
“Daters lie to meet the expectations of what they think their audience is,” Professor Toma said.
A paper to be published in the Journal of Communication used computer analysis to show that four linguistic indictors can help detect lying in the personal essay of a dating profile.
Liars tend to use fewer first-person pronouns. Professor Toma said this is an indication of psychological distancing: “You’re feeling guilty or anxious or nervous.” Liars use more negative words like “not” and “never,” yet another way of putting up a buffer. Liars use fewer negative emotion words like “sad” and “upset,” and they write shorter online personal essays. (It’s easier not to get caught if you say less.)
Scholars say a certain amount of fibbing is socially acceptable — even necessary — to compete in the online dating culture. Professor Ellison’s research shows that lying is partly a result of tension between the desire to be truthful and the desire to put one’s best face forward. So profiles often describe an idealized self; one with qualities they intend to develop (i.e., “I scuba dive”) or things they once had (i.e., a job). Some daters bend the truth to fit into a wider range of search parameters; others unintentionally misrepresent their personalities because self-knowledge is imperfect.
The standard of embellishment can frustrate the honest. “So if I say I am 44, people think that I am 48,” said one man interviewed by Professor Ellison and colleagues in a separate study.
But there is an upside to deception: it may inspire one to, as Professor Ellison put it, “close the gap between actual and ideal self.” One interviewee lied about her weight in her profile, and it was all the motivation she needed. She subsequently lost 44 pounds while online dating.
GUESS WHO’S NOT COMING TO DINNER
“Stick to your own kind,” goes the “West Side Story” refrain, a phenomenon that sociologists call homophily: love of the same. And they have observed this among online daters. But here is what they did not expect to discover: a very high rate of same-ethnicity dating.
“One of the theories of how the Internet might affect dating is that it might erode the tendency of people to mate with people like themselves,” said Professor Rosenfeld of Stanford. “I really expected there to be more interracial relationships for meeting online. And it wasn’t true.”
Research on a major dating site between February 2009 and February 2010 by Professor Mendelsohn and his colleagues shows that more than 80 percent of the contacts initiated by white members were to other white members, and only 3 percent to black members. Black members were less rigid: they were 10 times more likely to contact whites than whites were to contact blacks.
“What you’ve got is basically the reluctance of white Americans to date and to contact members of other ethnicities, particularly African-Americans,” he said. “We are nowhere near the post-racial age.”
Professor Mendelsohn set out to study relationship formation, not ethnicity. Yet along the way he found that white more than black, women more than men, and old more than young prefer a same-race partner.
Some people indicated that they were willing to date different ethnicities, but they didn’t. “What people say they want in a mate and what qualities they actually seek don’t tend to correspond,” said Coye Cheshire, an associate professor at the School of Information at Berkeley who has studied this with Mr. Fiore, Professor Mendelsohn and Lindsay Shaw Taylor, a member of the school’s self, identity and relationships lab.
HE SAID, SHE SAID
Gender parity, it seems, isn’t sexy. Women want men who are — wait for it — tall and wealthy, according to online dating research by Gunter J. Hitsch and Ali Hortacsu at the University of Chicago, and Dan Ariely of Duke. The researchers have examined thousands of dating profiles that included height, weight and, in many cases, photographs. They found that women prefer men who are slightly overweight, while men prefer women who are slightly underweight and who do not tower over them. These were the women who had the best chance of receiving an introductory e-mail from a man.
And even though men may get away with carrying a few extra pounds, they are also burdened with the expectation of carrying a fatter wallet: The scholars found that women have a stronger preference than men do for income over physical attributes.
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
Decades of findings about political ideology suggest that it is in part passed from parents to children, said Rose McDermott, a professor of political science at Brown University. And because previous studies show that people in long marriages align politically (the crackling example of James Carville and Mary Matalin aside), she wanted to study how people end up with like-minded mates.
Professor McDermott and colleagues at the University of Miami and Penn State examined 2,944 dating profiles, and few people were willing to express a political preference or interest in politics. Professor McDermott suspects that this is because they wanted to attract as many dates as possible.
But though it could make for an interesting campaign year, such daters could be making a mistake if they are seeking long-term partners.
“I was personally really shocked,” said Professor McDermott, whose study was published this year in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. “People were much more likely to say ‘I’m fat’ than ‘I’m a conservative.’ ”
THERE are millions of Americans seeking love on the Internet. Little do they know that teams of scientists are eagerly watching them trying to find it.
