I just can’t help but wonder how this would have played out if the man was a person of color? I’m just saying.

e.

at the hands of the police. I hadn’t read my google reader in a few days, and I first came across the story over at postbougie. A quick google search provided no actual news, except for blogs. I’m so pissed.

The story: around 2 am on New Years a few brown men were pulled off the train for an altercation. some were handcuffed, others weren’t. among those not handcuffed was 22 year old Oscar Grant. Apparently Mr. Grant was pleaded with the cops to not taser him, when they put him face down on the ground and shot him. Don’t believe me? It was caught on tape by two different people.

Granted it’s on a camera phone, you can still clearly see a cop holding Oscar down and another cop shotting him. What’s more crazy is that are MAD people watching, inside the train and on the platform. It’s just soo brazen I can’t believe it.

Of course the cops are trying to argue that he was trying to pull out his taser gun and mistakenly pulled out a gun. I’m sorry but a taser gun looks different than a real gun. Very different. And the worse part is that like Rodney King, these cops will probably be acquitted.

I finally found the story on CNN. Do a search for Oscar Grant and the first story is how the cop is getting death threats. Then you see the story about Oscar himself. Enough. American needs to start caring about Black men anf it needs to start now.

e.

cross posted at evahaldane.com

In the highly anticipated yet grossly diluted (this is solely my opinion) CNN series “Black in America”, Michael Eric Dyson stated that he feels that he was afforded more opportunities to have a flourishing, prosperous life than his brother because Eric is of a lighter hue and his brother is darker….and thus incarcerated. The “rapper” Yung Berg went public with his preference for light-skinned women over dark-skinned women. The producer Polow da Don has been long accused of shunning black women completely and targeting white women as potential mates, although he actually prefers “white women with a little black in them and black women with a little white in them” (whatever that means). It’s the year 2008, and “colorism” is still an issue that the African- American race deals with. Is it as big of a deal as we make it out to be? Or are we not focusing on it enough?

Who says beauty, intelligence, and prosperity belongs only to African-Americans of a lighter hue? I’ve heard darker African-American females “hate on” lighter African-American females because they feel that men prefer them with their light skin and “wet and wear” curly hair. An African-American male has once said to me that he thinks that “light-skinned women are crazy…they think the world owes them something because they think they are cute.” Is life really harder for those of us who are darker? I can name several darker African-Americans, including myself, who’ve succeeded without scratching and surviving on an extreme level. Oprah Winfrey. Michael Jordan. Condoleezza Rice. Perhaps anything worth having is based on one’s ability to perform vs. what he or she looks like. There are also lighter African-Americans who’ve had unfortunate situations occur in their lives, past and present. Rosa Parks was asked to sit in the back of the bus like all other African-Americans, and Halle Berry has yet to have a successful marriage. She’s been beaten on and cheated on. Can it get any worse than that?

So, when are we going to stop pointing the finger at others and blaming each other for where we are and how we feel about ourselves? Dyson’s brother isn’t incarcerated because he’s darker. He’s incarcerated due to decisions that he made and activities that he chose to participate in. Is it that Sarah wasn’t offered the job because she’s dark, or because she doesn’t interview well? If that guy passes you over because you are darker, then is that someone that you really need to put your energy and effort into? You are where you are based on decisions you’ve made, regardless of what the influence may have been. Own it.

In my opinion, “colorism” becomes an issue when you value what others think about you more than you value your own opinion of yourself. If you believe that you are intelligent, beautiful, and worthy of nothing less than the best, then no man, woman, child, boss, pastor, spouse, or family member should be able to easily take that away from you whether you are dark, light, black, or white. If I had to put myself in one of two buckets, I’d be in the dark-skinned bucket. As a matter of fact, my “hue bucket assignment” was addressed indirectly a few weeks ago. Case in point, I was out partying in Atlanta recently with one of my friends of a lighter hue. Her male friend says to her, “Oh, I see you have your chocolate friends out with you tonight.” Was I offended? No. Why not? Three things: self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-love. There’s always room for improvement, and we should all strive to be better people. However, at the end of the day, in the words of Erykah Badu, “I’m alright with me.”

Learn how to block other people and their mess out on occasion, and spend time with yourself. Know yourself. Love yourself and each other. Because society is so wayward and bass-ackward, “colorism” and other “isms” will still exist; however, you’ll be in a better position to combat those negative forces and not let them chip away at your mind, body, and soul.

Build a strong foundation but realize that it starts on the inside, not the outside.

