Racism: The Most Violent Weapon in Human History

Trayvon Martin wore a hoodie in the rain..In the world of Don lemon and Geraldo, maybe He should've had an umbrella instead

Trayvon Martin

Stop denying that race doesn’t matter.

To claim that killings of Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Darius Simmons, Garrick Hopkins, Carl Hopkins, and countless others have nothing to do with race erases generations of white-on-black violence.

And before you trot out some example from history of an African American who killed a white person, or cite some FBI statistics (deflection is a form of denial), hear us:

The history of violence directed at African Americans is grounded in a history of systemic racism; efforts to protect slavery, irrational fear, segregation, Jim Crow, stereotypes and white privilege are all part of this history.  It is what binds together Emmett Till and Jordan Davis, what links together the countless incidents of lynching throughout America’s history with killings of Trayvon Martin and Renisha McBride who were seen as “not belonging.”

white mobsThe history of the United States is one where whites have killed with impunity; the murder of African Americans has been carried under a culture that continues to sanction this violence. Our society has refused to hold white killers accountable within the criminal justice system. On the flip side, African Americans have historically and continually experience the opposite: the unequal brunt force of the criminal justice system.  Unlike their white counterparts, who have been let off the hook over and over again, blacks have been policed, locked up, lynched, and executed for s**t they didn’t do.  Just as those involved with countless lynchings and Emmett Till’s killers never faced consequences for killing black people, Michael Dunn and George Zimmerman have been left off the hook.

Race matters because of continued circulation of racial stereotypes. From Dunn’s views about “thug music” or Zimmerman’s profiling of Martin, or the belief from Theodore Wafer that Renisha McBride’s an intruder has everything to do with race.  How many different jokes about blacks and crime do you hear each day, either from popular culture or from friends?  How often do you confront media reports, video games, films, TV, or conversations that depict African Americans as dangerous, as “thugs,” as threatening criminals?

Michael Dunn

Michael Dunn

One cannot understand Michael Dunn, or George Zimmerman or countless others within a colorblind fantasy.  We must talk about racism, stereotypes and the history of criminalizing black bodies.  Research proves that whites, from college students to police officers, are more likely to misidentify a gun when in a black hand.  According to B. Keith Payne, “Race stereotypes can lead people to claim to see a weapon where there is none. Split-second decisions magnify the bias by limiting people’s ability to control responses.”  Racism thwarts many in white America from seeing how racism kills.

According Project Implicit,  “An analysis of more than 900,000 completed Implicit Association Tests (IAT) at the Project Implicit website suggested that more than 70% of test takers associated White people with good and Black people with bad…”   It is easy to dismiss race and racism but the daily consequences of American racism are real; the trauma and pain, the ongoing history of racial violence, and a culture that is more likely to see black criminality than black innocence.  Racism kills and so does denial.

Geraldo Rivera Blames TrayvonRace matters even in death.  How else can we explain the lack of concern society shows for the anguish of black parents who have lost a child?  The mantra of not speaking ill of the dead is rarely applied to black youth.  For all too many, that means routinely seeing the victims as criminals, as unworthy of sympathy and assumptions of innocence. Instead of being seen as victims, as someone’s son or daughter, someone’s friend that lost their life, they are turned into criminals deserving of death.  Writing about Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin, Eric Mann highlights the longstanding history of blaming black youth for their own murders:  [D]eep in the white American psyche” rests the controlling belief and script that sees “the impossibility of Black innocence.” Efforts to convict black youth for their own murders is engrained in the American fabric, enshrined in the history books, and centuries old in the script of white supremacy.  Racism continues to turn the victims of racism into criminals who either deserved to die or did something that resulted in their own death.

Whether citing school suspensions, problems with the law, drug use, clothing choices, being drunk, loud music, whistling, not listening to authority or simply their attitude, the presumption of black guilt, black criminality, and black pathology is reason for black death.  Don’t look at the killers or a history of white supremacy since the “victim” is in fact responsible for his/her death.  The message is clear: Don’t mourn for them; don’t seek justice for them since it is they (and their parents, their “culture”, and their community) that is responsible, not the killers, not the laws, not the gun culture, not the racism, and not America.

