This is a quick study break for me, but I feel compelled to write it.
I saw via Twitter that in the midst of fellow black blogger Danielle Belton, bka The Black Snob‘s eastern seaboard tour that she was going to be in Washington, D.C. urreah (dat’s where it’s at!), but more so that she was going to be on Nightline last night. Well, in the midst of me watching that OT game last night with the Bulls and the Celtics (we better go to seven games dammit!) and just feeling plum tired, I conked out around 10pm and didn’t get a chance to see her piece on Nightline.
Btw, damn WordPress again for not letting me embed clips other than friggin Youtube.
That aside, it was really a phone call from Mother Uppity last night that made me want to do the shout out.
My mother is HIGHLY impressed with reading Black Snob’s blog. She said that she was ready to wake my father up in the middle of the night just to watch the piece, which was all about Lady Michelle‘s first 100 days as the First Lady which was spurred by the unveiling of the first bust of an African American woman to grace the halls of the Capitol building, who just happens to be abolitionist Sojourner Truth. My mother simply adores reading the depth of Black Snob’s knowledge in her blog articles, her unabashed “natural hair” as my mother said, and ultimately the cartoons that she does.
Me personally thinks Mother Uppity sees much of herself in The Black Snob.
And that’s a good thing.
Keep up the work Black Snob.
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
I guess I’m like Jonathan L. Walton, who mentions on his blog that every once in a while he stumbles upon “great moments in Gospel [music] history” that act as much needed breaks from research. I was emailed the following clip on Facebook, but I opened it in the midst of a research break at Club Woody Woodruff Library. I’m a musician, so y’all know I was to’ up and weak after this clip.
Enjoy.
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
One of the joys of this blog is being the cultural critic and having the platform and the ability to provide my opinion on any and everything. And I must say that after watching this last week’s episode of BET’s College Hill: South Beach that I felt compelled to write about it.
Before I get into the meat of my article, I would like to start off with my sordid history with the channel known as Black Entertainment Television.
I didn’t grow up with cable, so when I got to college, I was finally able to partake in this that was BET. I had heard about it, knew about it, just hadn’t really seen it. For all intents and purposes, the big screen TV in our dorm in the lobby area only played two and half channels: ESPN, TNT during the basketball season and the third was BET. I finally got to see AJ and Free on 106 & Park. Like I have a memory of watching the debut of Chingy’s “Right Thurr” from the lobby of our dorm.
It wasn’t until my second year of college when we had cable in our dorm rooms and I remember my homeboy from Chicago calling me from Grambling telling me to stay up late and watch this new Nelly video.
Oh yes, I do remember the first time I watched the “Tip Drill” video.
And this was on BET Uncut where they showed all of these slightly more raunchy videos such as Ludacris’ “Pussy Poppin’” and I remember this horrible video known as “White Girls.”
Am I the only one who remembers that horrible video?
Then in my junior year we anticipated this new copied series of “College Hill.” Although we all knew that it was a copy from MTV’s “Real World” and we just rolled our eyes at just how stupid BET could be, we all anticipated watching it because this was supposed to be a “real world” perspective from our view. And the fact that they were filming at an HBCU was a positive, and moreover at an HBCU only 45 minutes away in Baton Rouge.
Then the world was introduced to “No Draws.”
Y’all remember homegirl back when they were at Southern in Baton Rouge and her father was the Dean of the School of Business.
I watched them at Langston University in Oklahoma and by 2007 when I did have cable consistently, I resumed watching “College Hill.” As it stood, this was about the only BET programming I was seriously watching aside from some random Cousin Jeff episodes or watching “Hip Hop vs. America” episodes. I didn’t watch the “Virgin Islands” season, but I tuned in a little bit for the “Chicago Interns” season simply because it made sense: 20-somethings doing something productive with their life and frankly I like Dr. Ian Smith. I really watched the “College Hill: Atlanta” season because I was out here when they filmed it. It was the same mild buffoonery, but it wasn’t anything that just really irked my nerves until this season.
For anyone who’s been watching this “South Beach” episode probably knows where I’m going with this.
There are only four guys in the cast this season, Brandon, Paul, Chris and Kyle. It’s the weirdest matchup of males I’ve ever seen for a BET reality show. There’s the playboy Brandon, and then there’s Paul who I’m convinced isn’t quite sure which day of the week it is: it seems like he lives on the planet Plutron at times, then there’s Chris who…well, I’ll get to him later and then there’s Kyle.
From episode one Kyle made this claim that he wasn’t gay.
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT.
Nothing against gay people, but EVERYONE could see that he was a lyin’ wonder.
It always amazes me how me and my cadre of friends always clown BET and talk about how dumb it is and how it hasn’t done much to progress black culture in this country in recent years, but without fail, at the start of the seasons of “Baldwin Hills,” “Harlem Heights,” and “College Hill” my Yahoo Instant Messenger gets to lighting up along with my phone with the same message: “You watching the new season of ___________?” And this time, it was followed up with the “Ch….do you see this queen they got on here this season?” in reference to Kyle.