Like contemporary Margaret Meads, these scholars have gathered data from dating sites like Match.com, OkCupid and Yahoo! Personals to study attraction, trust, deception — even the role of race and politics in prospective romance.
They have observed, for instance, that many daters would rather admit to being fat than liberal or conservative, that white people are reluctant to date outside their race and that there are ways to detect liars. Such findings spring from attempts to answer a broader question that has bedeviled humanity since Adam and Eve: how and why do people fall in love?
“There is relatively little data on dating, and most of what was out there in the literature about mate selection and relationship formation is based on U.S. Census data,” said Gerald A. Mendelsohn, a professor in the psychology department at the University of California, Berkeley.
His research involving more than one million online dating profiles was partly financed by a grant from the National Science Foundation. “This now gives an access to dating that we never really had before,” He said. (Collectively, the major dating sites had more than 593 million visits in the United States last month, according to the Internet tracking firm Experian Hitwise.)
Andrew T. Fiore, a data scientist at Facebook and a former visiting assistant professor at Michigan State University, said that unlike laboratory studies, “online dating provides an ecologically valid or true-to-life context for examining the risks, uncertainties and rewards of initiating real relationships with real people at an unprecedented scale.”
“As more and more of life happens online, it’s less and less the case that online is a vacuum,” he added. “It is life.”
Of the romantic partnerships formed in the United States between 2007 and 2009, 21 percent of heterosexual couples and 61 percent of same-sex couples met online, according to a study by Michael J. Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford. (Scholars said that most studies using online dating data are about heterosexuals, because they make up more of the population.)
Dating sites and academics have gotten cozy before; the biological anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers, for example, is Chemistry.com’s chief scientific adviser, and she helped develop the site, a sister site to Match.com.
But scholars are also pursuing academic research using anonymous profile content given to them as a professional courtesy by dating sites. Often the researchers supplement that with surveys and in-person interviews by recruiting online daters through advertisements on campuses, in newspapers and on Web sites like Craigslist.
Here’s some of what they have learned, including maxims for singles: why opposites don’t attract and honesty is not always the best policy.
TRUTHINESS
Do online daters have a propensity to lie? Do we really need scientists to answer this question?
If you are curious about numbers: about 81 percent of people misrepresent their height, weight or age in their profiles, according to a study led by Catalina L. Toma, an assistant professor in the department of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wanted to learn more about how people present themselves and how they judge misrepresentation. On the bright side: people tend to tell small lies because, after all, they may eventually meet in person.
Professor Toma; Jeffrey T. Hancock, an associate professor at Cornell; and Nicole B. Ellison, an associate professor in the department of telecommunication, information studies and media at Michigan State University, interviewed online daters in New York City, weighed and measured them, photographed them, checked their ages against their driver’s licenses and studied their dating profiles.
On average, the women described themselves as 8.5 pounds thinner in their profiles than they really were. Men fibbed by 2 pounds, though they lied by a greater magnitude than women about their height, rounding up a half inch (apparently every bit counts).
People were most honest about their age, something Professor Toma said is probably because they can claim ignorance about weight and height. Even so, in a different study she found that women’s profile photographs were on average a year and a half old. Men’s were on average six months old.
“Daters lie to meet the expectations of what they think their audience is,” Professor Toma said.
A paper to be published in the Journal of Communication used computer analysis to show that four linguistic indictors can help detect lying in the personal essay of a dating profile.
Liars tend to use fewer first-person pronouns. Professor Toma said this is an indication of psychological distancing: “You’re feeling guilty or anxious or nervous.” Liars use more negative words like “not” and “never,” yet another way of putting up a buffer. Liars use fewer negative emotion words like “sad” and “upset,” and they write shorter online personal essays. (It’s easier not to get caught if you say less.)
Scholars say a certain amount of fibbing is socially acceptable — even necessary — to compete in the online dating culture. Professor Ellison’s research shows that lying is partly a result of tension between the desire to be truthful and the desire to put one’s best face forward. So profiles often describe an idealized self; one with qualities they intend to develop (i.e., “I scuba dive”) or things they once had (i.e., a job). Some daters bend the truth to fit into a wider range of search parameters; others unintentionally misrepresent their personalities because self-knowledge is imperfect.
The standard of embellishment can frustrate the honest. “So if I say I am 44, people think that I am 48,” said one man interviewed by Professor Ellison and colleagues in a separate study.
