34°F Overcast [Forecast]
:: Friday, November 21st, 2008Save ourselves
"If we don't save ourselves, no one else will"Providing all types of landscape construction and design on Cape Cod and beyond. Since 1995, whether you need a lawn maintenance program or just need a "yard clean up" our professional team can do the job to your satisfaction guaranteed! (Barnstable)
Established in 1984, we are a primary care /walk-in clinic which provides the highest standard of clinical care to our patients plus a warm welcome. Our patients are part of our family. Full lab and x-ray facility on the premises. (Mashpee)
A Quick History Lesson
A Quick History Lesson for Readers of Cape Cod Today
"We are the world" is not how is really is around here
For many it is still convenient to sing their version of "We are the World" denying how pervasive institutional racism is in our daily lives. Unfortunately , outspoken Blacks are still resented. This resentment dates back to slavery and was codified after the Civil War when the implementation of the Black Codes made it illegal for a Black to speak back or even look a white person directly in the face. The price for breaking that law was often death. A modern day version of this contempt for Black people is evidenced in the way in which Obama and Reverend Wright are being treated by mainstream America. 
In contemporary society, White men go to business school and they study marketing. They are trained to be aggressive. They run Bear Sterns. They destroy Bear Sterns and they receive welfare from the Federal Government for their incompetence. Blacks on the other hand,are continually warned that what they studied in Business School was only for White boys. (On right is a clip from one of the two viseo below)
If Black men act aggressively or you are too outspoken, you will be silenced, possibly destroying your career. We defy all odds and become the Governor of Massachusetts and are condemned because we redecorate the Governors mansion. We defy all odds and become the leading Democratic candidate for the Presidency of the United States and we are bound to choose every word we say carefully, not to offend White men who are so threatened by our presence.
We are damned if we do and dammed if we don't. Despite Obama's eloquent words, whites will insist that the strident words of his minister follow him for the rest of this campaign. This is what we call modern day racism. Obama attempted to prepare the nation for the fact that we need to be vaccinated with the kind of education and acceptance that will start a healing process. We know that racism is irrational and America is like a sick office building. The tenets of racism and racist thought circumscribe the nation. Many of you who have responded to my editorials demonstrate how deep seated the sickness runs in the veins of America. Professor Derrick Bell, one of the country's leading Legal Scholars defines racism in America as permanent. It is like a terminal disease we have to live with, but like the terminally ill patient we hold out for a miracle cure.
Stop dismissing the daily experiences of so many in this society. Stop changing the subject and feeling the need to point out some other victim that is also bleeding. Concentrate on the bludgeoned in front of you. I have dedicated my professional and personal life as an activists, educator and vocal artists to addressing these issues directly. I am not shocked by the responses to my writings and Obama's ascendancy as a viable political leader in America. When I first heard Obama announce his run for the presidency, I thought of the Honorable Reverend Wright. I said to friends, they are going to wait a year and then try to use Wright against Obama. I remembered how the media did the same thing to Jesse Jackson with the "hyme" comment he allegedly made almost a year before the New Hampshire primary. The story was held and released on the eve of the primary.
Wright joins a litany of other Black theologians/activists in America continue with life time commitments to serving the Black community with integrity and honesty. During the height of segregation, The Black Minister could always tell the truth because he did not have to go downtown and report to the white man. Black people paid his salary. Wright stands tall and it part of a legacy of orators that include James Cone, Sam Proctor, James Forbes, Jessie Jackson, Martin Luther King, Maxine Waters, John Henrik Clarke, Randall Robinson, Nelson Mandela, Ida B Wells, Shirley Chisolm, Diane Mckinney,Fannie Lou Hammer, Elma Lewis, Paul Robeson, Herbert Daughtry and thousands of other leaders mostly unknown or ignored by White America. Those of you who are really committed to social justice need to take a few moments and read a book. Step out of you comfort zone. It is something Black people have to do everyday.
I share this video with you. Listen to the lyrics, see can you identify most of the people and incidences chronicled here and synced to the song "American Fruit with African Roots." If you can complete this task, you will better understand Reverend Wright and why Senator Obama cannot reject him.
