Learn something....
Why do Black women FIRST and Jewish women have such high occurances of fibroids and fribriod cancer?? Theyy only have ONE thing in common.....Nappy hair and the use of chemicals to streghten their hair....
Hate It or Love It Most Popular Posts
-
The more than 11 FAQ about Black Greek Organizations (No holds barred) 1: What's the history behind the rivalry between the ladies of ...
-
Is it the legs...the thighs...the skin color...the calve muscles??? This why I love African-American women!!! Bootilicous The TRUE definitio... -
The BET Network continues to diversify its programming with a new channel geared towards adults called Centric, which debuts this October. J...
March 30, 2012
March 29, 2012
GET INTO THE LYRICS....ADORN
Yeah, these lips...
Can`t wait to taste your skin baby
No, no
And these eyes, yeah
Can`t wait to see your grin...
OOh baby
Just let my love
Just let mu love adorn you
Please baby, yeah
You gotta know x 2
You know
That I adorn you
Yeah baby
Baby these fist...
Will always protect ya lady
And this mind oh,
Will never neglect you,
Yeah baby,
Oh baby
And this thang
Trying to break us down
Don`t let that effect us,
No baby
You just got to let
My love...
Let my love x 2
Adorn you
Ahh, le, le, le let it
Just adorn you
You got to know
You got to know
Know that I adorn you
Just that babe
I, oh
Let my love adorn you baby...
Don`t you ever
Don`t you let no one
Tell you different baby
Always adorn you
You got to know
You got to know x 3
Now yeah...
Can`t wait to taste your skin baby
No, no
And these eyes, yeah
Can`t wait to see your grin...
OOh baby
Just let my love
Just let mu love adorn you
Please baby, yeah
You gotta know x 2
You know
That I adorn you
Yeah baby
Baby these fist...
Will always protect ya lady
And this mind oh,
Will never neglect you,
Yeah baby,
Oh baby
And this thang
Trying to break us down
Don`t let that effect us,
No baby
You just got to let
My love...
Let my love x 2
Adorn you
Ahh, le, le, le let it
Just adorn you
You got to know
You got to know
Know that I adorn you
Just that babe
I, oh
Let my love adorn you baby...
Don`t you ever
Don`t you let no one
Tell you different baby
Always adorn you
You got to know
You got to know x 3
Now yeah...
March 28, 2012
BOOK REVIEW ON SEQUEL TO PRECIOUS.....THE KID....
Fifteen years after the heralded publication of her first novel, “Push” — the basis for the 2009 film “Precious” — Sapphire has written a new novel, “The Kid,” which traces the life of Precious’ second child, Abdul. At its best, “The Kid” captures the grueling heartbreak of trying to love anything when the world doesn’t love you enough, of trying to summon desire or affection in the absence of any healthy context for either one.
As the book opens, Abdul is 9 years old. Precious has died of AIDS, and that loss — of maternal affection, of any shred of normalcy, of childhood itself — haunts Abdul as he is bounced from bad living situation to worse. His story is told in a complicated first-person, stream-of-consciousness style, made trickier by the fact that the voice must shape-shift, taking on new moods and identities every time Abdul does.
“In my dreams I’m not black,” the young Abdul says, “and if I am I’m only half black and an Indian. I’m a warrior riding across the plains, in my dreams we drive the Europeans back into the ocean, in my dreams sometimes I am black, blacker than I am now, the blackest black man, Hannibal riding an elephant over the Alps, the ruler of a kingdom of a land where my father’s picture is like George Washington’s on the dollar bill, in my dreams I have not been beat. Or left alone. . . . When I close my eyes my dreams belong to the boogeyman, the Devil. They are the Devil’s lies. But my dreams were not lies before my mother died, or, except, maybe that time just before Mommy died was bad dreams.”
While Sapphire’s control of the narrative voice is impressive, the novel itself is occasionally less so, disconnecting from its human center and stranding its characters in the realm of the almost cartoonishly pathological. The brutality Sapphire depicts is deliberately, sometimes problematically, relentless: not even halfway through the novel, we’ve already encountered death, a vicious beating, multiple rape scenes and animal abuse. By the time a teenage Abdul strips down and masturbates to climax as his great-grandmother narrates the story of her rape as a 10-year-old, many readers will be ready to say enough.
