Are Tyler Perry Films Bad for Black America? – Source: YourBlackWorld.com

Brought to you by The Great Black Speakers Bureau, the #1 Black Speakers Bureau in the world.  To join the Your Black World Coalition, please visit YourBlackWorld.com.

Hey peeps,

I spent the week in NYC finishing up the filming for our MSNBC.com special.  It was grueling, but fun and interesting, the only time I’ve ever actually auditioned for a film and had to study a script to prepare for a production.  Also, I spent three hours in the studio with Rev. Al Sharpton yesterday, and we received a surprise call from NY Governor David Paterson.  I must say that I respect David Paterson tremendously, in spite of what the general public might think.  Finally, I’ll be shooting my AOL show this week in New York.  If you have good topic or guest ideas, please let me know. 

Until then, stay strong, be blessed and always do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Dr. Boyce

http://www.BoyceWatkins.co
Tiger Woods and Obama are Mixed Race Americans:  Why Do We Give Them Such a Hard Time About It?

by Dr. Boyce Watkins – TheLoop21.com

Tiger Woods and I have very different tastes in women: He likes stick figures with blonde hair, and I like curvy, intelligent women with brown skin. But I’ve never attacked Tiger for his preferences, for that’s just a part of who he is.
There a lot of people who feel differently from me when judging Tiger’s marriage preferences and racial identity. While I know quite a few brothers who respect Tiger for his game on the course, I know even more black women who wouldn’t care if Tiger dove face-first in a pit of molten lava. They’ve always despised Tiger’s lack of interest in black women. In fact, Tiger didn’t even have a black mistress, which might be an even greater insult to some.
The most ridiculous things I’ve heard come from those who truly believe that if Tiger Woods had been cheating with black women, they would never have gone public on him. I’m sorry, but a porn star is a porn star, and they all have sex for money. The mistresses were going to get paid regardless, whether you’re talking about a seductress from Beverly Hills or a stripper in Atlanta, Georgia. They all want their money, so Tiger’s biggest mistake was choosing the wrong kind of women to spend his time with. Strippers and porn stars don’t hang out with ballers for nothing.

Click to read.

Are Tyler Perry Films Bad for Black America? No, They Are Not

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Rick Ross Trademark Infringement Lawsuit Sees a Major Twist

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President Obama and Congress Tap Dance Around Unemployment

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Black Women Get Good News About Unemployment Again

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Dave Chappelle’s Strange Behavior on an Airplane: What’s Up Dave?

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Virginia State University Gets a Major Financial Boost

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Elena Kagan and the Black Men in Her Life

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Mel Gibson Using the N-Word? Say it Ain’t So

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Dr. Boyce: NBA Free Agents Earning Less Than You Think

• The summer’s NBA free agent market is probably more interesting than most. With LeBron James … Read More
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Scottie Pippen Wins $2 Million in Lawsuit but Appears to be Broke

• NBA legend Scottie Pippen cried when he heard that he’d been awarded $2 million in a legal … Read More
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Are You Unemployed? Well, Republicans Don’t Seem to Care

• This week, Congress is set to allow unemployment benefits expire for 1.2 million Americans. Many of … Read More
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Why there should be a black backlash against BET

By Dr. Boyce Watkins

10:43 AM on 06/28/2010

OPINION – Through the years, the BET Awards have become a staple of unhealthy and counter-productive broken black family fun…

> READ MORE

This message was sent from Dr. Boyce Watkins: Your Black World to cdancyii@embarqmail.com. It was sent from: Dr. Boyce Watkins, 23F Queens Way, Camillus, ny 13031. You can modify/update your subscription via the link below.

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Dr. Boyce Watkins

Why We Must Mass Mobilize Against Resegregation In Wake County NC-A Local, State, And National Issue

EMBARGOED RELEASE

6 July 2010  10:00AM

 

 

Contact:  Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President, 919-394-8137

               Mrs. Amina J. Turner, Exec Dir, 919-682-4700

               Al McSurely, Esq., Communications, 919-389-2905

               Irving Joyner, Esq., Legal Redress

 

Why We Must Mass Mobilize

Against Resegregation In Wake County NC-A Local, State,

And National Issue

By

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

 

Over the weekend I have spent some time reflecting on the moral philosophy contained in so much of our nations written ideals. Beautiful Words like “We The People….” Strong Commitments like, ‘indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Righteous hope for change, found in the words to our second national anthem, America the Beautiful, “America! America! God mend thine ev’ry flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law”.