Now, while I’m not fully approving some of the phrases used to describe Kyle, fact of the matter it kind of goes to why I’m writing this post. I was watching last night and to see Kyle act the way he did, my exact words to my friends watching it were “I’m hurt that black males are being portrayed in such a way. For me it really was that simple. What me and most of my friends were angry and shocked at, both gay and straight, was that BET decided to cast Kyle as this “stereotypical semi-flamboyant, loud and ghetto gay boy” who thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips with a “coupla grape sodas” on the side.
My whole room of friends had gotten dead silent once the riff Kyle had started between himself and the new girl Kay and Allison. We were all saying on the commercial breaks how much of a mess it really was. His sexuality aside, who was raising this boy? Who was telling him what was right and what was wrong? Who let him know that acting in such a way was appropriate for a black male of his age. Granted this is reality television and they love stuff like this, but oh em gee. That was a mess that I witnessed.
Did you hear the things that he was saying? I think what irritated me, and I got into this red zone last time when I did my “Response to ‘When Does Gay Tolerance Go Too Far?’” and I made the observation that often times gay people on our campus would do things to invoke the ire of some of the straight boys on campus. What we’ve done particularly in the black community is absolved the oppressed from ever taking on traits of the oppressor. We’ve made it so that blacks don’t ever practice prejudices toward those outside of our race (it’s not reverse racism contrary to popular opinion). And equally so, we’ve made it so that gay is always right–in some instances. I highlighted it slightly in my post about the Miss USA and Perez Hilton debacle, but I took my foot off the gas. But Bill O’Reilly dead on with his analysis: if I take an opposing view to a ________ (insert your non-white, non-heterosexual male of choice) then you run the risk of being labeled some sort of bigot at the worst or culturally insensitive at the least.
So, I wonder are there any Kyle apologists out there who feel that Allison’s comment was anti-gay, then I’m sure you totally missed my whole point. I had quipped to my friends that back on the boat when they were parasailing, it would have been a fight on the water and Kyle would have ended up overboard–he had a life vest, he would have been okay. I was so incensed by the comments from Brandon and Milan (that girls an airhead if I’ve ever seen one) saying that Allison had went too far.
Really?
I can’t even remotely imagine how her comment about the boy’s father was going too far in the midst of the “muthafuckin’ bitches” that Kyle had unleashed on the both of them throughout the ENTIRE day. So I’m gonna go there because I can–did he get a pass because “that’s just Kyle?” Is that code word for “because he’s gay” he can do that? Which leads me back to my postulation that some gay boys, well at least the one’s at one of my undergraduate institutions that I observed, thrived off of the attention from acting flamboyant and loud. For whatever reason, they liked being the center of attention and they liked being able to go off on someone and was always daring the other other person to get into a fight with them.
Again, for the purposes of this post, who told him that this was an appropriate way to display himself as a black male? Is this saying that Chris, Paul and Brandon are appropriate models of black maledom? No, but we’re talking about Kyle here, so let’s deal with what’s in front of us. That whole feud took up the whole episode, so clearly this is about Kyle.
Who’s apparently bulemic?
I think what made that episode so disturbing was the fact that I’ve observed that behavior from some black men over these last seven years (Oh gawwwwwd, have I been down south in school for seven years now?!?!?!) I’ve been in school. It’s an interesting phenomena that behind closed doors, it’s usually been poohed off as “that’s just _____” and for the other person to move on and not worry about it. Often times I’ve been in the position of Allison being forced to be quiet lest I face the loudness of some, as my friend says, “upset queen.” Still, the question is, who’s teaching these young men what it means to be black in America? Who’s telling them that going off all the time is NOT an appropriate way to build person-to-person relationships with others. A constant defense mechanism, or in Kyle’s case a constant offense mechanism is definitely the hard way to go through life or the easy way to end up on the business end of a knife or a gun.
We have to be aware of what informs our consciousness. Whomever told Kyle that it was okay to act the way he acted needs to be fully ashamed of themselves. Not talking about his sexuality, but just how he treated Kay was evidence of some other issues going on, just as was evidenced him breaking down crying in the rain. We must find things that affirm our existence and not tear it down; black people have a responsibility to affirm persons WHERE THEY ARE in their life’s journey (yes, my Psychology of Pastoral Care class is being put to good use!!). We don’t have the luxury of tearing down one another for our own self satisfaction. To his credit, Chris was able to walk out with Kyle who had broken down in the rain after Allison’s comment about his “dopehead daddy.”
Without question, the image of the black male has been a fluid one here in this country. We’ve always struggled to find our place, as has our equal counterpart, the black female–in essence black people in this country have constantly faced an uphill battle centering ourselves. I mean, if that’s who Kyle is, then let him be who he be. I’m just not convinced that that is-ness engenders the atmosphere for positive and healthy living, let alone it doesn’t engage community amongst one another, and at the root of it all lies some selfish attitudes that need to be addressed. It’s hard to go through life alone. For black males, we have to affirm one another, it’s the only way we’re going to make it.