Peace,
Quiana

First let me apologize for the delay in posts – blogger’s block and an insane work schedule were working against me. Anywhoo, we’re back! Without further ado, here’s SASSY’s take on CNN’s Black in America : Black Women and Family.

Rand Family piece – I wish I could say I was surprised about the White great great grandfather and the white side of the family, but I can’t. The white and black sides of the family meeting was really kumbaya for me, but I know who this program is geared to and I know that CNN needed to ease into the issues.

Now for the meat! Black children and our education system. The statistics are soo disturbing – 50% of black students graduate in 4 years. One student every 26 seconds drops out of high school. I am happy they paired our difficulties in education with success stories – there was touching scene of a family dropping their child off at college – the fifth of six children.

“The achievement gap between black and white students is appalling.” You said Soledad.

The programed followed a school that pays students for good well in school. I understand incentivizing education, I really do, but in my day (yeah i know that sounds so old) we just did well in school because we knew it would help us in the future. Of course children who are getting paid to learn are going to do well, but shouldn’t children to well in school simply because they value their future? I wonder what happens when the program ends. Will their love for learning die or will they continue working hard to get the best grades? I guess we’ll find out in two years when the evaluation is released.

I like Roland Fryer, I think his efforts are sincere. I’ve had the opportunity to meet Mr. Fryer before and he truly believes that by incentivizing education he will prevent children from dropping out, joining gangs and other trouble black children find themselves. I guess desperate times for desperate measures.

Black people and health care – speak on it. The emergency room shouldn’t be our doctor’s office. We often wait until it is too late. We don’t have health insurance and even some of us that do don’t go to the doctor’s office as often as they should. We are more likely to die from chronic diseases than white people. I understand the trust issues we have from the Tuskegee experiments but we also need to take care of ourselves. the lack of healthy food. I can attest that living in New York City there are only certain supermarkets that sell fresh produce and if you’re looking for organic food, forget it. It’s not accessible and it’s not affordable (especially in this recession)

I really wish they would have spent some time talking about mental health but there is only so much you can showcase in 2 hours.

The black middle class, an often ignored segment in the Black population, got about two seconds of air time. whomp whomp whomp. i loved it when Dr. Julianne Malveux (president of Bennett College) said, “Most of black people have not been arrested … most of black people do not engage in pathology.” Thank you!

fatherless families - Ah a subject I truly adore, I can go on for days about families without fathers. Here’s the synopsis: single mother, two jobs, five kids. This was described as the rule rather than the exception. Nearly 70% of black children are born to single mothers, that’s a fact. The importance of two parents cannot be denied, children who grow up in stable two parent households are more likely to graduate, less likely to become teen parents, you know this story.

“If it’s between living the life I want to live and getting married… I dunno.” – Chris Turner

the Single Black Women piece – educated, financially independent, single and black, sure that sounds about right. they say black men are intimidated, uhm, i buy that… a little. women are not meeting men on their level. Dr. Malveux broke it down like this “education, economics and incarceration” – and there you have it. We are in competition with so many other women – ok that sounds about right. The stats: 45% of black women are not and have never been married. That number scares me. The solution – the something new way – may be dating outside of our race.

HIV/AIDS, i’ve been waiting for this for 2 hours. AIDS is an epidemic in our community. We account for nearly 50% of all AIDS cases in America. We’ve got to get control over this disease and quickly. We need to start having safe sex. We need to get tested. We need to start talking to our sexual partners and ask those difficult questions. AIDS is the number one killer of Black women between the ages of 18 and 24.

Violence in the black community. There was nothing new in this story, just depressing stats and images of Black men in the emergency room. It was frustrating to watch the doctor try to convince a man who is in the hospital after having been shot/beat up/whatever to join a program to better his life. The number one cause of death for black men from their teens to 30 is homicide. We gotta do better

I loved that the whole special featured one (really big) family. I’m not sure why Black men are separated from the Black family… ok i do, but that’s another post.

Oh and the spoken word intros, please stop. Those are my thoughts on the special, what are yours?

peace,
e.

At the end of each week, we thought it’d be cool to share some most informative, crazy, funny and useful articles, blogs and videos.

U.S. Imprisons One in 100 Adults, Report Finds

Check out Amy Dubois (author of March’s book club book Get Yours) on March 27th.

Glamour magazine on Women, Race and Beauty

Stuff Educated Black People Like – we’ve been giggling all week

Shirley Chisholm is NOT to be forgotten now or ever

Did something catch your eye? Did we miss something big? If so, shoot us an email and tell us what you want to see.

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