Serena Williams Talks About $92 K Fine

While one black athlete is taking serious hits, another one learns how to dodge and deal with the legendary double standard. This is a blog by Serena Williams found on Global Grind. In it she talks about her controversial fine for her assertive conversation with a line judge in the recent US Open tennis championships. Finally, she has a voice! Speak sister, speak.

Hey Guys!

As the world seems to know or for those who don't I want to speak about my recently dubbed "outburst" and how I feel.

I have recently been fined by the Grand Slam Committee of the ITF (International Tennis Federation) over 82 thousand dollars for getting mad and using the "F-bomb" at a line Judge.

To clear things up FIRST I was NOT fined 82 thousand dollars. I was fined 92 thousand dollars! I paid 10 thousand dollars on site immediately after the U. S. Open. So for the record, I was fined $92,000 not $82,000! The biggest fine EVER in tennis.

Also for all those that don't know, I felt incredibly bad, and miserable for losing my cool, and most importantly not representing the person I really am spiritually and the role model I want to be to my young fans. I have been a very feisty player all my life, but when the time came for me to be calm and cool, I did not exercise a mild temper. How I regret not being a better role model and person to all of my fans. I apologized to my fans and even wrote a personal letter to the lines woman with my apologies. She understood as she often witnesses this as it is not uncommon in my sport, or any other sport. She was extremely supportive and said that she did not think any further actions should be taken against me.


A few years ago in a most important match being watched my millions; I was blatantly cheated and robbed of a US Open title by yet another official. I was again on the wrong side of not one or two, but several other bad calls. This incident however changed tennis. Because of what was incorrectly done to me, the whole sport of tennis adapted new technology for a player to challenge the calls lines persons make if the player feels they were wronged. I was expected to take solace in the fact even though I lost the U.S Open title (a dream I've been working for since I was 2 years old). At least others won't be wronged in the future. I am always happy for the next person. I always am. I received apologies from the USTA, the Lines Official, and the Head of the US Open. However I don't recall EVER receiving a note, a phone call, a letter even a text from anyone at the Grand Slam Committee ITF apologizing about the wrong and disastrous call one of THEIR officials made.

When I was a teenager I was booed by an entire packed stadium at Indian Wells. In my new book "On the line" I talk about how I remember crying on every changeover in the towel. Praying and wishing I could lose and the match would just be done with. When the match was over I thanked the crowd those that cheered for me, and even those that did not. Looking back I am still amazed how I remained so calm and positive, and even managed to come out on top.

The fact is every professional athlete gets wronged in one way or another. And every athlete gets upset. We have been working, sacrificing, missing out on numerous things, things we will never get back or experience for the sake of our careers. For the sake of that one moment in time where we have a chance to shine through.


Imagine for 20 years working day in, day out, sacrificing on countless things to get this job, that will make all your hard work and endless efforts worthwhile. Try to imagine having that promotion in one moment being taken away from you because of a slight over sight, by someone overseeing your work. 20 years gone away. Time to start over, dust yourself off and try again. You work harder make positive changes. It happens again.

"Dust yourself off" you say. "Try again"

You do just that. You work even harder than before, spend longer hours. Then it happens yet again. Another slight oversight.


Well this is what happened to me, and to be honest I believe I reached my boiling point. After yet ANOTHER wrong call I began to wonder- Was I being "overlooked" or wrongly judged on purpose!??? Is this being done to keep me from achieving my best? Why does this keep happening at the same place?

Throughout my career I have remained calm. But I guess I finally reached my breaking point. A point I should have never allowed myself to get to. Everything seemed to have surfaced. As you know, losing my cool cost me over 92 thousand dollars. 92 thousand dollars! This is more than most people make in a year. 92 thousand dollars! Answer this: Why is it another player who also lost HIS cool not to a line judge - like I did - but to the main officiating judge- using the same "f word" why was HE only fined 10 thousand dollars. Was what I did 10 times worse than what he did?!

There is another HE who was fined less than half of what I was fined after someone in his camp actually physically ATTACKED an official!!!!

What about the famous HE who made arguing with officials "cool". Cool for "MEN" I guess.
Is it because they are all HE's and not a SHE like me?

