London Olympics Entry #4: Crip Walk Controversy, Serena Williams and the Gold

When Justin Bieber, a Canadian who wears sagging pants (a fashion style that is said to come from prison culture), tweets Missy Franklin for winning a gold, it is called sweet teen spirit. When volleyball players sport itty-bitty-titty bikini's in front of the royal palace, it's called a proper uniform.

When the English Queen does a skit with the most misogynistic and man-whore spy in the world, the director is considered brilliant, while the queen was crowned as the memorable crowd favorite of the opening of the London Olympics.

When a tennis player smashes their racket to the ground like a drug-riddled heavy metal rocker, that's just great sportsmanship.

But when Serena celebrates with a dance that has become a crossover move that was created and popularized out of urban culture, she is signified as a trashy representation of the USA. Like her father said many years ago, the people in Compton will be celebrating with their 40 ounces and Chronic.

But eff'em, let me unpack this complex cultural moment that has contributed to this shift in Olympic culture.

In an unconscious moment of resistance, Serena Williams, in her own way, threw up her own black fists. While NBC covered her matches at ungodly hours, and did very minimal in highlighting her slaying top players, Williams decided to be unapologetic for the on-court beat downs with a victory dance from her own ethos.

And by the way, she is one of the few black women to win golds, and one of three African American women---her sister Venus, and trailblazers Whilma Rudolph who won three individual golds share this history.

Williams who is a huge hip hop fan, and a product of a hip hop generation, did what emcees do when they win, they celebrate in a braggadocio manner.

And as a child who grew up about a 10 minute drive from where Serena was reared, I know exactly Serena's POV. It has nothing to do with gangs. This is our native American black Angeleno war dance, a dance of strength and champion.

For several seconds, she displayed her connection with an aspect of black American culture and defied the Euro/Amero Bourgeois expectations of the lily white culture of tennis player. She bowed in victory with grace and swagger.

She has never apologized for her grunts, flashy outfits, and assertive court behavior. She and her sister were booed for years, their appearance has been scathingly critiqued, and oft times, US announcers imply their favor towards a Williams opponent.

Serena, no matter how many titles and now a gold that you win, you will be accepted as a brilliant and phenomenal player no earlier than 2073. So in the meantime, hop, step, hop. I celebrate you.

Why Mainstream America Refuses to Celebrate the Williams Sisters

Serena Williams' fifth win at the Wimbledon in early July marked her fourteenth major professional tennis title, something that about seven women have done in the history of professional tennis with three being American.

And she did it as a raw vegan, a lifestyle she embraced to support her sister who is also a raw vegan due to the recent diagnosis with an auto-immune disease.

Nonetheless, Serena's spectacular performance and a significant accomplishment that should have America boasting, barely scratched national news.

Nor was there really any interest in the Wimbledon doubles match that Serena and her sister Venus dominated and were victorious. Once the women's doubles were over, it was back to the exciting coverage of Roger Federer and Andy Murray, the match between a Swiss and Brit. American tennis experts gushed over the two men as if their own did nothing but take a shit that day.

Though the Williams sisters have single-handedly revived tennis' popularity, it seems as if mainstream America, hence, white America, is kind of waiting for them, and their booties, and 18 inch Brazilian human hair extensions, their mama's blonde Afro and their daddy who gives shout outs to those drinking 40 ounces and smoking Kush in the heart of Compton to just go away.

Venus Williams

At first I would assert that mainstream America was furious that two black women took over the face of American tennis, and totally shifted the complexion of its audience worldwide.

When Venus came onto the scene she was undeniably black. A dark brown skinned sister with that classic look that any black mama gave her girl child at least once in her pubescent life---cornrows with about 5 million beads shimmying in the sunlight.

It is the hairstyle that Bo Derek tried to imitate and was called drop dead beautiful, yet Venus got silent disapproval for her ethnic un-appeal.

And as I cringed when I saw the years of braiding had taken out her edges like former Essence Magazine CEO Susan Taylor, I still applauded her vivid imagery of blackness.

As a former athlete in a non-traditional sport for black folk (swimming), I know the challenges of being the only black or one of the few. I know the issues of femininity and the difficulty of trying to be "black" in a "white" sport; especially when you have a mother that did not allow you to shave. But that's another therapy session.

Serena Williams

I remember the day a little white girl called me a "nigger" when I won the 50 meter butterfly. That shit hurt.

I can't even imagine getting the consistent boos that Venus then Serena would get over damn near a decade.

Then there are the camera shots when Serena bends over. Or the pre-game coverage in which announcers would drool over blonde competitors and their beauty and delicate fierceness. The complaints and attempts at regulating the ladies' war grunts. The silent spectacle around Venus and Serenas muscles, hair, skin, and did I say ass?

Throughout it all, we have seen these women blossom into something more dangerous, more courageous than players who were expected to just be affirmative action kickstands that should've been gracious to be allowed a couple of endorsements.

These sisters, by blood and by cultural kinship, evolved into unstoppable champions who don't need the approval of a flag, a fan, or a country.

Never, never, never in the history of the sport of tennis, women or men, has there been siblings to dominate, and just take over the sport for more than a decade. And what do they get, silence and meager coverage as a form of protest of their presence.

But occasionally, the fearlessness you witness on the court rises like the waves of heat off of the AstroTurf in the Australian Open. The Williams' spit back their own protest with flamboyant outfits that accentuate their African curves and brown skin in the most European of tournaments.

Sorry Louis Gates Jr., their phenotypes are not the kind that dominate your gene pool as you proudly announce. Dem sisters right dere are to the bone African. And will shove a ball down your fucking throat if you say otherwise.