 

I spent a moment with Justice Marshall’s writings. All last week, I watched the right wing Senators malign him during Ms. Kagan’s confirmation hearings. And I reflected on what Justice Marshall said at the U.S. Constitution’s 200th birth day, in 1987:

 

“The men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 could not have envisioned these changes. They could not have imagined, nor would they have accepted, that the document they were drafting would one day be construed by a Supreme Court to which had been appointed a woman and the descendant of an African slave. “We the People" no longer enslave. But the credit does not belong to the Framers. It belongs to those who refused to acquiesce in outdated notions of "liberty," "justice," and "equality," and who strived to better them”.

 

I considered how my own mother, who still works in the public education system and my father who is now deceased were apart of those who refused to acquiesce who worked to end segregation in this state.

 

And then I thought about the great call of my faith tradition in regards to community, as found in the King James Bible Galatians chapter 3: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

 

After this time of reflection, I felt a fresh sense of urgency as to why we must stand in unity and Mass Mobilize against what the anti- diversity, right-wing, tea-party sympathizing, resegregationist caucus is doing in Wake County. In the face of overwhelming opposition, these five people—I don’t care where they are from . . .I care about how they are hurting our children—are marching forward to the ideology of their right-wing sponsors. Tearing us apart; using our children as pawns in their cynical aim to destroy public education and socio-economic diversity. Our children are being used as tools of division.

 

We must see this as a state and national issue. They are trying to create a false dichotomy by suggesting, without an ounce of empirical research. . . without a drop of moral underpinnings. . . that Wake County’s commitment to socio-economic diversity is the enemy of school excellence. The truth, and the research both say the opposite: socio-economic diversity is the friend of school excellence.

 

Their concept of ‘Neighborhood’ is too narrow. They want private schools with public dollars for those who can afford to move to rich neighborhoods in the suburbs. And they want pools of misery in high-poverty, racially-identifiable schools for the poor, who have been jammed into certain sections of Raleigh by red-lining, discriminatory lending and zoning policies and practices, and other legacies which had their genesis in the profane rational for slavery and not-so-long ago racist practices in our society.

 

Diversity is the law. Diversity is a tool of racial justice.

 

When the NAACP was litigating the famous 1954 case we call Brown vs Board of Education, The Topeka Kansas Board of Education told the Supreme Court that segregated schools were not unconstitutional “because”–AND I QUOTE—

”segregation in Topeka and elsewhere pervaded many other aspects of life, segregated schools simply prepared black children for the segregation they would face during adulthood.” The Topeka Board went onto argue that segregated schools were not necessarily harmful to black children because great African Americans such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver had overcome more than just segregated schools to achieve what they achieved.” Edward W. Knappman, ed., Great American Trials (Detroit: Visible Ink, 1994) 467

 

But the Nine Justices in 1954–all white men—rejected this flawed logic. Instead, the Court unanimously declared:

 

"We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does….

 

We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

 

In 2003 a comprehensive study conducted by Harvard University’s Civil Rights Project, found,

 

“a pervasive pattern of racial separation in public schools. Although minority enrollment now approaches 40 percent nationwide, the average white student attends a public school that is 80 percent white. At the same time, one-sixth of black students — the figure is one-quarter in the Northeast and Midwest — attend schools that are nearly 100 percent non-white.

 

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, the nation waged an imperfect battle against segregated education. Courts struck down de jure, or legal, racial segregation in the schools….

 

Today, however, the trend lines are going the other way—the wrong way. In the 1990’s, the proportion of blacks attending majority-white schools declined 13 percentage points, reaching the lowest level since 1968. In the same decade, the 1990’s, white enrollment fell substantially in schools attended by substantial numbers of black students. The average black student now attends a school that is only one-third white. Public schools, the Harvard report concludes, have been undergoing a "process of continuous resegregation…."

 

…….School resegregation hurts minority students by condemning them to separate, and unequal, education. It leads to schools with higher concentrations of poverty, less-qualified teachers, weaker academic challenges, and lower test scores. Students who attend these schools are less likely to go on to college; less likely to work in racially-integrated workplaces, and less likely to live in racially integrated neighborhoods.”

