Archive | April, 2009

The New Confederate States of America?

16 Apr

txflag_earthSouth Carolina left the Union of the The United States of America in December of 1860 sounding off the spring 1861 flood of Southern states that left the Union ultimately making headway for the Confederate States of America that lasted all of four years.  Although many of the Confederate leaders were charged with treason and acts of sedition under the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts, they were pardoned by the spineless President Andrew Johnson.

The last time we heard so much about states’ rights was the ante-bellum period.  So, for Texas Governor Rick Perry to say that he’s not ruling out the idea of secession.

WHAT THE F&%$?!?!?!

SECESSION?!?!?!

Here’s the story below from CNN:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry isn’t ruling out the possibility his state may one day secede from the nation.

Speaking to an energetic and angry tea party crowd in Austin Wednesday evening, the Lone Star State governor suggested secession may happen in the future should the federal government not change its fiscal polices.

“There’s a lot of different scenarios,” Perry said. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.” (Video below: Tea party fires up debate)

Perry, who is beginning to gear up for what could be a challenging re-election race, rejected more than $500 million in federal stimulus funds earlier this year and has been highly critical of President Obama’s stimulus package.  (Related: Joe “The Plumber” speaks at Michigan tea party)

His comments come a week after endorsing a resolution in the Texas state House reasserting state sovereignty over federal mandates.

Specifically it states that “all compulsory federal legislation that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited or repealed.”

Texas, America’s second biggest state in area and population, was its own nation for 10 years before joining the United States in 1845.

Should Texas one day secede, one man may already be vying to be its president. Actor Chuck Norris said last month he may be interested in the post.

“I may run for president of Texas,” Norris wrote in a column posted at WorldNetDaily. “That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.”

This is a hot mess.

I know this is nothing more than political pandering on behalf of a governor who wanted to make national news, but DAYUM!  this is a bit out of hand in my opinion.  Just think about it:  East Texas ain’t having it!  A good chunk of black folks live east of Interstate 45 and aren’t looking for any secession.  Whatever the case, I know that the majority of Texans wouldn’t be interested in leaving, but still, for a governor to get on a microphone and put such sentiments into the atmosphere is not good.

Yet again, Glenn Beck’s dumbass did his show yesterday out in San Antonio in front of the Alamo to make a big deal about it.  Again, as my earlier post said, such wanton journalism fuels the fans of redneck, hick fools who own guns and frankly, I wonder if we don’t see random hate crimes go up in Texas.  Such rhetoric gives unction to individuals to think that this country is going to pot and that if they don’t arm themselves and do something about it, then nothing’s going to get done.

I mean was this not the angle of the KKK?

I’m not calling all white folk members of the Ku Klux Klan in Texas, but doesn’t such speech and rhetoric give credence to those that decide to take the law into their own hands?  Because all of this is up for individual interpretation, could not some backwards-ass individuals see that the law needed to be taken into their own hands because the law that was on the books was in fact an unjust law, therefore not making it a law in the first place?

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This country hasn’t seen war on it’s own land since 1865 and the end of the Civil War.  I wonder did any of citizens at the time see it coming?  It’s easy for us in 2009 to not imagine U.S. Army tanks rolling down our own streets as a result of a civil war, but for many other countries, even in our own hemisphere, civil war is a daily occurrence.  I’m hoping that Rick Perry’s statement was just empty rhetoric.

And in the meantime, can someone just teabag Glenn Beck to make him shut up!

glenn-beck

Do you feel that the governor’s speech went too far or was it necessary to make his point clear?  Should such speech be categorised as treasonous or seditious in nature?  

I Want To Teabag the TeaBaggers–the Uppity Way!!

16 Apr

teabaggin

As you all can kind of figure out, I’m up to my eyes in work dealing with school and I haven’t done a serious blog in a minute.   I’m running left and right playing to services on campus and trying to squeeze in classes and schoolwork that I really don’t care about for the most part; still worried about what my summer plans are and wishing I had just a little bit more money.

But this made me pause.

