African American-Owned Businesses Affected by Oil Spill in Gulf

The massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is finally reaching the shores of the Gulf Coast, in what many have called the worst environmental disaster since the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. Not only does it have the potential to threaten hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife in the area, but more importantly the livelihood of many who make a living fishing in the nation's richest seafood region.

More than 200,000 gallons of oil a day have been spewing into the ocean since British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank off the Louisiana coast last week. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stated that BP, is "the responsible party" according to U.S. law and is "required to fund the cost of cleanup operations." In fact, in a letter sent last year to the Department of the Interior, the oil giant objected to what it described as "extensive, prescriptive regulations" proposed for more rigorous safety standards stating. "We believe [the] industry's current safety and environmental statistics demonstrate that the voluntary programs … continue to be very successful."

Last year, BP made more than 40 billion in profits yet paid no taxes in the United States.

This oil spil could not have come at a more significant time given that just a few weeks ago President Obama asked Congress to lift a drilling ban in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, 125 miles from Florida beaches and called for new offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean from Delaware to central Florida.

President Barack Obama has pledged "every single available resource" to deal with the situation and called the leak a "spill of national significance,"

The real threat is to thousands of independent African American and small businesses in the region that make a living via fishing and tourism. If there is a significant reduction in the oyster, shrimp and fish populations, which has been in decline anyway over the past decade, it may signal an end to the livlihoods of many.

In Louisiana for example, 12 percent of all businesses are owned by African Americans with coastal cities like Baton Rouge having 17 percent black-owned business, most in the fishing and tourism industries. The same can be said of Mobile, Ala., where 14.8 percent of business are black-owned compared to 9 percent for the state of Alabama. If this problem is not under control soon, many family owned and small African American businesses in the Gulf region may not survive.

Chris Brown, Others, Out 'Ignoranting' One Another

Gil Scott-Heron wrote the celebrated, militant poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The title, which has become a popular mantra, means that thinking is paramount and, unfortunately, not a common practice. Featured on his 1971 album, "Pieces of Man," the lyrical poem describes how media transformed into a medium that keeps individuals, especially African Americans, from thinking. Although Scott-Heron’s piece focused on television, his concept also applies to radio.

As a child growing up in Memphis, music was one of the most socially responsible mediums for communication, political and social activism. This was even applicable to R&B music; although it was one of the most expressive vehicles for transferring the amorous feelings of love, during the Civil Rights era, the music was used to lend voice to important social commentary reflective of the needs of the African American community. In fact, most popular artists consistently used their music for this purpose, producing some of the greatest love songs known to this genre. Whether it was Aretha Franklin's "Respect," which spoke of equality for black women, Marvin Gaye's protest of the Vietnam War in "What's Going On," or James Brown's "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," music tended to reflect the needs of the community and collective more than the selfish avarice of the individual.

Today, there are few such artists with a focus and dedication that would allow them to sing for the betterment of the African American community. Instead of Marvin Gaye, James Brown, and Sam Cooke, there are the Dream, Pleasure P, Chris Brown and Trey Songz. These individuals, albeit talented, lack substance and often sing about the same topics.

Looking at Trey Songz, it appears that most of his songs are about sex; titles include clear messages -- "Sex for Yo Stereo", "No Clothes On", "Make Love Tonight", "Just Wanna Cut", "Neighbors Know My Name" and "I Invented Sex." One would imagine that a conscious and responsible adult would be able to sing about subjects beyond sex, and I am certain that he could if he tried; however, his focus may be elsewhere. Perhaps he doesn’t know the history of the music that’s representative of the community from which it originates.

Throughout history, we African Americans have used music as a tool to tackle prejudice and racism. It appears that this practice is no longer lived or perceived as vital and may even be considered by some to be unappealing or worse unimportant. The question is, will music ever continue the legacy of Marvin Gaye's "Make Me Wanna Hollar" or Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come"? I cannot answer that, for it seems that most current artists in hip hop and R&B are more interested in being carbon copies — content on "out ignorating” each other. It is obvious that the revolution will not be on the radio either …

Post-Racial? More Like Pre-KKK

Most people don't know who Steve King is. And no, I am not talking about the writer of horror fiction. Congressman Steve King, R-Iowa, is a ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law. He is considered by many to be either an extremist or a nut job. To me, his behavior is sadly comical and may even suggest the need for some sort of hospitalization, medication or both.

King, like Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., is an example of what is wrong with American politics and the festering infection called white supremacy that can lead to irrationalism.

Tancredo claimed in 2008 while addressing the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, Tenn., that Obama would have not been elected president if America had literacy tests for voters. In the same vein, Rep. King appeared on G. Gordon Liddy’s talk show and asserted that Obama has a “default mechanism” that favors ”the black person.”