But there is an upside to deception: it may inspire one to, as Professor Ellison put it, “close the gap between actual and ideal self.” One interviewee lied about her weight in her profile, and it was all the motivation she needed. She subsequently lost 44 pounds while online dating.
GUESS WHO’S NOT COMING TO DINNER
“Stick to your own kind,” goes the “West Side Story” refrain, a phenomenon that sociologists call homophily: love of the same. And they have observed this among online daters. But here is what they did not expect to discover: a very high rate of same-ethnicity dating.
“One of the theories of how the Internet might affect dating is that it might erode the tendency of people to mate with people like themselves,” said Professor Rosenfeld of Stanford. “I really expected there to be more interracial relationships for meeting online. And it wasn’t true.”
Research on a major dating site between February 2009 and February 2010 by Professor Mendelsohn and his colleagues shows that more than 80 percent of the contacts initiated by white members were to other white members, and only 3 percent to black members. Black members were less rigid: they were 10 times more likely to contact whites than whites were to contact blacks.
“What you’ve got is basically the reluctance of white Americans to date and to contact members of other ethnicities, particularly African-Americans,” he said. “We are nowhere near the post-racial age.”
Professor Mendelsohn set out to study relationship formation, not ethnicity. Yet along the way he found that white more than black, women more than men, and old more than young prefer a same-race partner.
Some people indicated that they were willing to date different ethnicities, but they didn’t. “What people say they want in a mate and what qualities they actually seek don’t tend to correspond,” said Coye Cheshire, an associate professor at the School of Information at Berkeley who has studied this with Mr. Fiore, Professor Mendelsohn and Lindsay Shaw Taylor, a member of the school’s self, identity and relationships lab.
HE SAID, SHE SAID
Gender parity, it seems, isn’t sexy. Women want men who are — wait for it — tall and wealthy, according to online dating research by Gunter J. Hitsch and Ali Hortacsu at the University of Chicago, and Dan Ariely of Duke. The researchers have examined thousands of dating profiles that included height, weight and, in many cases, photographs. They found that women prefer men who are slightly overweight, while men prefer women who are slightly underweight and who do not tower over them. These were the women who had the best chance of receiving an introductory e-mail from a man.
And even though men may get away with carrying a few extra pounds, they are also burdened with the expectation of carrying a fatter wallet: The scholars found that women have a stronger preference than men do for income over physical attributes.
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
Decades of findings about political ideology suggest that it is in part passed from parents to children, said Rose McDermott, a professor of political science at Brown University. And because previous studies show that people in long marriages align politically (the crackling example of James Carville and Mary Matalin aside), she wanted to study how people end up with like-minded mates.
Professor McDermott and colleagues at the University of Miami and Penn State examined 2,944 dating profiles, and few people were willing to express a political preference or interest in politics. Professor McDermott suspects that this is because they wanted to attract as many dates as possible.
But though it could make for an interesting campaign year, such daters could be making a mistake if they are seeking long-term partners.
“I was personally really shocked,” said Professor McDermott, whose study was published this year in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. “People were much more likely to say ‘I’m fat’ than ‘I’m a conservative.’ ”
THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF MALE SENSITIVITY.....WE ALL ARE SENSITIVE TO SOME DEGREE
So no one will ask me at the end of the article what I think about Drake’s new album, Take Care, let me be clear: I like the album and I’ve had trouble playing anything else since I first listened to my leaked copy last week. Not only do I like the album because of its crisp production and Drake’s better-than-good skills as an MC, I like the album for all the reasons most others say they hate it.
Some say, It’s too emotional; I like it because it’s emotional. Some say he sings on it way too much, I don’t like it when he sings all the time either, but that strike against him isn’t enough to change my overall opinion on the album. Some say the combination of Drake’s emotional lyrics and constant singing make for a soft album, I say the art of the quiet, ambient rap album is under-appreciated, but I digress.
What I appreciate most about Take Care is the way it’s revealing how people really feel about men who not only are expressive about their feelings, but also men who know how to feel something, anything for the women who have come in and out of their life. Before Drake, the most emotional rapper I ever listened to was Tupac, and even if he wasn’t singing on half his records (he usually got singers to handle those duties), he talked about his struggle to make it work with another woman often. For years ‘Pac has been my go-to-artist when I was down about a woman, and by no means does Drake replace him, but he certainly adds to that otherwise small group of artists who can actually rap to how I’m feeling.
Now before everyone gets all up in their chest about me including ‘Pac in the same paragraph as Drake, take heed. By no means am I saying Drake is as good as ‘Pac…matter of fact, let’s move on. If you think that’s what I’m saying you’re not as smart as you think.