As I write this, I’m watching the Sean Hannity Show on repeat and just watching the hatefest that he’s stirred up.  Clearly, my mind was on other things because I drove past the State Capitol twice today driving Lil’ Uppity Brother (he goes to Morehouse, how much more uppity can you get) around the city and I didn’t notice that all the hoopla was a set up for Hannity tonight, or at the least a Tea Bag Event.

Am I the only one having wayyyyyyy too much fun with the double entendre here?  LMAO!  

I just mildly am concerned about how we view criticism in this country.  Prior to elections, it was considered unpatriotic to not participate in the jingoism that plagued this country directly after 9/11/01.  Seriously, Americans were looking cross-eyed at their neighbors if one house refused to wave a flag.  Which spurred more issues about people that had placed flags on their cars and after a few months became dog-eared.  Aside from the obvious iconoduelism (root word iconoduel) that has been placed in the flags and other objects, it begs the issue as to who’s shaping the consciousness of this country.

Granted the people in the YouTube clip that’s been circulating the internet are not the majority of Americans, what scares me is that people like Sean Hannity who have national platforms give credence to blowhard ignoramuses like this.  Case in point is someone like Joe “The Plumber” Wurtzelbacher who’s still working the conservative talk radio and FoxNews circuit.  I mean, I have relatives in my own family who take what FoxNews says as truth which is an amazement to me any and every day of the week.  Let the conservative talking heads tell it, this whole Tea Bagging movement (LMAO!!) is the best thing since chocolate milk was discovered along with sliced bread.

Fact of the matter is that this is not an election year, and if Obama’s plan actually works and the economy rebounds, they’re going to be eating crow for the majority of the next four years.  Can you believe that? These people actually want the economy to fail just so they can get their edge back in Congress and point to Obama as the source of the problem.

On a more surface level, FoxNews–well, Sean Hannity–hosted an Obama Hate-fest in front of the Georgia State Capitol and no one will raise an eyebrow.  Personally it just shows how much of a hack that he really is.  I mean, he criticized every dissenter of the Bush administration as unpatriotic and foolish, but yet he can host a whole party of some few thousand that all has anti-Obama signs.  And it’s really foolish that they’re all putting forth this idea that “the people have spoken.”  

Really?

Last I checked the Democrats SWEPT the Fall 2008 elections.  Obama’s in office and the Dems are only one seat from having a super-majority in the Senate.

I mean, I think the Tea Baggers just need to be tea bagged themselves and maybe they’re mouths’ll be so full they won’t be able to talk and we won’t have to worry about them.   Seriously, people, are we listening to ourselves?  This is a congressional issue.  We constantly elect the same people to Congress just because when we walk into the voting booth we recognise their name because we heard our parents talk about them when we were a kid, and then we vote for them.  These same people we elect aren’t reading these bills.  And this is something that has happened with Republicans and Democrats alike.

Although, I’m just not convinced that that much of this spending bill has gone to pork barrel projects. Here check this link out for interested parties.  But I’m sure most of the fools that I just watched for the last hour on the Sean Hannity Show wouldn’t even try and read that for themselves.  Here’s another link that shows what the tax cuts–yes, you read right, tax cuts–that were passed as well.

On a whole ‘nother level, I do see this in racial terms: where are the black people?  where are the Latino people? where are the Asians?  Where are the people of Arab descent?  Most certainly blacks in urban centers can attest to having small businesses in our communities owned and operated by people of Middle Eastern and Asian descent.  Moreover, Latinos of various nationalities in urban centers maintain and run their own small businesses–why weren’t they protesting en masse?  Every news shot I’ve watched tonight panned across monochromatic crowds.

The reason I ask is because wouldn’t they be similarly effected by the tax problems that all these conservatives and Republicans are hollering about?

I’m just saying….

How do you feel about the Obama stimulus plan?  Do you feel that it’s fair?  Do you think the tax structure as it exists is a fair one for people over a wide range of incomes?  Am I the only one who can’t help but chuckle every time I hear the phrase “teabaggin”?  LOL

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Uppity Negro Does a Guest Post

13 Apr

guest-blog

I did a Guest Post spot over at AverageBro.com for all interested parties.  Journey on over there with the thought in your mind “When Does Gangsta Boo Have To Go?”