One wonders if the novel’s uncomfortably literal rendition of “tragedy porn” — through which someone derives selfish pleasure while witnessing or trying to ignore a narrative of suffering — is a calculated indictment of a certain type of reader. At times, it seems the mission of “The Kid” is to punish those readers of “Push” who found even the faintest glimmer of hope in Precious’ journey, as if Sapphire were daring anyone to make this novel into a Hollywood story with lovely celebrities playing well-intentioned social workers and tough but tender teachers who impart the redeeming value of the written word.
The teachers here turn out to be serial molesters. The overwhelmed social worker spends much of her page time apologizing for her own futility. When Abdul finally starts to come into his own as part of a company of dancers, most of them hold him at a distance. His rich and talented girlfriend, whom he initially pegs as the kind of “normal” person he envies, turns out to have a story as bleak and horrifying as his, and desires for him that are anything but redemptive.
Abdul himself recalls a modern Bigger Thomas, embodying all the loathed and feared stereotypes of contemporary black masculinity: the man trying to become immune to his own sense of empathy, the “down-low” black man, the gay-basher who picks up men in parks, the rapist, the ward of the state who has nothing to give back, the man who is “naturally” physically superior, the would-be murderer, the thwarted intellectual, the boy who wants to become his father but remains firmly in denial of his father’s brutality.
Structurally, “The Kid” reads a bit like “Invisible Man” dragged through a haunted house’s hall of mirrors — a novel in which a character who doesn’t know himself and is driven primarily by his own survival instinct goes from one terrifying absurdity to the next, without fully registering either the absurdity or his own role in it. In some such novels, the character emerges at the end having confronted himself and learned in the process, but Abdul’s evolving series of names and mistaken identities ultimately render him all but nameless. “I reach out my foam hand for things,” he says: “My name — just had it, but it passes me by. . . . Things are drifting past me again, how old I am, where I am, did I ever know?”
“The Kid” asks readers to consider what it means to inherit, and what it means to survive. Ultimately, Abdul does survive, in that he lives. But after the unimaginable cruelties inflicted both upon him and by him, we are left with the feeling that all his mistaken and performed identities are no longer in fact mistakes, but the only self he has.
Danielle Evans is the author of a story collection, “Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/books/review/the-kid-by-sapphire-book-review.html?pagewanted=print
As the book opens, Abdul is 9 years old. Precious has died of AIDS, and that loss — of maternal affection, of any shred of normalcy, of childhood itself — haunts Abdul as he is bounced from bad living situation to worse. His story is told in a complicated first-person, stream-of-consciousness style, made trickier by the fact that the voice must shape-shift, taking on new moods and identities every time Abdul does.
“In my dreams I’m not black,” the young Abdul says, “and if I am I’m only half black and an Indian. I’m a warrior riding across the plains, in my dreams we drive the Europeans back into the ocean, in my dreams sometimes I am black, blacker than I am now, the blackest black man, Hannibal riding an elephant over the Alps, the ruler of a kingdom of a land where my father’s picture is like George Washington’s on the dollar bill, in my dreams I have not been beat. Or left alone. . . . When I close my eyes my dreams belong to the boogeyman, the Devil. They are the Devil’s lies. But my dreams were not lies before my mother died, or, except, maybe that time just before Mommy died was bad dreams.”
While Sapphire’s control of the narrative voice is impressive, the novel itself is occasionally less so, disconnecting from its human center and stranding its characters in the realm of the almost cartoonishly pathological. The brutality Sapphire depicts is deliberately, sometimes problematically, relentless: not even halfway through the novel, we’ve already encountered death, a vicious beating, multiple rape scenes and animal abuse. By the time a teenage Abdul strips down and masturbates to climax as his great-grandmother narrates the story of her rape as a 10-year-old, many readers will be ready to say enough.