Here are the two links. If you have a technical problem go directly to Youtube and type in "American Fruit with African Roots". There you will find a live version and the film version produced by Charles A Grandson IV. Here are the two YouTube links below.
American Fruit with African Roots
American Fruit with African Roots LIVE
96 comments
Blog posts and comments are entirely the thoughts and ideas of the people who write them and in no way represent the views of CapeCodToday.com, eCape, Inc., or its employees or owners.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs.
The Rosenbergs were executed in the early 1950s as spies for supplying atomic secrets to Josef Stalin's Soviet Union. One had nothing to do with the other.
Larry, I wrote a column (I thought for the Cape Cod Times) about Martin Luther King and the Jim Crow days incorporating the first verse of "Strange Fruit," but I can't find it. Either that part was edited out or I lost it during one of my several computer crashes.
I'm away for a couple more weeks, but I think I have it at home on a CD by Nina Simone. If you want a copy of the CD, e-mail me your address and I'll send it when I get back.
Or having your young 13 yr old son chased, tortured and murdered for looking at a white woman.(can't remember his name, although his mom had him buried open-casket so all America could see what was done to him)
Or having your house set on fire because you happen to be black?
Or being hosed down like dogs in the street?
Falsely accused of so many crimes, wasting away in so many prisons...it does not compare.
Wish you could see that,instead of getting defensive and trying to change the subject.
How do you suggest we make it right?
As far back as when I was in school, racism and slavery were taught at all levels in school and I know they are still being taught. We have "black history" month.
"In 1998 President Clinton acknowledged the evils of slavery. And last year President Bush visited Goree Island, a holding place for captured slaves in Africa, and spoke of the wrongs and injustices of slavery."
Again, I ask you what do we need to "make it right"? Remember, many of "us whites" arrived after the Civil War and many others fought for the Union.
Some of us here lived the era of racial riots, bussing in our schools, and probably had a better education on slavery, than many in other parts of the country. Take a tour of many of our historical homes. See where the nasty mean old racist white people hid slaves in their own homes, despite the fact they could be killed for doing so. See the underground railroad up close and personal. Have you read Common Ground? Step into my high school years. Got to tell you. I just got back from touring the south. If you think we are so damn racist here, and uneducated, move down there for a while.
Who, his lawyer contends, and I know to be true, was convicted to life in prison because the obviously racist jury could not believe a highly educated white woman would willingly have sex with a black garbage man.
Here, right here and now...HERE is a chance to deal with this!
It is a racial injustice right before our eyes, under our noses, in our face...
So, do we throw this under the rug too, or take this opportunity to do something about it?
He was convicted cause he's too black in a very-white world.
And we, who call ourselves Americans First, where is the Liberty and Justice for All?
The high five was first used by Phil Silvers in 1954 or so. It never caught on.
In 1977, Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker traded high fives after a home run. Burke has another bit of history behind him- he was the first guy in baseball to come out of the closet. His high five never caught on, though.
Then, in 1980, it was used by Louisville guard Darrell "Dr. Dunkenstein" Griffith. History has not recorded who the recipient was.
Again, it never caught on... but Magic Johnson saw it, and took it on as his own.
When Magic started using it, it caught on. Then white people stole it for their own, forcing the black man to develop the Fist Bump, which the white people are also stealing.
You can't have unity in the midst of group divisiveness. I am an individualist - I value the fact that every person alive is genetically unique in ways that we don't even begin to understand.
This fact supercedes pigeonholing people by their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. I resent certain groups telling me I am entitled to victim status because I'm a woman--I don't think I'm a victim and will let you know if that changes.
I am not saying that soccer moms suffer for being women the way 100% of black Americans have been affected negatively, to some degree, at some points in their lives, due to their race.
I am just saying that being the best you that you can is more empowering than beating the victim drum your whole life.
