Kat Edmonson - Be The Change That You Want To See

MYSTIQUE MAN

By: Donovan X. Ramsey

Prayer For A Random Black Man

Prayer For A Random Black Man
the search for-- and loss of -- a birthright
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
By William Jelani Cobb

I have been high on Obama for the last month, rambling on about new eras and dividing lines of history. And these are intoxicating times, days when hopes we were afraid to harbor have come so close to harvest.

But I crashed hard last week the day I was told that a student I knew, a brilliant, beautifully gifted young Morehouse brother was dead, the victim of a gunshot wound that resembled a suicide. Two days later I learned that my first cousin, a member of the Bloods, had been shot dead in his home and the house set ablaze. It was then that I remembered that the world is not so well choreographed, that we drag fragments of awful into our dreams and the bitter past is always, always with us. This is the second time I've had to pick up my pen to exorcise the grief of two black men killed in the same week. Forgive me if I repeat myself.

These are the moments that make our contradictions apparent, like what it means to come closer than we ever dared imagine to fulfilling the dream while one million of us languish behind bars and forty percent of our children live in poverty.

There were other unruly contradictions: one black man gone, leaving a body of mournful students in his wake. Another lived such a life that his eulogy would be gunspray and homicide and malt liquor libation. And they were both lives that were reaped before they ripened. I find myself asking open-ended questions: What does a prayer weigh and does it have an expiration date? Do they bear fruit in the summer and turn brittle in the winter night? And what is your debt to those who have prayed for you?

These days when people ask my religion I tell them I'm an apostle of history and they wonder if I am cracking a joke that they didn't get. But I know that history cannot be revoked and we have 389 years of it on these shores. I also know that before law or statute or judicial decree, integration in America began when the first African's bones were laid to rest in this hostile soil. We have only gained ancestral momentum since then.

I did not have the foresight to offer this sermon to my student or my kin and I will write it now as a psalm or an editorial prayer or a sad rambling for whoever finds use in it. Were I a wiser man, I would have told them this:

My own history has taught me that the devil is a black dog named despair; he stays on your trail like the slave hounds after a fugitive. The old spiritual tells us to Wade in the Water; I am sure this was meant in hopes that the dogs would lose the scent.

I would have said with all certainty: your life is not your own, it is a culmination of prayers and longings voiced before your grandmother was born. You fulfill this debt not by what you do for us, but by how you live your life and what you bequeath to those yet unborn. Your laughter is the deferred joy of your ancestors and your sorrows are a leftover from the even greater trials buried in the past.

I once read that a woman never stops carrying her children, that residual cells from each life she brings into this world remain inside her for life; I wondered if history worked the same way, that part of your life remains embedded within us and binds you to us. We give you the best of our flawed selves and this is the only real inheritance you will ever gain. Your task is to take that and make of it what your talents tell you. This is the meaning of tradition and it is the only way we know to bring the black dogs to heel.

I know of what I speak. I am a black man with a Ph.D. raised by a black man with a third-grade education. I took the backwater Georgia wisdom he left me and used it to write books. And in turn I leave those who come after a legacy of folk knowledge and book knowledge as raw material for their own doings.

We are nineteen generations deep in America and there is a generation of us that rests beneath the Atlantic Ocean. The could tell us that the obstacles behind us loom much larger than those in front of us. And that the only way those dogs ever catch you is if you stop moving forward.

William Jelani Cobb, Ph.D. is an associate professor of history at Spelman College. His third book, now available from NYU Press: To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic

Erykah Badu - Honey

Erykah Badu's video for her single, "Honey", off her new album "New Amerykah: Part One [4th World War]."

Estelle Feat Kanye West - American Boy

Bush’s Veto of Bill on C.I.A. Tactics Affirms His Legacy

By Steven Lee Myers
March 9, 2008

New York Times

President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency’s latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques.

Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using interrogation methods like waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad. Many such techniques are prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies.

The veto deepens his battle with increasingly assertive Democrats in Congress over issues at the heart of his legacy. As his presidency winds down, he has made it clear he does not intend to bend in this or other confrontations on issues from the war in Iraq to contempt charges against his chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, and former counsel, Harriet E. Miers.

