Hypocrisy in Black and White, The American Way

A couple of things are sticking in my craw today....

 One is the fact that Troy Davis is scheduled to die this evening for a crime that he may not have committed. Yesterday, the Georgia Parole Board refused to grant Davis clemency, stating there was more than enough evidence to show that Davis was the gunman and that the 7 of 9 witnesses against him who  later recanted their testimony, were apparently confused.

What it boils down to is another Black man is being lynched in Georgia. Davis is convicted of killing a white police officer. If Davis had killed a Black cop, he would probably have been sentenced to life in prison, all other things being equal.

But this is America, where equality and justice are still determined by the color of your skin. Studies continue to show that when the victim is white, 9 times out of 10, the Black defendant is given the death penalty...regardless of where the trial takes place in this country.

And believe it or not, a sitting United States Supreme Court Justice says it's okay to put an innocent man to death in America because the Constitution doesn't address the matter.

 Current  historical revisionists would have you believe, lynching is a thing of the past, doesn't happen anymore. Well, au contraire, mon frere, lynching has never been outlawed in America either. It just became not so classy to do so. Now it is done on the back roads, by drunken men in trucks who like to re-enact history, or  left up to the American justice system and police officers trained to coerce confessions to make it all seem legal and above board.  America's facade of pro life humanitarianism for all has slipped badly this week.

We're more worried about Palestinians killing Jews and vice versa than we are about what is happening inside our own borders.

No justice, there should be no peace if another innocent man dies.  However, Black America has been strangely quiet on this subject. Maybe it's because we're too busy bustin' a cap on each other to worry about another soon to be dead Black man.

Where is the outrage?  Where are the calls for justice from the Black blogosphere? Where are the Black celebrities willing speak on Troy Davis' behalf?

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Wow! Black churches have discovered there is an epidemic killing the Black community. It's call HIV/AIDS!  The headline trumpeted yesterday in the blogosphere.

So what do I do.... jump up and down, be happy, congratulate them? I've only been doing radio, TV and newspaper and magazine articles since 1984 on Blacks and AIDS.

I've lost 3 relatives and 15 friends to the disease. I don't even know how many of my friends are HIV positive, but I'll bet there are a lot of them, though.  All died in secrecy and some in isolation and fearful estrangement from their families. All of them considered themselves Christian, with many of them diligently attending Sunday services. Two were ordained ministers.

Straight Black women are the most at risk group in America today.

Am I supposed to welcome Black Churches, finally, to the last dance?  Maybe I should just  suppress my own anger and move on. Better late than never, right?  About damn time!

 Fuckin' hypocrites!

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Double WOW!

Only took LGBT equality some 60 years to the day after Blacks were allowed fully into the ranks of the military...Not because whites were suddenly become altruistic, seeing the error of their ways...The government simply needed more cannon fodder to fight the war du jour in Korea...

So on Day 2 after the government repeals that misguided policy formerly known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell...time for a reality check...

Sun still come up....check!
World still here....check!
Rain not turned radioactive...check!
Military not imploded....check!
Osama, Franco, Hitler and Mussolini still dead....check!
GOP still marching goose step over a teabag created cliff...check!
Obama still in the White House.....check!
Straight marriages still sanctified....Please!

Friday Rap

Palin in Cincinnati today....

1000 spots online and I'm not one of em. Palin is basically a tribal conversation anyway, only this time, the tribe is the Caucasian tribe..Black people, brown people never figure in anything she does or says..nor does the mainstream media or pollsters ever ask us..they always assume they know how we think..

Palin dismisses us with every condescending word that passes her lips....Play to white people and the wooly headed Blacks will quietly tag along.. Check out Roland Martin's Facebook page if you want to know what “others of us” think of Sarah Palin, her book and her bigoted form of politicking to some of the people...the normal America, as she calls them..

How long do I and those like me, have to live here before our birth certificates are authenticated, huh?