A) 'turns out we all stole the high 5 from the gays
B) you'd figure that gays wouldn't evolve past the ass slap, which was prevalent in sports before the high five/fist bump. I know I'd be slapping ass if I were out there with Brady, Seymour, Harrison, etc...
c) The guy who invented the high five eventually got the HI V. He died in 1993 or so.
OK... that last one isn't funny.
If someone says to me, "just get over it,quit playing the victim", they just don't get it!!!
It will affect everything about my life forever.
You can't simply wipe the slate clean-especially if the threat is still out there.
A sense of victimhood? How about the sense of entitlement!
You will probabaly never be "watched" in a department store, as if you are a thief...
I have seen this with a friend of mine...the absolute terror when being stopped by the police, for anything.
Not being served in a restaurant-that did happen.
And someone sitting on a jury
saying;"what are the chances of them having sex?"...as a reason to charge him with murder.
It's not something that happened 100's of years ago, it's happening now.
http://www.raceandhistory.com/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl/noframes/read/1638
We've been down this road before. Your friend any you get to the restaurant late and they tell you that lunch is no longer being served.... so immediatley, its racisim.
You have two choices, be a victim or be a survivor.
You an only be a victim if YOU allow your self to continue be one.
That who gave America? Who is YOU? You do have hate, and its ugly head is in that statement!
"The jews can speak openly about the holocaust that didn't even happen in American because they own/control the media."
WHAT???????
Wow, this is exactly the sort of ridiculous anti-semitic nonsense which
annihilates the validity of whatever message you are trying to get across.
The Jews, nor any other religion or race don't own and control any single industry, not even close. You know who owns and controls the media as we know it?
Shareholders. Wall Street. Anyone and everyone.
You are a racist, Princess, a racist.
Goodnight Princess, see what else you can dream up.
Capemom, last time I checked, Judaism was a religion, not a race. I've never understood why people confuse them or lump them together.
Is Princess a racist? I don't have any thoughts on that except to say, hmm..
how can one human judge another?
Why would anyone need to come on here with lies? Why would we? It's anonymous.
And it's a big insult to say what happened to me or another person never really did.
Good way to marginalize and degrade....
Good way to stop converation in its tracks.
Good way to say "your opinion means nothing."
As for Buzz? Who knows what roads he has been down. Or the color of his SUV.
As the harbor turns.
Get over yourself. I didn't call you a "liar" I do however dispute your story. If a restaurant has a policy and your friend was not served lunch because lunch had ended, that does NOT make it racism. Is the fact that you say CM is not guilty a lie? You have no prove. I don't call you a liar, I may disagree with you, but I don't call you a liar.
Don't believe everything you read.... your smarter than that.
It is debatable whether Jews can talk more openly here about the Holocaust than African Americans can about slavery.
But it is just repugnant and wrong to say that Jews "control the media". It's Nazi talk, pure and simple.
You, Princess are no better than Nazi skinheads in Idaho who think Jews control the media and the banks and that blacks and Mexicans are taking away their jobs, as well as many other crackpot and hateful theories.
The Rosenbergs were executed in the early 1950s as spies for supplying atomic secrets to Josef Stalin's Soviet Union. One had nothing to do with the other..." Nooo the Meeropols(Robert wrote STRANGE FRUIT)and the Rosenbergs were part of a subculture of Communists and 'fellow travellers' which was centered in NYC back when Stalin was still seen as 'cool'... the icepicking of Trotsky in Mexican exile may've been the beginning of the end of that view... thus the Meeropols felt the obligation to adopt the sons of Julius and Ethel... these were the days of Red Diaper Babies and Jewish Communist summer camps...
An unexpected error has occured!
If this error persits, please report it to the administrator.
That is why a black man was rail-roaded and sent to prison for life on the charge of murder and rape.
Mr. Watson, if you need an example of racism and it's hoffific consequences, you need look no further.
Maybe you can do something to help Christopher McCowen.
We have written every avenue we could think of...all the public officials,even including Tavis Smiley, and Cornel West...
This is a modern-day case of racial injustice and an innocent man has been condemned to die in prison, for something he didn't do.
Just look into it, you will be amazed. (or maybe not)