It is indeed a massive difference. Being American I guess the 1st amendment, freedom of speech, does not apply to a SHE in this case? In any event the Grand Slam Committee, ITF and its staff did not hesitate to call, send a note, text, nor write letters after this incident. Ironic is it not?

I don't mind being fined. If I did wrong I accept the repercussions. All I ask for is to be treated equal.

When I was fined the 92K, I asked to see if I could donate some of it to different schools, and programs I'm involved in. My request was denied. So, I decided to match the fine by raising money and donating an additional 92K to my 2nd school that I am opening up in Africa, as well as to schools that I am helping here in the United States. I also want to educate women about what I learned from this whole experience. How we as women are still treated as less than equal. I am going to turn this 92K into a positive!!! And I have decided to call it Serena's 92K mission!!! Go to Serenawilliams.com to learn more about my 92K mission.


Xxxx,
Serena Williams

A Response to Writer Jesse Washington's Article on Black Folk and Tiger Woods

I know I am putting a lot out there, but bear with me, this is long.

On a day that I vowed to focus on my dissertstion proposal, I have been inspired to deviate and respond to a deeply disturbing AP article written by Jesse Washington titled, "Tiger's Troubles Widens His Distance from Blacks."

(Photo of AP Writer Jesse Washington looking intellectual constipated)

In this article, Washington claims that discourse among black folk and in our circles illuminates our "resistance to interracial romance." He further comments that black peoples antagonism toward Tiger Woods illuminates the following:

This vexed some blacks, but it hasn't stopped them from claiming Woods as one of their own. Or from disapproving of his marriage to Elin Nordegren, despite blacks' historical fight against white racist opponents of mixed marriage.

But Woods has declined to identify himself as black, and famously chose the term "Cablinasian" (Caucasian, black, Indian and Asian) to describe the racial mixture he inherited from his African-American father and Thai mother. (click here for story)

Jesse, I'm sorry dude, but the issue goes a lot deeper and is traced much further than that. So as an African-American woman, I will respond to some of your Negro-esk comments that paint the African-American community as racist, social inbreds who cannot get over slavery like white people have.

When people like Washington erroneously point out "blacks resistance to interracial romance," not only does he homogenize the positions of black people, but he inaccurately explores an issue his small little brain cannot wrap around.

Then Washington insinuates that black people are also resistant because Tiger Woods' ascension as an icon in professional sports replaces two black men (Mohammed Ali and Michael Jordan) who competed in sports that were more colorized than gulf. The underlying implication is that these men also had black wives.

Washington never addresses the issue of how a sport gets to be exclusively played by whites, or is disproportionate in any racial category, thus removing racial segregration from the truth of the equation.

Even the sports of boxing and basketball, and all of the other major professional sports in the United States, were heavily segregated. Hell, recreation was segregated and limited to who had access.

In the case of gulf, it is who can get to a gulf course, but overarchingly, who has the money to play such an expensive game.

Furthermore, Washington does not even know that there are pockets of black people who compete in sports that blacks have not traditional been in such as hockey, swimming, tennis and surfing, and are still discriminated against. Didn't you read about the Philadelphia pool? Or you up on the Williams sisters?

And in the case of Tiger's creation of his own racial category, "Cablasian," black people were not in a tizzy that he attempted to recognize all of his ancestral DNA. It is the fact that this "plane-as-day-black-man," attempted to distance himself from his obvious African ancestry as much as possible---especially when we looked at his black pappy.

In many ways, Woods' distancing from his black heritage made him a more comfortable fit in a sport that did not accomodate darker hued faces. It is a known move where people of color must make xenophobic people feel at ease when they have not been around browner skins other than them cleaning up their houses or dancing a jig on the stage.

On top of all that, it was the shoulders of black atheles that Tiger Woods stands. Whether he wants to acknowledge it or not.

If it wasn't for people like Hank Aaron the ability to even get his black ass on a gulf course as a gulfer in a white country club known to discriminate against blacks would be a harder road to travel?

Like all people of color in the United States, it is through the struggle of African-Americans that pushed better race relations for all, even his Thai mother must say thank you.