People who know me in real life and those who only know me through the computer will draw their own conclusions as to why I like Drake as an artist and why I enjoy Take Care. I’ve been told I favor him. I had the world’s greatest Halloween outfit when I dressed up as him. My writing carries with it the same emotional vulnerability he carries in his music. All of these are fair and valid points, but they have nothing to do with why I enjoy Take Care. The reason I like Take Care is I like to see how people respond to actual emotional honesty from men.
I wish that we lived in a time and a generation where people would stop viewing my honesty as overly emotional. People always act like I spend my life crying in a dark room. I don’t, I’m good. I’m a man. — Drake
There are those who mistake being vulnerable with being sensitive and sensitivity with being soft. It’s a sick cycle, and one reason why men never want to open up to women in the first place. Most women don’t know the difference, don’t know the pain men live with for any number of reasons, and because they don’t understand it, they either deride it or doubt it. Well, here’s the truth ladies: If a man has never cried over you, your impact on him was minimal and for any man who has never cried over a woman, my condolences. None of this is to say a relationship without tears doesn’t count, it’s just to say it probably never got deep enough.
The most honest thing I’ve ever seen from a man was seeing my Pop cry when he and my Mom were breaking up. For so many years he told me to never cry. There were even times when I heard my mom cry over something he said and his reaction was so insensitive. He’d ask, “Why are you crying?” He never got it, and I swore he never would, until the day I saw him in the garage wiping away his tears. The reason? If I recall it was because my mom questioned his love for her, and told him straight up, “You don’t love me.”
I was like in 7th grade when I saw this, and I didn’t get it then. I was on my mom’s side and I too decided his love for her wasn’t real, or at the very least, wasn’t how any person should love someone, but as I’ve gotten older, and as I’ve loved someone with whom I made mistakes, I know why he cried. It’s the same reason why some men sing to a woman about how they feel.
We want her to understand just how serious we are about this love thing or hate thing because she doesn’t get it when we say “I love you” or when we say “I hate you”, and the latter may sound egregious, but it’s just as honest as the emotion of love. The point of it all is to understand, there’s real feelings stirring from within, and it was her who set them off. To express those feelings, however we choose, doesn’t make us less of a man, it probably makes us more of one.
Some say, It’s too emotional; I like it because it’s emotional. Some say he sings on it way too much, I don’t like it when he sings all the time either, but that strike against him isn’t enough to change my overall opinion on the album. Some say the combination of Drake’s emotional lyrics and constant singing make for a soft album, I say the art of the quiet, ambient rap album is under-appreciated, but I digress.
What I appreciate most about Take Care is the way it’s revealing how people really feel about men who not only are expressive about their feelings, but also men who know how to feel something, anything for the women who have come in and out of their life. Before Drake, the most emotional rapper I ever listened to was Tupac, and even if he wasn’t singing on half his records (he usually got singers to handle those duties), he talked about his struggle to make it work with another woman often. For years ‘Pac has been my go-to-artist when I was down about a woman, and by no means does Drake replace him, but he certainly adds to that otherwise small group of artists who can actually rap to how I’m feeling.
Now before everyone gets all up in their chest about me including ‘Pac in the same paragraph as Drake, take heed. By no means am I saying Drake is as good as ‘Pac…matter of fact, let’s move on. If you think that’s what I’m saying you’re not as smart as you think.
People who know me in real life and those who only know me through the computer will draw their own conclusions as to why I like Drake as an artist and why I enjoy Take Care. I’ve been told I favor him. I had the world’s greatest Halloween outfit when I dressed up as him. My writing carries with it the same emotional vulnerability he carries in his music. All of these are fair and valid points, but they have nothing to do with why I enjoy Take Care. The reason I like Take Care is I like to see how people respond to actual emotional honesty from men.
I wish that we lived in a time and a generation where people would stop viewing my honesty as overly emotional. People always act like I spend my life crying in a dark room. I don’t, I’m good. I’m a man. — Drake
There are those who mistake being vulnerable with being sensitive and sensitivity with being soft. It’s a sick cycle, and one reason why men never want to open up to women in the first place. Most women don’t know the difference, don’t know the pain men live with for any number of reasons, and because they don’t understand it, they either deride it or doubt it. Well, here’s the truth ladies: If a man has never cried over you, your impact on him was minimal and for any man who has never cried over a woman, my condolences. None of this is to say a relationship without tears doesn’t count, it’s just to say it probably never got deep enough.
