Obama Keeps it Real!!!

I was doing my morning Internet surfing and came across a quote Barack Obama made at an event in Powder Springs, Ga. His comment was in regard to the idea that many young black males aspire to be entertainers like rappers and athletes, while at the same time undervaluing the need for education.

Below is his quote:

“You are probably not that good a rapper. Maybe you are the next Lil’ Wayne, but probably not, in which case you need to stay in school,” Obama, D-Ill., told a cheering crowd, brought to a standing ovation at a town hall meeting in Powder Springs, Georgia. The presumptive Democratic nominee was speaking about high school drop out rates and the need for people to be committed to working hard in school so they can get a job after school. Obama said he knows some young men think they can’t find a job unless they are a really good basketball player. “Which most of you brothas are not,” Obama, who played basketball in high school, a sport he continues to play to this day, said jokingly. “I know you think you are, but you’re not. You are over-rated in your own mind. You will not play in the NBA.”  Source

“Say it Loud” A Short special on Young African American males and education

One of my favorite Lil Wayne songs “Trouble”

Another favorite Lil Wayne song “On My Own”

This is a classic “500 Degreez”

Speaking of Iran…

Given that the U.S., Israel, and Iran are playing these cute little war games with one another recently, it got me thinking, “Didn’t both countries* have a somewhat amicable relationship with Iran at some point? What happened to that whole thing?” I went on a quest for truth on the internets and I stumbled across this brief summary of historical events on and it helped refresh my memory:

Snap, that’s right! Iran-Contra! Perhaps you remember it from its role (along with co-star, the Central Intelligence Agency) in the mysterious invention and spread of crack cocaine throughout inner cities in the 1980’s. Or, perhaps not, because like me, you were crawling around with crayons in the 80’s. In any case, here are some links to serve as a crash-course primer. And in case you’re pressed for time, here’s an oversimplified spoiler: The CIA doesn’t care about Pookie.

Wikipedia: Iran-Contra

Journalist Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” 1996 series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News

The CIA-Contra-Crack Connection, 10 Years Later

Jay-Z, “Blue Magic” (‘Blame Oliver North and Iran-Contra/I ran contraband that they sponsored’)

Guerrilla News Network’s Crack the CIA documentary

Bill Moyers’ The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis (1987) [a must watch]

May God save the internets.

*I haven’t seen a trio endure such a tense breakup since Naturi left 3LW. Nullus.

Doing the Right Thing, When Everyone is Looking

As you may have heard, ex-North Carolina State Senator Jesse Helms died on July 4, 2008. Jesse Helms was the longest-serving senator in North Carolina history. Throughout his 30-year term he consistently voted against Civil Rights legislation and was a staunch segregationist.

Growing up as a black kid in North Carolina, I would always hear from my grandmother about his racially charged and prejudiced radio broadcasts during the Civil Rights Era. I always looked at Jesse Helms as a villain and obstacle to progress in my home state.

Thank God North Carolina has made great leaps in regards to racial harmony and has corrected much of the Jim Crow legislation that disenfranchised black North Carolinians.

Below is an article that I found very interesting and touching at the same time:

North Carolina state employee forced to retire for refusing to honor Jesse Helms.»

L.F. Eason, a 29-year veteran of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, “instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to flythe U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday” to honor the late senator Jesse Helms, “as called for in a directive to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley.” In a string of e-mail messages with his superiors, Eason was told he could either lower the flags or retire effective immediately. Here is Eason’s reasoning for his decision to retire:

This is in no way a political decision. I simply do not feel it is appropriate to honor a person whose epitaph of government service was to have voted against or blocked every civil rights issue that came before the US Congress. His doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice cost North Carolina and our Nation much that we may never regain.

A Look Back At Jesse Helms

Will Smith: Mr. Unstoppable

Last week Will Smith’s movie Hancock debuted in theaters all across America. Like always Mr. Smith broke a record with Hancock being his eighth consecutive number one movie since Men in Black II. The movie grossed $107 million domestically,  and $78 million internationally since opening last Tuesday .

