Blacks were better off under slaves? Asked today by a conservative blogger about the role of race in the hyper-partisan, talk-radio-addled atmosphere in Washington, Republican Rep. Trent Franks took the opportunity to say that he thinks African Americans were better off under slavery. Check out the video (below) some excerpts:
Slavery “is a crushing mark on America’s soul,” the Arizonan tells Mike Stark. “And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery. And I think, ‘What does it take to get us to wake up?’”
Friday, February 26, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Mayor Adrian Fenty, His Disgrace May Be Catching Up With Him
Recently The Washington Post ran a report on how black folks in Washington, DC don't support Mayor Adrian Fenty. I agree with their analysis and data.
Now here is an great article, and about a man who may just run for Mayor of washington, DC. Don Peebles appears to be just what Washington, DC needs. Check out this article from The Washington, DC "City Paper" on how Non-Candidate Don Peebles Goes Deliciously Negative on Fenty
This much is clear: If developer R. Donahue Peebles runs for mayor (and it doesn't seem to be a very big if), that vein in Adrian Fenty's forehead will be doing a lot of popping.
Last night, as a guest of the D.C. Federation of Civic Associations, Peebles delivered what was, for all intents and purposes, a mayoral stump speech. In his remarks before a friendly crowd, Peebles lambasted Fenty's record, attacking the incumbent on education, crime, and economic development. And, at times, he got rather personal.
Notably, Peebles delivered his strident remarks minutes after D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray occupied the podium inside the old council chambers at One Judiciary Square. While Gray decried divisions in the city and got quite animated about D.C. voting rights, he did not challenge the current leadership of the city as directly as Peebles did. (Keep in mind that Gray was there to deliver brief comments before installing the organization's new officers.)
It would be unfair to compare and contrast the would-be candidates, but one thing's clear to LL: Peebles has the taste for the political jugular that Gray does not.
Peebles read from a prepared text (available below). His particular spin on the rags-to-riches story---grandson of hotel doorman becomes hotel owner---won him applause and grunts of approval from the crowd. He got even more applause when he started his broadsides at the Fenty record---noting that murders went down last year, but only "for the first time...since Adrian Fenty walked into office" and playing down rises in school test scores as modest. Like Gray, he indulged in the old "tale of two cities" line, which launched him into the meat of his attack, skewering Fenty for "economic neglect" and closing social-service offices while unemployment is at an all-time high. In another ripped-from-the-headlines riff, Peebles decried the overcrowding at the city's youth detention center.
On the night of the State of the Union address, Pebbles also deployed a classic SotU tactic, quoting a resident named Renarda House to testify to the plight of the city. Her testimony: "Fenty is not in touch at all with this community." (House appeared not to be on the premises.)
That segued into another Peebles crowd-whipper---the recent CoStar tax-abatement deal: "I wonder how Adrian Fenty would feel, how he would explain to her and the hundreds of others, how he chose to close two service centers to save $1 million while at the same very time, he flew back from a junket from Las Vegas, Nevada, and sat in first-class next to the owner of a company called CoStar and cut a deal to give him $7 million to move his business from Bethesda, Maryland, to Washington, D.C.---a deal that would not create one new job, not spark any new economic development in our community."
After wrapping up his prepared comments, things got really interesting.
After one woman in the audience of several dozen rose to urge him to run, Peebles, citing his mother-in-law's terminal cancer, said he wasn't running "at this particular time." He added: "I do intend, whether I'm a candidate or someone else is, to help support change in the city."
With that, the Fenty slams notched into high gear. For one: "I don't dislike Adrian Fenty. I mean, you know, he's probably a good athlete. But I am angry at the job that he's done as mayor and the level of disrespect and the lack of compassion."
On his economic development record: "I, at 27 years old, with $20,000 in the bank have built more buildings in Ward 8 than Adrian Fenty with $9 billion in the bank."
Peebles went on to call him "vindictive" and retaliatory toward those who don't support his political campaigns. He pivoted to address a key ant-Peebles talking point: "People have been going around telling the media that I'm just trying to buy the mayor's race. But I want to answer that for those of the media that are here: I am. I'm gonna buy it back and give it to you." Big applause for that one.
