Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Weds. 7/22/2009 @ 9PM C/10PM E/7PM P~W.E. A.L.L. B.E. Radio Special: Pres. Obama A.K.A. Mr. Tough Love & The Myth Of A Post-Racial America Part One



Celebrating 2 Full Years In The Biz: Ain't No Stopping Us Now!!!

July 2009 Theme: Man In The Mirror...
Air Date: Weds. July 24, 2009
E-mail: r2c2h2@gmail.com
Time: 9 PM C/10 PM E/7 PM P
Listen To The Show Live:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2009/07/23/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio

Show's Theme: Pres. Obama A.K.A. Mr. Tough Love & The Myth Of A Post-Racial America Part One


W.E. A.L.L. B.E. Family!!!
Please join us to find out what it is really like to be Black In America in 2009 With The Honorable Truth Minista Paul Scott riding shotgun.

Today’s show topics:

1.) Does Pres. Obama Talk Down To Black People???

Loeb/Getty

Video: President Barack Obama Addresses The 2009 NAACP Convention

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv6EAaoFNno

Video: Obama in Ghana Parliament: Full Speech 11 July 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkNpUEWIhd4

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2.) Is Prof. Skip Gates Now ‘Black Like Me’?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcPFCTH_rQ

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3.) Michael Jackson Gets A Makeover?


By Gabriel Bouys, AP, pool photo
A large image of Michael Jackson appears at his memorial service as his brother Jermaine sings.
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/michael-jackson-sells-1-1-million-albums-1003993589.story#/bbcom/news/michael-jackson-sells-1-1-million-albums-1003993589.story

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Special Guest: The Honorable Truth Min. Paul Scott Of ‘No Warning Shots Fired’ News.



"TRUTH Minista" Paul Scott is a minister, writer, lecturer and activist. He has been a guest on talk shows around the world including Hannity and Colmes (Fox News), Fox News Live, Nachman (MSNBC), Hot 97 (NY), The Bev. Smith Show, Mancow Morning Show, Mike Medved Show, Russ Parr Morning Show, Mo in the Midday WVON (Chicago), Tom Pope Show (DC) Newstalk 1010 (Toronto) and SAfm (South Africa) discussing the issues of Rap,Race,Religion and Revolution. He has been interviewed by many newspapers including the USA Today and the Christian Science Monitor. Scott has lectured at universities across the country including West Virginia University and Clemson. Scott was ordained a Baptist minister in 1998 he later went on to coin the phrase Afrikan Liberation Theology, which is "Black Liberation Theology for the 21st century." After forming the New Righteous Movement, Scott formed the Messianic Afrikan Nation in 2003.

For more information contact (919) 451-8283 or info@nowarningshotsfired.com
http://www.nowarningshotsfired.com/

***

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http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/02/we-all-be-news-radio-reps-black-history_29.html


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Saturday, July 18, 2009

Happy Life Affirmation Bro. Nelson Mandela!!!


Mandela Struggles Against Aging As He Turns 91

* Story Highlights
* The first Mandela Day is held on Nelson Mandela's 91st birthday
* Idea is to encourage people to help others
* Mandela, former South African President, spending the day at home with family
* His wife says he is struggling with the limitations of aging

By Robyn Curnow
CNN

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- Former South African president Nelson Mandela is celebrating his 91st birthday Saturday -- as his wife reveals he is struggling to deal with the indignities of aging.

Graca Machel told CNN in an exclusive interview that the Nobel peace prize winner was finding it difficult to come to terms with the limitations of age but he is fighting to carry on working with his charities.

Mandela spent 27 years in jail before his release and was elected as South Africa's first black president in 1994. The veteran anti-apartheid campaigner is using his birthday to promote a message of helping others.

Machel said Mandela is too frail to travel overseas to the New York launch of the new charity initiative Mandela Day.

Mandela, who she calls Madiba, was spending the day at home in Johannesburg with his family.

His wife said he still keeps busy working with his charities he has slowed down, something he finds frustrating.

"Madiba is a very proud person. He is vain so when he realizes that he can't walk tall and firm like he used to be, he doesn't like it."

In an unusually blunt statement on his weakening health Machel also explained how hard it was for her to see him getting so old. "To see him aging is something that pains you. You understand you know it has to happen. That spirit, that sparkle, some how is fading."

Even with his spirit 'fading', Mandela's moral authority remains intact which is why Mandela Day aims to promote the values Nelson Mandela long after he is gone.

The global initiative aims to ensure his legacy is maintained and nurtured for the next generation.

Mandela and his charities are using his birthday, July 18, to call on others to do good for others.

Zelda la Grange, Mandela's personal assistant and one of the organizers of the first annual Mandela Day, said: "Mandela gave up 67 years of his life for the anti-apartheid struggle, so we are asking people to give up 67 minutes of their day on July 18."

She explains that Mandela was 24 when he became active in politics.

Mandela said in support of the initiative: "Our struggle for freedom and justice was a collective effort. Mandela Day is no different.

"It is in your hands to create a better world for all who live in it. Mandela Day will not be a holiday but a day devoted to service."

For Mandela and his wife, Mandela Day is a "way of demystifying, that only extraordinary people can do can make a difference."

Everyone, she says, can be a little like Mandela if you "care about others, you care about their wellbeing, you want them to have a real smile, they feel worthy, they are loved, they are cared and that's what you can do."

Mandela's daughter, Zindzi agreed, saying: "It's up to you whether you prefer to mow your neighbor's lawn, or you prefer to go help run a soup kitchen.

"It's all about that living the legacy because now he's handing it over to future generations."

Friday, July 17, 2009

R.I.P. To The Most Trusted Man In America Walter Cronkite...And That's The Way It Is...


This undated photo provided by CBS, shows CBS television newscaster Walter Cronkite. Famed CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, known as the 'most trusted man in America' has died, Friday, July 17, 2009. He was 92.
(AP Photo/CBS, File)

Video: Walter Cronkite Announces Death Of JFK


Vidoe:1968 King Assassination Report (CBS News)


Video: CBS News - Apollo 11 Moon Landing, July 1969


Legendary CBS Anchor Walter Cronkite Dies At 92
By FRAZIER MOORE, AP Television

NEW YORK – Walter Cronkite, the premier TV anchorman of the networks' golden age who reported a tumultuous time with reassuring authority and came to be called "the most trusted man in America," died Friday. He was 92.

Cronkite died at 7:42 p.m. with his family by his side at his Manhattan home after a long illness, CBS vice president Linda Mason said. Marlene Adler, Cronkite's chief of staff, said Cronkite died of cerebrovascular disease.

Morley Safer, a longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent, called Cronkite "the father of television news."

"The trust that viewers placed in him was based on the recognition of his fairness, honesty and strict objectivity ... and of course his long experience as a shoe-leather reporter covering everything from local politics to World War II and its aftermath in the Soviet Union," Safer said. "He was a giant of journalism and privately one of the funniest, happiest men I've ever known."