I’m not even sure how to pose a question after what I just wrote. But I’ll try. Who actually watched the episode, and what was your gut reaction to it? Do you feel that Kyle was acting in such a way because of his personality or was there something else behind it? Is it possible, using “Kyle” as a model, to separate his actions from his sexuality or are the two, in this particular instance interwoven together, or is that as a result of typical culture associating the two together. So just leave a comment if you just got to get something off of your chest about the whole situation.
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
Of course I’m stealing that title from Robert M. Franklin’s book Crisis In the Village. But, he’s quite right: there is a crisis in the village when two young boys commit suicide due to children taunting them.
I shied away from writing about this topic after the suicide death of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover in Massachusetts earlier this month because this topic hits so close to home for me. I personally remember once in fifth grade, right around the age of both of these young boys that I wanted to kill myself to my mother. I don’t really remember the reaction of my mother, but I do remember sitting in the bathtub that night thinking about drowning myself as my mother placed a direct call to my fifth grade teachers house. I don’t remember ever feeling suicidal again from teasing past that one moment.
I was never bullied namely because of my size. In fact I remember one new student in third grade who was definitely on the smaller side walked up to me while we were in the lunch line and said “I heard you were a bully,” I remember looking incredulous (sure I didn’t know what that meant back then, lol) thinking “Hell naw, it’s the rest of y’all that be pickin’ on me!” Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure most of my troubles would have been solved if I had just kept my mouth shut. In my own defense, I will say this, my smart-alecked mouth wasn’t on purpose. I consciously remember being hurt by what kids said to me, and how they treated me, I always felt that my response was more of a defense mechanism and it was viewed by everyone else as an offensive mechanism.
My mother tells a story of when I was playing litte league baseball with the organization associated with the park across the street from my house that one of the coaches, who was a parent of course, had walked up to her and told her that I needed to stop hitting back the other kids because I was bigger than them, and when I hit, I hit harder as opposed to when they hit me. My mother’s terse response was “How about a no-hitting rule?”
And his son, who was seven or eight at the time had a honking problem. No seriously–the boy used to randomly honk while sitting on the bench in the dugout like he was a goose.
We have a responsibility to our offspring, to the next generation for them to do better. How in the hell are we going to progress if parents and teachers let these runts get away with all of this craziness? What makes the cases of these two young boys so tragic is that both of them had “being called gay” at the forefront of their tormenters mouth. That’s very simple: who’s ever raising these kids have been taught that its okay to tease others and moreover to tease another person for being gay.
Also, who in the hell knows at eleven whether they’re gay or not?
Granted this aint 1996 when I was eleven, but I don’t think times have changed that much. Puberty is just starting and boys and girls are just figuring out which way is up and which way is down. Just the idea of being called gay by fellow eleven year olds brings up a plethora of issues in my mind. What determining factors did these boys’ peers go through that made it comfortable for them call them gay? Was it a certain display of femininity? If it was such, then I’m sure it was because both of these boys’ primary caregivers were their mothers. This isn’t to say that automatically because the father is out of the house that a boy has a proclivity toward homosexuality or even femininity, but it’s most certainly more understandable that a young boy could have more feminine characteristics because of being around his mother as opposed to both parents. (I’m sure to get some interesting comments on that one….I could be off on that one and I welcome critiques.) Although, I think openly gay blogger Rod 2.0 asks the best question “Is this how our community initiates young men into manhood?”
Nevertheless, I know what its like to be teased and bullied. Some of that is normal, but then when teasing becomes tormenting, its nothing short of torture for the person on the receiving end. I think it’s absolutely abhorrent and abominable for teachers and various administrators to ignore and DO NOTHING when they see a child visibly being tormented by other students. Damn those who stand by and let each other suffer visibly. And for teachers for the teachers who make public spectacles of the students who are being teased does nothing more than give the tormenters more fodder to tease with. Because these are children, I equate it to nothing less than to those standing idly by as they watched their brothers and sister being beaten by racist police officers in the Jim Crow south, or standing idly by as black bodies were hanged and lynched in trees or as if they stood by while they watched Jesus being crucified for crimes he didn’t commit.
We have a crisis in the village.
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
One of the random misconceptions that most liberals won’t let you get away with is the idea of “freedom.” Sadly, it has been in the history of Africans living here in the diaspora of North America learning that freedom, is in fact not free. It always costs something. Stephen King at the end of his screenplay “Storm of the Century” wrote:
This is a cash and carry world. Most times its a lot. Sometimes, it’s all you have.
I know this is a weird introduction into my defense of the white female who allegedly lost her campaign as Miss California to ultimately become Miss USA. Do I agree with what she said–HELL NAW!! Any viewpoint supported by the biblical scriptures I immediately question–but that’s just me. Do I think she should have said it? Well, therein lies the rub. That was her judgment call and we should respect it.
I watched Bill O’Reilly last night, and last night he had decided to be a journalist when he had some guy on there named Wayne Besen who sounded like a complete fool.