Now if any African American politician stated such, the claims of racism would be flying out the woodwork from the GOP and their supporters. But this is a common occurrence for King, who represents the 5th District of his state. Iowa, which has 600,000 people, is 99 percent white.

King has also been embroiled in a decision made to grant amnesty to Obama's aunt, Zeituni Onyango. Onyango was recently granted asylum by an immigration judge, overruling a previous judicial determination ordering her deportation. Congressman King thinks that she should have been deported.

Even prior to Obama’s election, King suggested that if Obama won, al-Qaida would be "dancing in the streets" more so than they did on Sept. 11, 2001.

Given his incendiary comments, it is no wonder he is held in high esteem by the likes of well-known klansman David Duke and the White Nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens.

King needs to be cautious with his rhetoric, given the increase in the number of hate groups in the United States.

It is obvious that the legacy of white supremacy and racism continues and that America is no more post-racial than it pre-KKK

Televised Skankery: When a Woman Is a Wife Without a Husband

For the first time in my life, last week I reduced myself to look at a show that I had vehemently criticized without even watching. I have always frowned on such practices in the past, although I have always evinced the uncanny ability to evaluate what is presented on television without watching it. Especially when it is self-described as reality television. I was at a friend's house and was mandated to watch it with them because his wife wanted to see it. She asked us both not to be overly critical. I have always been critical of reality television, because it's reflective of the Sambo buffoonery that television has typically used to show black folk. Plus, it was strange for me to try and understand why any woman or man would watch a show that doesn't serve any intellectual purpose. It is obviously not the type of content that will help you assist your kids with their homework or can teach you any valuable life lesson. But I gave in and watched.

They say water-boarding is torture, however I will gladly tolerate a day of water-boarding over the 5 minutes of what I saw on "Basketball Housewives." Oddly enough, none of the women presented themselves as the type of woman I grew up around and carried themselves with as much tact as a woman on the stroll late at night in any major city. Moreover, the general disposition displayed by all the women was that they did not need a man but yet they would not have fame or riches if they had not hooked the big mouth trophy bass many call a professional athlete.

Truth be told, I can't name one of them or pick one from the other in a lineup. But there are a few high yellow women that look like they have missed the sun even though they live in Florida. Then there is this little fidgety babe that rocks an S-curl. She must be from Memphis cause folks at the crib still rock them too. But I don't know who she has slept with because they never said her dude's name like they did for the one described as an ex-fiancee — which last I heard was not a wife. Another feature that struck me was how often they referred to each other at b---- and displayed behaviors that lets you know that before they were with or unwith (is that a word) the men they claim, it is likely that they were groupies.

I say this because as they sit down, defining themselves with the material contamination of designer clothes, boutiques and restaurants, they give off the appearance that they do not like each other sincerely but play as if they do. They even have a severe disdain for other groupies as if they are different gang sets. Maybe it is just me, but logic precludes me from understanding why the show is called basketball wives. I would imagine that televised skankery would be more important given that only one of them is actually married. They don't even carry themselves like women who are married or that deserved to be respected as women. I have never seen behavior as such from the women in my family. Never would they call each other b---- or reduce themselves to throwing objects at each other.

It is sad that such a show is popular, even more so than reading a newspaper. But what can one expect when a person is with another because of what they own, their profession and wealth? You can see their unhappiness through how they treat others. Like I said, maybe a better show title would be Televised Skankery, or What Happens to Women When They Marry and Date Men With a Sixth Grade Math and Reading Level

Original: Televised Skankery: When a Woman Is a Wife Without a Husband

pre-k graduation

bling bling but no books

I am no better than anyone else, but I do know that the majority of our society has lost their way, are selfish, materialistic and socially irresponsible. This is not a criticism but an objective reality. I can see this through simple observations whether it is the massive drop out rates of African American young folk, the high incarceration rates of African American men in prison, or the exorbitant rates of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases in our community.

Truth is that while America spits its anger and venom over the fact that a man of African descent is President of the united States, we are aiding this attitude via our ignorance and none concern to the point that we don’t see it. This troubles me for we can make time and take the time to see that Lil Wayne is in prison or what a bevy of unmarried women who call themselves basketball wives are up too, Brandy and her brother and a washed up gold digging actress by the name of Lisa Raye, but nothing else really of substance.

We know more about the lives of women like super head and Kat stacks and their sordid bedroom activities, women who we dare raise our daughters not to be like or venerate but can’t name what is in any proposal outlined by our current President or proffered via the legislative branch of government unless we hear about it on television. We couldn’t even tell you one amendment of thee constitution which our very freedom and liberty is buttressed upon.