And then things got personal, apropos of the Cora Masters Barry eviction saga. As predicted, the Fenty administration's attempt to oust the estranged wife of Marion Barry from her space at a city-funded tennis center became prime campaign fodder, prompting this vein-popper: "Does he think he's gonna be mayor forever? One day his wife will be the former first lady. Then I realized he probably doesn't have much respect for her." Yikes.
And that, of course, gave way to Fenty's related snub of civil rights icon Dorothy Height and poet Maya Angelou, who wanted a meeting with Hizzoner in order to stump for Cora. "Who the hell does he think he is?....If it weren't for Dorothy Height, he wouldn't be running the city; he'd probably be working at the cleaners."
Senator Harry Reid's Vegas Integration Lies
Well it looks like Senator Harry Reid is at it again. you remember how I commented about the NAACP giving Senator Reid an "A" in Congress report card | more HERE and HERE. Well, it appears that Senator Reid is spreading a bit of "little white lies" this time with regard to his role in the integration of the Vegas Strip.
Get this as reported by Steven Friess at AOL News, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who last month apologized for privately praising President Barack Obama's lack of a "Negro dialect," posted a Black History Month essay on his Web site Monday in which he takes credit for racial integration in Las Vegas.
One problem: Some local black leaders and historians don't remember him having had a significant role in that effort and the senator himself made no reference to it in his 2008 memoir.
Get this as reported by Steven Friess at AOL News, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who last month apologized for privately praising President Barack Obama's lack of a "Negro dialect," posted a Black History Month essay on his Web site Monday in which he takes credit for racial integration in Las Vegas.
One problem: Some local black leaders and historians don't remember him having had a significant role in that effort and the senator himself made no reference to it in his 2008 memoir.
President Barack Obama, right, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(Jason Reed/Reuters)
There is more, In the essay, which was also published as an opinion piece for the black-issues Web site The Grio under Harry Reid's byline, the Senate majority leader wrote: "I worked hard during my time in local politics in Nevada to integrate the Las Vegas strip [sic] and the gaming industry."
Yet Joe Neal, a former Democratic state senator who was a key figure in the civil rights movement in Nevada, was baffled by the claim. For one thing, Reid was only 20 when a famous 1960 meeting between casino owners, progressive government officials and NAACP leaders resulted in an accord to integrate Las Vegas casinos for customers.
The Nevada Legislature passed a civil rights act in 1965, but Reid did not become a member of that body until his 1966 election as an assemblyman. And a federal court decree in 1971 that set quotas for the hiring of minority casino workers was negotiated by the U.S. Department of Justice and handed down just months after he was sworn in as lieutenant governor.
Reid spokesman Jon Summers responded to questions about the claim with a one-sentence e-mail: "He and Mike O'Callaghan worked together as governor and lieutenant governor to apply pressure on business leaders to integrate the industry." Reid served as lieutenant governor under O'Callaghan for one term, from 1971 to 1974, before leaving the post for his first, unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate.
When pressed for specifics, Summers pointed to a Politico piece from June 2008 in which Reid told a journalist he helped negotiate the 1971 settlement that required casinos to begin hiring blacks in hotel casino jobs other than as maids and porters.
"I don't recall him being involved in any of that," said Neal, the first black state senator and first black gubernatorial nominee from a major party when the Democrat lost in 2002. He attended several meetings related to the federal settlement and was heavily involved as the state's top elected black official. "I don't think he would have an involvement" in the federal court decree.
Historians who have studied the era were similarly uncertain to what Reid referred. A 2004 doctoral dissertation [pdf] by sociologist Jeffrey J. Sallaz specifically examined the outcome of that federal decree and didn't reference either O'Callaghan or Reid. Instead, Sallaz laid out the history as a tussle between federal authorities and casino executives.
Read the whole article HERE.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
NAACP Generational Shift with Roslyn Brock at Helm
Finally, as reported by By Krissah Thompson, The Washington Post, The NAACP hands over reins to a new chairman | I have written my own response and congratulations... more HERE
As reported by The Washington Post, The NAACP selected health-care administrator Roslyn Brock as its chairman on Saturday, marking the culmination of a generational shift for the historic civil rights organization. For the first time in the NAACP's history, both its president and chairman are too young to have personally experienced legalized segregation.