Besen sounds like a complete jackass, and O’Reilly was correct to put it to him as to “only if people agree with you then it’s okay” mentality was sound judgment. Fact of the matter is that this country is in a statistical dead heat when it comes to gay marriage. Just because gay marriages have passed in Iowa, Massachusetts and Vermont does not mean that “the tide is turning” in their favor. While I’m all for it, and I’m with the Log Cabin Republicans on this one that for the “less government” talk of Republicans you’d think they’d be trying to keep this one of Congress and various state houses, fact of the matter is that for every one person in this country who’s for gay marriage, there’s an equal and opposite opinion from another citizen.
So, why are we listening to Perez Hilton?
You know how I feel about people like him: he’s the epitome of the anti-intellectualism that pervades the consciousness of the daily lives of Americans. Part of my inhibition toward v-logging, although I still may do it on a random, monthly basis, is the fact that it’s easy and requires less thought. It’s easy for me to pop open my computer and start talking off the cuff; weblogging still places an emphasis on the written word and it requires me to think about what I’m going to say a bit more than otherwise. Then for Perez Hilton and the millions of other YouTubers get online and act a complete fool. They spout off from their mouth and give no thought to what they’re going to say.
Although this isn’t quite the same situation as with Perez Hilton and Carrie Prejean, just look at what freedom of speech has allowed. We’ve all been on YouTube clips and to read the numerous hateful comments is somewhat appalling. Sometimes I wonder is it really adolescent teens who have nothing better to do or are these full grown adults who truly feel that way or are these mentally agitated adults of the Timothy McVeigh and Unabomber vein who plan to act on these feelings and beliefs. Personally, I couldn’t care less whether or not Perez Hilton, of all people, gets on YouTube and called Barack Obama a nigger, I would begin to question his sponsors, but nonetheless, who really cares. I’m more interested in Prejean getting flak for her statement.
Frankly, what was the point of asking her the question if they wanted her to mask her own feelings.
Or maybe they just got mad that homegirl just gave a shitty answer.
Hilton asked her should every state follow suit of allowing same sex marriages, and she went on to contradict herself by saying that while we live in a country where there’s a choice, she felt that in “my country” marriage should be between a man and woman. It was probably a loaded question, and Hilton knew that from jump. He’s a fool.
But, should she have been punished? No. Should she have known better when she answered the question? Yes. It’s all about agency, she had the responsibility to make that decision when entered the contest on a state level and rose to this level to a national stage. That much Besen was right about; she made a controversial statement in public, she should have been prepared for the fallout. Or maybe all of this was planned from the beginning, maybe she planned on this because she certainly getting more attention than Miss America and Miss USA’s normally get–I mean who watches that now. Hell, last one I remember was Vanessa Williams back in 1984 and I wasn’t even born yet!
All of this is fluff people.
This is a mask of the real issue which is the homophobia that’s behind her answer.
Yes, it’s homophobia.
How can you say that Uppity Negro? How do you know she’s homophobic? Have you talked to her? She probably had gay friends that she’d take a bullet.
I’m sure she has some black friends too.
Whether she has gay friends, or black friends, whatever the case is, I think it reeks of homophobia, or at the least a xenophobia that runs rampant here in this country because we allow it. I just heard today in class from one of our professors that one huge misconception is that many of those who participate in heterosexual acts have this belief that all gay folks are after ALL straight people. EEENK! WRONG ANSWER! In just the same fashion, whereas I don’t like all women I meet, every gay male doesn’t like ALL gay men. Moreover, I’m just not convinced of the argument that the “very fabric and nature” of our country is going to be ripped apart because two grown individuals want to be afforded equal rights under the law.
For those who are part of the LGBT community, I’m about to take license and I am open to criticism if I get this following piece completely wrong.
But, I think some of the mindset behind the “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” movement was just simply saying “accept me for me being.” It wasn’t necessarily trying to force one to participate in it, or go after kids and recruit kids to be gay (could you imagine how ludicrous some people think), but simply accepting, not just tolerating, someone on a human level, person to person.
The problem with Prejean’s statement, that Perez Hilton in all of his ___________ (fill in the blank) was that what she said created a further wedge between citizens and humans in this country; it further perpetuated the mindset of “us vs. them” that has lead to nothing but death and destruction in world history.
What are your thoughts? Do you think she should have penalized for her answer? Do you think Perez Hilton had an ulterior motive when he asked the question? Should she have just played the game and been done with it? What do you think the “fill in the blank” should be?
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
This was from the final Late Night Service from Morehouse School of Religion here at my school. Yup, that’s me again on the organ. And what ensues is what’s known as a “praise break” before we go right into the song that we were supposed to have been singing. My computer shuts off, but about another 30 minutes after it cuts off is nothing more than folks running around dancing, bucking and shouting because it’s the end of the semester, and many of the people I entered here with are leaving.
And my ass is here for another year.
Anyways…
Enjoy the clip
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
…or maybe his cohones decided to drop ever since they had shrunk from when Jesse Jackson had threatened to castrate President Barack Obama.
Or maybe he just passed the buck–as usual.
At least in the public eye, so far, the most decisive decision (I know that’s redundant) that Obama has done since being in office has been this stance with the Somalian pirates (and Bill O’Reilly is currently about to wonder if he’s decisive enough, but at least O’Reilly gave him kudos). Perhaps some could argue his pushing of TARP through Congress, or the Gitmo stance he took immediately, nonetheless, I’m hoping that Obama does what is right in this whole Bush administration torturers.