Affluenza DefenseWhite youth, on the other hand, even those who go on shooting rampages at in public places, even those who drive drink and kill people, who shoot first and ask question later, are regularly imagined as innocent, good, and all-American. Sometimes this takes place within the court of public opinion and other times within the courts.  We see this regularly in the aftermath of “mass shootings” at least those involving white perpetrators, in white communities, and with white victims. From James Holmes, who perpetrated a mass shooting in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in 2012, to Adam Lanza, who shot and killed over 20 children at a Connecticut Elementary School, society works to understand the backgrounds of these assailants and questions “why” and “how” these wholesome kids became evil.   Maybe it’s video games; or maybe its affluenza, or it could be mental health issues.  It’s never whiteness, it’s never racism; it’s never white pathology and ultimately that means little accountability

The effort to exonerate white shooters, from Lanza to Zimmerman, from Holmes to Dunn, embodies the power of race.  The failure to mourn Black Death, to protect black life, or the failure to understand the fear and anger reflects entrenched white privilege.  The yearning to cite Black on Black crime demonstrates the historic disregard for black life.

Khali Gibran Muhammad

Khali Gibran Muhammad

“It’s true that black-on-black violence is an exceptionally grave problem. But this does not explain the allure of the violence card, which perpetuates the reassuring notion that violence against black people is not society’s concern but rather a problem for black people to fix on their own,” writes Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. “The implication is that the violence that afflicts black America reflects a failure of lower-class black culture, a breakdown of personal responsibility, a pathological trait of a criminally inclined subgroup — not a problem with social and institutional roots that needs to be addressed through collective effort well beyond the boundaries of black communities.” Is it astonishing the black life is only valued when it can be used to deny white terror, to obscure solutions, and to otherwise blame EBW (everyone but whites). If black life was truly valued, we would all join those demanding justice for Jordan and Trayvon, those working to repeal stand your ground laws, those working to combat the insidious racial stereotypes that sustains anti-black racism.

If Black Death is such a concern for white America there are plenty of ways to get involved; to be a solution. There are plenty of organizations and individuals that are demanding justice for Mark Carson, Islan Nettles, Adrian Broadway, or Ricardo Sanes.  What are we doing for these victims, for countless others?    These are people, not talking points.

We do wonder where are the white leaders, whether Democratic or Republican, the organizations so concerned about gun violence, the media pundits, and those who like to obfuscate with “black on black crime” in addressing these killings? Where are the calls against Stand Your Ground, given its clear racial consequences?  Where is the support for those organizations and individuals that are challenging America’s pathological and destructive gun culture, or those working in communities like Chicago to combat injustice?  Where is the action and outrage about the violence that ravages Chicago or Detroit?  Where is the demand for something other than more police and lectures about sagging pants and fathers? Or do the concerns begin and end when trying to derail discussions about the continued history of racist violence that continues to plague this nation that continues to lead to deaths of Black Youth.

Stop racist violenceWe ask, what are we going to do about “white on white crime,” “black on black crime,” and the culture of violence that is ravaging communities? What are we all doing in the name of justice, in the name of every lost live?  What are we doing about permissive gun and mental health no matter the neighborhood?  We need to commit ourselves to having honest discussions about racism, inequality, and violence.  We must fight for justice for Trayvon Martin and Renisha McBride, for Adrian Broadway and Mark Carson, for Jordan Davis and Darius Simmons.  Justice will remain an illusion as we refuse to recognize the ways that they and so many others are seen as criminals when alive, remaining as “violent thugs,” in worthy of blame and reproach in death.

If we want to stop the violence, maybe we should look in the mirror, and look at racism, the most violent weapon in human history.  To deny race is to deny this history. To ignore racism and refuse to deal is to allow for the most dangerous weapon to continue to kill and kill without any consequence and intervention.  To wipe clean this history is to erase the pain and trauma of racial terror.  And worse, to keep repeating it, over and over.

Stand up for what’s right

written by  JLove and David Leonard

See, Judge, ACT:

What white folks can do:

Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ is a national network of groups and individuals organizing white people for racial justice. Become a member and get involved directly: http://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/

Don’t have time to organize?  At the very least:

-Sign up for ColorofChange.org and sign petitions demanding justice for all

-Donate to ColorofChange, SURJ and/or a multiracial group organizing around racial justice issues

-Post up on social media and circulate KNOWLEDGE so that your community is more informed; build an intentional community committed to justice, change, and accountability!