Unfortunately, we think we are free and seem to be more concerned with clubbing and who is the VIPs and what we wear than our intellectual development and education and worse, how we dedicate ourselves to our families. The women and men who raised us, at least many of them, after living and seeing the struggle would never support or practice such behaviors. Unlike days of past, ours is a sexual degenerate culture. In one word we despise drug dealing, gangsters and thugs and folk calling us nigger and bitch, but the reality is we buy the music of those that do such and shack our little butts off in our cars each day singing every word. Music that treats life as being worthless and regards women as merely pieces of meat.

Ours is a problematic state of being, for we lack knowledge of self which is what causes us to participate in our own self destruction. We enslaves ourselves for their was a period when the Likes of Carter G. Woodson, Fred Hampton, Shirley Chisom and Martin King and their words were more wide spread and popular than any musician and this was during the time of the last poets and Marvin Gaye. Even folks Like Marvin Gaye sang about the conditions of our folk and displayed some social responsibility, but such is lacking or no existence today for we don’t value knowledge or understand that information is power. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “nothing in this world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Maybe that is why we sing and have the bling-bling and no books.

I have no problem speaking my mind and I know that some will take this as an affront to modern culture, but it is not . I just never have nor will concede my human dignity for popularity but I do know that they of the minstrel variety will complain and even defend vile, lewd and self destructive behavior as pronounced so vividly in our culture. It was not I but Carter G. Woodson Who said:

“If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. If you can determine what a man thinks you do not have worry about what he will do. If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don’t have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don’t have to order him to the back door, he will go to the back door on his own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the man will demand that you build one.”

No wonder we are as we are, today I wouldn't be suprised if an unknown rapper was more reconizable and know about than somebody really worthy of attention, for it is a shame that folk recognize Lil Jeezy more than Neil Degrasse Tyson. Now I know how and what Harriet Tubman meant when she wrote “I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."

could it be any worse

The massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is finally reaching the shores of the Gulf Coast, in what many have called the worst environmental disaster since the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. Not only does it have the potential to threaten hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife in the area, but more importantly the livelihood of many who make a living fishing in the nation's richest seafood region.

More than 200,000 gallons of oil a day have been spewing into the ocean since British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank off the Louisiana coast last week. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stated that BP, is "the responsible party" according to U.S. law and is "required to fund the cost of cleanup operations." In fact, in a letter sent last year to the Department of the Interior, the oil giant objected to what it described as "extensive, prescriptive regulations" proposed for more rigorous safety standards stating. "We believe [the] industry's current safety and environmental statistics demonstrate that the voluntary programs … continue to be very successful."

Last year, BP made more than 40 billion in profits yet paid no taxes in the United States.

This oil spil could not have come at a more significant time given that just a few weeks ago President Obama asked Congress to lift a drilling ban in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, 125 miles from Florida beaches and called for new offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean from Delaware to central Florida.

President Barack Obama has pledged "every single available resource" to deal with the situation and called the leak a "spill of national significance,"


The real threat is to thousands of independent African American and small businesses in the region that make a living via fishing and tourism. If there is a significant reduction in the oyster, shrimp and fish populations, which has been in decline anyway over the past decade, it may signal an end to the livlihoods of many.

In Louisiana for example, 12 percent of all businesses are owned by African Americans with coastal cities like Baton Rouge having 17 percent black-owned business, most in the fishing and tourism industries. The same can be said of Mobile, Ala., where 14.8 percent of business are black-owned compared to 9 percent for the state of Alabama. If this problem is not under control soon, many family owned and small African American businesses in the Gulf region may not survive.

tweet-a-boo, i see you

If you are an avid reader, you may be we4ll aware of two of the finest works of science fiction written over the past 100 years: Audous Huxley’s A Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. In A Brave New World, Huxley attempts to warn us of a future plagued with interest supportive of scientific utopianism. A world in which people are just victims of propaganda to be manipulated. In 1984, George Orwell describes a petrifying dangers that man, in search of a Utopia may create via government in order to have an orderly society, but at the expense of the freedom of the people. In the book “Big brother” is always watching, “Ignorance is strength” and “freedom is slavery.”

Yesterday, the U.S. Library of Congress said it will start saving and archiving all worlds’ tweets from around the world due to a new partnership with Twitter. Each public tweet from 2006, when the first began to date will be archived. This means that all information that is on the public timeline, from twitpics, to your location, to any link will be recorded for all of history for anyone to search and study.

This just displays how significant view the Internet is in this digital age. After six months, all public tweets will be made available to the Library of Congress. It has been estimated that between 50 to 60 millions of tweets are published each day. Biz Stone, one of the founders of the micro-blogging service wrote “…there are some specifics regarding this arrangement. Only after a six-month delay can the Tweets will be used for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation."