Cronkite was the face of the "CBS Evening News" from 1962 to 1981, when stories ranged from the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to racial and anti-war riots, Watergate and the Iranian hostage crisis.

It was Cronkite who read the bulletins coming from Dallas when Kennedy was shot Nov. 22, 1963, interrupting a live CBS-TV broadcast of the soap opera "As the World Turns."

He died just three days before the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, another earthshaking moment of history linked inexorably with his reporting.

"What was so remarkable about it was that he was not only in the midst of so many great stories, he was also the managing editor of CBS News and the managing editor for America," former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw said. "Walter always made us better. He set the bar so high."

Cronkite was the broadcaster to whom the title "anchorman" was first applied, and he came so identified in that role that eventually his own name became the term for the job in other languages. (Swedish anchors are known as Kronkiters; In Holland, they are Cronkiters.)

"He was a great broadcaster and a gentleman whose experience, honesty, professionalism and style defined the role of anchor and commentator," CBS Corp. chief executive Leslie Moonves said in a statement.

CBS has scheduled a prime-time special, "That's the Way it Was: Remembering Walter Cronkite," for 7 p.m. Sunday.

President Barack Obama issued a statement saying that Cronkite set the standard by which all other news anchors have been judged.

"He invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down. This country has lost an icon and a dear friend, and he will be truly missed," Obama said.

His 1968 editorial declaring the United States was "mired in stalemate" in Vietnam was seen by some as a turning point in U.S. opinion of the war. He also helped broker the 1977 invitation that took Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem, the breakthrough to Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.

He followed the 1960s space race with open fascination, anchoring marathon broadcasts of major flights from the first suborbital shot to the first moon landing, exclaiming, "Look at those pictures, wow!" as Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon's surface in 1969. In 1998, for CNN, he went back to Cape Canaveral to cover John Glenn's return to space after 36 years.

"He had a passion for human space exploration, an enthusiasm that was contagious, and the trust of his audience. He will be missed," Armstrong said in a statement.

He had been scheduled to speak last January for the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., but ill health prevented his appearance.

A former wire service reporter and war correspondent, he valued accuracy, objectivity and understated compassion. He expressed liberal views in more recent writings but said he had always aimed to be fair and professional in his judgments on the air.

Off camera, his stamina and admittedly demanding ways brought him the nickname "Old Ironpants." But to viewers, he was "Uncle Walter," with his jowls and grainy baritone, his warm, direct expression and his trim mustache.

When he summed up the news each evening by stating, "And THAT's the way it is," millions agreed. His reputation survived accusations of bias by Richard Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, and being labeled a "pinko" in the tirades of a fictional icon, Archie Bunker of CBS's "All in the Family."

Two polls pronounced Cronkite the "most trusted man in America": a 1972 "trust index" survey in which he finished No. 1, about 15 points higher than leading politicians, and a 1974 survey in which people chose him as the most trusted television newscaster.

"He was the most trusted man in America and he was a reporter. Imagine. Who could we say that about today?" said Jeff Fager, executive producer of "60 Minutes," who began working at CBS News the year Cronkite stepped down from the anchor job.

Like fellow Midwesterner Johnny Carson, Cronkite seemed to embody the nation's mainstream. When he broke down as he announced Kennedy's death, removing his glasses and fighting back tears, the times seemed to break down with him.

And when Cronkite took sides, he helped shape the times. After the 1968 Tet offensive, he visited Vietnam and wrote and narrated a "speculative, personal" report advocating negotiations leading to the withdrawal of American troops.

"We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds," he said, and concluded, "We are mired in stalemate."

After the broadcast, President Lyndon B. Johnson reportedly said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."

In the fall of 1972, responding to reports in The Washington Post, Cronkite aired a two-part series on Watergate that helped ensure national attention to the then-emerging scandal.

"When the news is bad, Walter hurts," the late CBS president Fred Friendly once said. "When the news embarrasses America, Walter is embarrassed. When the news is humorous, Walter smiles with understanding."

More recently, in a syndicated column, Cronkite defended the liberal record of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and criticized the Iraq war and other Bush administration policies.

But when asked by CNN's Larry King if that column was evidence of media bias, Cronkite set forth the distinction between opinion and reporting. "We all have prejudices," he said of his fellow journalists, "but we also understand how to set them aside when we do the job."

Cronkite was the top newsman during the peak era for the networks, when the nightly broadcasts grew to a half-hour and 24-hour cable and the Internet were still well in the future.

As many as 18 million households tuned in to Cronkite's top-rated program each evening. Twice that number watched his final show, on March 6, 1981, compared with fewer than 10 million in 2005 for the departure of Dan Rather.

Rather, who replaced Cronkite at the anchor desk, called Cronkite "a giant of the journalistic craft."

"Walter loved reporting and delivering the news, and he was superb at both," he said. "He deserves recognition and remembrance, too, for the way he solidly backed his correspondents and producers, defending them vigorously in coverage of difficult stories such as the Vietnam War and the Watergate crimes."

A vigorous 64 years old, Cronkite had stepped down with the assurance that other duties awaited him at CBS News, but found little demand there for his services. He hosted the shortlived science magazine series "Walter Cronkite's Universe" and was retained by the network as a consultant, although, as he was known to state wistfully, he was never consulted.

He also sailed his beloved boat, the Wyntje, hosted or narrated specials on public and cable TV, and issued his columns and the best-selling "Walter Cronkite: A Reporter's Life."

For 24 years he served as on-site host for New Year's Day telecasts by the Vienna Philharmonic, ending that cherished tradition only in 2009.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Cronkite was selected to introduce the postponed Emmy awards show. He told the audience that in its coverage of the attack and its aftermath, "television, the great common denominator, has lifted our common vision as never before."

Cronkite joined CBS in 1950, after a decade with United Press, during which he covered World War II and the Nuremberg trials, and a brief stint with a regional radio group.

At CBS he found a respected radio-news organization dipping its toe into TV, and it put him in front of the camera. He was named anchor for CBS's coverage of the 1952 political conventions, the first year the presidential nominations got wide TV coverage. From there, he was assigned to such news-oriented programs as "You Are There" and "Twentieth Century." (He also briefly hosted a morning show, accompanied by a puppet named Charlemagne the Lion.)

On April 16, 1962, he replaced Douglas Edwards as anchor of the network's "Evening News."

"I never asked them why," Cronkite recalled in a 2006 TV portrait. "I was so pleased to get the job, I didn't want to endanger it by suggesting that I didn't know why I had it."

He was up against the NBC team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, which was solidly ahead in the ratings. Cronkite lacked Brinkley's wry wit and Huntley's rugged good looks, but he established himself as an anchorman to whom people could relate.

His rise to the top was interrupted just once: In 1964, disappointing ratings for the Republican National Convention led CBS boss William S. Paley to dump him as anchor of the Democratic gathering. Critics and viewers protested and he was never displaced again.