However, in Woods' case, he probably doesn't even know that John Shippen was the first American born gulfer, and the first African-American gulfer to play in the US Open. Shippen was cultivated and trained at the first African-American social and country club called Shady Rest in Scotch Plains, NJ. (click here to read article found in the Star Ledger)

If it weren't for John Shippen, Tiger Woods would be playing put-put in flip-flops on a miniature golf course in Cypress, California.

Woods' Cablasian-ness, somehow eradicated his blackness, when clearly everyone saw him as a black man who had diverse heritage, rather than a white male with complex racial and ethnic roots.

Complicated Notions of Interracial Romance in Black Communities
Black people, specifically black people in the Americas are some of the most open people to of interracial couples.

As we were subjected to miscengation for hundreds of years, we have been the community to have to rear majority of the interracial children produced since Columbus' crew of men set foot on these shores.

Black communities have loved and reared these children and embraced them in spite of the social and political ramifications that were created when a child's DNA represented the oppressed and the oppressor.

Then when opan interracial black/white couples started to surface in the 60s, they were usually found in communites of color rather than white ones because often times white male mobs (especially when the man was not white) would assault or kill them.

The heart of the issue in black communites is that many of the interracial couplings we had were not romantic. Also, the atonement needed to reconcile for the pain of these forced relationships have never been on the agenda of race relations in the US. In there lies a problem.

Many people joke and are repulsed when they speak about how black women vocalize disdain when a black man dates a white woman.

Though sometimes, hell, most times, it is phrased as a bitter, black bitch who is complaining once again that she can't get a man; nevertheless, the uncomfortable and unanswered pains of black people, sexuality and mate selection is neglected.

Black women speak with a historical reference specifically embedded in the centuries-old unrelentless and socially acceptable sexual abuse by white males and the subsequent, and often forced reproduction of mixed race children by white men.

Black women and their white male rapists were the major produces of black/white offspring, not black men, or white women.

And because white males then and now still hold the upper echelons of power and perceived power, black women hold much of that pain and humiliation in our history of oppression.

Unbeknownst to most, there are horrific stories that we have heard or have been indirectly told of these narratives by female folk in our family.

So common was the rape of black women by white men from 1400 to 1975, that raping a black woman was not considered rape.

My grandfather was biracial due to his mother who was repeatedly forced into a sexual liason with the patron of a house she cleaned.

She was a married woman who had children with her black husband, and several biracial children with her post-slavery master, oh excuse me, her employer. They reared them as their own. This was in the early part of the 20th Century, but that was the order of the day.

And this is not some old slave tales. Look at the rape case between the North Carolina LaCrosse team and the African-American woman who provided gentleman's entertainment. She was coded as a stripper, thus unworthy of having any credibility. Never once did the media identify her as a college student who attended another school at a nearby campus and used stripping as a means to make money.

However, the waitress of Tiger Woods, and the escort of former Governor Spitzer have not been coded as a gutter jump off who used her sexuality to make money.

In addition to this, black women have uncomfortably been placed at the bottom of the aesthetic scale of Westernized beauty. Yes, we've been exoticized, hence Beyonce. We have even been called gorgeous, hence Halle Berry.

But these lighter-skinned young ladies do not define what is the standard and uber example of beautiful. It is still today, a white, pale, thin woman, with long, blonde, un-coily hair is the standard and occupies the top category of what is worshipped as striking.

This discussion is also traced in the oversexualization of black men who are still seen as volatile, sexually brutes who cannot control their sexual appetites. In the past, they were lynched by joyous white mobs for what was often false accusations (and in some cases consensual affairs) of engaging in some sexualized act with a white woman.

So salient was the fear of black men raping white women that the most distributed and seen movie to day is, "Birth of Nation," a racist film that highlights the killing of blackface white actor acting like a black man who attempted to violated Missy.

So when a black man decides to engage in interracial relationships, some of the black women who disagree are not only inquiring as to why she is not good enogh, but also she is asking, "Why does it have to be a white woman?" Meaning, "Why must you consort with the very icon that has oppressed black people?"