With all of his success I must ask the question “How does he do it?”.  A rapper from Philly who gets his own television show and then transforms himself into a mega movie star. Let me not forget that he received the first ever Hip Hop Grammy. This is the story of an amazing human being. Will Smith’s life is record breaking itself. This man is a pioneer and trailblazer for African Americans in entertainment.

It seems that America and Hollywood are infatuated with him. I think it has a lot to do with America’s obsession with the self made man. The “come up” story is something that resonates with Americans regardless of color. Most Americans dream of being more than what they were when they started.  From the founding of this country, America has been known as the land of opportunity and the place where dreams come true. Will Smith’s ascension to stardom is a true representation of that.

Will Smith is the American dream, he is the result of years of focus, determination and vision.

Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff-Parents Just Don’t Understand

Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff-Summer Time

Will Smith on 60 Minutes

Hungry for Meaning on the Fourth

The Fourth of July is always a mental battle for me. I’m proud to be American in the sense of recognizing the uniqueness of the experiment in self-government, but when it comes to the pomp and circumstance, I just haven’t been able to get with it since fireworks stopped making me gasp. (Anyone planning to use this post to “Michelle” me in the future should I decide to run for office should stop reading here.)

Any student of African-American history or anyone with an American history teacher worth his or her certification may recall Frederick Douglass’ epic address on July 5, 1852, “What, to an American Slave, is Your 4th of July?” His answer: “a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.” In the eyes of the slave, he argued, this celebration of the equality of all mankind and liberty from tyranny was a “sham” and an “unholy license.” Of course, he was dead on.

One hundred fifty-six years later to the day of Douglass’ speech, I watched two black American women (sisters in every sense of the word) compete against each other in the finals of the world’s oldest tennis championship. That occurrence is a sign of major progress in itself, but the fact that I watched it in my own residence and not from slave quarters is a quantum leap from the world Douglass viewed then.

But even with signs of progress and ‘how far we’ve come’ abounding, I struggle to grasp my feelings about Independence Day and what it means for where we are as a country today considering our past and signs for our future.

What would the country be today if Thomas Jefferson, the quintessential embodiment of American-ness in his achievements and contradictions, had succeeded in convincing the other delegates to include this paragraph from his first draft of the Declaration of Independence into the final version of charges against King George III?

“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people for whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another.”

Would confronting the country’s deepest character flaws before they became bloodthirsty beasts have led us to an alternative reality from what we face today? The racial elements of the Founders’ hypocrisy are obvious, but what strikes me most bluntly is the sheer selfishness and lack of foresight that seems to have seeped into their hearts and minds like an invisible, poisonous gas. (I can hear the conversations now, “Yes, all men are created equal…but some men are created to build profitable industries for other men while those men drink lemonade and watch. Surely you understand, Thomas!”) Two hundred thirty-two years later, that poison has spread and worsened among us all, regardless of color, as we celebrate our independence via gluttony amid a world food crisis and paranoia masked as national pride.

We can’t last much longer like this. The glow of what journalist Fareed Zakaria calls “the post-American world” is looming steadily at the horizon, and while we pig out, the 6.3 billion “other” people on the globe are likely watching the baby empire cannibalize itself and figuring out their own ways of moving on without us.

Zakaria argues that America can still be a leader in this ‘new world,’ and I agree, but this can’t happen without a gut check and a radical shift in priorities. The Founders themselves believed in a government’s capacity to be overhauled and reinvented if the public’s eyes were open and if they were empowered with tools for change, so I suppose that’s something to be proud of. But if I don’t take that pride any further than lip service, though, I’m useless.

