DarkStar Spouts Off

Spouting Off On: "The Black Church"

The Black church isn't defined by Jeremiah Wright. No, the Black church is NOT Jeremiah Wright. That's what I want to say. I've been in many Black churches and I've never been in a church where a pastor has said the things that is being mostly looped and played as Wright's only pulpit statements.

Today I felt compelled to call into a radio show to strongly disagree with the guest who was saying Wright's comments are something that are regularly said from the pulpits of most Black churches across the country. NO! That's just not true. I was compelled to call in because I've heard enough false comments made about Black churches and I've had my fill of it.

I've written before that the idea that most Black churches have Democrats come into their churches and making comments from the pulpits on Sunday's close to elections isn't true. Yes, they do go into selected churches, but those churches are the overwhelming MINORITY of churches. From my experiences, I guess that politicians show up in less than 5% of Black churches. When I've challenged people, AND PUNDITS WITH A WRITTEN AUDIENCE to prove me wrong, I've always been met by silence. I ask them to find out how many Black churches are in a major city and then find out how many of those churches have politicians show up. But to date, no one has taken up that offer.

Wright saying that criticism of him is criticizing the Black church, SHOULD provoke the media to examine "what the Black church" is, but they won't do that because it destroys the model they rely on during the election cycle and the "demonstration" cycle. This goes for the mainstream and conservative media.

And, so far, I haven't heard the mainstream or conservative media mention why Sunday is the most segregated day in America. Rev. Fred Price addressed it and people like Jesse Lee Peterson went after him for speaking the truth. Why does the AME church exist? Why did the Southern Baptist Convention make a resolution on racial conciliation? And why does Bishop Harry Jackson and other preachers have to develop something called the reconciliation referendum?

How many other people are asking the questions I'm asking?

Day Of Gas Boycott: STOP IT!!!!!!

Look, I'm damn tired of receiving email and text messages saying <fill in the blank> day is a day to boycott gas! This "tactic" will not work because gas is something many of us HAVE to buy because it is an essential product.

Let's say a gas boycott is set for day X. One or two days before day X, gas stations are likely to raise prices because they know that people are stocking up before the so-called boycott. Then, on day X, gas stations are likely to lower prices enough to get people to "break the boycott" because the price is, temporarily, too good to pass up. Then for about 2 days after day X, gas prices go back up to the point they were the 2 days before the boycott because people who were silly enough to take part in the "boycott," have to re-fuel. So, chances are, you are going to pay MORE to boycott!

SO STOP SENDING ME THE CHAIN EMAIL AND TEXT MESSAGES!
Thank you.

Old Guard vs. New School

This dust up between Wright and Obama is a dust up caused by politics, media, and the ongoing battle between the Black old guard and the Black new school.  (I was going to write old school vs. new school but I think old guard is appropriate because, in my opinion, the old guard is now guarding against the new school taking over).

Thew new school understood and understands that Black politicians cannot rely on just Black voters or just speak to Black voters. Even if their constituency is primarily Black, they know that they can't limit themselves to just Black people. "It's a new day" is the correct term to use and the new school realizes this. That doesn't stop the new school from recognizing racism when it is there, but the focus isn't on that because the main battles have been won. This is exactly what Obama was saying when he mentioned that Wright is the older generation who is viewing things from a different perspective because of what he, Wright, as experienced in his life time.

However, even if that were all that there is to it, this mess would still be a big as it is because this is politics and Obama had previously tied himself to Wright. That makes Wright's comments, out of context or not -- and I agree that many are out of context from what I've been able to hear -- fair game in the war of politics.

Let's be clear about this, Obama lied when he said he didn't know about the comments Wright made. Obama, himself, has backtracked on that so I think lie is the appropriate word to use. Obama tried to have it both ways, he needed to placate Blacks who think politics at this level is just about "being Black", you know, those who asked if Obama was "Black enough". He also needed to placate whites who may have wondered if he was just another "Black politician." His campaign is about showing that he's different and is about change. Remember, "change" was the hot campaign word for a moment. Well, change requires toning down the old guard rhetoric and talking about commonality.