One wonders if the novel’s uncomfortably literal rendition of “tragedy porn” — through which someone derives selfish pleasure while witnessing or trying to ignore a narrative of suffering — is a calculated indictment of a certain type of reader. At times, it seems the mission of “The Kid” is to punish those readers of “Push” who found even the faintest glimmer of hope in Precious’ journey, as if Sapphire were daring anyone to make this novel into a Hollywood story with lovely celebrities playing well-intentioned social workers and tough but tender teachers who impart the redeeming value of the written word.
The teachers here turn out to be serial molesters. The overwhelmed social worker spends much of her page time apologizing for her own futility. When Abdul finally starts to come into his own as part of a company of dancers, most of them hold him at a distance. His rich and talented girlfriend, whom he initially pegs as the kind of “normal” person he envies, turns out to have a story as bleak and horrifying as his, and desires for him that are anything but redemptive.
Abdul himself recalls a modern Bigger Thomas, embodying all the loathed and feared stereotypes of contemporary black masculinity: the man trying to become immune to his own sense of empathy, the “down-low” black man, the gay-basher who picks up men in parks, the rapist, the ward of the state who has nothing to give back, the man who is “naturally” physically superior, the would-be murderer, the thwarted intellectual, the boy who wants to become his father but remains firmly in denial of his father’s brutality.
Structurally, “The Kid” reads a bit like “Invisible Man” dragged through a haunted house’s hall of mirrors — a novel in which a character who doesn’t know himself and is driven primarily by his own survival instinct goes from one terrifying absurdity to the next, without fully registering either the absurdity or his own role in it. In some such novels, the character emerges at the end having confronted himself and learned in the process, but Abdul’s evolving series of names and mistaken identities ultimately render him all but nameless. “I reach out my foam hand for things,” he says: “My name — just had it, but it passes me by. . . . Things are drifting past me again, how old I am, where I am, did I ever know?”
“The Kid” asks readers to consider what it means to inherit, and what it means to survive. Ultimately, Abdul does survive, in that he lives. But after the unimaginable cruelties inflicted both upon him and by him, we are left with the feeling that all his mistaken and performed identities are no longer in fact mistakes, but the only self he has.
Danielle Evans is the author of a story collection, “Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/books/review/the-kid-by-sapphire-book-review.html?pagewanted=print
LESSONS LEARNED....
“That is the burden of black boys in America and the people that love them: running the risk of being descended upon in the dark and caught in the cross-hairs of someone who crosses the line.”
I personally just got the message my mother always told me whenever I left the house whether it was going to school or traveling outside of the city....she always said, " Be on your p's and q's." She wasn't saying it for my because she doubted me but she wanted me to always be aware that I was consistantly being watched.
I personally just got the message my mother always told me whenever I left the house whether it was going to school or traveling outside of the city....she always said, " Be on your p's and q's." She wasn't saying it for my because she doubted me but she wanted me to always be aware that I was consistantly being watched.
THE BURDEN OF BLACK BOYS IN AMERICA.....
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
For centuries, the black family has been under attack. From slavery, through emancipation, through the civil rights era– which claimed the lives of two of America’s finest men (Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X), championing the plight of the black community and humanity to prevent tragedies like these– black folks were not quick to call themselves Americans because we have quietly accepted ourselves as “behind enemy lines.” With the entire nation outraged over the murder of Trayvon Martin, there may finally be a cultural comprehension, by all Americans, of what the black family has experienced historically and presently in this country.
Wendy Ealy Walker is a mother living outside Atlanta, Georgia, who has a 14-year old son of her own. She, like many other black mothers prior to the Martin case, has given instructions to her son to “go with what the cop says, do not argue” with law enforcement when he encounters them…which he has. Her devastation over Martin’s murder renews her latent fears of the targeting of her own son. She told Nightly News:
“That could be my own son, minding his own business, doing his own thing, never thinking that anyone would do him harm…it makes me angry and very frightened.”