Mr. Bush announced the veto in the usual format of his weekly radio address, which is distributed to stations across the country each Saturday. He unflinchingly defended an interrogation program that has prompted critics to accuse him not only of authorizing torture previously but also of refusing to ban it in the future. “Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists,” he said.

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Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Video

Song & video featuring an all-star cast, By Will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas. Inspired by Barack Obama's 'Yes We Can' speech.

The One's We've Been Waiting For

By: Donovan X. Ramsey

On February 5th 2008, a man that very well could be the next President of the United States, stood before a crowd of Americans as diverse as this nation and proclaimed that, “we are the one that we’ve been waiting for.” He could not have been more right. The upcoming Presidential election – in particular the candidacy of Barack Obama- has produced and highlighted many things. It has been a sounding board through which people have had overdue conversations about race and gender in the context of political power. This race has encouraged Black Americans to take stock of our problems, priorities and personal politics. It has brought to light issues and policies that have too long gone ignored by the ruling class and most importantly it has reminded Americans that we do still have a choice. We are reminded that life, like hope, is not some intangible idea or far-off finish line but a choice that we make everyday.

Brothers, there are those who see the electorate that we represent; young, educated and, Black as less than substantial. They believe that having existed so long out of the political processes of this country that we are easily hypnotized by pretty words and lofty promises. Some believe that we do not have the experience to recognize the change that we wish to see, let alone to be it. To them I answer that no generation knows more intimately the crisis that we face. We have never existed in a world where global warming wasn’t a threat. We have never seen a day where suicide bombers didn’t menace the prospect of peace in the Middle East. We have never inhabited a time where weapons of mass destruction didn’t sit poised ready to put an end to this fragile blessing that we call life. I answer that this generation, as much as any other, realizes that we have a loaded gun aimed straight at our future and we are compelled by the mistakes of the past to live in what Dr. King referred to as, “the fierce urgency of now.”

The winds of politics have, and will continue to, tug at the hearts and minds of the American electorate as I have seen them do here, in this microcosm of Morehouse College. I do not in any way claim that one candidate has a monopoly on the hope, will, or the resolve to pull this world out of our “improved means to an unimproved end.” What I do know for sure though is that this nation is starting to feel again. Something is shaking the foundation of this country like it hasn’t in years and we cannot miss our opportunity. The naysayers will always have their mouths full with words of doubt and complacency but what if the time really is now? What if we really are the ones that we’ve been waiting for? I have believe deeply, as Bruce Barton stated that, "Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance." Unequivocally, our circumstances are daunting and the risk is great but in the face of unprecedented adversity, we are the ones that we’ve been waiting for and we must be greater.

Bridging the Generation Gap: My Problem With Old Black People

By: Donovan X. Ramsey

There have been numerous incidents in recent years that have driven a wedge between the generation that I belong to and the generations that have proceeded. The most notable being when "America's father," Bill Cosby asked at the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, "Who are these sick Black people and where did they come from and why haven't they been parented to shut up?" The sick Black people referred to, and the topics of his rant and a subsequent book, were the youth of Black America. "These people" who apparently stopped being our people somewhere around the early 90's are consistent subjects of controversy and conversation. From nightly news sound bites to the many panel discussions on Hip-Hop, the message is clear: "these people" are f*****g up.

Those who pose questions like Cosby's would ask us to take a break from contextual analysis. They would have us believe that somewhere circa 1980; black babies sprung up from the ground (much like Cabbage Patch Kids) to wreck havoc and destroy all the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. They would have us believe that after every Black person over 60 banded together and walked shoulder to shoulder with Dr. King and created a perfect launching pad for the race, young people with the help of Rap music, began subsequently dismantling it. Somewhere in between that time; they also created the n-word, child illegitimacy, and crack. While this may be the most convenient answer (however improbable), the simplest one is that they came from those who came before.