But the old guard still has power and still is capable of flexing. Wright showed finesse when he was interviewed on Moyer's show. Then, he even had some white people wondering if the clips of Wright was fair. I think that's why O'Reily had a fit over the interview because Moyer showed something that wasn't being showed. But when Wright went to the press club, it was old school on display. It was joning on display. It was in your face "Black nationalistic politics" in your face. It was Black Liberation Theology right there in the open, delivered in the charismatic Black preacher style and those who have never seen it, can't deal with it.

Let me be blunt. The mainstream and conservative media wanted to see a contrite, soft speaking Black man, apologize but instead they got the "bad Negro" all up in the place! Actually, what was on display was a man who is sure about what he said, standing tall and defending what he said and what he believes.

Obama And Wright

Wright is speaking up at the most inopportune time for Obama. It is as if he is deliberately trying to take Obama out.

Is this an example of the "old guard" refusing to step aside for the next generation?

[ Update ]

That burned bread you smell it Obama.

Sean Bell

• Did the police know, before hand, that Bell and some of the people with him at "prior contact with" the police? If not, and I think not, it doesn't matter that some of them had records.
• Fifty shots is a hell of a lot of shots. When a person has to reload and continue to fire, you are damn sure they aren't working on training memory, they are working on straight up fear, and IMO, are not in control.
• The New York police department union was able to negotiate a clause that states in police involved shootings, Internal Affairs is not allowed to interview police involved in the shooting for 3 days, if I remember correctly. That's three days. Imagine suspects being caught but allowed to be together for 3 days before they talk to investigators.
• How is it that the prosecutors in these cases suddenly become incompetent?

For All The People

For all of the people who say you respect a person who states his opinion and holds to it despite criticism, I say you have to respect Jeremiah Wright.

Why Care About Public Schools?

I don't understand why more Black Democrat politicians don't grow a spine, tell the teacher's unions to walk off of a cliff, and bring forth RADICAL alternatives to the current public school system. Thank God some Black parents are taking the radical steps necessary to provide education for their children.

In the 2006–2007 school year, the city's Department of Education says that 3,654 students in New York were homeschooled. Most are white, but a growing number are African-American. Black parents tend to take their children out of the schools for other than religious reasons, and homeschooling groups say black children taught at home are nearly always boys. Like Robinson, some of New York's parents have concluded that the school system is failing the city's black boys, and have elected to teach them at home as an alternative.

Robinson's motives were even more specific: She wanted to cushion Tau from the serious culture shock of moving from rural Missouri to her hometown of Brooklyn.

She had been teaching in Springfield, Missouri, as a professor of architecture at Drury College, the only black member of the architecture faculty. Her son, meanwhile, was teased in the usual way for being one of the few black students in a white school. Tau says he had to explain to his teachers and fellow students that just because he was black didn't mean that he was from "the 'hood."

"Somehow, he was supposed to serve them better if he was more ghetto," says his mother. "We were out there on our own in the badlands."

...

For the second year of his homeschooling, Tau was joined by Deion, a cousin, who had been attending P.S. 35, which is directly across the street from Bread Stuy, the coffeeshop that they use frequently. Comprising grades six through eight, P.S. 35 is 89 percent black, and until he was pulled out of it, Deion spent his seventh grade being chased home by bullies.

"When his parents requested a relocation to another school, they were given a letter saying, 'At this time we are unable to do this, and maybe in January we can re-evaluate the situation.' Now, I don't know about you, but at that point it meant, 'Oh, fuck you'," says Robinson.

Yeah, good for them!

This Is The Problem

Thoughts like this is at the core of the problem.

Jason Gerbsman and his wife, Lauren, began thinking about buying a home just as the housing market began to slump two years ago. The couple, who were renting an apartment in the District, had saved a "substantial" amount for a down payment. But they wondered whether real estate was the best way to invest the money they had saved since college.