Through this case, we are transported in time to the murder of 14-year-old Emmet Till in August of 1955. The horror of his murder has rippled through the black family in America for all of these years up to Walker’s instructions to her own 14-year old son in 2012. His murder as well as many before him were the reason that black leaders of the past fought so hard to change the judicial system. They knew the saying that “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Columnist Charles Blow of the New York Times spoke to Nightly News as well and coined this experience as “the burden of black boys.” He wrote in his article “The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin”:
“That is the burden of black boys in America and the people that love them: running the risk of being descended upon in the dark and caught in the cross-hairs of someone who crosses the line.”
After this, racial profiling can never be considered a myth again. If so, we are in a more “inglorious spot” than even Claude McKay could have ever imagined.
LEGENDARY....DONYALE LUNA.....
Donyale Luna (August 31, 1945 – May 17, 1979) was an American model and cover girl. She also appeared in several films, in Camp (1965) by Andy Warhol, Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966) by William Klein, as Groucho Marx's companion in Otto Preminger's Skidoo (1968), and most notably as Oenothea in Federico Fellini's Satyricon (1970) and as the title character in Salomé (1972), a film by director Carmelo Bene.
After being discovered by the photographer David McCabe, she moved from Detroit to New York City to pursue a modeling career. In January 1965, a sketch of Luna appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. She became the first African American model to appear on the cover of a Vogue magazine, the March 1966 British issue, shot by British photographer David Bailey.
According to The New York Times, she was under exclusive contract to the photographer Richard Avedon for a year at the beginning of her career.
An article in Time magazine published on 1 April 1966, "The Luna Year", described her as "a new heavenly body who, because of her striking singularity, promises to remain on high for many a season. Donyale Luna, as she calls herself, is unquestionably the hottest model in Europe at the moment. She is only 20, a Negro, hails from Detroit, and is not to be missed if one reads Harper's Bazaar, Paris Match, Britain's Queen, the British, French or American editions of Vogue.
In 1967, the mannequin manufacturer Adel Rootstein created a mannequin in Luna's image, a follow-up to the company's Twiggy mannequin of 1966.
Luna appeared in a nude photo layout in the April 1975 issue of Playboy; the photographer was Luigi Cazzaniga.
According to the journalist Judy Stone, who wrote a profile of Luna for The New York Times in 1968, the model was "secretive, mysterious, contradictory, evasive, mercurial, and insistent upon her multiracial lineage -- exotic, chameleon strands of Indigenous-Mexican, Indonesian, Irish, and, last but least escapable, African." A London magazine (The Sunday Times Magazine, article by Harold Carlton) hailed her as "the completely New Image of the Negro woman. Fashion finds itself in an instrumental position for changing history, however slightly, for it is about to bring out into the open the veneration, the adoration, the idolization of the Negro ... "
When Stone asked her about whether her appearances in Hollywood films would benefit the cause of black actresses, Luna answered, "If it brings about more jobs for Mexicans, Asians, Native Americans, Africans, groovy. It could be good, it could be bad. I couldn't care less."
March 27, 2012
FIRST BLACK MCDONALD'S CEO HAPPENS TO BE A NORTH CENTRAL HS GRADUATE AND HOOSIER!!!
Courtesy of The Starpress.com
"Don Thompson is known to show up for early morning meetings with other trustees of Purdue University carrying armloads of McDonald's Egg McMuffins and cups of coffee."
"That gesture says a mouthful about the 48-year-old Thompson, who on Wednesday was named president and chief executive officer of McDonald's, becoming the first black leader of the world's largest restaurant chain."
"A leader with deep Hoosier roots, he is often described as warm, friendly, inspiring -- and very attuned to other's needs."
"I find him to be a clear-thinking and practical and process-oriented member of the board, as you might expect of an electrical engineer, said Michael R. Berghoff, president of Lenex Steel Corp. in Indianapolis and another Purdue trustee. He has a dynamic personality and a great antenna for what motivates people by understanding the emotional side of behavior."
"Thompson was born in Chicago but moved as a child to Indianapolis' Northside to be raised by his grandmother. He graduated from North Central High School in 1980 and from Purdue at West Lafayette in 1984 with a degree in electrical engineering. He was named to the high school's alumni Hall of Fame in 2010 and appointed by the governor to the Purdue Board of Trustees in 2009."