Now I understand why mainstream America (and for that matter England and France) refuse to celebrate or acknowledge Serena or Venus. Their presence is a painful reminder of the ignorance, racism and impotence of white supremacy and white privilege that many attempt to hide.

Oh and of course they are hating on the booty.

Please keep your eyes on the prize. (Side thought, what's up with the devil horn fingers?)

The Common Man's Sport of the World, Is an Elite Playground in the USA

There is something missing in this photo of the US soccer team. Can you please identify the missing element? I will give you three options to choose from.

A. Casey Anthony
B. A Transgendered Woman
C. Women of Color

Okay, so these hints are tricky, but if you picked C, you are sort of kind of right. There is one woman, Shannon Box, on the bottom left of the picture, who is from Southern California and is an African-American woman.

This is very problematic because soccer is played mostly by people of color all over the world, and in the USA, with the population being diverse.

Not only is the US Soccer team under-represent the landscape of soccer of the world, but it also mis-represents the milieu of America, once again propagating that America is encompassed of majority white people and a couple of brown and black tokens.

Also, it can be puzzling to learn that in the USA, soccer is an elite institution when it reaches the level of an organized sport.

Of course you see soccer in low wealth communities of color, especially in immigrant communities; but to play and excel in the United States on a larger scale means you have to dish out a lot of resources that include money and time; something that is scarce in working class and communities of color, thus making it rarely accessible to those children whose families reared them to adore the game.

In fact, traveling soccer leagues are not only expensive, but exclusive. There is a recruiting practice, much like the European soccer teams who target people of color to play in the various leagues. Top players are largely plucked from low wealth communities for top notch teams, garnering millions in these teams, but leaving very little in the communities which they came, with the exception of maybe a soccer camp to train future players for Euro leagues.

Meanwhile, players who are not selected are left to kick ratty balls in torn up Keds.

This gets even more disturbing when these players provide vivid stories of racist accounts while playing. Like bananas being thrown on the field or monkey noises being made when a black player is on a certain side of the field.



I have several relatives who have children who play soccer. I must be frank, it is seen as a status to play soccer, and not a common person's game. Something like, hockey on a hot day, minus the uber expensive equipment.

And to make matters worse, the high school I went to, a predominantly African-American school, looked at the game as a third-world sport, and pushed its athletes to play football and basketball. I guess there was more tolerance for concussions and broken limbs, then a healthy set of lungs and a global consciousness.

This beautiful game is also ugly in America.

Oh well, blog on..

Michelle Alexander at Riverside Church NYC: New Jim Crow convict under-caste

I remember when I was younger, a man called my father to inform him that my uncle, a man who was once-upon-a-time, destined to go to the NBA, had just overdosed and was laying out somewhere on the streets of Long Beach.

That wasn't the first call, or the last. And if you are African-American, in the United States, someone in your family has been destroyed and/or gravely affected by the wave of drugs that were dumped into the US in the 70s to neutralize the growing angst and youth power that challenged government policies.

Shortly thereafter crack hit our country like a social implosion.

It is as if we have amnesia, when this new war on drug emerges and the political industrial complex widens. Who will fill these walls. Well, the same people who have been doing so for years, you.

Especially as the economic gap becomes something similar to a Saharan desert, a gap that is like a sinkhole.

Check out Michelle Alexander's talk that explores how the prison industrial complex is the new Jim Crow, or a social-racial-class caste system.

The Revolution Will Be Blogged: Black Bloggers Protests Help Shut Down Scientifically Racist Research

Satoshi Kanazawa can kick rocks and kiss every black woman's arse.

Black Bloggers who addressed and shut down the insidious racist and demeaning pseudo-scientific research by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa who published an article exploring why "Black Women are Less Attractive" on Psychology Today several weeks ago, should be proud of themselves.

On Friday, Psychology Today issued a formal apology stating that:

We deeply apologize for the pain and offense that this post caused. Psychology Today's mission is to inform the public, not to provide a platform for inflammatory and offensive material. Psychology Today does not tolerate racism or prejudice of any sort.

Soon after the post on Psychology Today, the well-established publication had to pull the article due to the flood of comments and emails sent by people all over the world. It was after the criticism did they decide to review the research only find out, that measuring beauty is a subjective process, and could never be objective.

No shit? You are still fucking idiots.

Anyway, the racist shut down gets even better, the students at the London School of Economics are demanding that the research, Satoshi Kanazawa be removed from his position.

However, let put this in a perspective in which everyone is held accountable by starting with the institution that published Kanazawa's work and the one that funds his research. This is where snubbing true racism gets lost in the emotional and political sauce. They all knew of his work, and they okay'd it. Kanazawa is a little fish.

I suggest a boycott of Psychology Today, fuck an apology. And serious review of the Psychology Department at LSE, and the school itself. I attended a conference there in 2010, right after the Underwear bomber, and I got profiled damn near every time I went through those fucking gates.

But for now, I will celebrate with you lot. We did something revolutionary. Even the ones who call themselves bourgeois, uppity, house Negroes, and the like. We burned one plantation house down, even if you loved to live in it.

And my sisters, you are beautiful.

Even the Rat Was White: Racist Facts You Should Know About Western Science

During the early 1800s British and American scientists concluded that the Negroid race was inferior to Caucasoid race due to the small measurements of the skull or the crane. This scientific postulation was carried over to a scientific movement called Craneology. Today this science is now called "pseudoscience". Yeah right.