The average person should not consider a house an investment. The house should be thought of as a home. No matter how much you think the house is worth, your house is only worth the price at which someone is willing to buy it.

You also have a run up in home prices for areas with "good schools." This is definitely true, but it is not as pronounced as this opinion article states.

Hints of how things began to go awry appeared in "The Two-Income Trap," a 2003 book in which Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi posed this intriguing question: Why could families easily meet their financial obligations in the 1950s and 1960s, when only one parent worked outside the home, yet have great difficulty today, when two-income families are the norm? The answer, they suggest, is that the second incomes fueled a bidding war for housing in better neighborhoods.

It's easy to see why. Even in the 1950s, one of the highest priorities of most parents was to send their children to the best possible schools. Because the labor market has grown more competitive, this goal now looms even larger. It is no surprise that two-income families would choose to spend much of their extra income on better education. And because the best schools are in the most expensive neighborhoods, the imperative was clear: To gain access to the best possible public school, you had to purchase the most expensive house you could afford.

...

The result was a painful dilemma for any family determined not to borrow beyond its means. No one would fault a middle-income family for aspiring to send its children to schools of at least average quality. (How could a family aspire to less?) But if a family stood by while others exploited more liberal credit terms, it would consign its children to below-average schools. Even financially conservative families might have reluctantly concluded that their best option was to borrow up.

At least, that's my opinion.

The Future: Illegal To Be Poor And Have Kids

This Texas case, that I've written about here and here, is becoming more disturbing. The following three paragraphs (emphasis added), from this Washington Post article, really highlights why I voiced prior concerns.
 

Now comes a legal fight with a twist. The state will argue that the sect's children are at risk at the compound, but not because every one of them has been physically or sexually abused.

Instead, they will say that the culture of the church, which encouraged girls to marry and bear children in their early teens, was a danger to any child immersed in it.

"There was a pervasive belief that children having children was what they were supposed to do," said Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

If they succeed in this, I can see authorities saying children should be taken away from parents who live in projects or crime infested areas, not because of the actions of the parents, but because the parents live in an area which authorities deem has a dysfunctional subculture.

It's bad enough that if D.S. 2.0 does something that makes me tan those hind parts in public, someone who doesn't agree with spanking, can call the cops and start a process that can remove my son from my home. But this is taking things to another level.

Correlation Or Causation?

OK, is this an example of correlation or causation?

Okla. unemployment rate bucks national trend

Oklahoma's unemployment rate has bucked national trends and declined over the last year, but economists say the positive jobs figures have more to do with the booming energy industry than a new anti-illegal-immigration law that has led some Hispanic workers to leave the state.

Oklahoma's unemployment rate dropped more than 1 percent since March 2007, to 3.1 percent in March 2008, giving Oklahoma the fourth lowest rate in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

While some speculate the trend may be tied to a bill passed last year targeting illegal immigrants, economists say it's more a result of Oklahoma's bustling oil and gas industry, high commodity prices and the state's insulation from the national housing crisis.

"Oklahoma is enjoying a fairly prosperous time given the state of the national economy, with everything going on in the mortgage market and sub-prime area," said Steven Agee, an economics professor at Oklahoma City University. "We haven't experienced that big real estate bubble like other states ... so our housing market has not suffered by comparison."

Oklahoma's most robust job growth from March 2007 to March 2008 came in the sectors of educational and health services (6,800 jobs) and natural resources and mining (5,700), according to statistics from the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission.

Here is a different view:

Unemployment rates are rising across the United States, except Oklahoma. That state is experiencing the most dramatic reduction in unemployment since 2007, an improvement many in Oklahoma attribute to the passage last year by the state legislature of a strong employment-focused immigration reform law.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday reported unemployment in Oklahoma had fallen to 3.1 percent in March, down from 4 percent in March last year, while unemployment nationwide was 5.1 percent, up from 4.4 percent in March last year.