Okay, I know all of this is a bitter pill for a Monday after a holiday, but maybe I wasn’t the only person feeling a bit ‘off’ on the holiday. Maybe other people are hungry for a new role for the country, too. Maybe a new movement is bubbling beneath the surface and new leadership will emerge to give the American bus a good push out of the ditch. (Sidenote for those in the Obamanon: you are only useful if you will still say ‘Yes We Can’ and be driven by hope if Barack doesn’t win or will be prepared to actually work to create that ‘Change We Can Believe In’ if he does.)

For now though, I need to finish my leftovers. The chicken was particularly good this year.

Photo: Funkadelic, “America Eats Its Young” (1972)

Jimi Hendrix, “The Star Spangled Banner” (1969)

Hip Hop: The New Comedy

I was bored last night and decided to search the internet for some new music. Being a lover of Hip Hop I decided to specifically look for new Hip Hop songs. I ended up on Youtube looking at videos from Southern Hip Hop artists and one by one started to realize that I was laughing more than I was jammin.

A night that I thought was gonna be full of musical enjoyment became a night of comic relief. I really can’t believe that some of these rappers take themselves seriously.

It seems as if Hip Hop is evolving into a new form of comedy and I wonder what that means for the future of the art.

Below are all the videos that I ended up watching last night. These will surely have you on your ass laughing and asking yourself what happened to the good old days when wack lame looking Negroes didn’t get any shine.

Gucci Mane-Young Money(First verse is hilarious!!!)

Plies-Broken Equipment Parody

Plies-Like Water

Shawty Lo-Foolish Remix (Baby from Cash Money on Voice Box Hilarious!!!

I, Trifling Black Man.

I’m trifling.

I recently learned about the Black Masculinity Writing Competition sponsored by the National Black Programming Consortium and the writer Greg Tate. Of course, being a young black male, I was intrigued by the subject and the opportunity to show off my loudest and most audacious opinion — especially since I feel that pop culture and our elders give guys in my age group a bad rap. I made several mental notes on what I would write, and even talked up the contest to a few friends.

But I missed the deadline for submission.

Trifling black man, right?

In a way, my tiny lapse represents an element of black masculinity. Talking a good game, but when the time comes to deliver, being elsewhere or doing otherwise. To be fair, to err is human. No subgroup of people deserves the brunt of being seen as the most noncommittal or irresponsible. Yet, this is uniquely “common” among black men today.

This is the part of the piece where I’m supposed to talk about how often I hear black women complain about how “no-good” we are (and how defensive I get), or how ashamed I am of how so many of our men and boys are lost in wanting to be pimps and thugs (and how the best I can do is to just represent the best way I can and hope they/white people notice), and lament how there just doesn’t seem to be any models of Malcolm, Martin, and Medgar left (but slide in how I will be the next in line) — but all of this is preposterous.

Yes, there are partial truths in each of those arguments, but no matter how many opinions and staged dialogues we “just put out there,” anything resembling progress will be elusive until we change the starting assumptions. The “black community” has never been and will never be uniform. While black men face common enemies, tactics to defeat those enemies will need to be focused, and as diverse as our individual sub-communities are. And quaint though it may sound, it may just take on brother who cares to take on the task of helping another. No more grandstanding. No more big talk.

Let’s just get to work to be the difference where we can. And at the very least, work on being on time, because no one really wants to be, well, trifling.

Image by ADRIANHOPKINS.COM

UPDATE (7/6/08): The deadline for submissions has been extended! Oh, the irony.

Chris Rock, “Bring the Pain (1996)” [Excerpt]

Nothing is Constant

It’s been a little over two years since I graduated from college and moved from my home state of North Carolina to New York City. I moved to New York City because I have always dreamed of  living in a big city and working in the entertainment industry. In college I was seen as popular, smart, and I obtained anything I wanted. I was on top of the world. When I was offered the opportunity to move here fresh out of college I thought the world was mine for the taking and nothing could possibly stand in my way of success. Boy was I in for a rude awakening.