About the Authors

David Leonard is a professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race at Washington State University. http://drdavidjleonard.com/

JLove Calderon is a conscious media maker, social entrepreneur, and author of five books, including her latest: Occupying Privilege; Conversations on Love, Race, and Liberation. www.jlovecalderon.com

Editorial: America’s White Male Problem.. (Fear of a Black / Brown Planet)

Fear-of-a-Black-Planet-brownJust came across an interesting article on Alternet this morning called America’s White Male Problem.  It’s written by Frank Schaeffer an author and former right-wing Evangelical who talks about one of the underlying reasons behind some of the nihilistic directions this country seems to be taking has to do with deep-seated fears and pathology and not politics.. Here’s an excerpt of what he wrote…

The American political process is being hijacked by a reckless, whining dangerous gang of psychologically damaged white men who are far-right ideologues. I used to be one of them. It’s time to tell the truth about our white male problem.

Not everyone who disagrees with the president is a racist. Not even most people who do are. But the continuous attempt by the white far-right in Congress to shut down the government rather than work with our black president has a lot to do with racism. And lurching from manufactured crisis to crisis isn’t about politics; it’s about pathology. It doesn’t make sense politically to take the blame for risking America’s future — and the Republicans know they will take the blame — so how can we conclude other than something else is going on here?

I’m not talking about the white young male mass murderers we’re afflicted with carrying assault rifles courtesy of the NRA. I’m talking about the white far-right males who hijacked the 112th Congress and are set to destroy the 113th. They have metaphorically done to our country what the killer in Newtown literally did to 20 children, and for the same apparent reason: alienation from the mainstream and retreat to a paranoid delusional fantasy land of — literal — mental impairment.

This has less to do with politics and more to do with the fear and mental illness that grips a willfully ignorant minority of white males. But the mainstream media is talking about everything but the underlying racial, cultural and mental health issues afflicting the white male minority of far-right congressmen holding us all hostage. And the extreme insanity of the right-wing rhetoric over the last four years, from “birther” to Obama-is-a-Muslim etc., conclusively points to something other than politics.

The manufactured crisis we face are not about economics. These self-inflicted wounds are about a few people’s fear of being marginalized.

It’s not considered polite to mention race anymore. But I’m going to mention it anyway. We have a white problem.

You can continue reading the article  at http://www.alternet.org/americas-white-male-problem

You can also listen to our Hard Knock Radio interview w// Frank Schaeffer by clicking the link below

Dr Francis Cress Welsing

Dr Francis Cress Welsing

As you read this article I want people to pay attention to what Schaeffer is talking about when he talks about the psychological problems that are at play with some who are pushing extreme measures… Fear of Black/ Brown Planet... This is what Dr Frances Cress Welsing talked about years ago… Here’s a couple of videos…The first video talks about the massive lies that have been laid upon People of color…Pay close attention to the second and third videos where Welsing debates William Schockley a leading scholar from Stanford University who believed that Black people were genetically inferior.

Francis Cress Welsing.. The Gigantic Lie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n9-S5NhGMQ

Francis Cress Welsing..vs William Schockley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0AUA_J4zE4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgK6sskKmJ4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgK6sskKmJ4

Racism is Alive and Well in America..Black Postal Worker Attacked

This is a disturbing especially in midst of all the hatred and vile speech we hear on radio and seen at Tea Party events.. I said it once I’ll say it again, this is the  Reconstruction Era all over again and folks of good will and open hearts will have to step up and seriously condemn these types of scenarios. They are not as uncommon as one might think..

For those of us experiencing such treatment, we better learn better coping skills. No way one should have to put up with this.  Walk away is the first rule. Do not be glutton for punishment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnm_cSgPzmM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65aSdUMSJmY

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Here’s What’s Driving the Racial Hysteria this Country is Facing…Dr Francis Cress Welsing Explains the Psychology Behind White Supremacy

Dr Francis Cress Welsing

Wanna know why we have this intense racially charged reaction to President Barack Obama being in the White House?  It’s not because people may disagree with his policies. That’s understandable and fair game, but when you have a 400% increase in threats and this over the top maligning of his character mired in racial stereotypes, there’s something else going on. Perhaps we can find some answers rooted in what psychologist Francis Cress Welsing talks about in with her Race and Color Confrontation Theory.

Cress Welsing states white supremacy is a system is practiced by the global white minority, on both conscious and unconscious levels, to ensure their genetic survival by any means necessary. According to Cress Welsing, this system attacks people of color, particularly people of African descent, in the nine major areas of people’s activity: economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and war. Cress Welsing believes that it is imperative that people of color, especially people of African descent, understand how the system of white supremacy works in order to dismantle it and bring true justice to planet Earth.