Cronkite won numerous Emmys and other awards for excellence in news coverage. In 1978, he and the evening news were the first anchorman and daily broadcast ever given a DuPont award. Other honors included the 1974 Gold Medal of the International Radio and Television Society, a 1974 George Polk journalism award and the 1969 William Allen White Award for Journalistic Merit, the first ever to a broadcaster.

In 1977, Cronkite conducted a two-way interview in which he got Sadat to say he wanted to go to Israel if invited and then got Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to say Sadat was invited if he wanted to come. Sadat's trip was a major step in Middle East peace efforts, and the leaders of the two nations received the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.

"Walter was who I wanted to be when I grew up," said CBS' "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer. "He set a standard for all of us. He made television news what it became. We'll never see his like again."

His salary reportedly reaching seven figures, he was both anchorman and star — interviewed by Playboy, ham enough to appear as himself on an episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." But Cronkite repeatedly condemned television practices that put entertainment values ahead of news judgment.

"Broadcast journalism is never going to substitute for print," he said. "We cannot cover in depth in a half hour many of the stories required to get a good understanding of the world."

The evening news program expanded from 15 minutes to half an hour in September 1963, 17 months after Cronkite took over, but it never got to the full hour he said he needed to do a proper job.

Cronkite denied rumors that he had been forced out by Rather, but chastised him upon his 2005 departure as anchor in the wake of a disputed "60 Minutes" story about President Bush's military service.

"Dan gave the impression of playing a role, more than simply trying to deliver the news to the audience," Cronkite said. He apparently felt more warmly about Katie Couric, providing a voiceover to introduce the former "Today" show host when she debuted as the CBS anchor in 2006.

Couric broke into "Ghost Whisperer" at 8:13 p.m. to announce Cronkite's death.

She said on CNN that everyone at the network was aware of Cronkite's deteriorating health.

"We were all worried about when this day would come," she said. "He was so revered and beloved here. ... He was a personification of integrity and decency and humanity."

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was born Nov. 4, 1916, in St. Joseph, Mo., the son and grandson of dentists. The family moved to Houston when he was 10. He joked years later that he was disappointed when he "didn't see a single damn cowboy."

He got a taste of journalism at The Houston Post, where he worked summers after high school and served as campus correspondent at the University of Texas. He also did some sports announcing at a local radio station.

Cronkite quit school after his junior year for a full-time job with the Houston Press. After a brief stint at KCMO in Kansas City, Mo., he joined United Press in 1937. Dispatched to London early in World War II, Cronkite covered the battle of the North Atlantic, flew on a bombing mission over Germany and glided into Holland with the 101st Airborne Division. He was a chief correspondent at the postwar Nuremberg trials and spent his final two years with the news service managing its Moscow bureau.

Cronkite returned to the United States in 1948 and covered Washington for a group of Midwest radio stations. He then accepted Edward R. Murrow's invitation to join CBS in 1950.

In 1940, Cronkite married Mary Elizabeth "Betsy" Maxwell, whom he had met when they both worked at KCMO. They had three children, Nancy, Mary Kathleen and Walter Leland III. Betsy Cronkite died in 2005.

In his book, he paid tribute to her "extraordinarily keen sense of humor, which saw us over many bumps (mostly of my making), and her tolerance, even support, for the uncertain schedule and wanderings of a newsman."

___

AP National Writer Hillel Italie, AP Television Writer David Bauder and Associated Press writers Polly Anderson, Virginia Byrne and Cristian Salazar contributed to this report.

Bond Says Eliminating The NAACP Would Be Like Eliminating The Military


NAACP Chairman Julian Bond delivers opening address at NAACP Centennial Meeting in New York this week. He is also set to receive the Spingarn Award this year for his civil rights contributions. (Courtesy/NAACP)


NEW YORK - NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, speaking before thousands at the NAACP Centennial meeting in New York City this week, issued a stern rebuke of those who advocate the elimination of historic civil rights laws and groups just because America has its first African-American president.

“A group representing a utility district in Texas tried to get the United States Supreme Court to gut the jewel of civil rights law – the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The challengers opened their brief to the Court by declaring: 'The America that has elected Barack Obama as its first African-American president is far different than when the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965’,” he quoted.

“In other words, because Barack Obama won the presidency, we can now dismantle the civil rights protections and organizations that made it possible,” said Bond. “Would they have made the same argument after World War II – that because the United States won, we could dismantle the military?”

The hard-fought battle for the first African-American president has caused some people to advocate for an end to the NAACP, now 100 years old. Arguing that this is now a “post racial” society, they say there is no need for such organizations. For example, Justice Clarence Thomas – the only African-American person on the Supreme Court – voted to uphold that challenge against key clauses of the Voting Rights Act. But he was the only member of the court to dissent.

Bond, who was set to receive the NAACP's coveted Spingarn Award Thursday, points out that the very existence of the NAACP 100 years later with a civil rights and racial justice agenda that is just as full as decades ago is proof of racial progress that has yet to be made.

“The centrality of race in American history makes it impossible to overstate the significance of Obama’s election as the 44th President of the United States,” said Bond. “But that is also why his victory does not herald a post-civil rights America or mean that race as an issue has been vanquished. It will not end structural inequality or eliminate racist attitudes. Those who argue otherwise are engaged in sophistry of the highest order.”

Bond implied that such attitudes seem reserved for laws and organizations in place to maintain African-American progress.

“We don’t hear calls for the elimination of the Anti-Defamation League because a Jewish woman sits on the Supreme Court or because a Jewish man is White House Chief of Staff. We don’t hear calls for the elimination of the National Organization for Women because a woman is Speaker of the House of Representatives and another is Secretary of State. We don’t hear calls for the elimination of the National Council of La Raza because a Latina is Secretary of Labor and another is poised to become a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.”

President Obama was scheduled to speak to the NAACP on Thursday at the annual Spingard Awards Dinner. It is a long held tradition by a sitting president of the United States to address the non-partisan organization.

This year is starkly different from the past eight years as Bond almost consistently rendered scathing words for President George W. Bush, who boycotted all but one NAACP meeting. In speeches before this convention, Bond compared Bush's conservative policies to everything from “snake oil” to “the Taliban wing of American politics.”

This year was a complete reverse. That's not only because the Obama policy agenda is more liberal and sensitive to Black progress, but because this historic moment for the NAACP has aligned itself with the historic significance of the Obama presidency, forming a powerful kinship.

“It is fitting he was sworn in almost exactly 100 years after the founding of the NAACP. Just as Obama launched his candidacy for the presidency in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln on the steps of the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, so the NAACP issued a call to the nation on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth in 1909,” Bond recounted.

The goals listed on the original incorporation papers of the NAACP have not changed, Bond says:

“To promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or racial prejudice among the citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for their children, and complete equality before the law… That has remained our mission until today.”

(Hazel Trice Edney is NNPA Editor-in-Chief.)