“For those who carried out some of these operations within the four corners of legal opinions or guidance that had been provided from the White House, I do not think it’s appropriate for them to be prosecuted,” he told reporters.
But then Obama added that prosecutions for those who drafted the memos would be up to Attorney GeneralEric Holder. “With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws, and I don’t want to prejudge that. I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there.”
Asked about his opinion of a congressional investigation into the matter, Obama refrained from taking a position — but maintained that such an investigation should be bipartisan if it happens. “As a general deal, I think that we should be looking forward and not backwards. I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively, and it hampers our ability to carry out critical national security operations.
It has been the long history of liberals to take this apologist stance toward conservatives. Let’s take the whole Reconstruction from 1865-1877 when all Confederates were brought back into full communion with the already intact Union. No Confederate citizen was forced to pay any amount of restitution, little if any served jail time, Robert Lee was not charged with treason….the list goes on and on ad infinitum. We’ve seen this played out in the political arena time and time again where liberals don’t play the same as the conservatives. In modern times, we see how the Republicans systematically killed all types of Clinton reforms and did so unashamedly.
So here comes Obama, and after a very trying eight years for Democrats and other self-professed liberals, there is actually something that can be concretized into a form of prosecution, and initially Obama, after releasing these “torture memos” says that he’s not going to push for persecution.
Well….
I was like WTF?!? Why not?
Before I give how I truly feel about Obama’s decision, I’d like to at least discuss this whole idea of torture.
In theory, and in theory alone (I believe) we need to redefine this idea of humanity: even the terrorists are human. They may do horrific things as mere actions, but they still are or rather they still be humans. On that basic level, that could be one of us getting tortured. So, it raises the question, why should we regard them as humans when the reverse isn’t reciprocated; that is to say that the terrorists don’t see us as humans, so why should we? Which of course engenders this Westernized thinking of “get them before they get us.”
Another problem that this poses is the idea of a human life.
We easily will say, here in America, that one life of an, let’s say, Iranian terrorist is worth the lives lost in any terror attack. Where do we get off judging and valuing the lives of others? It’s an age old question that has been around since the beginning of time where different nationalities place higher judgment on the lives of their own versus that of other ethnicities, cultures, and now different races. As a result, rather than being united because of our differences, we are separated by our differences and negating our similarities altogether.
If I were an interrogations expert in the CIA or FBI would I actively participate in torture for the sake of American lives?
Hmmmm….
I think that’s one of those questions that you’ll only know what you’ll do when you’re put in that situation directly. But, what I do know is that the law clearly is against various interrogation tactics because they are classified as torture. Apparently Obama has left this door open for Attorney General Eric Holder to do with this what he wants. I just hope the man does his….hmmmm, shall we say his uppity field Negro duties and not shirk his responsibility.
Do you think that the left overs from the Bush administration should be prosecuted for going against the law? Or should we be looking toward the future and let that stay in the past? Is this a sign of things to come–Obama being wishy-washy on an issue, or is this just Obama being his typical self with “cooler heads will prevail” mentality? How do you feel about torture–is one being tortured worth the lives of our fellow citizens?
I had promised myself I was done with the TeaBagging and what not and the foolishness that it was. But alas, I lied. Fellow blogging dude over at AverageBro gave me an idea for a post.
I’m not sure if he realised he put his foot on the gas, but he brought up this idea in a recent post:
…are we supposed to believe this is a “bi-partisan, grassroots effort aimed at reckless gubb’ment spending and taxation”? If so, why’d this Great American get booed for simply telling the truth? [In reference to a posted YouTube clip]
I won’t lie to you, when I heard there was a Tea Party being planned for DC, I seriously thought about going for the very same reason. As one of the few Negroes in the crowd, I have little doubt I would have gotten on camera/stage with ease.
What if this had been a bi-partisan movement?
That is to say that wouldn’t this had been a powerful grassroots movement of the people if we all protested the frivolous spending on behalf of the government? Seriously, hearing the stuff that gets earmarked and passed even to me sounds ridiculous. But no, this turned into some FoxNews orgy of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Neil Cavuto simultaneously circle jerking on the heads of social conservatives who seemingly fail to see that they’re being nutted on.
Great analogy right?
At least intellectual masturbators seem to have a greater intent behind their feeling themselves amongst one another and the listeners at least participate and it becomes a great lovefest for all participants.
Okay, enough with that analogy, but y’all get my point.
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In other news…
In the 10th anniversary of the Columbine Massacre of 1999, why are we still debating whether or not there needs to be a ban on assault weapons in this country?
This is a small post, just wanted to drop that off on you all.
Any comments feel free to leave them below.
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
Governor Rick “Good Hair” Perry of Texas made the news. It was all over the networks. Big whoop. We all knew that it was a publicity stunt as one of the commenters noted as well. Another commenter forwarded this story to me, one that kind of slipped under the radar.