Below are clips from an appearance that Welsing made on the film Donahue show where she breaks all this down.. You can read her works in the Isis Papers and The Keys to the Colors..

After you watch the Phil Donahue excerpts you can scroll down and watch the historic debate between Francis Cress Welsing and Dr William Shockley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntJw6Red6k8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezk6DzLldBI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxVCg3i2C6A&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWePnfLBgj4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWvxVbsI8rg&feature=related

Francis Cress Welsing vs Dr William Shockley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O01PUOxE5Wk&feature=related

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Why Hip Hop Won’t Tangle With the Tea Party

Why Hip Hop Won’t Tangle With the Tea Party: Call for a Militant Mind Militia

by TRUTH Minista Paul Scott

 Whatcha do get your head ready. Instead of gettin’ physically sweaty”

                         Welcome to the Terror-dome-Public Enemy

In breaking news, two of Hip Hop’s most popular artists died today. In what was the culmination of a year long beef, an altercation in the middle of 52nd street has left both men dead. No, they didn’t shoot each other. As they stood arguing in the middle of the street, they were run over by a Tea Party Express bus that was running late for a rally…

Beef. That is one word with which the Hip Hop community has become very familiar over the last decade and a half. The term has resulted in many tragedies in the black community ranging from neighborhood feuds to deaths on street corners. Black people taking it to other Black people is an everyday occurrence in ‘hoods across the country. This is what makes the Hip Hop community’s (and the black community, in general) lack of response to the current climate of hate fueled by the Tea Party, Birthers and other agents of White Supremacy especially disturbing.

For the last year, anti-Afrikan behavior has escalated from anti -Black propaganda being promoted on radio stations to black Congressmen being called racial slurs and spat upon. All over the country Right Wing racists are rallying thousands of people, while black folks are pretending not to notice.

Since Hip Hop has always prided itself as being the true voice of the black community, you would think that rap artists would be on the front line fighting against these disses to black folks.

Not so.

So far, there have been, relatively, few Hip Hoppers calling out the Right Wingers. This is not to say that “no” rap artists are speaking out on issues, as there are Hip Hop Freedom Fighters in communities across the country but most have heard about the attacks that came upon such political artists such as Professor Griff and Sister Souljah in the 80’s/90’s and don’t want the same thing to happen to them. Many of them feel that even if they did take a stand, an unorganized, apathetic black community would just leave them hanging.

I don’t know if you noticed it or not but radio stations have even stopped playing “violent” music over the last few months. Instead, radio has dumped violence for misogyny. While we must not condone black on black violence in any form, the rationale for the sudden change in radio rotation must be examined.

The industry knows that one of the by products of Hip Hop has been black male rebelliousness. This is why those in power were quick to blame incidents of racial unrest such as the Virginia Beach and  LA rebellions (riots) of the late 80’s/early 90’s on the music of groups like Public Enemy. Immediately, they went to work to replace revolutionary Hip Hop with gangsta tales of black on black homicide and chemical genocide (crack sales). During the following decade, since  “racism” became less overt, the black male displaced aggression generated by Hip Hop was used on other black males.

However, with racism/White Supremacy becoming more “in your face” over the last year, the “powers that be” don’t want to risk the fratricidal message of gangsta rap to be misinterpreted as a call to “fight the power.” They know that with a change of a couple of words a 50 Cent song becomes a Dead Prez-like call to “bang on the system.” So now, all you hear on the radio is “stripper music” dealing with girls instead of guns.

The agents of white supremacy have studied our history well. They know the success that Bunchy Carter, Fred Hampton and others had in transforming gang bangers into revolutionaries during the Black Power Era. They know that a Blood or Crip esposed to a  strong dose of political education has the potential to become Black Panther or Deacon for Defense.

They also know that even the most hardcore thug will become outraged if while flippin’ the channel between Hip Hop stations, he hears a Right Wing radio host call him a “no good bum who will never amount to anything” and his mother a “lazy welfare queen.”

And with the escalation of anti-black rhetoric from Right Wing radio hosts this scenario is possible if not probable.