NAACP Has Role: Hold Obama Accountable


Loeb/Getty
President Barack Obama speaks during the NAACP's 100th anniversary convention Thursday in New York. He told the crowd, "Government must be a force for equality. But ... we also have to seize our own destiny, each and every day."
(AP)

July 17, 2009

BY MARY MITCHELL Chicago Sun-Times Columnist

With President Obama in the White House, planners of the NAACP's 100th anniversary celebration didn't have to worry about the president accepting its invitation to speak.

Crowned as the first African-American president of the United States, Obama got his swagger on before the creme de la creme of civil rights activists.

And the centennial celebration is rich with symbolism for both the prestigious civil rights organization and the first black president.

The NAACP emerged from the bloody Springfield race riots that killed seven people and destroyed scores of businesses and homes during the summer of 1908.

On Feb. 12, 1909, one hundred years after the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the NAACP was founded.

Nearly 100 years after that --also in February -- Obama stood in the shadows of the Old State Capitol in Springfield and channeled Lincoln in calling on a "house divided" to "stand together" and announced his candidacy for president of the United States.

Although Obama was referred to as a black candidate, he could not run a campaign that looked like it was carrying the banner of black America, nor could he accept the support of several established black leaders because whites considered them too controversial.

So while he is called the first black president, Obama has not been free to be a black president.

Indeed, even on the occasion of an anniversary speech before the NAACP, Obama's remarks were carefully framed to be inclusive.

For instance, he told the NAACP that his administration is working hard to "lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity that will put opportunity within reach not just for African Americans, but for all Americans."

Coincidentally, Thursday also marked the 25th anniversary of the Rev. Jesse Jackson's electrifying speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. It was the culmination of a race in which he won five primaries and caucuses and garnered 3.5 million votes, an amazing feat for a man inextricably identified with the civil rights movement.

Obama's existence is an obvious illustration of the racial progress in this country since Jackson's historic run.

But the fact that a black man is in the White House is prompting some of you to question the need for an organization like the NAACP.

To your way of thinking, the last racial barrier has been broken.

Hold on a minute. There is not a black president in the White House. There is a president in the White House who happens to be black.

As such, like all other presidents, he will have to be pushed into paying attention to the black agenda.

Consider this: When Bill Clinton was in the White House, Jackson practically had keys. But who from the grass roots of black America is speaking regularly to Obama about the issues that specifically relate to black people?

Jackson is on the outside looking in. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been banished. Minister Louis Farrakhan won't get an audience. The Rev. Al Sharpton is operating on the fringes.

Meanwhile, Latino leaders are rallying for a revamped immigration bill, and leaders in the gay and lesbian community are being vocal about their policy concerns.

The NAACP and other civil rights organizations will still have to agitate on behalf of black people on several fronts, including reforming the criminal justice system, getting a bigger slice of the funding to fight HIV/AIDS and overhauling our nation's failing education system.

In doing so, the NAACP and other civil rights organizations must be as colorblind as the Obama administration. By that, I mean the nation's oldest civil rights organization has to hold the nation's first black president as accountable as other presidents.

Best known for its battles against segregation in schools, the military and the federal government, the NAACP must now tackle the self-imposed ills facing black America, including drug abuse, crime and low academic achievement, while pressuring the Obama White House to adopt a comprehensive plan to fix the nation's deteriorating urban centers.

Now is not the time for the NAACP to bow out.

In the Obama era, it will take the clout of this century-old organization just to make sure African Americans stay in the game.

See Also...

W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special:Reflections On The 2009 Inauguration Part One:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2009/01/23/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio

W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special: Yes He Did...So Now What??? Defining The Obama Presidency...
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/11/16/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio

W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special:O Yes We Did!!! The Barack Obama Tribute...
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/11/09/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio

W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special: Barack Obama & The Hip Hop Effect On American Politics:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/02/10/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-Radio

~~~~~~


Get The Barack Obama Holiday Inaugural Gift Package By R2C2H2 Tha Artivist!!!

NAACP At 100: 'New Call For A New Century'



by Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA News Service

In a grand centennial meeting this week that drew thousands to New York City — the founding place of the NAACP — President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous proclaimed that the next move of the civil rights organization against new "layers of racism" will be to strengthen its inner ranks by becoming a majority through coalitions.

"We will change. Not for the sake of change itself, but for the sake of growth," Jealous said in remarks rendered at the convention Monday evening.

"We must be able to march forth as a majority and that means we have to be about organizing coalitions, maximizing our power to build bridges of understanding and mobilizing our entire rainbow of champions for social change."

Jealous was specific about his strategic vision.

"We will invest in research to ensure that what is obvious to us cannot be questioned by any. We will train and retrain with a focus on organizing even better and smarter than we are already. We will forge new coalitions...big, broad, effective strange-bedfellow coalitions. We will build campaigns that capture the imaginations of generations. We will embrace technology," he said.

"But we can't do this work alone. So today, we issue a new call for a new century."

That call comes in what is historically among the most exciting years for African Americans. Jealous reflected on the election of President Barack Obama as the nation's first African-American president, but also underscored how his election spotlights the vestiges of racism that still prevail.

"Jan. 20, 2009, was a day when hopes were fulfilled, when dreams came true, when ancestors sacrifices were remembered with tears of joy; in short, it was a day when the dream of this country seemed within reach of every family," said Jealous, 36, the youngest president to lead the civil rights organization.

"And then January 21st came, like every day thereafter, and families woke up to a new morning and were facing the same questions: Why can't Dad find a job? Why does Mom have to work so many jobs just to make ends meet? Why is my family's dream being foreclosed on? Why are our schools an embarrassment to everything this country stands for? Why are so many of our children... and mothers... and fathers dying of AIDS?"

Jealous stated as fact that in many cities "too many families" go to bed hoping that they have found places to sleep that are out of the way of random gunfire.

"We woke up on January 21st to the fact that we have one black man in the White House, but we have one million in prison," he said. "And so...we can't wait for someday, somehow — we need real change right here, right now."

It was Feb. 12, 1909, the 100th year after the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, that a racially diverse coalition met in an apartment in lower Manhattan "to issue an historic call to action," Jealous recounted the founding of the NAACP.

That historic call to action read in part: "Hence, we call upon all the believers in democracy to join in a national conference for the discussion of present evils, the voicing of protests and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty."

Jealous said the organizers — black and white, Christian and Jew, men and women — shared a commitment to fulfilling the promise of equality that was guaranteed by the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th amendment, 14th amendment and the 15th amendment of the Constitution. A few months later, a few hundred more — many of them leaders of the black church — joined the original group at the first NAACP convention, where they vowed to "take the campaign back to the field."

That field now consists of about a half million members across the nation and millions more who benefit from the NAACP's battles.

Jealous cited several battles that are close to being won.

"Before we meet again, we will deliver the first woman of color to a seat on the Supreme Court. We will pass major reforms in states like California and North Carolina. We will outlaw racial profiling everywhere. And in Savannah, Ga., where our local volunteers and national staff have delivered more than 65,000 signatures calling for the DA to reopen the case, the tide is turning every day — we will save Troy Davis' life and get the real killer off the streets."

The death penalty case of Troy Davis —involving a list of witnesses who have recanted their original testimonies against him — has been hard-fought by the NAACP under Jealous' tenure.

In Jealous' view, institutional racism within the criminal justice system is the next layer of racism that has come after "presumed inferiority."

"They said we just weren't good enough to be the quarterback, the coach or the CEO. But over the past 40 years, we've blown that fallacy out of the water — Oprah, General Colin Powell, Tony Dungy and Mike Tomlin, Tiger Woods, Ken Chennault, Barack Obama, Dorothy Height, and Venus and Serena Williams.

"But racism is like an onion — once you peel back one layer, there's another layer underneath. Peel back the layer of presumed inferiority and you find that today the primary justification for racism is presumed criminality," he said.

Because of the new layers that are increasingly obscure, yet just as damaging to America's progress, the NAACP is also clarifying its focus, Jealous said. He encouraged the audience to broaden its vision as well.

Jealous concluded with a message of hope.

"We are winning...And when we win — and we always win in the end — we win really, really big."

Jimmie Finally Gets His...Join Us For Jimmie Lunceford's Brass Note Dedication This Sunday @ 5pm C. On World Famous Beale Street

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*



Memphis, TN - 7 July 2009 – Jimmie Lunceford Brass Note to Be Dedicated in
Beale Street Walk of Fame

Jimmie Lunceford, the bandleader who turned the Manassas High School Band of the late 1920s into a top flight, professional, nationally touring group, will be honored on Sunday, July 19, 2009, on Beale Street. The dedication ceremony will take place at 5:00 pm in front of Handy Park.

Lunceford assembled and honed a band which became a major force in American popular music of the 1930s and 40s, often held in the high regard afforded to Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, and Duke Ellington. Constantly touring across the US, Lunceford often stopped in Memphis and held master classes with local music students.

Lunceford will be the latest Memphis musician honored on the Brass Note Walk of Fame which was instituted by Performa Entertainment Real Estate in 1986. Lunceford’s will be the 75th note installed.

The Jimmie Lunceford Jamboree Festival organization has been leading the way for the great Jimmie Lunceford to be recognized by his adopted hometown for the last two years. Whether through TV documentaries, internet radio shows, wreath laying ceremonies, interactive presentations to kids at Manassas High School, award shows and resolutions from U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, The Jimmie Lunceford Jamboree Festival has been the willing spear point in the vanguard to resurrect the memory of the prolific music giant and philanthropist in Memphis and beyond. Please visit the official Jimmie Lunceford Jamboree site, http://www.jimmieluncefordjam.blogspot.com to find out more about the Jimmie Lunceford legacy as well as ways to support our efforts.

For more information, call R2C2H2 Tha Artivist @ 901-299-4355 or e-mail r2c2h2@gmail.com.

*More Lunceford Coverage*

Jimmie Lunceford On 'Real Talk With Tha Artivist' TV Show
View the ‘Real Talk With Tha Artivist’ Memphis Comcast Cable TV Special, “And Rhythm Was His Business…Jimmie Lunceford: Memphis Music Legend” in three parts online…

Part One


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHSBrxpBxro&feature=channel_page

Part Two


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGiYBJHb9TM&feature=channel_page

Part Three


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9O8jL4f1VU&feature=channel_page


For More Information About Jimmie Lunceford & The Jimmie Lunceford Jamboree Festival Please Visit http://www.jimmieluncefordjam.blogspot.com

******

W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special~If Memphis Could Talk Part 6 Jimmie Lunceford: A Memphis Music Legend & Hallelujah! Made In Memphis U.S.A.:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2009/07/09/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio

W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special~2nd Annual Jimmie Lunceford Jamboree Festival Radio Program:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/10/12/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio

W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special~1st Annual Jimmie Lunceford Jamboree Festival Radio Program:
Buy Jimmie Lunceford Art & Gear To Support The Jimmie Lunceford Jamboree Festival Movement...



From A White Teacher: What Is It Like To Teach Black Students???


(C) R2C2H2 Tha Artivist/Ronald Herd II/W.E. A.L.L. B.E. NEWS
by Christopher Jackson

Until recently I taught at a predominantly
black high school in a southeastern
state.

The mainstream press gives a hint of
what conditions are like in black schools,
but only a hint. Expressions journalists
use like “chaotic” or “poor learning
environment” or “lack of discipline” do
not capture what really happens. There
is nothing like the day-to-day experience
of teaching black children and that is
what I will try to convey.

Most whites simply do not know what
black people are like in large numbers,
and the first encounter can be a shock.

One of the most immediately striking
things about my students was that they
were loud. They had little conception of
ordinary decorum. It was not unusual
for five blacks to be screaming at
me at once. Instead of calming down and
waiting for a lull in the din to make their
point—something that occurs to even
the dimmest white students—blacks just
tried to yell over each other.

It did no good to try to quiet them, and
white women were particularly inept at
trying. I sat in on one woman’s class as
she begged the children to pipe down.
They just yelled louder so their voices
would carry over hers.

Many of my black students would
repeat themselves over and over again—
just louder. It was as if they suffered
from Tourette syndrome. They seemed
to have no conception of waiting for
an appropriate time to say something.
They would get ideas in their heads and
simply had to shout them out. I might be
leading a discussion on government and
suddenly be interrupted: “We gotta get
more Democrats! Clinton, she good!”
The student may seem content with that
outburst but two minutes later, he would
suddenly start yelling again: “Clinton
good!”

Anyone who is around young blacks
will probably get a constant diet of rap music.
Blacks often make up their own jingles,
and it was not uncommon for 15 black
boys to swagger into a classroom,
bouncing their shoulders and jiving back.

They were yelling back and forth, rapping 15 different sets of
words in the same harsh, rasping dialect.
The words were almost invariably
a childish form of boasting: “Who got
dem shine rim, who got dem shine shoe,
who got dem shine grill (gold and silver
dental caps)?” The amateur rapper usually
ends with a claim—in the crudest
terms imaginable—that all womankind
is sexually devoted to him. For whatever
reason, my students would often groan
instead of saying a particular word, as in,
“She suck dat aaahhhh (think of a long
grinding groan), she f**k dat aaaahhhh,
she lick dat aaaahhh.”

So many black girls dance in the hall, in the classroom,
on the chairs, next to the chairs, under
the chairs, everywhere. Once I took a
call on my cell phone and had to step
outside of class. I was away about two
minutes but when I got back the black
girls had lined up at the front of the
classroom and were convulsing to the
delight of the boys.

Many black people, especially black
women, are enormously fat. Some are
so fat I had to arrange special seating to
accommodate their bulk. I am not saying
there are no fat white students—there
are—but it is a matter of numbers and
attitudes. Many black girls simply do not
care that they are fat. There are plenty
of white anorexics, but I have never met
or heard of a black anorexic.

“Black women be big Mr. Jackson,”
my students would explain.

“Is it okay in the black community to
be a little overweight?” I ask.
Two obese black girls in front of
my desk begin to dance, “You know
dem boys lak juicy fruit, Mr. Jackson.”
“Juicy” is a colorful black expression
for the buttocks.

Blacks, on average, are the most directly critical
people I have ever met: “Dat shirt stupid.
Yo’ kid a bastard. Yo’ lips big.” Unlike
whites, who tread gingerly around the
subject of race, they can be brutally to
the point. Once I needed to send a student
to the office to deliver a message. I
asked for volunteers, and suddenly you
would think my classroom was a bastion
of civic engagement. Thirty dark hands
shot into the air. My students loved to
leave the classroom and slack off, even
if just for a few minutes, away from the
eye of white authority. I picked a light-skinned
boy to deliver the message. One
very black student was indignant: “You
pick da half-breed.” And immediately
other blacks take up the cry, and half
a dozen mouths are screaming, “He
half-breed.”

For decades, the country has been
lamenting the poor academic performance
of blacks and there is much to
lament. There is no question, however,
that many blacks come to school with a
serious handicap that is not their fault.
At home they have learned a dialect that
is almost a different language. Blacks
not only mispronounce words; their
grammar is often wrong. When a black
wants to ask, “Where is the bathroom?”
he may actually say “Whar da badroom
be?” Grammatically, this is the equivalent
of “Where the bathroom is?” And
this is the way they speak in high school.
Students write the way they speak, so
this is the language that shows up in
written assignments.

It is true that some whites face a
similar handicap. They speak with
what I would call a “country” accent
that is hard to reproduce but results in
sentences such as “I’m gonna gemme
a Coke.” Some of these country whites
had to learn correct pronunciation and
usage. The difference is that most whites
overcome this handicap and learn to
speak correctly; many blacks do not.

Most of the blacks I taught simply
had no interest in academic subjects. I
taught history, and students would often
say they didn’t want to do an assignment
or they didn’t like history because it was
all about white people. Of course, this
was “diversity” history, in which every
cowboy’s black cook got a special page
on how he contributed to winning the
West, but black children still found it
inadequate. So I would throw up my
hands and assign them a project on a
real, historical black person. My favorite
was Marcus Garvey. They had never
heard of him, and I would tell them to
research him, but they never did. They
didn’t care and they didn’t want to do
any work.

Anyone who teaches blacks soon
learns that they have a completely different
view of government from whites.
Once I decided to fill 25 minutes by
having students write about one thing
the government should do to improve
America. I gave this question to three
classes totaling about 100 students,
approximately 80 of whom were black.
My few white students came back with
generally “conservative” ideas. “We
need to cut off people who don’t work,”
was the most common suggestion.
Nearly every black gave a variation on
the theme of “We need more government
services.”

My students had only the vaguest
notion of who pays for government
services. For them, it was like a magical
piggy bank that never goes empty. One
black girl was exhorting the class on
the need for more social services and I
kept trying to explain that people, real
live people, are taxed for the money to
pay for those services. “Yeah, it come
from whites,” she finally said. “They
stingy anyway.”

“Many black people make over
$50,000 dollars a year and you would
also be taking away from your own
people,” I said.

She had an answer to that: “Dey
half breed.” The class agreed. I let the
subject drop.

Many black girls are perfectly happy
to be welfare queens. On career day, one
girl explained to the class that she was
going to have lots of children and get fat
checks from the government. No one in
the class seemed to have any objection
to this career choice.

Surprising attitudes can come out in
class discussion. We were talking about
the crimes committed in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina, and I brought up the
rape of a young girl in the bathroom of
the Superdome. A majority of my students
believed this was a horrible crime
but a few took it lightly. One black boy
spoke up without raising his hand: “Dat
no big deal. They thought they is gonna
die so they figured they have some fun.
Dey jus’ wanna have a fun time; you
know what I’m sayin’?” A few black
heads nodded in agreement.

My department head once asked all
the teachers to get a response from all
students to the following question: “Do
you think it is okay to break the law if it
will benefit you greatly?” By then, I had
been teaching for a while and was not
surprised by answers that left a young,
liberal, white woman colleague aghast.
“Yeah” was the favorite answer. As one
student explained, “Get dat green.”

There is a level of conformity among
blacks that whites would find hard to
believe. They like one kind
of music: rap. They will
vote for one political party:
Democrat. They dance
one way, speak one way,
are loud the same way,
and fail their exams in the
same way. Of course, there
are exceptions but they
are rare.

Whites are different.
Some like country music,
others heavy metal, some
prefer pop, and still others,
God forbid, enjoy rap music. They have
different associations, groups, almost
ideologies. There are jocks, nerds,
preppies, and hunters. Blacks are all—
well—black, and they are quick to let
other blacks know when they deviate
from the norm.

One might object that there are important
group differences among blacks that a white man simply cannot detect. I