 

We know that diversity of our schools makes our schools stronger. We already know that. We have better things to talk about than where this crowd would take us. We have many challenges to educating our kids and all poor kids.  We have many challenges to clog up the school to prison pipeline. We have better things to put our minds to than deal with this crowd.

 

But, my brothers and sisters, my neighbors, my growing family—all children of God– we have to stand up to them!

 

If we don’t stand, if we sit back and let them take us down this driveway to division, we allow them to undermine the sweat and tears and creative human efforts our parents and grandparents fought so hard for—just the modest first stepping stones to a truly integrated and human society. We can’t turn back now!

 

Let us not get sucked into the trap of juxtaposing diversity and excellence. They are two sides of the same coin. We know what makes excellent schools. They try to divert the debate about diversity with his nonsense about wiping out the achievement gap—as if that will be easier with high-poverty schools and less qualified teachers. If this school board were serious about student achievement, the five would leave diversity alone.

 

It’s a false dichotomy to suggest one negates the other. What this crowd should be focusing on, and every other school board in North Carolina should be focusing on, is stopping resegregation, improving diversity in our classrooms for all children, achieving equity in funding, high-quality teachers, smaller classrooms, strong support for math, science, parental involvement, reducing disproportionate dropouts and suspensions of minority, and increasing graduation rates. This is where we need to be focused. Instead, this crowd is trying to make a U-turn in settled public policy in Wake and set an even more regressive model for the state and nation. This crowd wants to insert a backwards policy, putting poor children into Neighborhood Schools in areas where the legacy of race discrimination is self-evident, thus condemning our poor children to the most under-funded, most segregated, poorest schools.

 

If we allow resegregation it undermines all of the other things we need to do to secure our children’s future. That’s dangerous! That’s wrong! That’s Immoral! And, we believe, it’s unconstitutional!

 

This is why, along with our legislative strategy, legal strategy, voter registration strategy, we are calling for mass non-violent mobilization on July 20, 2010 at 10:00AM here in downtown Raleigh on Fayetteville St. beginning at the Convention Center area proceeding down Fayetteville Street toward the Capitol Building where we will have a street assembly and after the mobilization many of us will go where the school board meets and continue to raise our protest to their actions.

 

The theme of our mobilization is —

NO to Resegregation!!!

YES to School Diversity and School Excellence!

Forward Ever — Backwards Never!

See related:

Wake County Public Schools

WILL DUDUS SING? by William Reed Columnist

Christopher “Dudus” Coke is a man worth watching.  Coke is a Kingston, Jamaica resident who caused a state of emergency and got the leader of the country’s ruling party to put his political career and reputation on the line to keep him out of American courts.  The arrest of Christopher Coke was an urban spectacle, and his trial has the potential to revel a lot about American and Jamaican officials’ drug trade dealings.  If Coke sings much may be told about Jamaican and American officials’ involvement in illegal activities from the Caribbean to North America to England.

The case is an example of the “strong arm” of the United States government and its practices in the drug trade.  The US justice department had the alleged leader of the notorious Shower Posse gang on a "world’s most dangerous" list, while a former Jamaican national security minister describes him as “probably the country’s most powerful man”.  The role and record of “Dudus” is result of alliances between U.S. imperialism and the predominately-Black island’s governing bourgeoisie.  Coke gained his mythical status as a linkage between Jamaica’s working class elements and the political ruling class elite that comprises the: Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP).

Many Jamaicans say that “if Christopher Coke is a criminal, then so are the Jamaican ruling parties and the U.S. government” who introduced drugs and gun violence in poor community districts of Jamaica during the 1970s and 80s.  Dudicus Coke’s trial threatens to expose corruption that has been intrinsic to Jamaican politics for decades and bring to light the length to which criminal gangs and both local parties are linked.