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To quote one of my favorite authors....Much Ado About Nothing..

Talking about the Mammogram recommendations...What Grown ass woman allows a nameless panel of doctors to tell her what to do with her body?

It's called a recommendation for a reason...If you want a mammogram...get it...If you don't....don't get it...The choice is yours....end of discussion

And only a fool would stop doing self breast examinations....check yourself and feel good in the process...simple

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All the way crazy..

As I write, there is this fool on television telling us not to wash the turkey before we cook it..because to do so contaminates the rest of the kitchen....HUH?

Again...Grown ass women are going to do whatever the hell they want to do...I wash my bird and will continue to do...and...surprise... I always clean my kitchen on a daily basis...as well as during my cooking...cleaning as I go along leaves less mess at the end to deal with.

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Oprah's moving her talk show to her OPN network in 2011 and the MSM is hyperventilating already...asking what are folks going to do when Oprah leaves syndication..? OMG!

They're going to change the channel and find her..that's what they've going to do...Or maybe...just maybe they will find something else to do at 4pm (time she's on here)

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Barack in China

First Obama bowed to the Japanese Emperor... didn't hold hands with him like GW and his Saudi Sheik....then he went to China and found out the Chinese don't like Black people either..

Why are we surprised when the biggest export out of America and Europe has always been so called white superiority and privilege..

Dark people all over the world have spent lifetimes emulating the white rich and famous....Sammy Sosa is not an anomaly... he is the reality in much of the world...

We considered Michael a freak...but all he did was show the rest of the world how to do it...

Big cosmetic firms market all kinds of fade creams world wide because being light is being right...In Africa...In India...All over Asia....everywhere....Brown and Black people are told they are worthless unless they lighten their skin....and it's been going on forever..

They market their creams on television with dark skinned women singing the praises of being light and landing the man of their dreams or their job of choice..becoming a big time movie star..

From American slavery and the genocide committed against Native Americans.....to Brit, Spanish and Portuguese colonialism worldwide (underlying cause of the current problems in Rwanda)..

Around the world....light, bright and damn near white is the rule of thumb..

And what's that community secret......Nadinola?....Ambi?.....you know where of I speak...

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Note to the Black Community so called civil rights organizations....Obesity kills more Blacks than that other problem I've been ranting about...you know the one you keep ignoring....HIV/AIDS?

I will say it again...isn't it time for the Black community to come to grips with what is killing us...

Black on Black crime.....

Black men refusing to go to school or take responsibility for the kids they help make....

Refusal to recognize the Black LGBT community...

HIV/AIDS killing straight Black women....

now add Obesity to the list.

We are dying...Isn't it time to stop tilting at windmills and tackle some real problems?

Martin's Daughter Making Her Own Kind of History

It's been a relatively good and historic week for Black and LGBT people in America. After all this was the week that President Obama signed an expansion of the hate crimes law named after Mathew Shepard and James Byrd....

Shepard the young gay man brutalized and left to die by two homophobic neanderthals tied to a fence..James Byrd the black man tied alive to the back of a pick up truck by racist white men and dragged until his body was strewn in pieces all along the roadway..

The expansion, which was opposed by every Republican in Congress added gender and sexual orientation to the protected status for Americans. In other words, you can't attack someone who you believe is gay or lesbian just because you feel like it.

Gay bashing is no longer a sport in America...

Obama also signaled his intention to repeal the bigoted travel ban on HIV/AIDS positive people, that prevented them from coming into this country....

And Health and Human Services is creating a resource center designed to help elderly gay and lesbian people...this announced by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius...

This was the good stuff....However there was a not so good thing that happened this week as well..

I will tell you upfront that I'm making a judgment call based on past actions...Bernice King...the youngest daughter of MartinLuther and Coretta Scott King has become the first woman elected to preside over the Southern Christian Leadership Conference...her father's historic organization..