The most honest thing I’ve ever seen from a man was seeing my Pop cry when he and my Mom were breaking up. For so many years he told me to never cry. There were even times when I heard my mom cry over something he said and his reaction was so insensitive. He’d ask, “Why are you crying?” He never got it, and I swore he never would, until the day I saw him in the garage wiping away his tears. The reason? If I recall it was because my mom questioned his love for her, and told him straight up, “You don’t love me.”
I was like in 7th grade when I saw this, and I didn’t get it then. I was on my mom’s side and I too decided his love for her wasn’t real, or at the very least, wasn’t how any person should love someone, but as I’ve gotten older, and as I’ve loved someone with whom I made mistakes, I know why he cried. It’s the same reason why some men sing to a woman about how they feel.
We want her to understand just how serious we are about this love thing or hate thing because she doesn’t get it when we say “I love you” or when we say “I hate you”, and the latter may sound egregious, but it’s just as honest as the emotion of love. The point of it all is to understand, there’s real feelings stirring from within, and it was her who set them off. To express those feelings, however we choose, doesn’t make us less of a man, it probably makes us more of one.
WHEN AMERICA TURNS IT'S BACK ON BLACK BOYS.....(MUST READ ARTICLE)
I grew up at a time in America when parents never sparred the rod, in fact, the entire neighborhood never sparred the rod. I grew up at a time when my best friend’s father was, at times, more influential than my own father. I grew up at a time when par for the course was broken homes, single mothers raising young Black boys, single, working mothers struggling to keep food on the table. I guess this made me a disadvantaged youth. At a minimum, I should have been one of the youth that people targeted as needing strong support in order to avoid falling victim to the world. Surprisingly, I don’t think at any point, I’ve ever felt disadvantaged or at-risk. In fact, because I had a praying grandmother and a mother who was intent on ensuring that I had positive Black male role models, I probably was far from at-risk. The same doesn’t exist for many of my peers, and this past week was a constant reminder that we need to be more involved in the development of our youth.
Check out this week’s mix by the awesome @CarverTheGreat, and also check out his website here, he’s got mixes on mixes on mixes. As always, download the mix here, or stream it below:
Last week, as many of us spent the majority of our time shocked at the fact that Penn State didn’t do anything about a former coach in their football program raping young “at-risk” boys. While we spent time debating who should have been fired and how outraged we were that “no one did anything about it,” we neglected to develop a list of demands for things the university needs to do for those boys. It’s not about football, it’s not about Paterno, or Penn State, it’s about those boys! Very alarming statistics exist for victims of sexual abuse. We all know that many victims of child abuse grow up to be abusers themselves. So what should be done now? I’d start with making sure that the university completes a full investigation to identify any other victims who may not have came forward yet, then they should provide at the expense of the university extensive counseling to all victims. (And not just the victims, but their families and friends as well, who have been affected by this tragedy.) Lastly, the university needs to spend some hard time in that community doing what they were supposed to be doing with the “Second Mile” foundation. They need to really get into the community and mentor the youth, take them from “disadvantaged” and “at-risk” and put them on a path to success.
That would be a logical place to start for Penn State, but where do we start for all of our Black boys across the country? There’s a concept in The Mis-Education of the Negro that we still remain guilty of to this day, we just do not give back. We don’t share the information with our communities, after all the community that helps raise us, is the same one that we work so hard to get as far away from as possible. When I was growing up, my mother kept me involved in several sports, Boy Scouts and an organization called, The Beavers Club. The Beavers Club was one of my first experiences with Black male adults who were personally vested in my success. I thank my mother for that program because I grew meaningful relationships with older men who taught me in many ways how to be a man. Today, there is a lack of programs like the Beavers Club. There are less and less Black boys in Boy Scouts of America, and playing organized sports. Maybe this is because parents are afraid to let someone else raise their kids, or maybe it’s because our kids these days are a lot lazier and satisfied to sit at home playing video games. Whatever the case may be, our Black boys are lacking the effective mentoring they need to be successful.
So where do we start?
We start by taking an active role. There are tons of things that we do everyday or periodically that we don’t want to do, but how many of us are regularly seeking out opportunities and following through on mentoring young Black boys. You pay taxes, you pay your bills, you show up at jury duty, or anything else that you wouldn’t really like to be doing, but getting someone to spend a few hours a week helping out the next generation is like pulling teeth. And brothers, let’s be honest, we’re letting Black women do more mentoring for our youth than we are doing right now. We’re somehow “too busy” for that which is us. This has to stop. When we turn our back on our youth, we lose our youth.