As well, there is an underlying secret that black men would be better off with a white woman because she knows how to act and thus treat a black man sexually, attitude-wise, and as a support system. As opposed to a black woman who still wears the stereotype of being uncouth, unattractive, disempowering, and an unsuitable mate.

If I cannot prove this in numbers, stats show that most black men in interracial relationships are with white women. This would be understandable if only black and white people lived on the planet, and especially in places such as the United States, but white people specifically are the least amount in numbers?

In direct and indirect ways, whether the people involved in interracial marriages want to admit it or not, in America, this romantic choice signifies black men selecting not only a social-cultural taboo, but agreeing that in their eyes, a white woman is the aesthetic and mate preference instead of black women.

Even though, this essay does not talk about love, I do know that love is a very real thing. I do acknowledge that love manifests in many ways. And I know that there are people who have wonderful interracial relationships (and especially for some reason black men who have slept with a white woman) who will disagree with these comments, but I had to put it out there.

For someone who has been approached by everything under the sun, I stand firm that choosing what we love, how we love it, and if we love it is a conscious (and unconscious) decision.

As one white gentleman told me that I was racist when I turned him down because I said I exclusively dated black males, I smiled and thanked him for the compliment. Shame me twice, I love to make love to people who look like my daddy.

Blog on, EcoSoul

I love this interview


Think about this...


Check out the list. It had me scratching my head.It is an old list, but I can add more.

NJ Nets Need Newark Love

I made history with the Nets last night. I was one of the sparsely seated audience (I dare not say fan) who took the giant step with the Nets garnering their horrible record of 18 straight losses in the first 18 games of the season.

I swear it looked like one of my old high school games. Lots of ass whooping by the Mavericks and the poor Nets were just running up-and-down the court without a clue. Hell, I felt like going onto the court and hacking Jason Kidd like I used to do as an off-guard who rarely got off the bench.

But I refrained. Tiger is already hemmed up on some bullshit. Allen Iverson has been humbled by going back to the 76ers at 100 years old (in NBA league years). How many other black athletes need to be shamed this week?

As I ate nasty french fries in the Izod Center last night, I was doing the classic black woman noise with famous phrase right after, "umph, umph, umph, this is a damn shame."

But Imma tell you what the problem is, the Nets need to permanently relolcate to Newark's Prudential Center. Word was that they were supposed to come this season because ticket sales were horrible.

To test out the move, there were two pre-season games in Newark and they sold out, even though the Nets did the predictable, lost both games; however, somewhere down the line someone pulled back on the deal and they are still at the stale Izod Center.

Now when they were in Newark, it was on and poppin'. Ain't no party like a Newark party! In the midst of them losing I had soooo much fun. The fries, the wine and the funnel cake were delicious.

Since there isn't shit to do in Newark, we were all happy to be engaged in something at the Prudential other than dodging the police during hockey night.

Too bad the white folks who had to trek over from Hackensack were scared. Oh well, comes with the territory.

Nets need to bring that ass here to Newark. Kiesha, Rahsaun and dem waiting. Holla!

Missy Gets Pissy: The Woods' and the Case of Double Standard Domestic Violence

(Please fill this in with your own comments regarding

this photo of Elin Woods tells Tiger Woods)

When Rihanna and Chris Brown's domestic violence incident hit the media, feminist organizations and middle-class mothers who watch Oprah were all over it. They wanted blood and Brown's testicles in a black'n blue hue. I could see it now, furious well-manicured house moms snatching their daughters' iPods and banning, "With You."

Today Chris Brown is hoping to fill up a 500-seater auditorium, to hell with Madison Square Garden.

What happens when it is reverse? In the case of Tiger Woods, absolutely nothing. In fact, it becomes a comedic moment for mainstream news and bloggers.

Not only is this double standard bullshit, it brings to question who really wants change and domestic violence to end when both genders are not held accountable for irresponsible and destructive actions.

Domestic violence against men is not only underreported, but not taken seriously by authories, or the public.

This translates to gutter-bucket women not only getting away with assault and battery, but even in some cases, them using the fact that the police will believe their side before their male companions and getting innocent men locked up.