The black blogosphere has been abuzz with the recent online article posted in Psychology Today that revealed "research" stating black women were the least attractive.

I did not have the opportunity to read the article because it has since been pulled from Psychology Today's site due to the flood of online protests and critiques.

Nevertheless, this article should not be shocking because Western science, Psychology included, is founded on racist ideology and worldview that operates from a hierarchy placing Caucasian or white as the superior race, while African/Negroid are the bottom feeders of the totem pole.

I really am not interested in using my brain power to dissect the absurdity of these claims, rather, I will provide some historical facts around the racism that is still pervasive in Western medicine, which is considered modern medicine.

There is a book called, Even the Rat Was White by Robert V. Guthrie, that provides a historical view of the racist foundations of science, and heavily look at Psychology.

Lastly, let me state that black people, starting with enslaved people, have been the disproportionate population that has served as guinea pigs in scientific studies. Even today, prison populations and the military subject people to a slew of scientific study that falls under the umbrella of "bettering the human race."

BTW, ask a person in the military how many vaccinations and pills they take?

Gynecology
J. Marion Sims is called "the Father of Gynecology" due to his experiments on enslaved women in Alabama who were often submitted as guinea pigs by their plantation owners who could not use them for sexual pleasure. He kept seven women as subjects for four years, but left a trail of death and permanently traumatized black women. 

Anarcha was one of the women Sims experimented upon. A detailed history of this monster is in Harriet Washington's book, Medical Apartheid.

Sims believed that Africans were numb to pain and operated on the women without anesthesia or antiseptic. The procedures usually happened this way. Black female slaves who were guinea pigs would hold one subject down as Sims performed hysterectomies, tubal ligation, and other procedures to examine various female disorders.

Sims also performed a host of operations on other slave populations. The following excerpt details his "practice" on enslaved infants.

Sims began to exercise his freedom to experiment on his captives. He took custody of slave infants and, with a shoemaker’s awl, tried to pry the bones of their skulls into proper alignment.

Skin Color
Founding Father and American physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush proposed that black skin or "the black color" was a inherited skin disease from ancestors who suffered from some form of leprosy. To him, this ailment could be cured through proper assimilation. He also agreed with his white contemporaries that the Negroid race were direct descendants of monkeys.

Vitiligo

Here is a quote from Rush:

Negroes were not by nature intellectually or morally inferior. Any apparent evidence to the contrary was only the perverted expression of slavery, which "is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it."

Steatopyogia

Khoi Khoi woman

In December of 1815, French anatomist, Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville conducted an autopsy on a woman who would be known as the Hottentot Venus in front of a group of salivating scientists, one of which was Georges Cuvier, the father of anatomy. Her genitalia and skinned body was kept on display in a Parisian museum until the mid-1900s, where they were eventually placed in storage.

Saartjie Baartman or Sarah Baartman served as the fascination of England and France due to her physicality, in particular, her buttocks. Cuvier would term this "physical disorder" as steatopygia in the Memoires du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in 1817.

Steatopygia is described as the is a high degree of fat accumulation in and around the buttocks. The deposit of fat is not confined to the gluteal regions, but extends to the outside and front of the thighs, forming a thick layer reaching sometimes to the knee.

Steatopygia became one of the determining factors of European scientists to validate hypersexuality of African women; thus rationalizing the common sexual crime of rape and forced breeding. Interestingly, how today's article talks of black women being less attractive, yet not too long ago, it was envogue to rape a black woman by white men.

Baartman's story is one of sadness and great misery. Though all the details of her journey to England to be placed on display in circuses around England, and central squares in Paris, and high society parties, are still sketchy, it doesn't take a smart person to know that her death, just several years after her embarkation on Europe's shores was due to a life of hardship and gross exploitation.

Drapetomania
American physician, Samuel A. Cartwright termed this "mental disorder" for slaves who wanted to escape slavery. It was a sickness of the mind that caused enslaves blacks to run away. Symptoms of drapetomania included sullenness (depression) His work was published in the following publication.

A serious drapetomaniac, freedom fighter and escaped slave, Harriet Tubman.

Samuel A. Cartwright, "Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race", The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 1851:691-715 (May)

The Eugenics Movement
This 19th Century scientific campaign based on superior and inferior genes was spawned in Europe. Heavily influence by Charles Darwin's theories on evolution, eugenicists purported that certain genes and social characteristics produced superior humans, while others created sub-par, almost animal-like creatures.

The standard (or superior being) was based on Aryan features/Nordic, thus those who "deviated" dramatically from pale skin, blue eyes, and blond or light-brown hair were categorized as low grades.

German scientist measures the physical dimensions of a Jewish Nazi camp prisoner during WWII.

Eugenics became the scientific foundation in Nazism, and its validation for extermination. Jews were subjected to various genetic tests and experiments by Nazi scientists who were attempting to understand DNA and genes.

In the United States, eugenicists pushed public policy on reproductive and citizenship rights, and marriage licensing. In fact, the concept of the perfect race was heavily developed in California before the rise of Hitler.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, whites who had moved to California were involved in massive massacres, and experimentation of the indigenous people. The project was to see how a "perfect human" could be bred out of "undesireables."

Fannie Lou Hamer

In the US, though, Connecticut was the first state to implement eugenics laws. Those who were deemed "unfit" to breed were sterilized, and could not marry each other, and certainly not one who belonged to a more superior race. Mentally and physically challenged people, poor people, and people of color and Eastern European immigrants were placed in the category of being "unfit". Women were subjected to non-consensual hysterectomies, and these populations were often used as scientific guinea pigs.

