Our Black Year Can Help Us See Our Black Selves

Every once in awhile I read a book that actually really does leave some sort of lasting impact on my life.  When I was a kid, it was the imagery of Charlotte's Web that did it.  As a late teenager, The Autobiography of Malcolm X opened my eyes to questions I had about race and dedication.

Now its "Our Black Year."

A good friend - she calls herself a book slut - gave me this book to read.  At first, it sounded like it would be a nice story about some more crusading black folks who thought "how nice it would be to buy from only black businesses for a year."   And while the book was that, it turned out to be so much more to me.

The Andersons of Chicago, a well-to-do corporate mom, corporate dad and a couple of commercial perfect little girls, decided they would spend one year in buying from only black owned businesses. And, of course, it turned out to be one of the most difficult undertakings ever for them.  Well, you'd figure it would be that way.

But what got me was the book, written by corporate mom Maggie Anderson, was much more about the psyche of black folks and why we collectively refuse to see ourselves as a group, as do those who are Jewish, Italian, Korean, etc.  These folks support their own while at the time setting up shop in black communities and taking all our dollars out into other communities that have little to do with any of our black butts.  One interesting fact in the book that says it all: dollars spent in, say, the white communities, circulate there for weeks or months.  In black communities - six hours.

In the end, it leads to black communities that continue to crumble because, well, we don't care.

Too many of us, probably myself included, who seem to have some education, good jobs and doing okay have just economically abandoned those who haven't.  We've left the true idea of the "Talented Tenth" -- in which the more educated would work to pull others up with them -- in the dust.  We've moved on up and then away.

Not to say that there aren't black businesses that operate in shady manners, continually run themselves out of business as they operate like fruit stands and wrongfully think we should shop with them.  They aren't helping themselves or us at all.

But the issue is this: black folks have to take control of the economics of the black community.  In case you haven't noticed, we don't control any of that.  And when I say black community, I say that as a group of African-Americans who seem to have forgotten what our existence in this country is all about. We've allowed ourselves to become a splintered collective that forgot what our great- great-grandparents fought for.  We were a group trying to get our slice of the pie.  But we've become so satisfied by the individual crumbs that the greater world has tossed to us -- to shut us up -- that we've forgotten all about what made other groups, Italians, Koreans, et al, successful.  Taking care of our ourselves.

That isnt about shunning whites, Asians, Japanese or anyone else.  It's about taking care of ourselves, as they have done, to make sure we are pulling our own weight and contributing and sharing in the combined wealth that all of us as Americans should get.  It's about bringing us all up to the same level, making us a bit stronger as a nation.  It's not about being anti-anything.  If someone gets that from this, then they are a complete idiot.

It's all about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and not making fun of those who don't have boots or who's boots are really pieces of cardboard that they've written the word "boots" on.  It's about making sure we can all have a pair of boots.

Instead, we've become a group that separates themselves.  A group that fought to sit in the front of the bus, only to choose to go to the back of the bus anyway.  Of making fun of those who ride the bus.  Or think we are too good to ride the bus.

So ask yourselves, "How am I REALLY helping my black community?"  You'll probably be shocked at the true answer when you honestly look into the mirror.

It's Simple: There Should Be NO Football at Penn State This Year

"The most saddening findings by the Special Investigative Council is the total and disregard by the most senior leaders at Penn State for the safety and welfare of [Jerry] Sandusky's child victims."

That is why Penn State should be honest about being an institution of integrity and shut down football at the school in, at the very least, 2013.

I'm probably the biggest college football fan you'll find.  I believe in the what is [supposed to be anyway] the idea of young men on the field, battling each other for the ideals of high-minded collegiate institutions that are about education and growth.  But this scandal gets at the heart of what is wrong with college football.  College football, mainly big-time college football, -- which can't even get over its greedy ways to come up with a simple championship format like every other sport -- has gotten so rich, greedy, selfish and insulated in its own cocoon of self-importance that the powers that be who run this national enterprise have now seen what that culture can create - people who think they are above not only the law, but the well-being of people who they don't deem to be very important.

In this case, that means children.