I know several males who have dated the wrong woman and got the shortest end of any stick. A record and anger management classes that were based on lies.

Women who specialize in targeting professional athletes as meal tickets really need to take notes from Elin Woods and consider golf and hockey...well maybe not hockey, they are more likely to walk away with three teeth.

African-American Print, White Owners

I just spoke to a vendor of the Essence Music Festival and she said how difficult it has become over the years since Essence Communications Inc. contracted Rehage Entertainment to run the festival.

She explained that previous coordinators worked with grassroots and unknown visual and performing artists, fashion designers, jewelry makers and other afro-chic vendors, especially from Louisiana, but after Hurricane Katrina things have changed.

Rehage has removed previous workers and policies to implement ones that are silently eliminating those artists who have created the very fabric of the Essence Music Festival.

Also, this means that Rehage is a significant stock holder in this event and they'd be damned to let anyone mess up their money. If anyone knows you can make a lot off of black talent, it would be Rehage.

Rehage Entertainment is known to host its very Caucasian, "Voodoo Experience." It is annual event that brings white rock bands and diluted pop artists to NOLA to bastardized and commercialize black spiritual culture.

Essence Music Festival is just one example of black media, hell black arts only having a blackface.

You ever wondered how black festivals either get coopted or they go under? There are many reasons, but some of the main ones are around sponsorship, in-fighting, and commerciability.

The bigger festival coordinators want to grow, the more money is needed, therefore making festivals solicit to big corporate dollars such as Coca-Cola or Chase Manhattan Bank that put hugre and compromising clauses in their sponsorship contracts. For example, it is known that beverage companies emphasize that only their drink can be sold by venords.

In-fighting is another downfall. The egos and the greed by formerly well-meaning and conscious festival coordinators is an often implosion to events.

As well, festivals face the inevitable of being more "appealing" or "universal" to audiences to expand its traffice, and their goes the neighborhood. Soon you'll see more outsiders attending the event than locals and performers will feel more like Saarjtie Baartman (aka Hottentot Venus) standing naked in a Parisian square than an expressive soul.

This leads to my overall point, African-American print media now has white owners. Hence, Essence magazine that was bought by Time Inc. several years ago.

It is also well-known that Robert Johnson sold Black Entertainment Television to Viacom. I am not surprised by this because I was at a conference years ago when BET attempted to release a soft-porn station and Johnson was asked by a black reporter why the station continued to devolve in its programing. He blasted back with a comment I will paraphrase saying that what he did was entertainment and did not have to tackle serious issues because it was not what BET was about.

The once famous, The Source hip hop magazine has changed hands several times with its current owner, John Lewis Partnership out of the UK. As well, the fleeting, XXL and now defunct King is owned by Harris Publications.

The comatose Vibe was recently rebought by Quincy Jones, the former founder.

In September, Newsweek reported that Johnson Publishing's Company CEO, Linda Rice has been attempting to woo Time Inc. and Viacom to buy Ebony.

The only black-owned magazine that is still standing is Black Enterprise owned by Earl S. Graves Publishing Company, so they say.

I point to these print publications because most of these were trailblazers in black global media, spearheading issues and images you would never see. Now they are commodified parts of black culture in America that many think is still black owned. Moreso, the weak and diluted stories they've been covering for the last 20 years have compromised the voices of blacks in America completely.

This is where the discussion of political change versus economic change comes into play. Print magaiznes such as the Source or Jet had political positioning, but lacked basic economic foundations to be rooted media like the Washington Post.

Ironically, Oprah Winfrey who is still standing and dominating, used her positionality as a mammy for desperate housewives and white middleclass to do more in black communities across the globe fiscally (as well as finance her own tour to support President Obama) than all of these newspapers combined. Basically, her business moves are not only genius, but technologically savvy, though I heard her personality is extremely ugly.

So next time you save money to go stunting at the Essence Music Festival and you are at the Superdome trying to find your husband or look cute, please keep in mind you ARE NOT recycling black dollars.

Images and the Face of Female Labor

With the recent uproar regarding Google's Images and First Lady Michelle Obama, I decided to do a little query of my own.