While her election is a history making event for women...it is not a good thing for the Black LGBT community.

King has been very outspoken in her hatred of the gay community all the while cloaking her bigotry in religion.. She has been very outspoken against LGBT equality, leading marches and protests against same sex marriage.


“I know in my sanctified soul that he (Dr. King) did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”
-Bernice King


Talking about her father and same sex marriage....When both Dr. King and her mother Coretta Scott King were known for their support of the LGBT community...contrary to the words of their daughter.

In a time when Black civil rights organizations and the Black church need to step forward and lead the fight against the problems within the Black community...I fear she will feed the fires of hatred, further alienating Black gays and lesbians sending them deeper into the closet...

And this is not the time to be in the closet considering how many within the Black community are infected with and dying as a result of the HIV virus. AIDS is killing straight Black people..not just lesbians and gays....

Black women are the most victimized...by men sleeping with other men and refusing to acknowledge their sexuality and by an uncaring system of neglect from the government, from the Black church, and from Black civil rights organizations, which remain silent....

I take no joy in seeing Bernice King ascend to the presidency of the SCLC because I believe that based on her past words and actions the Southern Christian Leadship Conference is about to become a cudgel wielded against the Black gay and lesbian community by another homophobic bigot this one of magnificent lineage and a bigger than life name... who routinely wraps her hatred in religion in order to make it more palatable to the masses..

Smitherman vs the LGBT Community

I want to say up front that I am a "johnny-come-lately to this topic, basically because I have problems with both the LGBT community and the Black Community for the very reasons being debated, racism and homophobia.

I also have a problem with Mr. Smitherman...When he talks, I turn off, because I have yet to find him credible on any topic. I am mystified by his election to head the NAACP. I am mystified that so many others apparently find him to be a man worth following.

I found Jill Benavides comments after the meeting at City Hall to be patronizing, and condescendingly PC with regard to Smitherman. It was as if she were talking about a child. In other words..."let him have his temper tantrum, we love him anyway."

Having said all that......Let’s go there...shall we...

Nowhere on either side of this clueless conversation has the Black LGBT community been talked about or included in the conversation. Smitherman talked about his one white gay male NAACP member, as if having one represents all. That is the same way the white LGBT community talks about Blacks...you know..."some of my best friends are....."

The conversation that took place at City Hall obscures the fact that Black gays and lesbians are totally invisible in Cincinnati. And it’s like that across the country. Much of it due to the queer hatred within the Black community, in addition to the racism in the LGBT community

As Black people..we spend most of our lives being beaten up because of the color of our skin. It’s been a very difficult road to electing our first Black president. We have been killed for simply wanting to be treated equally. Laws were passed to make that happen, yet it’s still a problem in 2009, and you have only to look at two recent incidents of men, white men, killing their families and police for fear of a Black man in the White House.

You’ve got white governors talking of secession...that has got to be the ultimate in white flight..think about it...the same thing happens when a black family moves into a previously all white neighborhood...still....that’s not past history...that’s last week....

Now compound skin color with being gay or lesbian and you go from being beaten down on a national level to somebody, maybe your own brother, sister, mother, father, neighborhood, kicking your ass because you’re a sissy or you’re a bulldagger. You get tired of being a target, you get tired of being called names....for Black gays and lesbians...being called a nigger is not much different than being called queer or fag or bulldagger.

Trust me, you’re not going to run out and join the very community organizations that want you dead...

The white LGBT community doesn’t feel it’s racist, but it is no different, really than liberal whites who like using that.."some of my best friends are....." phrase. Blacks are not taken seriously within the LGBT community, usually being dismissed with a patronizing pat on the top of our fuzzy little heads, with a "thank you for coming...but we know better, what’s good for you..."

The prop 8 vote in California exposed the LGBT racism, when it was erroneously reported that Blacks were the reason it passed....Blacks gays and lesbians who took to the streets to protest the vote, were attacked by white gays and lesbians.....called niggers among other things....The white LGBT community has yet to apologize for their assumptions during that time...