"Oklahoma is no longer 'OK' for illegal aliens," said State Rep. Randy Terrill, who sponsored House Bill 1804 which passed by overwhelming majorities last year in both the House (84-14) and Senate (41-6) of the Oklahoma Legislature.

"The bottom line is illegal aliens will not come here if there are no jobs waiting for them," Terrill said. "They will not stay here if there is no government subsidy, and they certainly won't stay here if they know that if they ever encounter our state and local law enforcement officers, they will be physically detained until they are deported."

I don't know the answer, but I suspect causation. Remember what what happened after the ICE raids on the Swift meat processing plant. The company raised wages and put out employment ads. People lined up to put in an application to "do the work that Americans won't do."

Poppi

An idea came to my mind.

Master P made it plain that he was overlooking the career of his son Romeo, but that he was his father first and if need be, he would stop Romeo's career because his son's development was most important.

Snoop Dogg supported the football league his son was playing in. After getting upset about something, Snoop created another football league and was/is active in it.

In a few interviews I saw or heard, Busta Rhymes has stated he is concerned about providing for his son and that dictated some of the career moves that he made.

50 Cent claims he has his son with him a lot and even brought him a bullet proof vest. What. Ever.

The idea is for these people to create PSAs encouraging "men" to be a part of their children's lives.

Domestic Violence

I may expand this later, or I may not. It all depends on how I feel.

After spending a good part of the day in a courtroom dealing with domestic violence cases, what I can say is, the cycle of domestic violence will continue until women, and men, are willing to stand up and let the process run its course. By this I mean, showing up for court and when they do, not dropping the charges.

"Baby. I'm sorry. We can be a family" works.

And when the women, and men, do follow through, today's court system isn't about getting a dangerous person off of the street, the court system is about "resolving" these cases as efficiently, to the court, as possible, let the woman or man filing the charges be damned.

Yes, I did see abused men.

Michael Eric Dyson

On a "Best Of" show for Donnie Simpson, I heard an interview done by Donnie Simpson of Michael Eric Dyson.

I'm not a fan of his, but the man can use the Queen's English like no other. There are few peers to him in linguistic gymnastics and NO ONE, I mean NO ONE, can go from standard American English, to the Queen's English, to street slang, and back, as fluently, clearly, and accurately, as he does. And, at times, he makes points that are so good you have to acknowledge it.

Hell, he is the ONLY person who have I seen or heard completely shut down Ann Coulter!

Top House Democrat denounces Clinton campaign tactics

Top House Democrat denounces Clinton campaign tactics

WASHINGTON - “Scurrilous” and “disingenuous” were among the words a top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives used on Thursday to describe Hillary Clinton’s campaign tactics in her bid to defeat Barack Obama for their party’s presidential nomination.

House Democratic Whip James Clyburn, of South Carolina and the highest ranking black in Congress, also said he has heard speculation that Clinton is staying in the race only to try to derail Obama and pave the way for her to make another White House run in 2012.

“I heard something, the first time yesterday (in South Carolina), and I heard it on the (House) floor today, which is telling me there are African Americans who have reached the decision that the Clintons know that she can’t win this. But they’re hell-bound to make it impossible for Obama to win” in November, Clyburn told Reuters in an interview.

Deep.

No Home Training

A lot of what is going wrong in some Black communities is the result of poor or no home training. But it has always been my contention that most parents, including single parents, if they knew better, would do better. You will always have your exceptions, but most would do better if they knew better. One question to ask is, "Why don't they know better?" But I think a more important question to ask is, "How do we get them to learn to DO better?"

Some people are saying since the parents aren't doing their job, it's up to the schools to "socialize" -- home train -- the children. But I maintain that if you are in an area were socialization is a problem, then socialization in the school is a problem, which means I tend to think that you can't teach socialization in the school because the atmosphere doesn't allow it. (Of course, if you suspend and/or expel the problem students, then the atmosphere would be more hospitable).