In every city the Right Wingers are organizing their troops via Conservative radio stations, as media giants such as Clear Channel have begun converting their country music stations into virtual 100,000 watt Ku Klux Klan headquarters. In, North Carolina they recently turned 106.1 FM into “Rush Radio, named after their star player, the infamous Rush Limbaugh. Clear Channel realizes that all politics is local so ,although they broadcast the likes of Sean Hannity, Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, throughout the day , during the morning drive time, their programming becomes early morning strategy sessions. So while the nationally syndicated bigots like Limbaugh lay out the national strategy, the local hosts and their listeners politic on  how to implement it locally. All the while black folks are busy lip syncing, “How Low Can You Go” on their way to work, totally oblivious to the plans being devised on the talk radio station at the end of the dial.

In NC, the WRDU “Morning Show” insults black folks every morning with the same Right Wing racist garbage without being challenged. They have even set up a chat room where their racist listeners hold strategy sessions every morning from 5:30AM to 9AM EST because they know that most black folks are too busy laughing at J. Anthony Brown jokes on the Tom Joyner Morning Show to pay them any attention.

Twenty years ago, we would have never stood still for this disrespect without challenging it. However, nowadays we are too busy getting into Internet “beefs” on YouTube with other Afrikans that we don’t seem to have time to challenge those who espouse the tenets of white global domination and the oppression of Afrikan people.

That is why it is important that we form “Militant Mind Militias” in  ‘hoods across the country to counter the lies and attacks on black culture from the Right wing. We have to start calling in to these Right Wing racist talk shows and challenging their racist rhetoric.

Don’t get it twisted, this has nothing to do with whether one agrees with the politics of Barack Obama. This is about the anti-Afrikan white supremacist ideology being spewed by the Tea Party and the rest of their crew.

It is time that we dust off our Neely Fuller and Amos Wilson books and put the principals into action.  Some of us have read hundreds of books on African History but only use the information to prove that we are intellectually superior to our black brothers and sisters; never once challenging the Ph.D carrying members of white supremacist think tanks.

It is time that we start using Youtube, Facebook and Twitter for something more than booty calls and coonery.

It is time that we start using our Afrikan minds to challenge white supremacy ideology.

Militant Mind Militias must be started immediately using our strong Afrikan intellect as weapons.

We have nothing to lose but our mental chains.

I know that some of you are going to cop out and give 100 reasons why we should  not get into ideological debates with white folks. You really only need one reason to do so; our people need to see black intelligence in action. Isn’t that what inspired us to follow the teachings of Malcolm X, Dr. Khallid Muhammad and Dr. John Henrik Clark, that they were not afraid to challenge the best white scholars in open debate?

The ancestors are crying out for us to engage the oppressor in a battle of the minds.

Unfortunately, so far, Hip Hop and most black folks have been missing in action.

TRUTH Minista Paul Scott writes for No Warning Shots Fired.com. He can be reached at (919) 451-8283 or info@nowarningshotsfired.com

For examples of the racism being spewed every morning by 106.1 FM in North Carolina visit
http://wrdu.com/pages/morningrush.html

No Warning Shots Fired.com
(Hardcore News and Views with a Gangsta Attitude)
http://www.nowarningshotsfired.com
(919) 451-8283

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. . . and the ‘hood pass’-Adam Mansbach Goes in on John Mayer

. . . and the ‘hood pass’-Adam mansbach Goes in on John Mayer

By Adam Mansbach
AS JOHN Mayer’s racially-charged comments in Playboy magazine ricocheted around the Internet this week, I found myself exhausted by the sad reality that the national dialogue on race remains driven by the engine of celebrity gaffes and gotcha moments.

Our voracious, ADHD-afflicted news cycle castigates, forgives, and forgets at a rate that precludes sustained discussion, so expect Mayer to spend a week with his head on the chopping block and then jog away, rubbing his neck, to join Chris Matthews, Harry Reid, Michael Richards, Geraldine Ferraro, Don Imus, and John Rocker on the list of figures whose shocking transgressions have faded to dim memories.

An analysis of such incidents and their scant longterm fallout suggests that it is now more acceptable to publicly spout racism than to publicly accuse someone of spouting racism. Look for Mayer to continue to make a vague apology to a fanbase and a punditry eager to excuse racist action because they can find no racist feeling behind it. Look for Mayer to swear he’s never uttered the n-word before and never will again, and look for the context in which he said it and the clumsy if well-intentioned point he was trying to make about white privilege to be obscured.