"Thompson, who has climbed during 22 years with the company from making Big Macs in an Illinois restaurant to regional and national leadership, wasn't available for interviews Thursday after his latest promotion was announced. He succeeds CEO Jim Skinner, who is retiring after 41 years."
"But a 2008 profile in the trade publication Franchise Times quotes Thompson about his accidental introduction to the food industry."
"Soon after graduating from Purdue, he worked as an engineer at an aerospace company."
"One day, he received a message from a recruiter who he thought was representing airplane builder McDonnell Douglas."
"Actually, it was for a management trainee job with McDonald's, the restaurant chain. So he took a chance, changed careers and rose rapidly."
"Thompson is married to another Purdue electrical engineering graduate, Liz, and they are the parents of a son attending the University of Notre Dame and a younger daughter."
"The Thompsons met as young scholarship students at a banquet in 1980 at Purdue. They had shared an early childhood on Chicago's rough South Side."
"Friends including Berghoff said it is not unusual for Thompson to spend time after trustee meetings getting to know new scholarship students."
"He is very sensitive to how loans and support can allow a student to go to school and take advantage of opportunities, Berghoff said."
"Virginia Booth-Gleghorn, director of Purdue's minority engineering programs, said Thompson's dedication to young people's education is evident, from his personal donations to his hands-on attention."
"What really touches my heart about Don is he really takes an effort to remember and credit the programs that helped him, she said. He was amazed his whole life changed once he learned about engineering."
"Thompson formerly was president of McDonald's USA and became the operating chief of the global company in January 2010. He will assume his new role as chief executive July 1 for the Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald's."
"It will be a seamless transition, said Peter Saleh, an analyst at Telsey Advisory Group in New York. "They're not going to skip a beat going from (Skinner) to Don."
"Thompson faces the challenge of boosting sales amid increasing competition from Wendy's, Burger King, Taco Bell and others, plus higher commodity prices."
"Everyone today is trying to steal shares from them, Saleh said. Thompson's challenge will be to protect the breakfast business and continue to expand McCafe specialty beverages."
THE BEAUTIFUL KERRY WASHINGTON STARS IN SCANDAL....MUST WATCH TV....
Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) dedicates her life to protecting the public images of the nation's elite and making sure their secrets never get out. Olivia is a former White House communications director for the President, but has left to start her own crisis management firm, Olivia Pope and Associates. She is hoping to begin a new chapter of her life, but is finding out that she cannot leave parts of her past behind.
Olivia Pope and Associates staff includes Stephen Finch (Henry Ian Cusick), a womanizer considering settling down, Harrison Wright (Columbus Short), a smooth and efficient litigator, Abby Whelan, (Darby Stanchfield), the firm's investigator, Huck (Guillermo Diaz), a hacker with a CIA past, and Quinn Perkins (Katie Lowes), a fresh faced lawyer quickly learning the world of crisis management.
COMING UP NEXT....NOTORIOUS...FEATURING MEAGAN GOOD AND LAZ ALONZO.....
According to Deadline, in the Universal TV and BermanBraun's NBC drama pilot Notorious, Good will play detective Joanna Locasto, in the series described as an "opulent soap."
Written by Liz Heldens, Good's character goes undercover as the housekeeper's daughter into the family she grew up in to investigate the murder of her childhood friend - celebutante Vivian Lawson.
Laz Alonso will be returning to your TV screens very soon as an NYPD detective alongside Meagan Good in a new NBC drama pilot titled, ‘Notorious‘. It will be the first time the network has cast two Black actors in a lead since the short-lived drama ‘Undercovers’ with Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw
Written by Liz Heldens, Good's character goes undercover as the housekeeper's daughter into the family she grew up in to investigate the murder of her childhood friend - celebutante Vivian Lawson.
Laz Alonso will be returning to your TV screens very soon as an NYPD detective alongside Meagan Good in a new NBC drama pilot titled, ‘Notorious‘. It will be the first time the network has cast two Black actors in a lead since the short-lived drama ‘Undercovers’ with Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw
RACIAL CONTROVERSY AMID RECORD BREAKING NUMBERS FOR THE HUNGER GAMES FIRST MOVE.....