In Mississippi, there is a term for women who were given hysterectomies without consent. It is called a "Mississippi Appendectomy" because women were told they were getting the appendixes removed or a minor reproductive procedure, and ended up without a womb.

60,000 Americans were sterilized in the eugenics movement, the most famous African American is Civil Rights activist, Fannie Lou Hamer who never had children because she went to the doctor for a small "woman's" procedure and woke up with a partial hysterectomy.

Today, eugenics movement is seen in various initiatives, such as the 90s push of getting women addicted to crack to stop reproducing, and the recent, Republican Representative John LaBruzzo who would like the State of Louisiana to pay poor women $1000 to get their tubes tied.

Your Hard Earned War Dollars Support Racist NATO Forces

Very rarely do I repost a story, but this story merits some attention. While people are justifying military force upon Libya, I know these supporters are not aware of the insidious racism and degrading treatment that is going on against black civilians.

Much like Blackwater military and UN Pakistani's raping women in Haiti and Iraq, black folk are treated like shit around the glob.

Nato units left 61 African migrants to die of hunger and thirst

Exclusive: Boat trying to reach Lampedusa was left to drift in Mediterranean for 16 days, despite alarm being raised

• Jack Shenker in Lampedusa
• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 8 May 2011 21.30 BST
• Article history

Refugees from Libya reach Lampedusa. A Nato ship failed to rescue a boat in trouble – leaving 63 people on board to die. Photograph: Francesco Malavolta/EPA

Dozens of African migrants were left to die in the Mediterranean after a number of European and Nato military units apparently ignored their cries for help, the Guardian has learned.

A boat carrying 72 passengers, including several women, young children and political refugees, ran into trouble in late March after leaving Tripoli for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Despite alarms being raised with the Italian coastguard and the boat making contact with a military helicopter and a Nato warship, no rescue effort was attempted.

All but 11 of those on board died from thirst and hunger after their vessel was left to drift in open waters for 16 days. "Every morning we would wake up and find more bodies, which we would leave for 24 hours and then throw overboard," said Abu Kurke, one of only nine survivors. "By the final days, we didn't know ourselves … everyone was either praying, or dying."

Click here to read the whole story.

Pas de justice pas de paix (No Justice No Peace) French Nazi Police Show the Real Story Behind France's Unresolved Racism

Evacuation de familles sans logement à la Courneuve Uploaded by Mediapart. - News videos from around the world.

I cringed in horror when I saw the video of a group of French police brutally dissolve a group of African immigrants who were peacefully protestoring in Paris on July 21. The city of love my black ass.

The group consisted of mainly of women, women with children and pregnant women. The part that makes my blood boil is the absolute ruthless way they drag women with children on their backs against the cement. Savages! And people wonder why the Black Panther Party called some cops, pigs.

According to news reports (Media Part and CNN) 190 adults and 49 children were protesting their eviction from the building they had been squatting in front of since the July 8 removal. Babies and children living on the street!

Some were documented and others were not, the news reports that all have said that they have attempted with great effort to get legalized, but were denied.

The immigrants were mostly from the Ivory Coast, but this is not the first time this has happened to specifically African immigrants.

In fact, Africans are treated horribly and denied jobs, the opportunity to be legalized, decent housing, and other resources. And immigrant blacks period experience severe segregationist and xenophobic behaviors and attitudes in France. Also, African immigrants are grossly exploited with cheap labor, and many live in poverty.

Right now the France Administration is redefining its "Frenchness" with new nationality codes. Part of these policies are implementing a selective immigrantion process that expels their unwanted such as the recent waves of Africans, some Portuguese and Spanish (specifically the Arabs) that have migrated to France.

Specifically, France's President Nicolaus Sarkozy wants to revoke citenship to immigrants that he thinks put the country's security at risk.

But when someone whispered, "The Africans are coming," all hell broke loose.

In 1995, then the Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac expressed his disdain for African immigrants in his explanation of why the average "white" French citizen is becoming infuriated by their presence.

This is a translation of what he said, "The father lives in cramped quarters with three or four wives and some twenty kids. He gets 50.000 francs ($7000) from entitlements (welfare) benefits without, it goes without saying, working. If on top of that you add the smell and the noise, the French worker – he loses his mind."

This is the perspective: Africans come to France to get free benefits while they tax the economy and degrade the quality of life for true French citizens. Interestingly, when France was stealing people, natural resources, and forcing Africans to be speak proper French to benefit the French empire, it wasn't a problem.

And have you smelled the underarm pits on a French subway? Now that is some funky odor.

So now that Africans have been used in the worst way and France has reaped all the benefits through years of colonialism, they are no longer needed.

This is exactly what Arizona rednecks are salivating to do.

Though these nationality codes are part of a recent European xenophibic trend, this only follows a series of injustices and clear signs of serious racial disparities and conflict.

In 1996, there was a removal of about 200 immigrants from Mali who squatted in front of a church in Paris. They too attempted to be legalized and go through all of the proper steps and were denied.

Earlier this year in April almost 48 Africans died in a fire in a dilapidated hotel.

You think Arabs have it bad? And they have it real bad. Try being an African in France, sheeeiiittt.

Well Serena, now you know why the white folk don't bother you in your luxury Paris apartment. You are a nigglette like the rest of us.

La La La Hey Hey Hey . . . Goodbye Byrd

I cry not tears of sadness, but tears of joy on hearing Senator/Hitler Robert Byrd's old, racist ass has finally slipped on the banana peel and is kissing the cold slab of a morgue. Back to the ether you go Gringo el Diablo.