While Cosby's comments represent an extreme, he is just the tip and one facet of the iceberg. Another facet is how the conflict between the old guard Black leadership and Black youth culture has been heightened by the 2008 Presidential election, one that has proven itself to have special significance. In a race that has become increasingly about a shift of generations, ideas, and perspectives, it was no surprise to me that prominent Civil Rights leaders like former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and Georgia Representative John Lewis expressed support for Senator Hillary Clinton despite the groundswell of support among Black voters for Senator Barack Obama (young people in particular). It is also no surprise to me that the one group that I have had the most hostile debates with, about the election, have been Black Americans 45+. In short, this is indicative of a fundamental difference between the worldviews of two generations and the struggle it has produced.

On one hand you have a generation that lived with and, in many cases, personally experienced the brutality of pre-Civil Rights America. They fought the good fight and carried the torch of advancing Black interests in a time when doing so could prove lethal. They appealed to the system and worked well within it. For that, they deserve our abiding respect and gratitude. What they don't deserve, however, is to hold the torch forever. They shouldn't carry that torch forever not because they aren't able (our elders have been tested and have earned their stripes) but because the world is changing and it is no longer their cross to bear. On the other hand, you have members of a generation who have benefited from the gains of the Civil rights Movement and have had to come of age in a society with a much more sophisticated racist power structure. We have a higher profile and through Hip-Hop have been given the most powerful voice in all of media (partly because we "haven't been parented to shut up.")

The difference in our experience and the contrast in our approaches have seemingly caused a rift but is the generational gap really that wide? I believe not and I think the first step to bridging it is in remembering that "these people" are indeed our people. Although a recent graduate of Morehouse College may not think, speak, or dress like Dr. King, it does not mean that he is less qualified to lead because after all, this hour doesn't need another Dr. King. In the words of that great man, "This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed non-conformists." So I ask anyone 45+ and within eyeshot of this page to realize that "these people" came from you people and to focus less on the package and more on the content because the dedication that Dr. King spoke of could very well come in the form of a rapper just as it could a Southern preacher.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: More Than A Day Off

Any number of historic moments in the civil rights struggle have been used to identify Martin Luther King, Jr. — prime mover of the Montgomery bus boycott, keynote speaker at the March on Washington, youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate. But in retrospect, single events are less important than the fact that King, and his policy of nonviolent protest, was the dominant force in the civil rights movement during its decade of greatest achievement, from 1957 to 1968.

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Dr. King's "I Have A Dream Speech" video.

Say What?!: Lupe Overdoses On the Cool?

When the gangbangers would try to pull it, I was like, ‘Yo, I will f**k you up. And if you wanna call your cousin, call him. I’ll call me! I’ll call me right now.’ We were shooting TEC-9s when we were babies, so the whole gangsta image, that ain’t nothing.” - - Lupe Fiasco for Entertainment Weekly

Marion Jones, Stripped of Medals, Talks to Oprah

Olympic champion Marion Jones appeared on Oprah today and told the talk-show queen that she took responsibility for lying to the government about steroids and a money laundering scam, lamented the impact it had on her friends and family, and is fretting about how she is going to tell her two sons about having to spend six months in jail.

"I have no regrets for doing what I did on October 5," she said of pleading guilty and admitting on national television that she lied. "I want people to understand everybody makes mistakes." She continued, "I truly think a person's character is determined by their admission of their mistakes and beyond that, what they do about it."

Oprah asked the disgraced former sprinter why she lied in the first place, to which Jones responded, "I made a mistake. I made the choice to, at that time, protect myself, to protect my family, and I've paid the consequences dearly."Aside from her jail sentence, the 32-year-old Jones was also stripped of the five medals (three of them gold) she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and has also seen all of her performances since September of that year erased from the record books.

"I've returned the medals, the performances have been taken away. But they pale in comparison to seeing my husband cry," she said. "They pale in comparison to have to see my mother have to stand there in the courtroom and bawl."

Top Flight Security of the AUC

By: Donovan X. Ramsey

Janet Jackon- "Feedback"

Despite lingering controversy from the Super Bowl fallout and dismal sales of her last album, Janet (Ms. Jackson if you're nasty) is back and as hot as ever. With the release of her new single and video for "Feedback," she remind us why she has 20+ years in the game. Her new album "Discipline" is slated for a February 26th release date.