So, the answer has to be non-government groups that can teach parents to be better parents and/or socialize the children who aren't being socialized properly.

If we leave it up to non-government groups, then the issue is getting the parents to attend programs that will attempt to teach them to be better parents. Or the problem is getting the children into the socialization programs.

Of course, if someone reports the parents or the children get into trouble, the court system can then "order" the parents or children to attend the parenting and socialization programs.

Personally, I think the government putting its nose in parenting of children has not helped the situation at all. Children know that if their parents whup them, they can call "child protective services" and get the  parents in trouble.

On a personal level, family, friends, and I have reached out one on one to people we know who have not been parenting properly to suggest ways they could be better. But we can't be there 24/7/365.

More later

Fishing For DNA [ UPDATED ]

OK, let me see if I understand this now.

Texas authorities remove children from their parents because of a call by a female who said she was under aged, forced to marry an older man, has a child, and is pregnant again.

Texas authorities raid the compound, gather the children and the mothers, and take them away. Meanwhile, from the last information I read, the female who made the call is still not able to be identified. [ Update ] See below. It was a hoax.

Now, the Texas authorities are taking DNA samples from the children and some adults to determine who are the real parents.

You will have to forgive me for thinking this is a fishing expedition. You will have to forgive me for thinking the authorities now know the telephone call was a hoax. You will have to forgive me for thinking this is the only way Texas authorities can determine if children are being born to under aged females.

If these people are sexually abusing young girls, then I have no problem with authorities arresting them and trying them and locking them under the jail. However, the basis of what caused this doesn't seem valid and people should be wary.

[ UPDATED ]

Now it appears that this was a hoax.

A Colorado woman with a history of making phony reports to police has been named by Texas Rangers as a "person of interest" who could have made the calls to a women's shelter that sparked the FLDS compound raid.

    Police arrested Rozita Estraletta Swinton, 33, at her Colorado Springs apartment Wednesday in connection with a February call to police there in which she pretended to be a young girl being held in a basement, said Colorado Springs police Lt. Skip Arms.

    Investigators also executed an evidentiary search warrant at Swinton's home and seized a number of items that indicated a possible connection between her and calls regarding the FLDS compounds in Colorado City, Ariz.; and Eldorado, Texas, the Texas Rangers said Friday in a press release. The items, which were not identified, will be evaluated and analyzed at various crime labs in Texas.

 

Now, isn't this something. My wife says "we" will be paying these people a lot of money. I'm going to hunt around to see who is upset about this, or because of the possibility of child abuse, people are willing to overlook this abuse of power.

Philly

I was in Philly this weekend and I got a chance to see a few of the Obama campaign ads as well as the Clinton campaign ads.

Obama's ads were "inspiring" and positive. Clinton's ads were really negative and low.

Straight up, she is setting the stage for further destruction of the Democratic party if she is not the nominee. She is seriously putting forth a script to destroy Obama and it will be used by the Republicans if he gets the nomination.

5 - 10 Seconds Is Rape

I really don't know what to say:

According to testimony, the 18-year-old woman had just had sex with another man, and Mr. Baby asked whether he could "hit that" also.

...

Mr. Baby testified that the woman agreed, as long as he would stop when she told him to. The woman testified that Mr. Baby continued for five to 10 seconds after she asked him to stop.

Wow. He stopped 5 - 10 seconds after she told him to stop. I'm thinking it took about 3 seconds to register and then about another 2 - 3 seconds to say, "Huh?" and then the rest of the time to stop.

No means no, but damn. NO man, regardless of marital status, is safe from this.

A Person Comes To You For A Job

A person comes to you for a job, and during the interview, you remember you saw her a few years ago acting like Monica Lewinski, or you saw him Full Monty.

These kids don't get it.

What the kids are doing these days.

Forget about passing notes in study hall; some teens are now using their cell phones to flirt and send nude pictures of themselves.