Byrd not only should be the poster-board of a hate-history grandfather clause for political office, but there should be an age cap. You can't have walked in the time of George Washington and Chicken George and still be in office.

And why is it that sons-of-a-bitches like he and Strom Thurmond live to be old as Moses?

Fuckers.

And who keeps reinstating this dude? He's been skeeting dust bunnies in his fabricated wet dreams since the the King speech on Washington. How could be an effective legislature? He wasn't.

I know the physical vigor that it takes to be a political official and a 90-something man who shakes and farts between quoting the Constitution doesn't have the energy. Sorry, viagra and uppers can only do so much.

Hmmm, so let's look at the resume of Byrd
KKK member
Anti-voting Rights Act political official

Representative of Incest and Coal mine exploitation in West Virginia

Okay stop, that's enough. Good riddance. He is now with that negro Riley of the Boondocks who salivates to touch the hem of god aka Ronald Reagan who is really taking tequila shots up the ass.

Heartless you might say. Oh no, I hope his soul finds light, but in the words of my Jewish compadres, "Never Again". Unlike much of mainstream American news, I will not forgot the sordid past of Byrd and the folks he undermined and probably killed due to his racist actions.

Arizona, Black Folks and Bananas in the Tailpipe

Oh yes, I am back!Right after LeBron "Punk Ass" James failed to deliver again.

Now, now, he's not overrated, he's just spoiled. Send his ass to the Clippers and let him understand hard times.

That's right, I forgot, he's trying to slither his way to the NJ Nets under the influence of Jay Z who has secretly snatched the only source of entertainment for black folks in Jersey and send the b-ball team to Brooklyn.

Let's hope the recession puts that on an indefinite hold. I live right down the street from the Prudential Center and I'm getting some tickets. They've got great funnel cakes and beer.

But if James does come to the Nets (and damn do they need a savior) and chokes like he did for the Cavaliers, he needs to be prepared to face Brick City. There will be some goons ready for that ass.

Okay, so let's talk about ass and the assholes in Arizona. Wait a minute, let me back up a bit. I will start with some of the messages on my Facebook page from African-Americans who are praising the racial profiling and racist policies in Arizona.

Hooray, some cheer, as they think that the good old U.S of A, specifically anti-King Holiday Arizona is opening a door to hire their black ass. Uh-no.

As a matter of fact, I get into heated debates with folk in my family who have valid reasons for their angst against folk who willingly come to the US for a better life. They just put it in the wrong context.

In the end, the overarching issue is exploitation from both sides. Undocumented workers are paid slave labor and unskilled black workers are cut out of jobs that were historically given to them, so they don't get any slave labor.

It is interesting how the blame always goes to the one with the least power. And the ones who push the laws are the ones who will gain the least from them. In fact, they will experience adverse affects from it.

AZ makes it very easy for white supremacist and classist policies to be passed all in the slogan of protecting the US Citizens of all colors.

But I always tell my black folk, be careful what you cheer for because your citizenship is on permanent probation too.

And of course, like predictable history, the white man speaks with forked tongue. And I am not saying this as the literal "white man," but the history of the US goverment promising one thing, but delivering another monster. I call it the classic "banana in the tailpipe."

So now a bill is up for consideration in Arizona to cut ethnic studies from schools. Bye-Bye Black, Asian and Chicano Studies, your existence is irrelevant. Get the banana out of your ass and think before you support.

Who do I need to rape to be this guy?

Three-time-rapist-and-counting is happily throwing the pigskin for Pittsburg Steelers during Spring training as the NFL decides what to do with their prized white, oh I mean, golden ticket.

Yes I did say THREE.

So let's go through them.

Rape #1 - A woman in her early 20s who worked at a golf course near R-dog's home in Lake Oconee, Georgia. One evening she acted acted as a "designated driver" and took the athlete home who then forced her to stay as he pulled down his pants and told her that she could do whatever she wanted with him. A week later at one of his home parties he raped her in his bedroom. Read the details here in the Smoking Gun.

Rape #2 - At the Harrah's in Lake Tahoe, an employee accused R-dog of beating and raping her in the casino while holding her against her will. The two-time Superbowl champ said that they had a relationship which involved consensual sex. Her history of mental health issues (especially the piece where she was seeking help for a fictitious lover) discredited her claims.

Rape #3 - In Milledgevill, GA, R-dog intoxicates a 20-year-old college, sorority woman at a club who says she was later violated while in a drunken stupor. There was a video surveillance tape of the night that R-dog was offering the college student shots, but mysteriously it has disappeared. Though her physical examine shows trauma parallel to rapes, it is dismissed due to her inability to totally give detailed information of the night in question.

Here is a quote from the NY Times that talks about the latest victim's account.

Bright said the woman and Roethlisberger had been drinking and had met at different bars in Milledgeville during the evening. Some of their conversations were of a sexual nature, Bright said. Roethlisberger’s group ended up in the V.I.P. area of one club, and when the woman and her friends arrived, he invited them to join him and bought shots of alcohol.

“Everyone agrees that the victim was highly intoxicated,” Bright said.

Later, Bright said, one of Roethlisberger’s bodyguards escorted the woman down a back hallway, and Roethlisberger followed her into a small bathroom, which Bright said was less than five feet wide.

“Significant questions about what occurred persist,” he said.

The woman was eventually driven to the hospital by friends, and an emergency room doctor and two nurses examined her. Bright said that they noted a superficial laceration, bruising and slight bleeding in her genital area, but that everything else was normal and that the doctor could not say definitively that the bruising was from any kind of trauma or sexual assault.