I have been thinking about labor for the last several months. I've been trying to put into words how I can convey this notion of us re-thinking the value of our physical, intellectual, emotional, and cultural labor---especially with the Internet utilizing all four and making ka-zillions.

I Googled "labor" in the images section and the second image was the famous poster you see in the beginning of the blog called "Roise the Riveter." This symbol was conntected to white women's labor movement during WWII.

I say white women's labor movement because women of color in the US have always worked.
This iconic image challenged traditional notions of femaleness in the United States and represented women's support of war efforts by working in places males usually occupied up until the war.

Hmmm, I thought, this is interesting. One, because the poster says, "Honor Labor;" two, because there has existed a female labor force waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy before this photo.

Since America's inception, women of color have labored their whole lives, in non-traditional ways, as well as "traditional." And much of our labor is not even close to being honored, or even recognized.

Women in my family were known to be very muscular because of the physical labor endured when picking cotton, cutting sugar cane, or using a mule for the plow their whole lives crafted biceps that would make today's bodybuilder sick with envy.

These women were not much of women in the eyes of mainstream America, but workers who looked far from pale daintiness.

Women in my family also have various stress-related illnesses with dealing with careers that undermine their intelligence, or neglect their very presence.

And when they are recognized, it is a bitter struggle where they are the anomaly, who becomes the face of success.

She is broadcasted and becomes why institutionalized sexism and racism validates that Forutne 500 companies are indeed diverse thus the lack of color is the lack of savvy, leadership and brillance. This woman looks like this...
And even though women of color range in labor within the labor force, it is all too familiar that a woman in labor looks like this...but isn't new life supposed to be beautiful?

My Unthanksgivings List

When I was a staff writer for a print publication, my editor and I had stark ideological differences during our Thanksgiving issue.

Though we both agreed on the history of Thanksgiving and all the falsities and historical amnesia it encouraged, she chose to write a commentary about the things she was thankful. I, on the other hand, wrote about the hypocrisies.

She would often say to me that we must be grateful for the blessings that some people have. I would tell her that I totally agree, but why must we do it on this day, a day that gives energy to the same oppressive forces that keep us in the same miserable conditions.

Furthermore, why must we give "thanks" for being less miserable, and less fucked-up than the other person when in fact, that person's misery is our misery in some way or the other. We are not these disconnected people. Though we are disjointed in our actions and thinking, we are still linked, so in the end, we either reap each other's joy, or pay dearly for our sorrow.

So in truth fashion, I continue with my annual Un-Thanksgiving’s List for several reasons:

Firstly, few people recognize how the United States operates more like a slave camp than a united nation that celebrates the richness of its people and attends to its needs.

Secondly, holiday (holy days) fit the political, economic, and cultural agenda of the agenda setters and not the masses; we pay for overpriced food, alcohol, gas, and airline tickets to refill the coffers of those that exploit us.

Thirdly, instead of people resting, many right now are seeking double-time pay to make up for the mountain of bills in trying to the live the American dream.

Lastly, in my conscience, I can never forget the domestic genocide that occurred in the present-day Americas regarding the indigenous folk of this land.

EcoSoulintellectual’s
Un-Thanksgiving’s List

(Gobble Gobble on this)

1. I am Un-grateful for the current umployment rate for black/African-Americans that is 15.7%, the highest compared to Latinos who are in a close second at 13.1%, whites at 9.5% and Asians at 7.5% (October 2009 reports from the US Department of Labor, Burueau of Labor Statistics).

2. I am Un-grateful for people telling me that I need to be happy that I am working, although I have several degrees and am still underemployed, uninsured, and overworked.

3. I am Un-grateful for the atrociously high levels of homeless women and familes, mentally ill, and disproportionately increased percentage of black Veterans.

4. I am Un-grateful for professional, collegiate, and high school teams that still use racist Native American caricatures as their mascots and blatantly justify their actions as being a "tradition" at their institution.

5. I am Un-grateful for the 18th Century images of Native Americans in feathers, in face paint, and on horses as the current visual idea of how Native Americans look as if they are extinct.

6. I am Un-grateful for the 1.5 million Native Americans who live on reservations and are dealing with serious issues of survival.