As predicted, Lionsgate’s ‘The Hunger Games’ broke box office records when it was released over the weekend. The Hunger Games grossed $155 million, more than double what the film ‘Twilight’ raked in during its opening weekend in 2008 ($69.9 million).
But one thing movie critics didn’t predict was the racial tensions that would overshadow the film’s opening weekend and evoke hateful social commentary from passionate fans of the book on which the film was based.
Taking a page out of today’s cultural obsession with reality TV, The Hunger Games pits young television contestants against each other in a brutal, real-life battle to the death.
But fans of the book are outraged at the film’s writers for taking artistic liberties with the book’s big screen adaptation (two of the book’s principal characters are played by black actors).
“Rue” is played by 13-year-old actress Amandla Stenberg, and the sensitive “Cinna” is played by hunky singer-turned-actor Lenny Kravitz.
The book’s fans, some of whom waited in line for days for the midnight showing on Friday, vented their racist hatred on Twitter.com and other social outlets.
One person wrote, “why does rue have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined the movie.”
Another person tweeted: “cinna and rue werent suppose to be black. why did the producer make all the good characters black.”
One bigot happily tweeted a movie spoiler on Twitter: “call me racist but when i found out rue was black her death wasn’t as sad #ihatemyself.”
My two cents-If you read the books, you will hear Rue described as having dark skinned and brown eyes, A TRAIT that is similar with her people who are from the SOUTH and are from the district known for farming. Thresh is ALSO from her District. No comments thus far have been made about him being black.
sandrarose.com
March 26, 2012
PRESIDENT OBAMA ADDRESSES THE TRAYVON MARTIN MURDER....
“Obviously, this is a tragedy,” he said. “I can only imagine what these parents are going through, and when I think about this, I think about my own kids, and I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and everybody aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together — federal, state and local — to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”
He went on.
“I think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen,” said Obama. “And that means we examine the laws and the context for what happened, as well as the specifics of the incident.”
SHOUT OUT TO THE 504 FOR ALL THE MUSIC AND DANCE CONTRIBUTIONS.....
OLD SCHOOL.....
NEWER SCHOOL....
UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEX AND LOVE....
The music video for Trey Songz’ sultry new ballad “Sex Ain’t Better Than Love” premiered Thursday. The message in this song is one that you young ladies and men need to hear.
Sex and love are not the same. When you meet a man or woman who makes your heart do flips — that’s not love.
Many of you think you’re in love because the sex is good, or because he or she swept you off your feet when you first met. But chances are you’re not really in love. The words “whirlwind romance” are a red flag.
Love has nothing to do with sex. Love doesn’t even begin to come into play until the effects of dopamine wear off.
You have a better chance at a lifelong relationship with a man who doesn’t come on to you hot and heavy when you first meet.
Couples who get married too soon, within a few months of meeting each other, usually discover that they were never in love when they file for a divorce a year later.
So how do you know when it’s really love and not the dopamine? If you think about sex every time you think of him or her, it’s most likely not love.
Dopamine begins to fade within 6 months to 2 years. If the dopamine attracted him or her to you, he or she will soon be gone when it fades.
If it’s real love, he or she will stick around long after the dopamine fades.
That doesn’t mean you should withhold sex from him until he proves his love for you. It means you are able to make better decisions about your future with him once you understand the difference between dopamine and love.
sandrarose.com
Sex and love are not the same. When you meet a man or woman who makes your heart do flips — that’s not love.
Many of you think you’re in love because the sex is good, or because he or she swept you off your feet when you first met. But chances are you’re not really in love. The words “whirlwind romance” are a red flag.
Love has nothing to do with sex. Love doesn’t even begin to come into play until the effects of dopamine wear off.
You have a better chance at a lifelong relationship with a man who doesn’t come on to you hot and heavy when you first meet.
Couples who get married too soon, within a few months of meeting each other, usually discover that they were never in love when they file for a divorce a year later.