Jerry Sandusky, the former defensive coordinator for the Penn State football team, spent 30 years at the side of head coach Joe Paterno.  The two were locked arm and arm as they won and won on the football field over the years.  But behind the scenes, behind the winning headlines, Sandusky was hiding a secret life in which he molested children.  He raped children.  And Joe Paterno, the man who was the picture of college football's high-minded concern with education and dedication to the minds of young people, was in the end helping Sandusky to hide his dark side.  A dark side in which he raped children.

"Four of the most powerful people at Pennsylvania State University - President Graham B. Spanier, Senior Vice President - Finance and Business Gary C. Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy M. Curley and Head Football Coach Joseph V. Paterno - failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children over a decade.  These men concealed Sandusky's activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities."

Penn State's top individuals did nothing to stop a child predator. A man they knew was a child predator. The displayed a "striking lack of empathy" towards these victims because they did nothing. Nothing. Why?  Because they did what college football officials think they can always do - sweep things they deem negative and a threat to their image under the rug.  No one will ever know.

Except those children.

Football's importance is so out of whack on campuses now, so much so that this sort of thing has happened.  The sheer pitiful nature of this shouldn't be too surprising to people.  It's the kind of thinking that goes on behind the school-colored walls of the college football world.  Maybe not so sickening as this.  But damn near close.

And that's what makes this a football issue.

So if Southern Methodist University can get the NCAA's death penalty for having boosters who paid players and did all kinds of things that countered the college football world's high-minded morals, where does this Penn State situation stand?  I have an answer.

Penn State shouldn't be playing football this season.  It's as simple as that.

(quoted material comes directly from Louis Freeh's report on the Penn State football scandal)

Martin, Mississippi and Morons

Progress is a funny thing, isn't it?

You think you've taken ten steps forward only to realize you've hardly gone anywhere because after taking three steps, you expected the other seven to follow automatically. Hopeful and as optimistic as we may be, we all know it hardly ever happens that way.

Exhibit A and B, Mississippi and Alabama. While the great American melting pot looks more like jambalaya everyday, a number of people in these two bottom rungs of the educational and cultural ladder believe interracial dating should be banned. Gotten rid of. Made illegal. No white folks should be marrying anybody black. To be specific, 29 percent of those enlightened Republican voters in Mississippi believe interracial dating should be illegal. Another 17 percent weren't sure. In Alabama, 21 percent of their likely GOP voters in Alabama thought the same - this in a state where interracial dating was actually illegal until 2000. (the poll was done by North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling)

As usual, loyal and brain-washed GOP loyalists will try to downplay and dismiss this poll with any silly reason they can make up because they, a) are afraid to admit how they and many of their breathren really feel, and b) because they think it's okay for them to believe those silly thoughts.

Why?

Well, it goes back to 1992. How can an entire party of people be angry for 20 years over losing an election? Ask those on the right. Since Bill Clinton came out of nowhere to defeat George H. Bush in the '92 presidential election, they have been hell bent on defeating the Democratic party, no matter what it took. Since then, they have been on a systematic, strategic, selfish and immature moronic mission to kill the donkey. And since then, anything coming from a Democrat or anyone seen as a left-winger is painted as bringing the country down into some deep pit of anti-American hell -- facts and history, be damned.

So now those on the right constantly stamp liberal and social concerns as the bastion of waste, socialism, wasteful spending, voter fraud or any made up ism or fraud they can wave out of thin air. One of their targets continues to be race. In fact, race is the main area they've used to deeply divide this country. They frame anything darker than Barack Obama (oh, heck, him too since he's the product of an interracial relationship) as the main contributor to the nation's doldrums.

All of this to build a coalition of scared to death voters who believe the nation is going to hell unless we rid ourselves of this dark filth, either by deportation, jail, the death penalty or whatever they can come up with. Its led to the renaissance of the politics of scaring the hell out of you and making you believe "they" are the problem and "they" are out to get you, wherever you may be.

That means things are right or wrong, black or white. Us against them. There is no gray.