7. I am Un-grateful for the ignorant and xenophobic Native Americans who deny the progeny of Native and African American peoples a rightful place in their nations and their histories.

8. I am Un-grateful for African-Americans who are more comfortable with saying they are Cherokee before they say they come from African bloodlines.

9. I am Un-grateful for a black President who is surveillanced by audacious white privilege and a white power structure that situates him as being a powerless figure-head who must apologize for being black, and apologize for the black people who challenge his supervisors.

10. I am Un-grateful for greedy corporations such as airline carriers that are getting away with bloody financial murder and creating a divide between who is able to travel and who is not worthy enough to see their family.

11. I am Un-grateful for a body of black people who think Obama can "change" America with his two hands, and just hold side conversations during lunch hour at "prestigious" jobs to educate their white co-workers. Only to have never done a goddamn thing in communities of color because they are so preoccupied living the dream by going to work, the club, church, the frivolous sporting events of their children, or a nice Negro Kwanzaa.

12. I am Un-grateful for prosperity churches that are the neo-pimps of religion and are led by hypocrite pastors who literally wear the tithes of poor people and pseudo-middle class on their backs with $5,000 tailor-made outfits.

13. I am Un-grateful for prosperity churches and missionaries leaking religious toxicity in Africa, and all black and brown nations all over the world. Then in America claim they are saving souls, much like former slavers and colonizers.

14. I am Un-grateful for this only day that allows a significant chunk of people to eat with their families, especially working class folk in which this "holy-day" represents their ancestors' and thus their enslavement, colonialization, demonizing indigenous spiritual systems, family disruption in homelands, dismantling of culture and worshipping of slave masters.

15. I am Un-grateful for a spineless United Nations that does not stand up to power-hogs such as America, but agrees to bully countries that have less military amunition.

16. I am Un-grateful for the blatant move of using war and domestic surveillance as a means to create jobs instead of building infrastructure in cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and Oakland, and the rural areas, and neglected areas of Mississippi that have not been rebuilt since Hurricane Katrina.

17. I am Un-grateful for a dual-political party system that uses communities of color during tight elections, but forget about them for the rest of the terms.

18. I am Un-grateful for the colorism that still exists throughout all oppressed communities in which bi-racial children and white populations have set the standard of beauty based on the lightness or whiteness of one's skin, and in some cases, the texture of one's hair.

19. I am Un-grateful for over half a million children in the foster-care system who wish they had better circumstances, especially during the holidays.

20. I am Un-grateful for voice enhancer machines such as Autares (autotune) and Vocopro.

21. I am Un-grateful for America projecting its domestic violence issue on Rihanna and Chris Brown.

22. I am Un-grateful for some members of the LGBT community blaming the African-American community as being one of the main reasons for its political set back in California; and attempting to make the black community the face of homophobia while disregarding the intrinsic sexuality issues throughout this country's history.

23. I am Un-grateful for the perception of mainstream America that three or more black people on a television series makes it a "black show."

24. I am Un-grateful for the constructed divides between race and ethnicities across the lines, but especially within black and brown communities that often perpetuate these divisions.

25. I am Un-grateful for an economic system that uses paper currency as a way to weight one's labor worth, when the labor itself holds far more weight than a paper bill. Only for this currency to be justified by people who will bend and fold for a dollar.

26. I am Un-grateful to the financial architects of a disastrous economy who are eating very well today, and sleeping good tonight, while those who are gravely affected are worried about the next meal and where they will sleep tonight.

27. I am Un-grateful for an old corroded stock exchange system that is on its last breath, yet the news lies about the DOW and Nasdaq's current status. These news entities are not owning up to the fact that many nations and individuals are leaving these forms of exchange for older and more efficient ones such as bartering actually resources and labor.

28. I am Un-grateful for a climate that makes people fear, harshly criticize, and avoid not admitting that being clear about what we do not like or are ungrateful is some type of moral sin.

29. I am Un-grateful for the unhealthy food we are about to eat.

BTW, thanks for reading this post :-)...my cornbread is cooked ready to serve to some people who need to eat.