Being Black gay and lesbian means you’re caught up between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Not feeling accepted by anyone can be a very lonely way to grow up and to live.

Smitherman and the NAACP need to realize that there have always been Black gays and lesbians active within his organization and the civil rights movement. What they need to do is to recognize that the NAACP and other Black organizations are also not inclusive organizations working for all Blacks.

There is no mention of the devastation of HIV/AIDS on the Black Community. In fact Smitherman as a straight man is probably more susceptible to getting the virus than any gay black man at this stage, not because he is gay or down-lo, but because Black straight women are the ones being infected at record breaking rates.

Black women are sleeping with down-lo men and taking the germ back to their straight boyfriends...

And why are men down-lo...because they stand to be judged not men, if they come out..being labeled soft is worse than being called a nigger in the Black community. Witness the death a couple of weeks ago of a 12 year old Black youth, who hanged himself, after being repeatedly called a fag at school.

Why was he called a fag, or labeled soft.....he liked school and his mother taught him to comport himself like a gentleman...he was not gay, by the way....just a clean cut little boy...dead...

It is killing our community...yet....I hear nothing from the NAACP about this massive problem. If the women die...who is going to bear your sons? Or will any white or J-Lo looking Latina woman do?

It is no proof of your so called inclusive tendencies if all you can talk about is one gay white boy as a member. Remember, he can always go back to his community in which by birth he is a master of the universe.

Black gays and lesbians must go home to the same hate that they suffer from in the streets.

The entire Smitherman statement left women out the conversation, altogether. That is typical of the misogyny that also permeates the Black Community.

So, to put an end to this ramble.....

NAACP....you need to talk to Black gays and lesbians first.....you need to address the number one killer of Black people in this country and the world....second only to gun violence...which is another problem in and of itself...

Opening the tent to include all Black people will send a bigger message than a useless conversation with white gay and lesbian organizations with issues of their own to deal with..

It doesn’t matter who turns out to support what....until we recognize the problem within our own community, we will be having this worthless conversation in 2010, 2011, 2012.....

Black women, Black Church and Down-lo Men

Are apparently to blame for the defeat of proposition 8 in California, according to New York Times Op-ed columnist, Charles M. Blow. Prop 8, for those of you who don’t know, is the law passed in California banning gay marriage.

Following the vote on election day, white gays and others erroneously faulted blacks for the vote after exit polls showed that 70% of blacks favored the ban. Subsequent reports however, showed that blacks actually made up a very small part of the coalition of voters who voted to ban gay marriage, for which white gays, who turned violent against black gays, during their demonstrations post election day, indiscriminately tossing around the N-word, have yet to apologize.

In his piece today, Blow did a closer look at the situation and came up with some interesting reasons as to why blacks, overall, don’t favor gay marriage. You can read his article here.

To briefly summarize Mr. Blow, the LGBT community should target black women, if they want to change the community mind set against homosexual marriage. His reasoning is that black women overwhelmingly outnumber black men when it comes to voting and going to church. The black church, Blow reasons, is the cause of conservative thinking among black women. So in Blow's opinion, white gays should target black women.

This conservative mind set is the main cause of homophobia within the community. Blow also states that since black women have trouble finding and keeping a man, they are probably not really happy with men marrying other men. In other words, black women don’t like competition. He also sights black women anger with black men who date and marry white women three times more than black women marry white men. Going outside the race for nooky has long been a thorn in the side of black women, according to Mr. Blow.

Blow also notes that black women’s anger is another reason why men who are on the down-lo, don’t want to discuss it with their female sex partners. This lack of communication is the reason behind the growing number of straight black women who are contracting the HIV/AIDs virus.

Blow concluded that white gays need to make the argument one about health rather than sexuality or civil rights, because basically when it comes to black men, the church and white women, black women don’t want to hear it.