Some of the results have been an inept breed of career politicians and a bunch of stupid and wasteful laws allowing people to carry guns anywhere you can find air or giving you the right to off one of "them." Ask teenager Trayvon Martin. Oh, you can't ask him because one of those lunatics who believed one of "them" - one of "their" uniforms is black skin and a hoodie - was out to get him. He fatally shot Martin who was armed with the deadly weapons of a can of tea and a bag of Skittles. A Republican-authored law written in Florida just a few years ago allowed him to do so.

So for a lot of people, these are us against them issues. Right or wrong. Black or white. Shouldn't have been in that neighborhood. Shouldn't have worn a hoodie, as Geraldo Rivera stupidly said. Yeah, that's the progress we've made in this great country. Seven steps back to the need for a renewed civil and human rights movement in this country. We again have a bunch of morons hell bent on painting made-up pictures of "them" out to get you. Dead brains and dead kids are now the result. Expect more.

March Madness and Mockery

How much of a NCAA March Madness basketball fan am I? Well, I took this week - the first week of the 68-team tournament - off from work so I can watch as much first and second round action as possible. Unbeknownst to most, I take off the Thursday and Friday of the first week of the tournament every year. So, I figure since the tournament expanded from 64 teams last year, my time off should expand also.

There is just something about seeing a team like Norfolk State or South Dakota State with just as much of a chance to win the national championship as North Carolina or Kentucky. Well, sort of, anyway.

Honestly, I'm not stuck in some pollyanish state of mind to think that the former teams REALLY have as much of a chance to win the NCAA title as the latter two. The way college athletics are shaped today is that the biggest, most ridiculously rich schools will nearly always get the nation's best athletes, win the most the games and appear on television the most. That means they will continue to get the most money and continue that unfair cycle. It's a neat and tidy professional monopoly that major college and major conference leaders want you to believe is just about a little game, but is instead about billions of dollars for their coffers.

But in college basketball, at least schools like Mississippi Valley State and Belmont College get an opportunity to win, albeit a small opportunity. And what makes this billion dollar industry, March Madness - which is even a trademarked slogan - so great and so well watched is that sometimes the little guys actually do win.

No so for college football. The Bowl Championship Series - which I call the BS Championship Series - is nothing but a small cartel of big schools and big conferences shutting out other schools who just happen to be so not as rich as the others are. The way that works is only a few schools in major college football have ANY chance of playing for the national championship and the millions of dollars that come with it. There is no playoff like there is in March Madness. Why? The NCAA itself runs the college basketball championship and lets nearly everybody have a chance to play in it. In college football, the large and rich schools run the Bowl Championship Series and keep a tight lid on who gets to play for the winning spoils. So unless Middle Tennessee State University or Marshall University somehow find millions to afford athletes, facilities and everything else it takes to make a smaller school competitive, they will be as close to playing the college football championship game as I am.

Either way, the system is completely unfair. But why should you, a non-sports fan who'd rather watch a Tyler Perry play or listen to some philharmonic do Bach, care?

Because colleges, which make billions of dollars each year from the ESPNs, EA Sports, Gatorades and Nikes of the world, are considered non-profit organizations. Yep, those same schools who raked in as much as an estimated $80 million each last year for college sports and pay coaches millions of dollars a year and build gazillion-dollar facilities have to pay little, if any, in taxes on that money because college athletics is supposed to support the charitable mission of education.

Now you see why Alabama doesn't want the University of Central Florida to see any part of the BCS Championship Series? They want to keep all that nearly tax free money to themselves. It makes rich schools richer and little schools little. All in the name of the charitable mission of athletics. RIGHT!

That completely unfair situation is hardly just about a little game, as those who make billions from those same games like to defensively say. This is about reigning in a completely unfair system that makes a mockery of the nation's laws for non-profit organizations. Major college athletics barely supports the educational system they are supposed to represent and is completely out of control. College athletics has become a professional entity that exploits athletes and is more concerned with television dollars and keeping those television dollars in the pockets of a few instead of promoting the ideals of amateurism, sportsmanship and education.

That has got to change. Congress has got to quit kow-towing to partisan interests and actually do something about this sham perpetuated by what is now the minor leagues for professional football and basketball.

If nothing else, give Long Island University-Brooklyn a chance to win a title. Well, at least college basketball gives them a sliver of a chance.