The gross disparity between the treatment of black athletes and their "ciminal charges" and in particular, when it is linked to their sexuality is as wide as the distribution of wealth in America.

Bigger than Moses parting the violent, red sea...no pun intended.

Tiger, Kobe, Michael, Jack Johnson...the list goes on.

Blog on EcoSoul

Attention All Black Walmart Shoppers, Please Kick Rocks

Walmart is the only institution in America that has successfully made the Civil Right's angle of color-blind consumerism in a brutal capitalist society come true.

It has created a space where racist rednecks and illegal Mexican immigrants can shop on the same aisle without any beef...well that is until yesterday.

In South Jersey, an identified male announced on the Walmart speaker for "All black people to please leave the store." Blacks and whites alike were dumb-founded between their perusals of bad cotton drawers and lead-based spoons for overseas. Although video tapes are being studied by authorities, no one has been pointed out. Click here for story.

I really love this incident because it illuminates the pockets, no acres of KKK-esk white counties in Jersey, PA, and NY that are as racist as their southern cousins. Then it shows the historical fact that in hard times, racist attacks increase, especially against white-on-non-white.

No does this stop the typical black, Latino or Asian customer. Oh hell naw, they just kept the cart pushing. I swear there is something in the music that is messing with our heads every time we step into that monstrosity.

Blog On, EcoSci

Thick Black Noodle in the Shaghai Soup: How China Deals with the Black "Other"

The face of one brown-skinned young lady named Lou Jing has the whole country of China uncomfortably dealing with its narrow, and in some cases, racist perceptions of citizenship towards black Chinese.

The non-porcelain skinned Chinese Goodess has trumped China's race card and exposed a nasty little secret that they are glad happened after the Olympics. They don't like black noodles being dipped in Chinese soup.

Shangai native, Lou Jing who has a Chinese mother and African-American father recently appeared on an idol talent show in the country. When she claimed that she was Chinese, born and bred in the hot East Asian metropolis, all hell broke loose.

People were surprised that this black woman who was deemed "Halle Berry of the East" could speak perfect Mandarin and Shanghainese. At first, she was a jewel, then the ghetto grapevine happened.

The Internet came alive with Chinese citizens claiming that she was not Chinese. Some hurdled nasty rumors about her mother having an extramarital affair with an "African Devil," and producing a bastard child.

In response, Jing and her mother announced that the father was not African, but African-American, the relationship between the parents was consensual, and he has been an active parent upon finding out his paternity.

Now, Chinese folk who are trying to diffuse the comment, are saying that it wasn't about her being black, but about her mother having an affair and having a baby as a result. Uhhh, yeah right. How convenient is that excuse. It just so happens that the father's blackness is important in mentioning.

This hot and controversial issue stirs up a lot of dirty secrets that the Beijing Olympic committee hid very well in 2008. China is very xenophobic and incredibly racist when it comes to black people.

There were some news reports that talked about Chinese government's racial profiling against its small, but visible African residents. It was reported that many of them were harassed, fined and even jailed before the Olympics in an effort to clean up the streets.

But it gets better. Several African-American athletes reported hostile and blatant harassment that seemed based on race during the Olympics.

This incident is remniscent of my trips to Korea. At the time, I was part of a group of African-American teens who were visiting the country. We were at a museum and I overheard a child squeal in delight to his teacher, "Look at the monkeys!"

While there, I heard stories of Koreans warning families to keep their women away from the black soldiers during the Korean War. Propaganda was spewed telling the Korean people that blacks were devils and grew tails at night.

Interestingly, it was okay for white soldiers to indulge, but the chocolate ones, oh hell no.

But did that stop the fucking? Of course not. Resultantly, babies were born. On my trip to Korea it was explained to me that bi-racial children, and in particular black Koreans, were outcasts and often lived around dump sites and the poorest areas of the country.

Lou Jing's popularity not only raises issues of race, and race around sexuality, but also citizenship. She changes the face of China, who prides in porcelain complexions, even though a significant amount of their population in the South are brown and dark brown people with broad features.

Below Jing busts a hip-hop flow to show her skills. She know she a sister!

From Savior to Anti-Christ: Setting Up Obama's Political Crucifixion

This week was the final straw, I gotta talk about the prediction I made before Obama got into office. My father and I have these wonderful political talks. In one of our conversations when we were talking about America and Obama, I said that Obama is being portrayed as a Savior now, but will be crucified as the anti-Christ down the road.

And with this past weeks rising rejection of some school districts and some (ig'nant ass) parents in allowing their children to hear a speech from the President of the United States directed towards the youth is an ante up towards a metaphorical lynch mob.

Here is a man with two daughters and is the damn President, and the message that is insinuiated is that Obama is some kind of sex offender or big bad bully that will brainwash or force children to do things they should not.

The surveillance of black males is astonishing, even when they are in the "highest" political position of the most powerful nation. This goes to show you that there is something more powerful moving and shaping things as they please...or at least they try.

Albeit, this group of people who swear they will yank their children out of school before they allow the President to address their children are not the majority voicing their opinion; however, as the "objective" media depicts them, these groups are portrayed as an unstoppable tidal wave that is growing stronger by the minute. And it all began with a tear drop from Glenn Beck.

Wow, where was this type of media during all the protests and 911 commissions. Oh, they were there, they just were holding the footage in an attempt to attack forward thinking White House staff like Van Jones, who told America what black people already thought of George W, he has "crack-head" and thuggish behavior.