I just recently started watching this TV show called, “The Walking Dead” on AMC. It’s a pretty intense show, a post-event, zombies taking over hour-long television show that airs on Sundays. As I sat there watching this show, people have left their families behind, they’ve parted ways looking for safety. It’s about self-preservation and survival. When families separate sometimes the child ends up being infected and the next time they see their family they look completely different and once infected they’re looking to harm their own family because they don’t recognize them anymore. That’s exactly what happens when we turn our backs on Black boys. We create inner-city zombies who by the time we see them again; we don’t recognize them, we don’t relate to them, and it seems like they are intent on causing terror in our lives. To be honest, we can’t blame them, we have to blame ourselves. If we have done everything in our power to keep an eye on our Black boys then we would share none of the blame, but we know that deep down, we haven’t. Time is running out for our boys, we’ve lost more, more are at-risk, and it seems like they all may be infected one day, but I won’t turn my back and run away, I’ll keep representing the cure.
Check out this week’s mix by the awesome @CarverTheGreat, and also check out his website here, he’s got mixes on mixes on mixes. As always, download the mix here, or stream it below:
Last week, as many of us spent the majority of our time shocked at the fact that Penn State didn’t do anything about a former coach in their football program raping young “at-risk” boys. While we spent time debating who should have been fired and how outraged we were that “no one did anything about it,” we neglected to develop a list of demands for things the university needs to do for those boys. It’s not about football, it’s not about Paterno, or Penn State, it’s about those boys! Very alarming statistics exist for victims of sexual abuse. We all know that many victims of child abuse grow up to be abusers themselves. So what should be done now? I’d start with making sure that the university completes a full investigation to identify any other victims who may not have came forward yet, then they should provide at the expense of the university extensive counseling to all victims. (And not just the victims, but their families and friends as well, who have been affected by this tragedy.) Lastly, the university needs to spend some hard time in that community doing what they were supposed to be doing with the “Second Mile” foundation. They need to really get into the community and mentor the youth, take them from “disadvantaged” and “at-risk” and put them on a path to success.
That would be a logical place to start for Penn State, but where do we start for all of our Black boys across the country? There’s a concept in The Mis-Education of the Negro that we still remain guilty of to this day, we just do not give back. We don’t share the information with our communities, after all the community that helps raise us, is the same one that we work so hard to get as far away from as possible. When I was growing up, my mother kept me involved in several sports, Boy Scouts and an organization called, The Beavers Club. The Beavers Club was one of my first experiences with Black male adults who were personally vested in my success. I thank my mother for that program because I grew meaningful relationships with older men who taught me in many ways how to be a man. Today, there is a lack of programs like the Beavers Club. There are less and less Black boys in Boy Scouts of America, and playing organized sports. Maybe this is because parents are afraid to let someone else raise their kids, or maybe it’s because our kids these days are a lot lazier and satisfied to sit at home playing video games. Whatever the case may be, our Black boys are lacking the effective mentoring they need to be successful.
So where do we start?
We start by taking an active role. There are tons of things that we do everyday or periodically that we don’t want to do, but how many of us are regularly seeking out opportunities and following through on mentoring young Black boys. You pay taxes, you pay your bills, you show up at jury duty, or anything else that you wouldn’t really like to be doing, but getting someone to spend a few hours a week helping out the next generation is like pulling teeth. And brothers, let’s be honest, we’re letting Black women do more mentoring for our youth than we are doing right now. We’re somehow “too busy” for that which is us. This has to stop. When we turn our back on our youth, we lose our youth.
I just recently started watching this TV show called, “The Walking Dead” on AMC. It’s a pretty intense show, a post-event, zombies taking over hour-long television show that airs on Sundays. As I sat there watching this show, people have left their families behind, they’ve parted ways looking for safety. It’s about self-preservation and survival. When families separate sometimes the child ends up being infected and the next time they see their family they look completely different and once infected they’re looking to harm their own family because they don’t recognize them anymore. That’s exactly what happens when we turn our backs on Black boys. We create inner-city zombies who by the time we see them again; we don’t recognize them, we don’t relate to them, and it seems like they are intent on causing terror in our lives. To be honest, we can’t blame them, we have to blame ourselves. If we have done everything in our power to keep an eye on our Black boys then we would share none of the blame, but we know that deep down, we haven’t. Time is running out for our boys, we’ve lost more, more are at-risk, and it seems like they all may be infected one day, but I won’t turn my back and run away, I’ll keep representing the cure.