Here check it out:
It wasn’t quite the firing on Fort Sumter that launched the Civil War. But on April 1, your Georgia Senate did threaten by a vote of 43-1 to secede from and even disband the United States.
It was not an April Fool’s joke.
In fact, Senate Resolution 632 did a lot more than merely threaten to end this country. It stated that under the Constitution, the only crimes the federal government could prosecute were treason, piracy and slavery.
“Therefore, all acts of Congress which assume to create, define or punish [other] crimes … are altogether void, and of no force,” the Georgia Senate declared.
In other words, in the infinite, almost unanimous wisdom of the Georgia Senate, Michael Vick is being imprisoned illegally, Bernie Madoff should serve no time for stealing $60 billion and the Unabomber must go free. In fact, the federal penitentiary in Atlanta should be emptied of its inmates.
But wait, there’s more.
The resolution goes on to endorse the theory that states have the right to abridge constitutional freedoms of religion, press and speech. According to the resolution, it is up to the states to decide “how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged.”
The resolution even endorses “nullification,” the legal concept that states have the power to “nullify” or ignore federal laws that they believe exceed the powers granted under the Constitution. That concept has a particularly nasty legacy. It helped precipitate the Civil War, and in the 1950s and early ’60s it was cited by Southern states claiming the right to ignore Supreme Court rulings ordering the end of segregation.
Finally, the resolution states that if Congress, the president or federal courts take any action that exceeds their constitutional powers, the Constitution is rendered null and void and the United States of America is officially disbanded. As an example, the resolution specifically states that if the federal government enacts “prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition,” the country is disbanded.
In other words, if Congress votes to restore the ban on sale of assault rifles, the United States is deemed to no longer exist.
Um…yeah.
That actually happened and no one talked about it.
Even when common sense people actually get up and make sense, these fringe groups of people don’t listen. It’s as if they’ve been programmed to be anti-Obama. Okay, so yeah, the left was anti-Bush on almost everything, so I’ll concede that much, but still the right is now doing the same thing that they’ve accused us of. Now, as far as this blog is concerned, I give credit where credit is due. But, I didn’t go out of my way to bash Bush, and it seems that even with this whole international bruhaha with the Somalian pirates that some are going out of their way just to criticize Obama. That being said, make sure to check out this Keith Olbermann clip and Janeane Garafalo rant. Just interested in knowing what you think.
And womp womp for WordPress not letting me embed this clip so make sure to click the link.
What I won’t understand is just how has being taxed been considered an overstepping of governmental powers? So they cite the President “firing” the CEO of General Motors–were not most Americans suffering from mixed feelings over the same failed CEOs receiving TARP funds? How did they expect it to be handled?
I think what really irks me is that there are those who believe in this idea of states’ rights are still the fools who behind closed doors refer to the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression.” States’ rights and slavery and not mutually exclusive events when dealing with southern states. Summarily neither does the modern Civil Rights movement and the whole Supreme Court decision of 1954 of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education: these southern states felt that their “way of life” had been threatened and as a result they had the Constitutional right to be mad and revolt, possibly even seceede.
I’m not convinced that any state anytime soon would leave the Union. It’s just an impossibility. No state has the full infrastructure to exist upon it’s own. Any president worth their salt would either a) not accept the withdrawal of the states from the Union, as did Lincoln or at worst b) recognize said state as a rogue nation. If either situation happened, the rest of the country would have the full resources to subdue the upstart government.
But what if….
Just food for thought.
Here’s the rest of the article:
This, your Georgia state Senate voted 43-1 to endorse.
Now, to be fair, the resolution passed because it was snuck unnoticed onto the Senate resolution calendar on the 39th day of the 40-day legislative session, when senators were trying to handle dozens of bills and scores of amendments. Most did not have an opportunity to read the six-page resolution, which in its description claimed to merely affirm “states’ rights based on Jeffersonian principles.”
However, those who introduced and sponsored the measure have no such excuse. Presumably they read and understood what they asked their fellow senators to endorse. And those sponsors include some of the most prominent members of the Senate — Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers of Woodstock, Senate President Pro Tem Tommie Williams, Transportation Committee Chairman Jeff Mullis of Chickamauga, and Chief Deputy Whip John Wiles of Cobb County, among others.
The resolution they sponsored is part of a radical right-wing national movement — a similar resolution was introduced in the Georgia House but not voted on. It has been introduced in legislatures all over the nation, and has passed in both chambers in Oklahoma and one in South Dakota.
And while the Georgia resolution is legally meaningless and was passed without debate or even knowledge of most senators, it has had an impact. It has been hailed by, among others, those fighting the conspiracy to create a single North American country, by the Confederate States Militia, by the John Birch Society, and the League of the South, which still pines for the cause of an “independent South” and believes that “Southern society is radically different from the society impressed upon it by an alien occupier.”
You have to question the judgment of those who would have any truck whatsoever with such nonsense, and who would jeopardize the reputation of the Georgia Senate to lend aid and comfort to such radical causes and fringe groups.
Go effin’ figure.