Last August, the US authorities charged Coke with organizing deals of marijuana and crack cocaine, and funnelling the profits along with weapons back to Jamaica.  Mr Coke faces life in prison if found guilty.    Reports call it "guns for ganja" trade and labels the island "the Caribbean’s largest source of marijuana" for US users and "a transit point for cocaine trafficked from South America,"

According to Jamaican media, Mr Coke is more like a "godfather" to Kingston residents – a benefactor providing the means for food and schooling.  Over the years, Jamaica’s governments created the environment in which such political entities could flourish.  Gang control is at its most pervasive in communities entirely under the control of one or other of the political parties, known as “garrison communities.”  His lawyers call Coke a legitimate businessman and the major shareholder in two successful Jamaican companies, Incomparable Enterprise and Presidential Click.  People on the streets of western Kingston call him Presi, Bossy, Shortman or, Dudus.  Coke sends their children to school, mediates disputes and gives them employment.

Garrison communities – Tivoli, Trench Town, Jungle, and Fletcher’s Land – are self-governing, politically protected enclaves striated according to party affiliation, dependent on and controlled by "Dons" and their gangs, who are the liaison between the community and political parties.  Dons receive the patronage and political protection of party leaders that insulates them from law enforcement.  In exchange, they finance political campaigns, deliver votes, and maintain their territories.  Dons fill a gap that national and local governments seem unable and unwilling to tackle; and, in turn, benefit enormously from government contracts for construction, transportation and infrastructure as they utilize these legal businesses to launder money.

Though still technically “in charge” of Tivoli Gardens projects, Coke’s wealth enabled him to move to an opulent former plantation home in Red Hills, a cool, peaceful retreat favored by entrepreneurs and politicians.  Senior politicians, including Jamaican Prime Minister Golding, have reportedly been electronically intercepted by US surveillance while talking to Coke.  Many may testify in favor of Coke.  He has been instrumental in resurrecting and restructuring Kingston commerce and ensuring the safety and protection of both vendors and buyers in the island’s capital downtown.  Coke’s business transactions and social interactions (such as the popular dancehall event, Passa Passa) are beneficial and cause money flows in to poverty-stricken communities unlikely to benefit from tourist dollars or government subsidies.

(William Reed is available for speaking engagements via BaileyGroup.org)

See related:

William Reed

Governor to address highway patrol misconduct – Source: News & Observer

Gov. Bev Perdue plans to announce Wednesday "significant" changes to a state Highway Patrol that has been grappling with a string of cases of trooper misconduct in recent weeks, a spokeswoman said.

"You’ll have some significant first steps in what will be a long-term effort to see consistent change, and a consistent approach to put in the right policies to make sure that this kind of behavior is prevented as much as possible, and then eradicated whenever it appears," said Chrissy Pearson, Perdue’s press secretary. (Read more @ News & Observer)

See related:

Governor Beverly Perdue

 

Butterfield and USDA to Announce Speed Fire Funding

U.S. Representative G. K. Butterfield

First District of North Carolina

---

For Release:  Immediate

Date:  July 6, 2010

Contact:  Ken Willis
Phone:  (202) 225-3101

---

Butterfield and USDA to Announce Speed Fire Funding

Speed, N.C. – Congressman G. K. Butterfield and state Director for USDA Rural Development Randy Gore will announce federal funding for the town’s volunteer fire department on Wednesday, July 7.

Butterfield and Gore will be joined by Fire Chief Bobby Wheeler at the Speed Volunteer Fire Department at 113 Millpond Road in Speed, N.C.

WHAT: Congressman Butterfield and NC USDA Rural Development Director Randy Gore announce federal funds for Speed Fire Department

WHEN: Wednesday, July 7, 9 – 9:30 a.m.

WHERE: Speed Volunteer Fire Department, 113 Mill Pond Road Speed, N.C.

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Congressman G.K. Butterfield

Electric Rate Reality and Bronson Williams – Source: Behind The Scenes of A TV Talk Show

Reality and electric rates don’t go hand in hand, at least not in Rocky Mount, NC.  Bronson Williams’ the “truth hurts” radio broadcast is convoluted with misinformation.  Allbeit, the same misinformation, day after day after day…

If you live and work in Rocky Mount, you’d be better served to listen to  FM 92.1 “Express Yourself” on Monday nights.

I turned off Bronson’s show the day he told me that . . . (Read more @ Behind The Scenes)

Note: I totally agree with you George it is not about the utilities but about the game. He is doing just that pimping folks through his radio broadcast. C. Dancy II – DCN Publisher

See related:

Rocky Mount Utilities