Brock, 44, takes the helm from civil rights pioneer Julian Bond. She will guide the association along with Benjamin Jealous, who, at 37, is the youngest president in the NAACP's history.
The shift comes as the association seeks to regain the influence of its heyday during the civil rights movement, and Brock said her goal is to expand the NAACP's base beyond its stagnant chapter membership and narrow its focus on a few specific civil rights issues: education, health care, economic empowerment, criminal justice and civic engagement.
Roslyn M. Brock, who joined the civil rights organization in college, succeeds Julian Bond, left. (Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post)
AAPP says: All of you know how I feel about the NAACP. I have been a critic of the NAACP for some time, yet at the same time I have scene glimmers of HOPE. I've talked about how the naacp is still facing a battle over its future. More Here about - my second take
It's interesting that I (along with other bloggers) just recently discussed how the NAACP gave Senator Reid an A in Congress report card | more HERE and HERE
Yes, I have been critical of how Three Negros (stooges) meet with Obama at White House without an agenda, plan, strategy, out program in place. On this blog I have followed the NAACP for some time. I have pointed out, like so many other black folks how NAACP is out of touch! As an example, giving Harry Reid a grade "A" as a Senator.
Now we learn the NAACP selected health-care administrator Roslyn M. Brock as its chairman on Saturday, marking the culmination of a generational shift for the historic civil rights organization.
AAPP: This is good News!
As reported by By Krissah Thompson over at The Washington Post, For the first time in the NAACP's history, both its president and chairman are too young to have personally experienced legalized segregation.
Brock, 44, takes the helm from civil rights pioneer Julian Bond. She will guide the association along with Benjamin Jealous, who, at 37, is the youngest president in the NAACP's history.
The shift comes as the association seeks to regain the influence of its heyday during the civil rights movement, and Brock said her goal is to expand the NAACP's base beyond its stagnant chapter membership and narrow its focus on a few specific civil rights issues: education, health care, economic empowerment, criminal justice and civic engagement.
"As we move forward, our greatest challenge really is to hone our message to make it relevant," said Brock, who joined the NAACP as a freshman in college. "We have to recognize and to own that we can't be all things to all people, and that there are new players in the space that we operate in who may be able to do some things better than we can."
Brock and Jealous, who was named president two years ago, are tasked with finding a way to reignite what they call the association's "front-line" activism. Jealous said both see their mission as no less pressing than the struggles faced by African Americans in other eras.
AAPP says: Hmmm.... Here is my previous comments on the naacp 100 years... what next?
"We are the so-called children of the dream," Jealous said. "We were told that everything was fair and all we had to do was work hard. That worked well for many of us, but all of us realize that we are a part of a generation that is both the most murdered in the country and the most incarcerated on the planet."
Both Brock and Jealous said they want to see the NAACP catch up with technological advancements in social activism. Smaller, younger groups have built robust online activism networks. Jealous began last year to increase the NAACP's online presence, with live streaming of video and online campaigns in support of health-care reform and other issues.
AAPP says: I agree with one of the professors, quoted in the Washington Post article, "The jury is still out on the relevance of the NAACP, but this is definitely a step in the right direction," said Andra Gillespie, a professor of political science at Emory University. "The biggest structural challenge [facing the NAACP] is in an era where there is codified equality and you have a black president, you have to figure out what a civil rights agenda looks like. No one has figured that out."
I also agree with the responder to a recent blog post, regarding the NAACP's meeting with Barack Obama recently, when he wrote:
"Looks like The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion traveled all the way to Washington, in the middle of a snow storm, just to get one hour with The Wizard Obama. Even Dorthy knew it would be a waste of time...that's why she stayed home. They could have gotten better results with a phone call. Many Blacks said it would be a "cold day in hell" before Obama would spend ONE day addressing our issues... they were wrong....it just took a cold day in Washington, and less than one hour to address our issues." More HERE
As Krissah Thompson at The Washington Post, noted, although it had been a force in winning major civil rights battles for decades, the NAACP has been criticized in recent years for not remaining relevant. The average age of its 64-member board of directors is 58. Read more HERE
With all this said, we wish her the best in her new role....
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