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

The Uppity Negro In Church…

10 Apr

I’ve always talked about it, and I finally got around to posting something.  But that’s me on the organ and some of my other friends toward the end of rehearsal.  We have a group on campus known as the Ecumenical Voices of Praise and we sing for the random services on campus week to week.  So, I had had a concert earlier today with the school’s chorus so I was a bit shouted out.  Them jokers this morning decided to go ALL the way in the gate.  So by that time, I was quite tired.  It’s not quite my best playing.  But I’ll be posting some more, hopefully when I’m all there.

Hope you enjoyed.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

The Obamas’ Search For a Spiritual Home

7 Apr

obama-in-church

I remember watching George Bush walk out of St. John’s Church on January 20, 2001 on the slightly rainy inauguration day that year, and I remember at 16 wondering what it would be like to see a black man as a president having to attend a white church service.  I imagined that he’d be going to some Baptist, or even dare say some Pentecostal church.

Wow, how quickly that time comes.

So, as I made the mistake of downing a McDonalds Iced Coffee shortly after North Carolina got all up in the Michigan State last night, I happened to see this story of the Obama’s Church Search on Anderson 360 on repeat–so at 6 in the morning after not being able to still sleep, I felt compelled to write and subsequently drop this post about it.

Here’s the story as it stands now:

hite House aides are said to be vetting churches in Washington to find a spiritual home for U.S. President Barack Obama and his family. 

The Boston Globe reported Sunday that the president’s staff is working to balance the Obama family’s security needs and personal beliefs. Then there is the competition among local Christian ministers to woo the Obamas into their flock, the newspaper noted.

Joshua DuBois, director of the White House office of faith-based initiatives, is coordinating Obama’s search for a church. He said his office has been inundated with phone calls and invitations from various congregations.

DuBois said one of the challenges is finding a church that can handle the logistics and publicity that come with a presidential visit.

“We want to make sure we’re respectful of that community,” he was quoted by the newspaper as saying,

The Globe noted that Obama’s search for a new church comes about 10 months after his break from Trinity United Methodist Church in Chicago.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, the church’s leader, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, came under fire for his sometimes incendiary preaching of black liberation theology.

Now it’s already understood that Obama has had an interesting relationship with churches and spirituality.  Of course the sermons from Jeremiah Wright come to the forefront, but this is definitely an interesting turn of events as far as I’m concerned.  For anyone who’s been a long time reader of this blog knows where I stand on the whole Jeremiah Wright issue, but maybe not so much as far as how I truly feel about church.

Most have picked up that I’m quite disillusioned about how church is done nowadays, particularly in the black church setting.  Be that as it may, I’m simply not a fan of safe preaching.  So, for the White House, through 26 year-old Joshua DuBois as head of the faith-based initiative program, to actually commence a vetting process should be mildly insulting to clergy world wide.  In a day and age where people come to church expecting a word from God, it seems that these pastors that are in the running to be Obama’s DC pastor would have to be very careful about what they say lest they upset their most important member.

As my friend has said, “It’s time out for recreational preaching.”  It’s one thing to go to a church where the members are poorer and have less education and run around hollering and screaming and giving some jacked up theology, but it’s another thing preaching at these black middle class churches full of the “have-some-want-some-mores” who are professionals in their fields and are nothing more than, as Vernon Johns said “educated fools.”

It is of no surprise that Obama would of course pick a black church as a “front runner” seeing as how he came out of Trinity, but still, as this article noted and as the CNN piece noted, the Rev. Derrick Harkins, pastor of Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in DC probably preaches sermons that are “safe.”

I am reminded of this passage in the book of Acts in the 17th chapter where Paul and Silas are passing through Thessalonica and naturally there are some haters out there who just don’t like what they’re saying.  This group of haters run to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas.  The mob pulls Jason out (right, what kind of mob was this) and ask Jason to turn over Paul and Silas because these men were “turning the world upside down.”