How does the president become the Boogeyman in 7 months? Or better yet, Candyman. Do you remember that movie? It was about an urban monster that was really a wandering black male spirit who was tortured and killed for consorting with a white woman during slavery. His affection and expression of love during dangerous social and political times was twisted into a monstrosity that even hood kids were scared off.

Though I disagree with some points about Healthcare (I'll discuss later), the ways in which these people are acting reeks the stank of institutionalized and blatant racial issues. Metaphorical KKK robes and Swastikas are sadly materializing in front of our eyes.

Real issues with the country's operations are being overlooked, since people have re-imagined and re-created race wars.

People are starving. People are homeless. People are unemployed. Children are sick and sad. People are desparate. And this type of poverty has been going on for years in some areas! But nooooo, all people want to do is spew sublimally hateful messages based on race and religion.

Then there are those who are throwing fuel onto the fire of racial tensions that have not allayed since Obama's win. People are consciously and sub-consciously operating with the notion that people of African descent are inferior and a black person in a leadership position is inferior thus causing the country to collapse when the bitch has been collapsing since the Declaration of Independence excluded freedom for all.

But all you gotta get is some folk who think they have privelege. Get them to do the dirty work of the few who are master manipulators and puppeteers that are laughing as they see all working class, lower class and so-called middle class, fighting for crumbs and keeping the machine of crazy world cranking.

After they warn the public to keep their children from Obama, what's next? God-fearing, pure White Women? If his mama was alive, I know she would bitch-slap some of her folk. But thank God we have Michelle. She bench presses every morning with at least 20 fuck-you's for'em all.

Too Black and Not Black Enough, Classism and the Untold Tale of Two Black Cities

Yesterday, charges were dropped against Harvard professor and W.E.B. DuBois Institute director, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. who was arrested for disorderly conduct when he complained about the actions of Cambridge, Mass. law enforcement for obvious racial profiling activities. Just back from working on a documentary in China, Gates was identified as a possible suspect when an officer passing by his residence noticed the lauded African-American scholar and his driver attempting to unhinge a jammed front door.

After the “misunderstanding” was somewhat cleared up, an upset Gates expressed his disappointment, which led to him being taken into custody. Resultantly, the Harvard community was in an uproar once word of the incident spread. The “liberal” reputation that the small enclave of Harvard Square happily touted was now receiving a downpour of what some saw as undeserved criticism.

The Gates case has added to the blatant events of racism that are reawakening the grave race issue in America. This dialogue is shadowing the era of Obama where a cry of a post-racial conscious had been celebrated by many idealists, but seen as a dangerous delusion by those who knew better to jump too soon.

However, there is a troubling fissure in this dialogue and debate. Another serious issue that is being swept under the rug is class issues in the African-American community.

Several months ago, a burgeoning female scholar by the name of Chanequa Campbell, who hails from Brooklyn, NY, was kicked out of her campus dormitory and not allowed to graduate for her association to a murder suspect. More specifically, she was the friend of the suspect’s girlfriend. The confusing part of this case is that while Campbell was banned and not allowed to graduate, the suspect’s girlfriend, Brittany Smith did graduate and is allowed on campus grounds.


Campbell, who says she is from a poor family and was not part of the black elite student circle, has pointed out that it is because of her socio-economic status that she was treated in such a way, and without the support of black Harvard students or faculty. The silence of black Harvard in the case of Campbell drastically contrasting the racket made in support of Gates illuminates the serious class issues that have caused serious boiling points in the African-American community.

Gates is an established historian known most recently for his documentary, “African American Lives,” a series that connects noted African-Americans back to their complex lineages such as Oprah Winfrey, Tina Turner, and Morgan Freeman. He is at the zenith of his career. He has achieved what many scholars dream.

On the other hand, Chanequa Campbell was at the beginning of her academic journey. She too has been praised for her academic success, but since her dismissal, her whole life trajectory is questionable. At a time when Campbell needed the utmost guidance and support from black Harvard faculty and peers, she was quietly disregarded, suggesting that her less-than-desirable background would possibly mar the reputation of blacks on campus.

Though many do not like to acknowledge the classism in African-American communities, it is prevalent throughout the group. It is a hideous historical social construct that is determined by more than wealth, but also skin color and hair texture (espcially for women), education level, and sadly how distant is one’s slave lineage.

Ironically, Gates, who in his African-American heritage series repeatedly points out the “white ” blood in him, so much so, that he smiles in delight when a DNA scientist tells him that he has more white blood than black, is nothing but black when the police come. Yet he is not “too” black to be rallied and insulated by the black and white Harvard community. Yet Campbell, with her Brooklyn roots, who is a darker, young woman with blatant West African features, is too black, even for black Harvard.

Like in the days of DuBois, who was proud of his European ancestry (Dutch and French) and his Massachusetts roots from a community of free people of color who were educated and reasonably prosperous; his pedigree, which also included his physical characteristics, were perfect for the black elite of that time. DuBois’ elitist ideology was so heavy a belief that he campaigned for blacks to support his vision of the “Talented Tenth” or a group of black intelligentsia that would further the black race and lead the rest of the group. This idea was heavily contested by other thinkers and black activists of the time, but the idea and practice of an insulated, crème de la crème, black circle still remains.

It is not surprising that Gates’ (or should I say gatekeeper's) name has been saved, and in some eyes, has been elevated, while someone like Campbell, who could’ve been the next Gates or Oprah, or perhaps furthered his work, is now forgotten.

****RETRACTION*****When I wrote this article, I pulled a write up from the NY Post that said in a May 25, 2009 report, Brittany Smith was not barred from campus. However, in a Newsweek report I saw yesterday, Smith was not allowed to graduate like Campbell.