November 14, 2011
TRULY SAD...REST IN PEACE GOD'S CHILD....
Investigators have identified a burnt torso found near I-94 on Detroit’s east side as a missing transgender teen.
Henry Hilliard Jr., 19, also known as Shelley or Treasure, was last seen at 1:20 a.m. on Oct. 23 in the 900 block of Longfellow, wearing a silver dress. The 19-year-old had several piercings and tattoos, including one of cherries on the upper right arm.
Chief Investigator Albert Samuels of the Medical Examiner's office was able to connect the cherry tattoo to the information provided by police to make a match, said spokesman Dennis Niemiec.
Police said they're investigating Hilliard's death as a homicide.
The Free Press last month reported that police and medical examiners often did not communicate about missing people to try to match them to John Does at the morgue.
Police say that as a result they began sending detailed missing person alerts to the ME’s office -- including the alert for Hilliard.
“Obviously, getting these alerts helps,” Niemiec said.
November 11, 2011
November 10, 2011
November 9, 2011
PURPOSE AND SPACE...
When a person is in your life for whatever purpose you need met, friendship, compansionship, sex, a drinking or partying friend and they no longer serve that purpose, IE, the sex stops, you no longer drink or party, you dont value the friendship or need the companionship...they serve no purpose so they no longer need to be in your space.
November 8, 2011
LEARNING TO LOVE YOURSELF IS THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL...
Men respect women who respect themselves...A man is only going to treat you the way he watches you treat yourself.
For men and women....Value Yourself...
Looking for love in all the wrong places is a song for the 20's....By your 30's, if you are still singing that song, you need to figure out how to start loving yourself so that somebody else can love you...
Ladies...find a man who values, respects and loves his mothers, grandmothers and sisters and he is capable of loving and respecting you
For men and women....Value Yourself...
Looking for love in all the wrong places is a song for the 20's....By your 30's, if you are still singing that song, you need to figure out how to start loving yourself so that somebody else can love you...
Ladies...find a man who values, respects and loves his mothers, grandmothers and sisters and he is capable of loving and respecting you
November 7, 2011
THE REASON T.O. SHOULD HAVE WORE CONDOMS....
Terrell Owens' financial situation is so dire, he filed papers in three separate child support cases to have his payments lowered ... because he makes ZERO DOLLARS ... this according to court docs obtained by TMZ.
As TMZ first reported, a bench warrant was issued for T.O.'s arrest after he missed a court date with one baby mama ... to whom he's trying to lower child support payments.
Turns out ... T.O. has three OTHER baby mamas and over the past few months he's filed to have his payments reduced with two of them (and, according to his rep, he plans to file for a modification of support for the third).
For those of you counting at home, here's the scorecard ...
Baby Mama #1, Monique Reynolds
T.O. and Monique have an 11-year-old son together. According to the papers, he paid $20,000/month in support until last year, when it was reduced to $11,202. He also gave her $100,000 to buy a house.
Baby Mama #2, Kimberly Floyd
They share a 7-year-old daughter, for whom TO was ordered to pay $20,000/month for back in 2005. In 2008, they agreed to drop that to $15,000.
Baby Mama #3, Samelia Miller
Miller gave birth to a son back in 2006. He was ordered to pay $13,400/month in support.
Baby Mama #4, Melanie Paige Smith
T.O. was ordered to pay $5,000/month for their daughter back in 2007. This is the only case where T.O. has not yet requested a reduction ... though his rep says he plans to ask for a modification.
In each of the cases where T.O. is requesting a reduction in child support payments, he says in his declaration, "My currently monthly income is zero ($0)."
In the papers, T.O. also claims to pay $62,366/month for various properties and says his home in Georgia is in foreclosure. He says he put all but two of his homes up for sale.
A rep for T.O. tells TMZ, "He has tried to keep paying all of these mothers what they were used to year after year, basically putting himself into a financial crisis. He has always paid his child support payments and loves his kids."
As TMZ first reported, a bench warrant was issued for T.O.'s arrest after he missed a court date with one baby mama ... to whom he's trying to lower child support payments.
Turns out ... T.O. has three OTHER baby mamas and over the past few months he's filed to have his payments reduced with two of them (and, according to his rep, he plans to file for a modification of support for the third).
For those of you counting at home, here's the scorecard ...