Simply stated, “safe” preaching isn’t going to turn the world upside down.

Jeremiah Wright was right in his assertion that he was a pastor and Obama is a politician:  Even if Obama deep down knows what is socially and spiritually right, he’s a politician and he’s going to pick a politically safe church.

He’s a grown man, he can do what he wants.

What type of church do you think Obama should be a part of?  Will he still have the specter of Wright hovering over him or will this finally put that whole issue to bed?  How do you feel about politics in the pulpit given this post you just read?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Only at an HBCU….

5 Apr

Okay, I’m probably late with this clip, but here it goes

 

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

The Public Intellectual Strikes Again

4 Apr

6a00d83421c95853ef00e54f3a19b18833-640wi

So America’s favorite black voice on all things black, Michael Eric Dyson, has been given a new lease on life as far as radio show is concerned.

Oprah Winfrey is confirmed as Michael Eric Dyson’s first guest on his new public radio show, the African American Public Radio Consortium announced on Tuesday. Other confirmed guests to appear in the show’s first two weeks include Sean “P. Diddy” Combs,Spike Lee, Hill Harper, Donna Brazile, Samuel L. Jackson and Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, the consortium said.

“Michael has a broad range of relationships,” Loretta Rucker, executive director of the consortium, told Journal-isms. The show “will be a platform” for Dyson, the academic, author, talk-show pundit and minister, to use those contacts.

As reported on Monday, the consortium, which sparked “The Tavis Smiley Show,” its successor “News & Notes” and “Tell Me More” with Michel Martin, all on National Public Radio, is launching the Dyson show on Monday in partnership with Baltimore’s WEAA-FM, the Morgan State University station. It is to air initially in 18 markets, mainly on the radio stations at historically black colleges and universities.

Unlike the previous shows, however, Dyson’s show will not be produced by NPR, which will have a role only in distributing the show. There will be no reporters or other journalists.  But distribution will not be limited to NPR stations, Rucker said. “This is the exact outcome we were hoping for,” she said. “We are creating a whole new model.” The hour-long show will be produced by WEAA in Baltimore and recorded at XM Studios in Washington.

Dyson’s show will have a smaller budget than the NPR efforts, Rucker said. The daily feed will go out at 1 p.m., and a Web site, www.dysonshow.org, will be created for online listeners, Rucker said.

The initial markets are Baltimore; Montgomery, Ala.; Huntsville, Ala.; Atlanta; Waterloo, Iowa; Jackson, Miss.; Alcorn, Miss.; Holly Springs, Miss.; Las Vegas; Durham, N.C.; Raleigh, N.C.; Elizabeth City, N.C.; Fayetteville, N.C.; Winston-Salem N.C.; Wilberforce, Ohio; Houston; Prairie View, Texas and Norfolk, Va.

This should be interesting.  

Am I the only one who realizes that all but two of the cities in that list are home to HBCUs?

Um, AverageBro gives out Cyber Capri Suns for web freebies for those who get answers right, so my prize’ll be that I’ll forward a Borders coupon to you–something that you can actually use–for the person that can correctly name the HBCUs in all of the respective cities.

Yes, it’s a long list, but I get hella Borders coupons with up to 30% off in store prices.

So get to going.

And no cheating.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Random Uppity Negro Quote of the Day

2 Apr

quote-of-the-day

The black community, maybe more than any other, is affective linked to churches and their pastors to the degree that criticism of either (no matter how rational) is often viewed as nothing short of an attack on God…Unfortunately, black ministers (be they emancipators or collaborators in oppression) are often protected from secular intellectual confrontation by the almost certain ire of their flocks, which is heaped upon any critic who questions their leaders’ decisions and/or motivations.”

From a book I’ve been reading, What’s Wrong With Obamamania? Black America, Black Leadership and the Death of Political Imagination authored by Ricky L. Jones.  And this quote was found in the chapter entitled “I Don’t Care What Jesus Would Do; I’ve Got To Get Paid: The New Black Preacher.”

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Upon Becoming a Post-Graduate Negro

1 Apr

black-male-studying-2

Hello to all you members of the Uppity Negro Network!!

