No Safe Place

What for many will be a very difficult and emotional journey begins January 19th, 2010, at Cincinnati's Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

"Without Sanctuary," is an exhibit of photographs depicting America's dark and lengthy dance with the devil from 1882 until 1968, when nearly 5000 Americans died at the end of a hangman's noose-lynched and brutalized by their fellow Americans.

The exhibit has been touring the country drawing record crowds. It will stay at the Freedom Center until May of this year.

"Without Sanctuary" sheds light on a very brutal part of American history. It is not the "comfort history" that is routinely taught in schools across America. This exhibit pulls the drape to uncover the remnants of America's Holocaust, that officially lasted from 1619 until 1865 when slaves were officially emancipated.

While emancipation gave the newly freed slaves many of the same rights as other citizens, lynching was used to take them back.

Winking at a white woman is what many believe was the basis behind lynchings. However rape allegations and accusations were the basis behind about a fourth of the incidents. Most people lynched...men and women....were political and labor activists. And while most of those lynched were in fact Black, many were native American, some were Jewish, and some were Hispanic or other minorities.

All committed the ultimate crime of upsetting the status quo as defined by the majority.

The exhibit also reveals what happened here in the tri state during those years. Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana were not guiltless during this era. In fact, this area, right now, present day, remains the number one location for KKK and White Supremacists activity in America. Come learn the history of our area, and find out the part our ancestors played in shaping this shameful era.

I hope that my fellow Cincinnatians will use this opportunity to go and see "Without Sanctuary." And, while you're at it, take in the Freedom Center, tour it and learn history as it should be taught, honestly and simply in the words, deeds and pictures of those who lived and witnessed it.

And look for me, down there, as well. I just recently became a volunteer exhibit interpreter and am geeked about beginning another journey of historical revelation. "Without Sanctuary" represents my first exhibit. I look forward to sharing it with you.

Ohio Lawmakers Bringing Back Slavery

Proposed bill seeks to define women as property

Didn't have time to jump on this yesterday when I saw it on my buddy's blog, QueerCincinnati. Thanks Barry.

However, State Representative John Adams of Sidney has reintroduced a bill that would make it illegal for a woman to seek an abortion without written permission from her sex partner.

Meaning the guy who knocked her up...whether she is married to him...has a relationship with him...is victimized by date rape or any kind of happenstance leading to rape...or incest....or is a jump off....

consensual or not....

This proposed law which claims to give “fathers” rights over their children...mandates legal penalties if the woman does not comply or fingers the wrong man...She can go jail and get fined..heavily..

This proposal also says that if the woman does not name the “father” then she can't have an abortion..at all...under any circumstances...regardless of how she got pregnant...

Fully 53% of unplanned pregnancies happen because contraception fails..Now anyone who is using contraception is not trying to get pregnant...

And just because a woman decides to have sex...does not mean she is giving up her body or her uterus to pregnancy....

Nor does having sex with a man mean that she is surrendering her rights as a human being to her male partner....so that he can make decisions about her body...

Men do not bear the same burden as women when it comes to babies..

They do not carry them....They don't suffer the health issues..the wear and tear on the chassis, so to speak...And they can and do usually go away more often then they stay...

It is not fair that women die from pregnancy...

It is not fair that women have their health permanently affected by pregnancy, sometimes for their entire lives...

It is not fair that the number one cause of unnatural death for pregnant women is murder...

And nowhere in this bill does it address the man's responsibility...

For instance:

Married man fooling around with his wife's best friend....jump off gets pregnant...has complications...can't work....must he step in and support her and her two other children from a previous marriage?

What if she has no maternity leave benefits from her job....must he step in and pay her bills while she carries?

Or, she is forced to carry and deliver..but doesn't want the child...must he take the baby...and raise it...and support it..til its 18th birthday or whenever it graduates from college?

This bill requires a DNA test so, can't nobody lie their way out of it, if named as the male sex partner..

However, this chauvinistic travesty only speaks to the woman's responsibility, leaving men to do what they usually do...

Hit it and quit it...

And let me apologize to my brothers who do take care of their children...There are many men who do step up to the plate when called...

I come from a two parent home...where my parents got married a week before I was born....that was 59 years ago come August...He's still there taking care of my mother and the rest of us when we need it...

This bill is wrong....there is no other way to say it...It reduces women to slaves subject to the whims of a man...

Any man...

We have laws that convey rights on fathers....it's called marriage....

You want some say...then take responsibility and ask her to marry you...and then do it...

Happy Negroes, Unhappy Slaves Redux

A continuing conversation on race in America

Back in February of 2008, I wrote about a conversation that I had with a man, whose name I don’t know, about Black people, white people and the political campaign of Barack Obama, who, at that time was merely running for president. You can read about that conversation here.

Even after the conversation, we continued to talk and a year later, we’re still engaging in our favorite weekend past time and still talking. He’s not happy with Barack as president. He voted for him as did I, but he is unable to be patient. He wants change now, as in "Okay, we put the Black guy in.....now what’s the difference..."

Today we went back to race again coming at the question from differing viewpoints. He has progressed from slaves being happy during slavery to Blacks should be grateful they were taken off the slave ships and allowed to live. According to my friend, Blacks don’t show gratitude for what whites did for them way back when, which was to save our lives from the big bad Spaniards who stole them in Africa, forced them onto ships to survive or die.