So be leery of what you send out in your limited 140 character space, for if you plan to run for congress or any political office, your tweets will be available for you opponents to use anyway fit.

the struggle continues - yet many dont care

sovereignty, liberity, freedom, rights or privilege

It is only fitting that on this day we revisit history and not just any history, but that which empowered one Martin Luther King Jr., to embark on the continuation of the works, ideas and beliefs of freedom and liberty. Yes freedom and liberty for even with knowledge of King, Frantz Fanon, and Thomas Jefferson, such knowledge is lost on the hearts and minds of others. I say these because I have come to the empirical conclusion that many folks of my ethnic persuasion have accepted that we are free or even worse – think we are free. Truth is that many can not tell the difference nor explain what separates liberty from freedom, or a right from a privilege.

For me, the concepts all start with the fundamental understanding of sovereignty – a construct imbued in us not from or by any man but rather a Supreme Being or higher power. Sovereignty means supreme or highest in power. To be sovereign means to be independent of, and unlimited by, any other; possessing, or entitled to, original authority or jurisdiction. This is what liberty and freedom are based on in these United States of America with respect to the un-alien-able rights men documented in the constitution.

I say this because a sovereign individual is self-reliant and does not need anyone (even government) to provide for him, protect him from himself nor tell him what to do. To be sovereign means to be responsible for ones own actions, to be financial independent and free from unnecessary government interference – basically living the life he desires. The problem again is that many do not understand theses concepts or how mandates are in direct opposition from the aforementioned concepts.

Recently Obama passed a Health Care reform bill that mandates folks buy health insurance, similar in the vein that we are mandated to purchase auto insurance and or wear seat belts (if your state demands such by law). Truth is some states do not and that there were times that it was not required to buy auto insurance or wear seatbelts. Many may be too young to remember such but it is true. When I mentioned my problem with this to a friend, he told me that he was glad such was mandated because driving is not a right but rather a privilege. I said that anything can do, create or think of is legal and provided to me by that greater than me and not a man. Also added that by your logic, reading and learning is a privilege also for that is how slave masters saw it – that they could decided for you as government entities do now. I also added that also thought it was unnecessary for marriage license, gun permits and driver’s license. Again he disagreed.So I reminded him of why we have both.

There was a time when there was no such thing as either, that is until or near the end of slavery. Historically, all the states outlawed the marriage of blacks and whites. Not until the mid 1800’s did some states allow such but in order to do so, they were mandated to received a license from the state (had to get permission to do an act which without such permission would have been illegal). Blacks Law Dictionary notes historically that a marriage license is defined as, "A license or permission granted by public authority to persons who intend to intermarry." "Intermarry" is defined in Black’s Law Dictionary as, "Miscegenation; mixed or interracial marriages." Up until this period their was no such thing and now states all use them as a way to make money for God requires no such permit.

The same is true with respect to Gun permits. Throughout much of American history, gun control was used as a method for keeping blacks due to the racial fears of whites. Racist arms laws were on the books before the US was established. The French Black Code (required Louisiana colonists to stop "any black carrying any potential weapon, such as a cane)." If a black refused to stop on demand, and was on horseback, the colonist was authorized to "shoot to kill." Even before that the sixteenth century the colony of New Spain, prohibited all blacks, free and slave, from carrying arms. Mississippi went further, and prohibited any ownership of a dog by a black person. Such restrictions increased dramatically after Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831. Virginia's response to Turner's Rebellion prohibited free blacks "to keep or carry any firelock of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead". Simply, America has a fear of armed blacks based on the collective unconscious of what many made Africans in America Experience. Even the end of slavery in did not eliminate or change racist gun control laws. Blacks even needed to obtain a license before carrying or owning a gun or knife when such was not required for whites. Even today the same practices based on race via mandates stem from what we saw in the years of slavery. From public housing residents being singled out for gun bans to so-called "Gun sweeps" by police in "high crime neighborhoods.

All I am trying to say that we speak and accept these mandates by the government and they are often accepted under the guise of privilege as opposed to a right. We do not value freedom or liberty as much as we say or we would have continued the struggle that ore fore parents lead. It seems again as we think we are free, or think we have made or thin\k we have overcome, but the truth is we accept with out question. Accepting mandates as such makes us slaves, obviates us from individual responsibility and takes away our enumerated rights stated in the constitution. I mean it is not rocket science – if we are not sovereign, we have no liberty, if we have no liberty we have no freedom, if we have no freedom we have no rights – all that is left is privilege, which by definition can be given and/or taken away at anytime.