I’d like to invite the Network on a journey into the trials and tribulations of a third-year grad student who’s at his wits ends about graduating.

Honestly, if anyone who reads this has some heads up on some opportunities PLEASE, OH PLEASE feel free to drop a note in the comment box, or if its confidential just send me an email at uppitynegronetwork at gmail.com and I’ll be more than happy to capitalize on said opportunity.

So, last Friday I went to talk to one of my professors about what my post-graduate plans are and this is what I know and learned:

1.  I will have to do another masters degree.  RIGHT!  Great big UGH!  I kind of got over the idea of being a black man with a Ph.D. before my 30th birthday sometime back in January when my Greek professor gave me a D+ after not giving back ONE single, solitary homework assignment or quiz.  But, that aside, most Ph.D. programs in my field aren’t accepting students with just a Masters of Divinity, which means that most are now obtaining what’s known as the Masters of Theology or an M.Th. degree.  It’s a degree that prepares one for the concentrated work of a doctorate program, and acts as a better bellwether over the M.Div. as to whether an individual is capable of doing doctorate work and subsequent research.

So, right now, I’m looking into M.Th. programs

But, here’s where I’m asking for help from the Network.

With my average daily readership, I’m sure that there’s someone out there who can help with this:

Schools look for “stand out people” for their doctorate problems.  Just like the kid in the movie “21″ with Kevin Spacey, he was able to tell a story and he got the scholarship.  There’s nothing that pops about having a 4.0 GPA anymore these days, or having high GRE scores, those are just a given, but what about the individual stands out.  Now, the M.Th. program is nice, but my professor recommended me to look into graduate programs that focused on rhetoric.  So, of course in the communication field, but specifically a degree in rhetoric.

Well why rhetoric Mr. Uppity Negro?

7744_african_american_businessman_giving_a_speech_at_a_podium1My current concentration is homiletics and worship, so of course when I get to the doctorate level much of what I’d be researching would be heavily tied into the art and the study of communication, speech and rhetoric.  Actually, now that I think about it, that’s probably one of my wheelhouses because I took an AP English Language class in high school and killed the course with an A because our weekly essays and in-class essays were all about the rhetorical devices used in the sample writings to get the writer’s point across.

So if anyone has a heads up on English or Communication departments at various schools that offer Master’s degrees in the field of rhetoric specifically, perhaps communication and speech secondarily, please let me know, because the Google searches I did were a hot mess.

2.  I need to start a bibliography.  For any Ph.D.’s out there or those who have entered the process, what various tips would you have as to how you went about this process because this one seemed a bit overwhelming to me because I already have a stack of books on my desk that are required reading, and right now my summer reading list is at about 10 books.  My prof recommended that I read as much as possible and keep a summary list of each book I’ve read about a page and half long just for my own file’s sake so that when the time comes I don’t end up looking like a dumb Negro.

3.  I need to take a class over Emory because their professors have better traction in the field as opposed to him, because he’s a Hebrew Bible scholar, not a homiletician per se.

Well, I looked at the fall schedule, and there’s one class that’s not an Intro class being taught Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1-2:20 and I KNOW out of those two days I’m going to have to be taking a class here at my own school, so just pray that that works out for me.

4.  I need to take my modern day language of either French or German.  Now he said this needs to be just a reading class, meaning I don’t have to learn to speak it nor listen to it. 

Well isn’t that nice.

PROBLEM NUMBER ONE with that is I’m supposed to be taking Hebrew next year (and hopefully that goes better than Greek did for me this past year) and just the idea of taking two languages, even though I’m quite familiar with French, is a bit much for me.  And I know a few programs, Princeton Theological Seminary for one, offers French or German during the summer prior to you beginning your comp classes in the Fall.  And my prof has been adamant about taking the languages early.  So I guess it’s up to me to inquire over at Clark-Atlanta to see what possibilities of cross-registering?

NO!

I can’t take those two at the same time, I’m just going to have to suck it up and take it in one of those summer joints, because I’m about to kill myself.