The instant text, picture and video messages have become part of some teens' courtship behavior, police and school officials said.

The messages often spread quickly and sometimes find their way to public Web sites.

"I've seen everything from your basic striptease to sexual acts being performed," said Reynoldsburg police Detective Brian Marvin, a member of the FBI Cyber Crime Task Force of Central Ohio. "You name it, they will do it at their home under this perceived anonymity."

...

"This happens a lot," said Kelsey, author of Generation MySpace: Helping Your Teen Survive Online Adolescence. "It crosses every racial socio-economic group. Christian kids are doing it. Jewish kids are doing it."

Blame it on hip-hop?

Divorce, Video Style

This woman is nuts!
Maybe THAT'S why he wants a divorce.

Political Correctness

Someone calling a person a "guilty white liberal" is the equal to the use of sell-out by Black people. Only it generally comes from the white side and it is a more polite way of saying someone is a nigger lover.

This Case Is Disturbing

This case is disturbing on a number of levels.

If this is true, then you have a situation where grown men sexually abused young girls under the guise of religion.

If it is true or if it is not true, you have the authorities raiding a location based on a series of telephone calls and they can't locate the person who made the calls. They can't locate the person for whom they made the raid.

I'm troubled. Right now I think the call may not have been from a true victim.

Yeah, I Asked What's A Love Language For Punk

Yes, I did ask for a love language translation for Tavis is a punk.

Here is Tavis Smiley discussing his leaving The Tom Joyner Morning Show.

It still seems a little too coincidental, but I take him at his word and apologize for the comment.

Obama's Room Mates

This is under the politics category, but it really doesn't fit there.

Michelle Obama's Roomie

She walked into the historic Nassau Inn that evening and delivered the news to her mother, Alice Brown. "I was horrified," recalled Brown, who had driven her daughter up from New Orleans. Brown stormed down to the campus housing office and demanded Donnelly be moved to another room.

The reason: One of her roommates was black.

"I told them we weren't used to living with black people — Catherine is from the South," Brown said. "They probably thought I was crazy."

Today both Donnelly, an Atlanta attorney, and Brown, a retired schoolteacher living in the North Carolina mountains, look back at that time with regret. Like many Americans, they've built new perceptions of race on top of a foundation cracked by prejudices past — and present. Yet they rarely speak of the subject.

Barack Obama's run for president changed that. When the Democratic senator from Illinois invited more dialogue on race last month, Donnelly and Brown, both lifetime Republicans, were ready.

But their willingness to talk isn't a response to the candidate born to a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya. It's more about Obama's wife, Michelle.

She's that roommate from a quarter century ago.

...

Other than confirming that Donnelly was her freshman roommate, Michelle Obama declined, through a campaign spokeswoman, to comment for this story. Her senior thesis, however, delved into the experience of black alumni at Princeton and provides some insight into her mind-set at the time.

In the introduction, Obama wrote that Princeton made her more aware of her "Blackness" than ever before. "No matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong," she wrote. "Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second."

Read the rest at the link provided.

Now, will this make it into the narrative about Michelle Obama's life a Princeton?

Comments R Me: Elite This

I commented at Cobb:

OK, and exactly why is he wrong?

You mean to tell me people in small towns who have lost companies, aren't a bit mad? Or those who see their towns change because of perceived illegal immigration, aren't they a bit mad?

Talking heads from the right consistently state "fly over salt of the earth people" are mad about certain things. So, what's the beef?

OH, it was a Democrat.

Never. Mind. Silly me. I'm still THINKING while other people are still knee jerking.

I commented at Cobb, again:

So, when folks in small town PA say PA is REALLY everything EXCEPT Philly and Pittsburg, that's not a put down?

How about when small town folks say city folks aren't real America?

Or when conservative talking snots say "real America" is "flyover country" not the left and right coasts?

At Booker Rising:

Name one person who proclaims themselves to be Born Again, who DOESN'T cling to religion.