Look for him to continue not address more problematic statements from the interview, in particular the one about his male organ being a “white supremacist’’ — a flippant attempt to explain his dating preferences that takes up the language of dehumanization and reveals a blithe willingness to reinforce any number of stereotypes about sex, race, and desirability. Look for the mainstream media to ignore that comment too.

Look for the “hood pass’’ Mayer stumbled so badly in trying to discuss to be serially snatched away and restored in a blogopshere-wide game of capture-the-flag. Far more importantly and indicatively, look for the very notion of a “hood pass’’ to go largely unexplored.

The “hood pass’’ is symbolic of white acceptance, personal or artistic, by the black community. Although both the notion of a monolithic black community and the conflation of blackness with the “hood’’ are problematic, the “hood pass’’ has been widely accepted. Part of the reason may be that it appears to place agency in the hands of black people, as arbiters of who and what constitutes tolerable incursion. Given the profound legacy of white co-option and exploitation of black life and culture, this might seem like a step in the right direction.

The problem with the “hood pass,’’ though, is that it turns racial progressivism from an activity to a state of being. It places engagement with this country’s system of structural racism, and the privileges white people accrue from it, in the past tense — as if everybody in possession of a “hood pass’’ has already fought and won what is actually an ongoing struggle with one’s self and one’s country.

This complacency underwrites the widespread belief of young white Americans that they can be as “down’’ as necessary by consuming black cultural artifacts pushed by media conglomerates whose profits depend on expert marketing of the ghetto to the exurbs, black to white, and visceral “realness’’ to a generation of voyeurs. Full of empathy and short on identity, with few relationships to actual black people and less understanding of the machinations of institutional racism, they conclude that they, too, have “hood passes.’’ Through the magic of circular logic, they then conclude that every stereotype they embrace is as legitimate as they are. Much as Mayer seems to have.

It was a conversation with an old friend, filmmaker Kesime Bernard, that reminded me what we stand to gain by talking about the latest display of ignorance by an avatar of a culture that rewards it. “Our generation has built a cottage industry around uncomfortably edgy racial humor,’’ she wrote, “but the reaction is as important as the delivery.We carve out boundaries in real time. These little celebrity scandals do ‘teach’ us little by little where we stand.’’

I want to believe she’s right — that we can make this not about Mayer’s hood pass, but the hood pass, not one rock star’s cavalier bigotry, but the millions nodding to it. That Americans can learn from where we stand, and that we stand for something. Because if we don’t, as the old saying goes, we’ll fall for anything.

Adam Mansbach is author of “The End of the Jews,’’ and “Angry Black White Boy.’’

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Did President Obama Come too hard with his ‘No Excuses’ Speech to the NAACP?

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People are buzzing about President Obama’s speech to the NAACP the other night. It’s getting a lot of praise for being energetic. It received a rousing standing ovation.  Many are saying he spoke sobering words that really needed to be heard during these hardtimes. He called for personal responsibility. he encouraged parents to step it up and be more involved.

He basically let us know that times are changing, the world is more competitive and quite frankly with him being in the White House a whole lot of non-Black folks aren’t trying to hear any excuses as to why we aren’t making it.

He pointed out that there are lots of opportunities for people to take advantage to move forward and its sad that so many are not.

Minista Paul Scott feels that President Obama glosses over important issues about race and racism

Minista Paul Scott feels that President Obama glosses over important issues about race and racism

On the other hand there are those like Truth Minista Paul Scott who emphatically feel that a good speech and false perceptions held by others do not erase systemic conditions. Police brutality, poverty and institutional racism have not disappeared with the election of President Obama. In fact they may have gotten worse as there seems to be a backlash to America electing its first Black president.

Paul brings to the forefront some other interesting facets to consider including Obama’s tendency to downplay white supremacy when he talks about race. He feels that when Obama speaks to Black people he’s doing so to appease whites hence he adapts a harsh ‘personal responsibility’ tone. Paul points out personal responsibility is a good thing, but it suggests that many of the barriers in front of us are there because we aren’t trying hard enough. Racism is there because we have not educated ourselves enough. 

Paul suggest that Preisent Obama take a look at Carter G Woodson’s book ‘The Miseducation of the Negro”.

Anyway take a listen to the two speeches and let us know what u think. Was Obama on point with his make no excuses speech or is Minista Paul Scott correct in pointing out that some excuses are just too damn big to ignore.

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