So how do you know when it’s really love and not the dopamine? If you think about sex every time you think of him or her, it’s most likely not love.
Dopamine begins to fade within 6 months to 2 years. If the dopamine attracted him or her to you, he or she will soon be gone when it fades.
If it’s real love, he or she will stick around long after the dopamine fades.
That doesn’t mean you should withhold sex from him until he proves his love for you. It means you are able to make better decisions about your future with him once you understand the difference between dopamine and love.
sandrarose.com
THE HEAT SHOWS SUPPORT FOR TRAYVON MARTIN.....
Unlike rappers who only support a cause if there is something financially in it for them, LeBron James and the rest of the Miami Heat team showed their full support for Trayvon Martin by wearing grey hoodies in a group photo. LeBron uploaded the photo to Twitter.com today with the hashtags: “#WeAreTrayvonMartin #Hoodies #Stereotyped #WeWantJustice”.
17-year-old Trayvon was unarmed and carrying a bag of Skittles candy when he was ambushed and gunned down by a racist neighborhood watch captain as he walked home from a corner store in Sanford, Florida on Feb. 26th.
SANDRAROSE.COM
March 22, 2012
A STAIN ON THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI....JUSTICE IS SERVED....
A white teenager received two life sentences after pleading guilty Wednesday to murder and a hate crime for running over a black man with his pickup truck.
Deryl Dedmon, 19, was indicted for capital murder in the June 26 death of James Craig Anderson, a 47-year-old car plant worker who was remembered for his love of church and his sense of humor.
Dedmon admitted that he and a group of friends were partying in a small town outside Jackson, when he suggested that they go find a black man to harass.
The group of white teens chose Jackson because of its majority-black population.
Dedmon, who was driving, found Anderson standing outside a hotel just before dawn.
Anderson was beaten before Dedmon backed his truck up in the hotel parking lot and accelerated into Anderson, running him over and killing him.
It wasn’t the first time Dedmon and his friends had harassed black people just for kicks. He usually targeted the homeless or drunks who weren’t likely to report it to police, according to USA Today.
Before his sentence was handed down Wednesday, Dedmon turned to Anderson’s family and asked for forgiveness.
“I am sincerely sorry. I do take full responsibility for my actions on that night. I pray for y’all’s family every day … and that God will soften your hearts to forgive me,” Dedmon said as members of both families wiped away tears.
He continued: “I was young. I was dumb. I was ignorant … I was not raised the way that I acted that night. I was raised in a godly house. As I stand before you today, I am a changed man. I am a godly man. God has showed me to see no colors. God showed me that we are all made in the image of God so we are all based on the same thing … I do not ask y’all to forget, but I do ask y’all to forgive.”
But the judge presiding over the hearing was not so forgiving.
“Your prejudice has brought shame upon you and placed a great stain on the state of Mississippi,” said Hinds County Circuit Judge Jeff Weill Sr.
“Whatever excuse you may offer for what you have done, forget that. There’s no excuse that you can offer for the family of Mr. Anderson or to your fellow Mississippians who have to try to reconcile the horrible damage you have caused,” Weill said.
Recalling the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers that became known as “Mississippi Burning,” Hinds said, “All the hard work we have done to move our state forward from that earthen dam in Neshoba County to here has been stained by you. A stain that will take years to fade.”
I AM TRAYVON MARTIN....
This happened in America. I am shot and killed in a residential neighborhood. My cell phone is on my person, and I am found to have been carrying only a bag of candy and a drink. 911 calls from neighbors record my screams for help, in the moments before my death. No one uses my cell phone to locate my family. No one canvass the neighborhood to see if someone there knows me. I am a John Doe in the morgue for three days. But, my body is tested for drugs and alcohol. My killer is not tested for anything. My killer is questioned and released, and he is still free today. I am Travon Martin, and We are better than this
March 21, 2012
ESSAY ON THE LIFE OF ANOTHER BLACK MAN CHILD....TAYARI JONES....MUST READ
TAYARI JONES: Like many Americans, I have been glued to the television eager for details about the tragic murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. I'm not sure what I hoped to discover because each new piece of evidence is more disturbing than the last. I listened to the recently released 911 tapes from my office computer and cried in public. I was up until after midnight scanning my Twitter feed for news and comfort, a 21st-century vigil of sorts.