have done my best to find them, but so
far as I can tell, they dress the same, talk
the same, think the same. Certainly, they
form rival groups, but the groups are not
different in any discernible way. There
simply are no groups of blacks that are
as distinctly different from each other
as white “nerds,” “hunters,” or “Goths,”
for example.

How the world looks to blacks
One point on which all blacks agree
is that everything is “racis’.” This is
one message of liberalism they have
absorbed completely. Did you do your
homework? “Na, homework racis’.”
Why did you get an F on the test? “Test
racis’.”

I was trying to teach a unit on British
philosophers and the first thing the students
noticed about Bentham, Hobbes,
and Locke was “Dey all white! Where da
black philosopher a’?” I tried to explain
there were no blacks in eighteenth century
Britain. You can probably guess
what they said to that: “Dat racis’!”
One student accused me of deliberately
failing him on a test because I
didn’t like black people.

“Do you think I really hate black
people?”
“Yeah.”
“Have I done anything to make you
feel this way? How do you know?”
“You just do.”
“Why do you say that?”

He just smirked, looked out the window,
and sucked air through his teeth.
Perhaps this was a regional thing, but
the blacks often sucked air through their
teeth as a wordless expression of disdain
or hostility.

My students were sometimes unable
to see the world except through the lens
of their own blackness. I had a class
that was host to a German exchange
student. One day he put on a Power Point
presentation with famous German landmarks
as well as his school and family.

From time to time during the presentation,
blacks would scream, “Where da
black folk?!” The exasperated German
tried several times to explain that there
were no black people where he lived in
Germany. The students did not believe
him. I told them Germany is in Europe,
where white people are from, and Africa
is where black people are from. They
insisted that the German student was
racist, and deliberately refused to associate
with blacks.

Blacks are keenly interested in
their own racial characteristics. I have
learned, for example, that some blacks
have “good hair.” Good hair is black
parlance for black-white hybrid hair.
Apparently, it is less kinky, easier to
style, and considered more attractive.
Blacks are also proud of light skin.
Imagine two black students shouting
insults across the room. One is dark
but slim; the other light and obese. The
dark one begins the exchange: “You
fat, Ridario!” Ridario smiles, doesn’t deign to look
at his detractor, shakes his head like a
wobbling top, and says, “You wish you
light skinned.”

They could go on like this, repeating
the same insults over and over.

My black students had nothing but
contempt for Hispanic immigrants. They
would vent their feelings so crudely
that our department strongly advised us
never to talk about immigration in class
in case the principal or some outsider
might overhear.

Whites were “racis’,” of course, but
they thought of us at least as Americans.
Not the Mexicans. Blacks have a certain,
not necessarily hostile understanding of
white people. They know how whites
act, and it is clear they believe whites
are smart and are good at organizing
things. At the same time, they probably
suspect whites are just putting on an
act when they talk about equality, as if
it is all a sham that makes it easier for
whites to control blacks. Blacks want a
bigger piece of the American pie. I’m
convinced that if it were up to them
they would give whites a considerably
smaller piece than whites get now, but
they would give us something. They
wouldn’t give Mexicans anything.

What about black boys and white
girls? No one is supposed to
notice this or talk about it but
it is glaringly obvious: Black
boys are obsessed with white
girls. I’ve witnessed the following
drama countless times. A black
boy saunters up to a white
girl. The cocky black dances
around her, not really in a menacing
way. It’s more a shuffle
than a threat. As he bobs and
shuffles he asks, “When you
gonna go wit’ me?”

There are two kinds of reply.
The more confident white
girl gets annoyed, looks away
from the black and shouts, “I don’t wanna
go out with you!” The more demure
girl will look at her feet and mumble
a polite excuse but ultimately say no.

There is only one response from the
black boy: “You racis’.” Many girls—all
too many—actually feel guilty because
they do not want to date blacks. Most
white girls at my school stayed away
from blacks, but a few, particularly the
ones who were addicted to drugs, fell
in with them.

There is something else that is striking
about blacks. They seem to have
no sense of romance, of falling in love.
What brings men and women together is
sex, pure and simple, and there is a crude
openness about this. There are many degenerate
whites, of course, but some of
my white students were capable of real
devotion and tenderness, emotions that
seemed absent from blacks—especially
the boys.

Black schools are violent and the
few whites who are too poor to escape
are caught in the storm. The violence is
astonishing, not so much that it happens,
but the atmosphere in which it happens.
Blacks can be smiling, seemingly perfectly
content with what they are doing,
having a good time, and then, suddenly
start fighting. It’s uncanny. Not long
ago, I was walking through the halls
and a group of black boys were walking
in front of me. All of a sudden they
started fighting with another group in
the hallway.

Blacks are extraordinarily quick to
take offense. Once I accidentally scuffed
a black boy’s white sneaker with my
shoe. He immediately rubbed his body
up against mine and threatened to attack
me. I stepped outside the class and had
a security guard escort the student to
the office. It was unusual for students
to threaten teachers physically this way,
but among themselves, they were quick
to fight for similar reasons.

The real victims are the unfortunate
whites caught in this. They are always
in danger and their educations suffer.
White weaklings are particularly susceptible,
but mostly to petty violence. They
may be slapped or get a couple of kicks
when they are trying to open a bottom
locker. Typically, blacks save the hard,
serious violence for each other.

There was a lot of promiscuous sex
among my students and this led to
violence. Black girls were constantly
fighting over black boys. It was not uncommon
to see two girls literally ripping
each other’s hair out with a police officer
in the middle trying to break up the
fight. The black boy they were fighting
over would be standing by with a smile,
enjoying the show he had created. For
reasons I cannot explain, boys seldom
fought over girls.

Pregnancy was common among the
blacks, though many black girls were
so fat I could not tell the difference. I
don’t know how many girls got abortions,
but when they had the baby they
usually stayed in school and had their
own parents look after the child. The
school did not offer daycare.

Aside from the police officers constantly
on patrol, a sure sign that you
My black students had
nothing but contempt for
Hispanics. Whites were
“racis’,” of course, but
they thought of us at least
as Americans.

Security guards are everywhere in
black schools—we had one on every
hall. They also sat in on unruly classes
and escorted students to the office. They
were unarmed, but worked closely with
the three city police officers who were
constantly on duty.

There was a lot of drug-dealing at
my school. This was a good way to
make a fair amount of money but it
also gave boys power over girls who
wanted drugs. An addicted girl—black
or white—became the plaything of anyone
who could get her drugs.

One of my students was a notorious
drug dealer. Everyone knew it. He was
19 years old and in eleventh grade. Once
he got a score of three out of 100 on a
test. He had been locked up four times
since he was 13.

One day, I asked him, “Why do you
come to school?”

He wouldn’t answer. He just looked
out the window, smiled, and sucked air
through his teeth. His friend Yidarius
ventured an explanation: “He get dat
green and get dem females.”

“What is the green?” I asked. “Money
or dope?” “Both,” said Yidarius with a smile.

A very fat black interrupted from
across the room: “We get dat lunch,” Mr.
Jackson. “We gotta get dat lunch and
brickfuss.” He means the free breakfast
and lunch poor students get every day.
“Nigga, we know’d you be lovin’
brickfuss!” shouts another student.

Some readers may believe that I
have drawn a cruel caricature of black
students. After all, according to official
figures some 85 percent of them graduate.
It would be instructive to know how
many of those scraped by with barely a
C- record. They go from grade to grade
and they finally get their diplomas
because there is so much pressure on
teachers to push them through. It saves
money to move them along, the school
looks good, and the teachers look good.

Many of these children should have been
failed, but the system would crack under
their weight if they were all held back.

How did my experiences make me
feel about blacks? Ultimately, I lost
sympathy for them. In so many ways
they seem to make their own beds.
There they were in an integrationist’s
fantasy—in the same classroom with