Do you think another Confederate States of America is possible in modern-day America? Or are these fringe groups really fringes and vocal minorities that are still having knee-jerk reactions to losing back in November? Does Garafalo have a point, that most of this isn’t even prejudices, but out and out racism? What would your response be if one state or many states decided to withdraw from the Union?
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
I never really knew I felt about the whole Cuban-U.S. relations until recently.
As a kid growing up, I heard about the tenets of Communism and frankly it all sounded GRRREAT to me. Especially in light of the Christian teachings I heard growing up about how Christ was for ALL people, and this semi-universalist slant was taught in the church and in my house by my parents. As I got older and actually read Marx’s words and had seen the effects of Communism versus Democracies, I started to see that if I had to pick between the two, I’m sure I would go with Democracy any day. Personally, the biggest flaw I see with Communism is that it’s too much room left for dictatorships and despotism to take place in the governmental heads.
Since I’m not a fan of the autocratic government, nor the plutocracy that seems to have manifested itself in the form of a Democratic Republic here in the United States, I think a Democratic Socialist government would be a nice fit for this country.
Say what you want, say what you will this is my blog. (I’ll defend that statement later on sometime in a whole blog.)
Moving right along….
I was talking to one of my friends earlier this semester and he was telling me about how one of our professors, whom he TAs for had ran into a Cuban-American in his field of study at this conference out of the country and that he prefaced a comment to her at a dinner table that “Oh, you’re Cuban? So you defected from the revolution?”
I just laughed.
Prevailing pop culture was that former President Fidel Castro stepped onto a scene that was fraught with chaos and coup after coup on the island and restored order on the idea of dealing with the unemployment numbers and addressing the stark differences between the poor and the rich despite the large middle class that had been established on the island by 1959. Moreover, no doubt that Castro’s communist associations at least leveled the playing field for those readily identified as negro on the island, it still hasn’t exactly bared out according to plan.
What Fidel Castro ultimately did was create an autocracy that he ran gangsta. I mean, let’s bow down at the man’s feet. He single-handedly receives all the credit for telling the U.S. to effectively kiss his Cuban ass for half a century. Am I in favor of state-run newspapers, radios and television stations? Of course not. Am I condoning the probably torture that has taken place against dissidents of the Castro regime? Hell no. But, still it seems that those who “left the revolution” did so because their way of life was being taken away from them.
I remember watching the crowds of over a million people celebrate for something in Cuba, and also watching the various travel channels go to Cuba, and I’m sorry people, but I never saw the scores of unhappy people that many Cuban Americans claim to be wandering the streets. Say what you want, say what you will, but I think a good half of this is propaganda on behalf of the empire of the United States.
Kudos to President Barack Obama for saying that this amounts to a bunch of tomfoolery by having such major embargoes on this country. A sovereign nation that’s been forced to honor a decree from 1902 that gives the U.S. the land space at Guantanamo Bay and ultimately had to deal with unnecessary U.S. involvement up until the Bay of Pigs and subsequent Cuban Missile Crisis incident and finally the U.S. got the hint that Castro was NOT to be effed with in any shape form or fashion. I mean if the shoe was on the other foot, wouldn’t many Americans do the same thing? Oh yeah, I forgot we just got out of eight years of said policy. Think Iraq. ’Nuff said.
Let me be clear, I’m not touting Cuba as some paradise we should all emulate, not at all, but I really do question how and why some leave, but so many stay back. Is it really attributed to the syndrome that has been associated with Harriet Tubman’s famous saying “I would have freed more if they only knew they were slaves.” Or is it that that those who left were so entranced by the trappings of capitalism and a free-market empire that they just had to come here the best way they knew how.
I always view Cuba in one of the following ways:
1. I personally remember the early nineties and hearing about the whole Haitian problem and how they were NOT keen on accepting nationals who were fleeing from the coup of Jean-Bertrand Aristide the first time back in 1991, but hearing about how they were still keeping the “wet foot, dry foot” practice in full effect down in the Keys off of the Florida peninsula. I just remember hearing about the scores of Haitians trying to make it just to Cuba and away from all of the fighting and violence that had erupted following the Duvalier family dictatorship and the first free elections in Haiti.
What was keen to me was just how the bias of Haiti, which has a recognized 90% black population to Cuba’s 12% (2+/-), to that of Cubans. It was the white Cubans who were fleeing to Florida and making a living.
2. The whole Elian Gonzales scandal. We, in America, really tried our best to make that poor boy a political token. That was nothing more than a big power play. Had that been any other Latin American country, even Venezuela, no questions would have been asked, and I’m sure it wouldn’t have made the news except locally.
From there, I’ve viewed the whole diplomacy, or rather lack thereof between these two countries and I must say that Obama is taking the step in the right direction. Whereas I could understand the argument that many hold as far as Obama saying that he’d “sit down and talk” with leaders such as Irani Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for instance, because of the expressed belligerence on his behalf, but neither Castro has expressed sentiments in quite some time that could even been interpreted as bellicose; Cuba poses no threat to the U.S.
So why do we still have trade embargoes on Cuba?
Seriously, what does it profit Cuba? Clearly they’ve survived since the arms embargo of 1958. And most certainly what does it profit the U.S. as a country to not do business with Cuba?