Baby Mama #1, Monique Reynolds
T.O. and Monique have an 11-year-old son together. According to the papers, he paid $20,000/month in support until last year, when it was reduced to $11,202. He also gave her $100,000 to buy a house.
Baby Mama #2, Kimberly Floyd
They share a 7-year-old daughter, for whom TO was ordered to pay $20,000/month for back in 2005. In 2008, they agreed to drop that to $15,000.
Baby Mama #3, Samelia Miller
Miller gave birth to a son back in 2006. He was ordered to pay $13,400/month in support.
Baby Mama #4, Melanie Paige Smith
T.O. was ordered to pay $5,000/month for their daughter back in 2007. This is the only case where T.O. has not yet requested a reduction ... though his rep says he plans to ask for a modification.
In each of the cases where T.O. is requesting a reduction in child support payments, he says in his declaration, "My currently monthly income is zero ($0)."
In the papers, T.O. also claims to pay $62,366/month for various properties and says his home in Georgia is in foreclosure. He says he put all but two of his homes up for sale.
A rep for T.O. tells TMZ, "He has tried to keep paying all of these mothers what they were used to year after year, basically putting himself into a financial crisis. He has always paid his child support payments and loves his kids."
BLACK UNEMPLOYMENT RATE FALLS IN OCTOBLER 2011....
The the economy is showing signs of growth, albeit at painstakingly slow pace, confirmed the October jobs report released by the Labor Department Friday morning. The unemployment rate for Blacks fell to 15.1 percent, almost a full percentage point from 16.0 percent in September. The overall jobless rate shrank slightly to 9 percent from 9.1 percent the previous month.
According to Georgia Tech University economist Thomas Boston, the September figure was not so much a dip as it was a more accurate reflection of the Black unemployment picture because the August figure of 16.7 percent was falsely high because seasonal adjustments had not yet been made.
The economy added 80,000 jobs in October. That was the fewest amount in four months and below September's revised total of 158,000. In addition, this week the Labor Department reported that applications for unemployment benefits declined last week to 397,000, marking only the third time since April that applications have fallen below 400,000.
Boston warned that the debt crisis in Europe could negatively impact this nation’s burgeoning economic growth because the five largest financial institutions are heavily invested in both Europe and the most debt troubled countries, including Greece, Italy, Ireland and Portugal. If the banks have to write off as lost a large portion of that investment, those losses will be felt here at home in the form of less lending.
“That means more difficulty for African-American business owners, more difficulty for people trying to refinance mortgages and fewer opportunities for people who are confronting the likelihood of going into foreclosure to restructure mortgages,” Boston said. “All of that affects African-Americans more, so there is an connection between what’s happening in Europe and how it’s going to affect us here.”
In October, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) declined by 366,000 to 5.9 million, or 42.4 percent of total unemployment.
According to Georgia Tech University economist Thomas Boston, the September figure was not so much a dip as it was a more accurate reflection of the Black unemployment picture because the August figure of 16.7 percent was falsely high because seasonal adjustments had not yet been made.
The economy added 80,000 jobs in October. That was the fewest amount in four months and below September's revised total of 158,000. In addition, this week the Labor Department reported that applications for unemployment benefits declined last week to 397,000, marking only the third time since April that applications have fallen below 400,000.
Boston warned that the debt crisis in Europe could negatively impact this nation’s burgeoning economic growth because the five largest financial institutions are heavily invested in both Europe and the most debt troubled countries, including Greece, Italy, Ireland and Portugal. If the banks have to write off as lost a large portion of that investment, those losses will be felt here at home in the form of less lending.
“That means more difficulty for African-American business owners, more difficulty for people trying to refinance mortgages and fewer opportunities for people who are confronting the likelihood of going into foreclosure to restructure mortgages,” Boston said. “All of that affects African-Americans more, so there is an connection between what’s happening in Europe and how it’s going to affect us here.”
In October, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) declined by 366,000 to 5.9 million, or 42.4 percent of total unemployment.
November 6, 2011
SOME THINGS NEED TO BE RE-POSTED, OFTEN....
Love yourself enough that you will hurt yourself before you allow somebody else to hurt you...mind, body and soul.
LIFE LESSON 63....
You are who you hang out with....if you want to change your situation, change your surroundings and hang out with those who are already where you want to be.
This goes in love, life, career, education, spirituality, and your overall self awareness.
This goes in love, life, career, education, spirituality, and your overall self awareness.
November 3, 2011
THE TRUTH IS....
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. -Winston Churchill
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