white students, eating the same lunch,
using the same bathrooms, listening to
the same teachers—and yet the blacks
fail while the whites pass.

One tragic outcome among whites
who have been teaching for too long
is that it can engender something close
to hatred. One teacher I knew gave up
fast food—not for health reasons but
because where he lived most fast-food
workers were black. He had enough of
blacks on the job. This was an extreme
example but years of frustration can
take their toll. Many of my white colleagues
with any experience were well
on their way to that state of mind.

There is an unutterable secret among
teachers: Almost all realize that blacks
do not respond to traditional white
instruction. Does that put the lie to environmentalism?
Not at all. It is what
brings about endless, pointless innovation
that is supposed to bring blacks up
to the white level. The solution is more diversity—or put
more generally, the solution is change.
Change is an almost holy word in education,
and you can fail a million times as
long as you keep changing. That is why
liberals keep revamping the curriculum
and the way it is taught. For example,
teachers are told that blacks need handson
instruction and more group work.

Teachers are told that blacks are more
vocal and do not learn through reading
and lectures. The implication is that they
have certain traits that lend themselves
to a different kind of teaching.

Whites have learned a certain way for
centuries but it just doesn’t work with
blacks. Of course, this implies racial
differences but if pressed, most liberal
teachers would say different racial
learning styles come from some indefinable
cultural characteristic unique to
blacks. Therefore, schools must change,
America must change. But into what?
How do you turn quantum physics into
hands-on instruction or group work? No
one knows, but we must keep changing
until we find something that works.

Public school has certainly changed
since anyone reading this was a student.
I have a friend who teaches elementary
school, and she tells me that every week
the students get a new diversity lesson,
shipped in fresh from some bureaucrat’s
office in Washington or the state
capital. She showed me the materials
for one week: a large poster,
about the size of a forty-two inch
flat-screen television. It shows
an utterly diverse group—I mean
diverse: handicapped, Muslim,
Jewish, effeminate, poor, rich,
brown, slightly brown, yellow,
etc.—sitting at a table, smiling
gaily, accomplishing some undefined
task. The poster comes with
a sheet of questions the teacher is
supposed to ask. One might be: “These
kids sure look different, but they look
happy. Can you tell me which one in
the picture is an American?”

Some eight-year-old, mired in ignorance,
will point to a white child like
himself. “That one.”

The teacher reads from the answer,
conveniently printed along with the
question. “No, Billy, all these children
are Americans. They are just as American
as you.”

The children get a snack, and the
poster goes up on the wall until another
one comes a week later. This is
what happens at predominately white,
middle-class, elementary schools everywhere.
Elementary school teachers love All
of the Colors of the Race, by award-winning
children’s poet Arnold Adoff.

These are some of the lines they read
to the children: “Mama is chocolate …
Daddy is vanilla … Me (sic) is better …
It is a new color. It is a new flavor. For
love. Sometimes blackness seems too
black for me, and whiteness is too sickly
pale; and I wish every one were golden.
Remember: long ago before people
moved and migrated, and mixed and
matched … there was one people: one
color, one race. The colors are flowing
from what was before me to what will
be after. All the colors.”

Teaching as a career
It may come as a surprise after what
I have written, but my experiences have
given me a deep appreciation for teaching
as a career. It offers a stable, middle-class
life but comes with the capacity
to make real differences in the lives of
children. In our modern, atomized world
children often have very little communication
with adults—especially, or even,
with their parents—so there is potential
for a real transaction between pupil and
teacher, disciple and master.

A rewarding relationship can grow
up between an exceptional, interested
student and his teacher. I have stayed in
my classroom with a group of students
discussing ideas and playing chess until
the janitor kicked us out. I was the
old gentleman, imparting my history,
culture, personal loves and triumphs,
defeats and failures to young kinsman.
Sometimes I fancied myself Tyrtaeus,
the Spartan poet, who counseled the
youth to honor and loyalty. I never had
this kind intimacy with a black student,
and I know of no other white teacher
who did.

Teaching can be fun. For a certain
kind of person it is exhilarating to map
out battles on chalkboards, and teach
heroism. It is rewarding to challenge
liberal prejudices, to leave my mark on
these children, but what I aimed for with
my white students I could never achieve
with the blacks.

There is a kind of child whose look
can melt your heart: some working-class
castaway, in and out of foster homes,
often abused, who is nevertheless almost
an angel. Your heart melts for these children,
this refuse of the modern world.

Many white students possess a certain
innocence; their cheeks still blush.
Try as I might, I could not get the
blacks to care one bit about Beethoven
or Sherman’s march to the sea, or
Tyrtaeus, or Oswald Spengler, or even
liberals like John Rawls, or their own
history. They cared about nothing I
tried to teach them. When this goes on
year after year it chokes the soul out
of a teacher, destroys his pathos, and
sends him guiltily searching for The Bell
Curve on the Internet.

Blacks break down the intimacy that
can be achieved in the classroom, and
leave you convinced that that intimacy
is really a form of kinship. Without
intending to, they destroy what is most
beautiful—whether it be your belief in
human equality, your daughter’s innocence,
or even the state of the
hallway.

Just last year I read on the
bathroom stall the words “F**k
Whitey.” Not two feet away, on the
same stall, was a small swastika.

The National Council for the Social
Studies, the leading authority on social
science education in the United States,
urges teachers to inculcate such values
as equality of opportunity, individual
property rights, and a democratic form
of government. Even if teachers could
inculcate this milquetoast ideology into
whites, liberalism is doomed because so
many non-whites are not receptive to
education of any kind beyond the merest
basics.

It is impossible to
get them to care about such abstractions
as property rights or democratic citizenship.
They do not see much further than
the fact that you live in a big house and
“we in da pro-jek.” Of course, there are a
few loutish whites who will never think
past their next meal and a few sensitive
blacks for whom anything is possible,
but no society takes on the characteristics
of its exceptions.

Once I asked my students, “What do
you think of the Constitution?”
“It white,” one slouching black rang
out. The class began to laugh. And I
caught myself laughing along with them,
laughing while Pompeii’s volcano simmers,
while the barbarians swell around
the Palatine, while the country I love,
and the job I love, and the community I
love become dimmer by the day.

I read a book by an expatriate Rhodesian
who visited Zimbabwe not
too many years ago. Traveling with a
companion, she stopped at a store along
the highway. A black man materialized
next to her car window. “Job, boss, (I)
work good, boss,” he pleaded. “You
give job.”

“What happened to your old job?”
the expatriate white asked. The black man replied in the straightforward
manner of his race: “We drove
out the whites. No more jobs. You give
job.”

At some level, my students understand
the same thing. One day I asked
the bored, black faces staring back
at me. “What would happen if all the
white people in America disappeared
tomorrow?”

“We screwed,” a young, pitch-black
boy screamed back. The rest of the
blacks laughed.

I have had children tell me to my face
as they struggled with an assignment. “I
cain’t do dis,” Mr. Jackson. “I black.”

The point is that human beings are not
always rational. It is in the black man’s
interest to have whites in Zimbabwe but
he drives them out and starves. Most
whites do not think black Americans
could ever do anything so irrational.
They see blacks on television smiling,
fighting evil whites, embodying
white values. But the real black is not
on television, and you pull your purse
closer when you see him, and you lock
the car doors when he swaggers by
with his pants hanging down almost to
his knees.

For those of you with children, better
a smaller house in a white district than
a fancy one near a black school.

I have been in parent-teacher conferences
that broke my heart: the child
pleading with his parents to take him
out of school; the parents convinced
their child’s fears are groundless. If you
love your child, show her you care—
not by giving her fancy vacations or a
car, but making her innocent years safe
and happy. Give her the gift of a not-heavily black
school.

Mr. Jackson now teaches at a majority-
white school.