I think many critics fail to see that the U.S. beginning with Nixon and through the Reagan administration had begun this type of isolationism. Not quite the isolationism of the thirties with reference to World War II, but a type of ideological isolationism that gives off the air of empire. Empires believe that they are the only enlightened nation. This is not just simple, garden variety nationalism that we see on a day to day basis from smaller countries, but rather the result of empire-minded leaders. While Obama has assumed the head of an empire and still has some questionable actions that support the Empire of the United States, his approach toward Cuba and foreign policy does ring with anti-empire sentiments.
Fact of the matter is that right now, the U.S. has no political capital with the rest of the world. Whatever Clinton hadn’t done to piss off foreign leaders, Bush made sure to come back around and step all in it. Our credibility on the world stage was shot all to hell and gone. Even with his popularity alone, Obama has left many other countries on tip-toe anticipation as to what change in direction he’s going to make. Fact of the matter is that the U.S. would get away from this manifest destiny bullcrap that hearkens back to the era of theMonroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary and the Clark Memorandum, all of which are evident of the hegemonic practices of this nation which we call home.
I mean hell, John F. Kennedy was invoking the damn Monroe Doctrine, c. 1823 in order to justify the embargo on Cuba. So, from 1823 to 1962, we were still operating on the same code of ethics? What the crap?
Whew! Sorry, that was a tangent.
What I was trying to say was that, by lifting this embargo, the sovereign nations in our own backyard–in the Caribbean and Latin America–will have much more respect for us. As opposed to having to view us as some random specter of a benevolent dictator, maybe they will be able to see us as an equal and fellow nation.
So, to those who left the revolution, what are you really willing to fight for? Merely things that point to my material wealth or something greater than that. I guess it’s your choice. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not all that damn impressed.
What do you think about Cuba-U.S. relations? Do you think Obama’s going in the right direction with his current approach toward Cuba? Do you think Raul Castro has taken the right approach of “it’s all or nothing” with Obama? Should the US ultimately lift the embargo?
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
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I saw via Twitter that in the midst of fellow black blogger Danielle Belton, bka The Black Snob‘s eastern seaboard tour that she was going to be in Washington, D.C. urreah (dat’s where it’s at!), but more so that she was going to be on Nightline last night. Well, in the midst of me watching that OT game last night with the Bulls and the Celtics (we better go to seven games dammit!) and just feeling plum tired, I conked out around 10pm and didn’t get a chance to see her piece on Nightline.
My whole room of friends had gotten dead silent once the riff Kyle had started between himself and the new girl Kay and Allison. We were all saying on the commercial breaks how much of a mess it really was. His sexuality aside, who was raising this boy? Who was telling him what was right and what was wrong? Who let him know that acting in such a way was appropriate for a black male of his age. Granted this is reality television and they love stuff like this, but oh em gee. That was a mess that I witnessed.
So, I wonder are there any Kyle apologists out there who feel that Allison’s comment was anti-gay, then I’m sure you totally missed my whole point. I had quipped to my friends that back on the boat when they were parasailing, it would have been a fight on the water and Kyle would have ended up overboard–he had a life vest, he would have been okay. I was so incensed by the comments from Brandon and Milan (that girls an airhead if I’ve ever seen one) saying that Allison had went too far.
We have to be aware of what informs our consciousness. Whomever told Kyle that it was okay to act the way he acted needs to be fully ashamed of themselves. Not talking about his sexuality, but just how he treated Kay was evidence of some other issues going on, just as was evidenced him breaking down crying in the rain. We must find things that affirm our existence and not tear it down; black people have a responsibility to affirm persons WHERE THEY ARE in their life’s journey (yes, my Psychology of Pastoral Care class is being put to good use!!). We don’t have the luxury of tearing down one another for our own self satisfaction. To his credit, Chris was able to walk out with Kyle who had broken down in the rain after Allison’s comment about his “dopehead daddy.”
You know how I feel about people like him: he’s the epitome of the anti-intellectualism that pervades the consciousness of the daily lives of Americans. Part of my inhibition toward v-logging, although I still may do it on a random, monthly basis, is the fact that it’s easy and requires less thought. It’s easy for me to pop open my computer and start talking off the cuff; weblogging still places an emphasis on the written word and it requires me to think about what I’m going to say a bit more than otherwise. Then for Perez Hilton and the millions of other YouTubers get online and act a complete fool. They spout off from their mouth and give no thought to what they’re going to say.
What I won’t understand is just how has being taxed been considered an overstepping of governmental powers? So they cite the President “firing” the CEO of General Motors–were not most Americans suffering from mixed feelings over the same failed CEOs receiving TARP funds? How did they expect it to be handled?
Prevailing pop culture was that former President Fidel Castro stepped onto a scene that was fraught with chaos and coup after coup on the island and restored order on the idea of dealing with the unemployment numbers and addressing the stark differences between the poor and the rich despite the large middle class that had been established on the island by 1959. Moreover, no doubt that Castro’s communist associations at least leveled the playing field for those readily identified as negro on the island, it still hasn’t exactly bared out according to plan. 
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