From the minute I got here it seemed like everyone was fighting for a piece of the pie. Down South it seemed like there was a slice for everybody, there wasn’t much competition. It also didn’t take long to realize that there were highly intelligent, ambitious, and capable people everywhere in this city. It almost seemed as if the best of the best throughout the country converged on this city alone. I had to finally come to the understanding that success wasn’t gonna happen overnight and that it was gonna be a long fight to the top.

I think this realization is something that all recent graduates must go through. You leave the comfortable shelter of your university and become humbled by the mere touch of the real world. There are no questions asked, the real world has an uncanny way of letting you know where you really stand in the big scheme of life. I really see what Darwin means in his concept of  “Survival of the Fittest.” Only those who have great tenacity, determination, vision and a willingness to learn can obtain the keys to success in life.

Kanye West, “Good Morning”

A Soldier’s Death, No Biggie

When the US and its small contingent of allied nations invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001and 2003, respectively, most people in the country and government thought warring with these two countries would be a cake walk. There was no way two underdeveloped nations in the Middle East would put up any kind of Resistance that would cause the largest Military force in the world to even blink an eye. We had the technology, so why not bomb the hell out of them with the most advanced multi-million dollar weaponry on the planet? After the barrage of war planes and naval ship bombings, it seemed as if all hostile parties in both countries were erased.

Then out of nowhere insurgents in civilian clothes started detonating large amounts of explosives in public areas throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. This caused many civilian casualties and chaos but that wasn’t the end. Those same men started to strategically place Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s)-essentially roadside bombs- in position and then let them rip as US soldiers passed by. This turned out to be one of the most successful tactics the insurgency has used in either country. Along with the combination of small gun battles between insurgents and the US military, this has been the cause of thousands of US soldier casualties.

Mainstream media refuses to report and showcase actual numbers of US military casualties and injuries. I really wonder why this is. Below you will find figures and youtube clips that shows this war in a whole new light.

U.S. Military Casualties and Wounded Soldiers, as of 6/30/2008

Operation Iraqi Freedom casualties 4,116

Operation Iraqi Freedom wounded 13,458

Operation Enduring Freedom Afghanistan casualties 527

Operation Enduring Freedom Afghanistan wounded 1,325

Source: U.S. Dept. of Defense, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

Photo Credit: World Prout Assembly

BBC Coverage of American Casualties

4th25, “Matter of Time” (Theme to the movie, Stop Loss)

DJ Khaled…Featuring Dr. King?

You’ve probably heard DJ Khaled’s street anthem, “I’m So Hood” (or at least have heard some hood advocates chanting its infectious hook) by now. But what you’ve likely missed during its video, between shots of cash, carats, and cars, is a guest appearance by none other than hood legend…

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.!

MLK shows up in mural form as an apparent lord of the block, floating ominously over a row of men with hands held behind their heads while being prodded by the police.

Prior to this, Khaled helps thug-rap pioneer Trick Daddy escape police pursuit by scooping him up in his convertible and dropping him off at some apartments to lay low. As Khaled coasts to his next destination (meeting coke-rap “boss” Rick Ross –- self-styled after a legendary, now-repentant crack kingpin “Freeway” Ricky Ross), he’s stopped by police looking for Trick. Khaled denies any knowledge of him, but the police ask him out of his car while they search it for contraband. The search comes up empty and Khaled is off.

The fate of the men in the suspect lineup isn’t clear after Mr. “We the Best!” speeds away, so it’s anybody’s guess whether they got off with a warning, were all arrested, or even what they did to be arrested beyond being colored and outside.

One thing is for certain, however. If there’s any evidence that we are closer to the colorblind society people like to dumbdown King’s dream to, it’s that black and white officers get to work side-by-side to frisk and search men of color under a mural of the man himself…all while a dreadlocked cyborg sings a melody about sagging pants and gold teeth. How’s that for progress?

See for yourself (MLK cameo starts at 1:13)