I'm only the latest in a long line of black women speaking the names of our murdered boys. This is my role as a woman in the community. But my ties to this case stretch back to when I was a little girl growing up in Atlanta, Georgia. When I was in the fifth and sixth grade, dozens of African-American children were murdered. Almost all of them were boys. Even though Wayne Williams is believed to be the murderer, questions and scars persist. Learning about death and dying is part of growing up.
If we're lucky, we come to understand that death is natural through the passing of a grandparent or some other elder. But for too many of us, we are made aware of our own mortality by seeing our peers: the boys we wanted to go to the movies with, the boys who used to pull our hair. We learned that they could be killed for the crime of being themselves: young, black and male. When the Atlanta child murders occurred, I was just at the age when we were noticing the differences between the sexes.
As the body count increased, I realized that in my community the difference was that if you were a boy, someone might try to kill you. Recent reports have surfaced that Trayvon was on the telephone with a girl as he walked from the store where he had bought candy. The girl on the phone was the last person to speak to Trayvon Martin. I'm filled with sorrow for her. When I was young, girls were not mere bystanders as we watch our mothers groom our brothers to live in a world that feared them.
Boys were taught not to look police, security guards or anyone with authority directly in the eye. They should say only yes, sir, or no, sir. We, too, were in training, learning to protect the men we loved. We became our mothers' surrogates, reminding the guys to keep cool, to be quiet. We knew they wanted to impress us, but we begged them not to talk back the way boys always do. Today, at 41 years old, my girlhood is behind me, but the memories of dead boys linger.
Most childhood fears are terrors that you grow out of. As you age, you realize that there is no monster under the bed. But the worry that someone will look at a black man and deem him to be suspicious and feel justified in killing him, this is a threat that only deepens as he grows older - if he's lucky enough to get older.
Tayari Jones is the author of the novel "Silver Sparrow."
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/20/149003647/trayvon-martin-the-lingering-memories-of-dead-boys
I'm only the latest in a long line of black women speaking the names of our murdered boys. This is my role as a woman in the community. But my ties to this case stretch back to when I was a little girl growing up in Atlanta, Georgia. When I was in the fifth and sixth grade, dozens of African-American children were murdered. Almost all of them were boys. Even though Wayne Williams is believed to be the murderer, questions and scars persist. Learning about death and dying is part of growing up.
If we're lucky, we come to understand that death is natural through the passing of a grandparent or some other elder. But for too many of us, we are made aware of our own mortality by seeing our peers: the boys we wanted to go to the movies with, the boys who used to pull our hair. We learned that they could be killed for the crime of being themselves: young, black and male. When the Atlanta child murders occurred, I was just at the age when we were noticing the differences between the sexes.
As the body count increased, I realized that in my community the difference was that if you were a boy, someone might try to kill you. Recent reports have surfaced that Trayvon was on the telephone with a girl as he walked from the store where he had bought candy. The girl on the phone was the last person to speak to Trayvon Martin. I'm filled with sorrow for her. When I was young, girls were not mere bystanders as we watch our mothers groom our brothers to live in a world that feared them.
Boys were taught not to look police, security guards or anyone with authority directly in the eye. They should say only yes, sir, or no, sir. We, too, were in training, learning to protect the men we loved. We became our mothers' surrogates, reminding the guys to keep cool, to be quiet. We knew they wanted to impress us, but we begged them not to talk back the way boys always do. Today, at 41 years old, my girlhood is behind me, but the memories of dead boys linger.
Most childhood fears are terrors that you grow out of. As you age, you realize that there is no monster under the bed. But the worry that someone will look at a black man and deem him to be suspicious and feel justified in killing him, this is a threat that only deepens as he grows older - if he's lucky enough to get older.
Tayari Jones is the author of the novel "Silver Sparrow."
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/20/149003647/trayvon-martin-the-lingering-memories-of-dead-boys
March 20, 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)