He told me that Blacks should be glad nobody forced them to get back onto those ships because the Spaniards would have killed or drowned them rather than transport them. So slavery was something of a godsend for Black people. It was a blessing that we, Blacks today, are not properly thankful enough or respectful for.

That last thing on respect comes from my reading of him as he was telling me this. He didn’t say it, and I don’t want to put more words into his mouth because he is well capable to choking himself. He doesn’t need my help to do that.

As I listened to his theory, it dawned on me that I was hearing a theory that under lay the thoughts and actions of a lot of white people....that Africa, the slave ships, were bad, but getting to America was the good thing for Black people. It saved us.....I asked him....saved us from what exactly.....the freedom of living in your own country, with your own family, on your own land, surrounded by your own stuff? Being free to make your own decisions and not have to worry about whether you put too much starch in your master’s underwear?

How can being brutally snatched to another country to serve and become the property of another man be considered salvation? He still has no answer for me. He can’t seem to get past the "Africa bad, America good" scenario, or that Blacks blame whites for a situation not of their making. I couldn’t get past the "issues" of choice.....once Blacks were unchained and taken off the ships...no one forced white people to engage in slavery....It was a conscientious choice to do that after attempts to enslave Native Americans failed. It was a dehumanizing situation from which we all, both Black and white, still suffer.

So at this point, after a couple of thrusts about the still ongoing institutionalization of racsim that permeates everything in America, we move on, saving this saga for another day. We turned instead to Herbert Hoover’s presidency as the reason why most Black people are democrats. Seems he saw something recently on television that made this connection.

In my friend’s mind he felt that Blacks should have been republican from jump instead of adopting the politics of their owners who were primarily southern democrats. I explained that many blacks were republicans or believed in the politics of abolition and the party of Lincoln, and that persisted well through the 1960s.

I have already chronicled how much of my family was republican. The switch happened when southern democrats left the party to become republicans rather than allow Fannie Lou Hamer to be seated the Democratic Convention, I believe in 1964. I can remember hearing older family members talk about the death of FDR, and of watching his funeral train. They recalled the tears they shed and shock they felt when this man passed. Yet they still called themselves republicans.

I reminded my friend that what Blacks may have felt politically, was different than expressing it, because getting the right to cast a vote was in and of itself, an adventure. It remains that way today despite the voting rights act of 1965. And unless anyone thinks the fight is over, the Voting Rights Act is not a permanent law-it must be renewed every 25 years.

It is also coming before the United States Supreme Court in the next couple of weeks. A Supreme Court that is led by an activist conservative. What will happen is anybody’s guess.

There are any number of possibilities, including striking it down and declaring it unconstitutional....just like affirmative action in California.....In the aftermath....the colleges and universities have once again become primarily all white institutions.....Will that happen to the right to vote?

Don’t know.....Just asking questions....as always....

My conversation with my friend.....to be continued....................

Speaking in Tongues other than English

All this talk about making English the national language got me to thinking about my upbringing and how I was taught to speak by my parents and grandparents as well as the other grown ups around me. I'm not an immigrant. I'm an original native born American and anyone who knows history, knows that only two ethnic groups can make that claim; Native Americans and, since 1619, the descendants of slaves. My people were slaves. Since they were ripped from their homeland, I don't have any other country to claim other than the United States of America where we've been here in a direct line, since 1790.

Since I was born five years after the end of World War II, there was Jim Crow, but no Brown vs The Board of Education. The Ku Klux Klan was ascendant. Integration was a new concept. Separate but equal was the law of the land.

Growing up you were expected to know your place, be as respectful and as invisible as you possibly could be around Whites. That meant being clean, quiet and well spoken at all times when in public. Failure to do this, especially if you were male, meant at the minimum, a public tongue lashing from the offended white person, jail or sometimes even death. Blending in was a survival tactic taught from birth. And that brings me back to language.

You were expected to speak "proper English." What the kids today call "talk white." When I was a child that was simply survival, the best way to get thru school and to get a job. It's second nature to me now,

But how we talked at home and around the neighborhood with our neighbors is and was different. Sometimes it's called "slang." Sometimes it's given the official name of "Ebonics." Under any name it is and has been derided by both Blacks and Whites as not a good way to talk. When the City Schools of Oakland tried to teach Ebonics, school officials were castigated and roundly chastised by everyone, nationwide. They were accused of bringing down the race and making fun of Blacks. I guess if the slaves forced to come to this country could have somehow preserved their languages intact, despite the bombardment of white European/Christian culture, maybe Ebonics would have been taken more seriously.

But when you think about, Slang, Hip Hop and yes the bigger catchword Ebonics are languages. Just like French, Spanish, German, Italian, Polish, Czech, Hebrew. It's the language of America's Black neighborhoods. So why do we get laughed at when we choose to speak our first language but Hispanics and other immigrants get rewarded with multi lingual signs, English as a second language courses, and a myriad of defenders of all walks of life standing up for their right to speak what they know?

I don't think there needs to be an official law recognizing English as the official language. It's really just another attempt by the ruling class to keep things "pure" if you will, and to preserve the comfort level of the paler masses. Blacks and Native Americans have always been bi lingual and will continue to be until there is a complete blending of the races in this country. The very language itself has changed and will continue to change to reflect America's ever-changing population.

Ya feel me on this?