A Nigger with a PhD

Malcolm X’s words speak from the grave when he asked an audience about 40 years ago, “What does the white man call a black man with a PhD? A nigger with a PhD.” This is quite true with the recent arrest of Harvard Scholar and African-American historian, Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was thought to have been breaking into his Cambridge, Mass. house by local police enforcement.

Gates was not arrested for breaking and entering, but was detained with the charge of disorderly conduct for allegedly shouting at an officer and following him outside with more verbal complaints after he had to prove that he was indeed the resident of the house he was entering. Can you believe it, the man who was hooting and hollering about the amount of white blood he had in his family was seen as a negaro?!

Fresh from a trip in China where he was taping a PBS documentary, Gates had every right to be furious. As he and his driver (a black man as well) pushed his jammed front door, automatically, his activities pegged him as a suspect before a homeowner.

A man, who has dedicated his whole life to reconnecting the forgotten members of African tribes to their roots and complex lineages, is now as criminalized as every other black man in the United States, including Barack Obama.

There is an ugliness about black brotherhood in America. It is an insidious open secret that every black man knows and understands. He is the face of the criminal, before anything else, and especially before being seen as a symbol of humanity.

In every black man’s life, he has engaged in a conversation about how someone he knew was harassed by the police, or he himself was the subject of harassment. It is an embarrassing and dehumanizing fact that black men attempt to soothe each other in the throes of explaining a commonsense survival experience that no other man in America can ever understand.

This incident incites a question I have been asking since Obama’s election, and since the official announcement of a depression. Why are racial incidents increasing in the era of post-race?

Gates’ arrest is the epitome of an American society that is created on a false consciousness called “Whiteness,” an idea that being white and the belief system of a certain white person is not just superior, but the only accepted standard. In this ideology of “Whiteness” it is manifested by everyone. What I mean by that is, "Whiteness" cannot be maintained by just white folk, but is a social construction that people of color help perpetuate, and sometimes perpetuate it the best. It is the idea that a machine can keep going as long as you replace the parts that know how to keep it running, regardless of what brand or factory they were manufactured. If they fit and can do the job then the machine continues to run.

In the case of the Harvard scholar, the fact that Gates was a suspect before a resident is part of a slave code that evolved into a black code, which then transformed into Jim Crow, and is now a foundation of institutional racism, or “Whiteness”. This new code is part of an old consciousness that Black Bucks are dangerous and not to be trusted, even with a goddamn degree and all.

I AM the Black Dot in the WATER that is Pissing in a Philly Pool

(PHOTO CAPTION: In 2004, Maritza Correia is the only African-American woman to qualify for the US Olympic Swim Team)
It was the early 80s and I just finished winning a 50 meter freestyle race somewhere in the Valley, right outside of Los Angeles. I was the only black in the event and one of the few blacks there. My older brother and sister made it to these finals for LA County's aquatic summer swimming program. As I was rounding the corner, a group of white girls who I just beat came up to me. The leader of the hyena pack said, "My daddy told me to tell you that you are a nigger." Appalled, hurt, and upset, I ran to my parents and told my father what happened. He told me to run back and tell them, "You ain't nuthin' but a peckerwood, cracker."

Oh no, my father does not believe in the non-reactive Civil Rights approach found in the black swimmers' movie "Pride". That was the typical MLK "turn-the-other-cheek" song and dance that we did not boogie to. So when I saw that girl, I let her have it, and of course, a couple of choice words I had picked up from my father as well. Then, I won another event and went on to become a lifeguard for 10 years.

Racism in the swimming pool and at swimming areas still goes on as we can see in the latest contempo-segregation at a Philadelphia pool where 60 black and Latino kids were turned away. Unfortunately, this is a norm that white America likes to avoid. That for the most part, there is an inner anxiety in intimate settings with darker hued folk.

Black people do not swim as much in this new world, not because they don't want to. For the most part, many of us did not have access to pools. Also, I argue that blacks, in particular, in the US, have not dealt with the spiritual pain of the Atlantic waters, or the sea. Plus, black women are so imprisoned by their hair care regime that the pool was never an option for many black women.

In spite of the aquatic segregation that was fought in the 1960s with "wade-ins", we are lovers of the water, best believe. My mama told me that one of her older brothers used to dive in the bayous in Louisiana to pull out the bodies that drowned in the waters. Talk about having Jacques Cousteau beat!

On a serious note, aquatic recreation has dried up in many communities of color, and like the long list of things we have not fought for, nor have funded---efficient and clean public pools are one of them.

Here is a little list of stories of inkwells (black swim areas) that were either removed, or set up to segregate black communities. Click on them to read a link about their histories.
(PHOTO: Black Inkwell in Santa Monica)

Martha Vineyard's Black Inkwell

Santa Monica, CA's Inkwell Beach

Racial Division in Chicago Public Beaches

Carr's Beach in Annapolis

Sparrow's Beach in Annapolis

Atlantic Beach in South Carolina

Segregation in Cape May, NJ

Gulf Coast Segregation

This reminds me about a documentary about Black Surfers called "Whitewash" that is being showed in Harlem next Thursday at an amphithetre by Marcus Garvey Park. The music score is by The Roots and Erykah Badu. A surfer girl who is land-locked. I will be there doing my AquaBoogie, yep, yep. Here is a trailer of the documentary.



However, I would like to the know the address of this recreational facility so I can piss in the waters and perhaps donate a Baby Ruth candy bar.