5.  Have you thought about pastoring?  I literally tremble at the thought of pastoring.  As if all of the aforementioned points weren’t burdensome enough, I was willing to attempt to try, and give it my best, but dammit, I fell apart when he mentioned pastoring.  I went into my story about how I felt my church had kind of left me, especially as a young cat, out on the lam to fend for myself without any hands-on direction.  Apparently my church has the attitude that they only help those who know how to ask for help rather than helping those that need help, but don’t know how to ask for it  <—– LIKE ME!!

So, my current dilemma is that I play for a church at their 11 o’clock service and of course just like most churches in America, their main service is either between 9:30 or 12 noon when they start.  

Well, what’s the big deal, just leave that church and go to another one, one may ask.

hammond-organHA!  I wish it were that simple.  On this part, the white church denominations have this part right:  the process of becoming a pastor or being on a church staff is much more heavily based on what you know.  It’s merit based.  It’s generally an open process that follows some sort of…well….process!  That is NOT the case with many black churches in black denominations, it’s heavily based on who you know–and if you can preach.  And even then, these bastards don’t want to pay you.  They love getting free stuff out of young people like me.  A free musician here, a free youth pastor there….it’s a mess.

So if I were to be hired by you typical black Baptist church here in Atlanta there stands a very good chance that I wouldn’t get paid for it.  To be an associate or an assistant pastor does NOT mean a stipend and a salary, HA, that’s not going to happen.  Those cases only occur at the big name churches where the associates may actually get a stipend or be salaried to some extent.  And then these black Baptist preachers are such a mess, they’ll smile in your face and tell you what you want to hear and meanwhile shit on you in the back room and not think twice about not hiring you.

Why couldn’t they just say no in your face rather than string you along for a whole school year?

Ooops….sorry, am I venting?

All that said, the catch 22 for me is that my means of income is tied to my playing at my current church at an 11:00 service.  So, for any of my Atlanta members of the Uppity Negro Network, if you know of a church that wouldn’t mind having me on to kind of walk side-by-side with the pastor and just learn the lay of the land of what it means to be a pastor, send me an email and let me know what’s the deal and maybe I can hook up with you.  Not to mention I also play the organ and piano.

But then my professor said that he had a bible study group that was looking possibly “to go to the next level.”

HA!  Could you imagine me as part of a start-up church team?!?!?

Well, Sarah laughed at God when she was supposed to get pregnant.

6.  Oh yeah…I still haven’t taken the GRE yet.

  • ********************************

And all of this that I really need to get started on now (these aren’t issues that can be done overnight) combined with the fact that I’m still in school until May.  That means I still have final research papers (still ain’t made it to the library yet), and final exams that need to be studied for and taken, and ultimately passed the best way I know how.

I need another job because this check, while I’m MORE than thankful for it, and it covers my expenses from week to week, I have ZERO cushion in case something happens that needs to be paid for, and I’m a bit tired of having to watch my money so tightly, I understand that budgeting is part of life and blah blah blah….I know that, but just the simple fact that having another gig would give me a bit more independence if you know what I mean.

So, yeah, this uppity Negro is hustling for a job.

Again, if any of my Atlanta readers know of some job openings you think that I would be interested in, or jobs that can work around my fool crazy FULL TIME school schedule, let me know and drop me an email at uppitynegronetwork at gmail.com and I’ll be more than happy to do what I need to do.

And it’s almost 2 o’clock in the morning as I write this.

UGH!  Pray I make it y’all.

Seriously, I’m kinda begging for some feedback on this one y’all.  You know I try not to be a comment hog on this site, but on this one I’d CHERISH some feedback because I feel I’m about to hit burnout–seven years of straight schooling and staring down the barrel of possible another 5-7 years isn’t exactly a happy prospect.  I swear ‘fore Jesus Christ, if and when I finish my Ph.D., I’m going to a desert isle, and burn my cell phone and just go into hiding for about a month and just vacation my ass off! LOL  But seriously, any Ph.D. tips, church ministry leads and/or job leads, I’d really appreciate you’re comments or emails.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

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