How Bill Cosby Got iy WrongWritten by Tamika Johnson
Bill Cosby got it wrong. His many speeches regarding plight of poor blacks in this country and their lack of personal responsibility were not only off mark, but completely irresponsible. Cosby failed to take into account many mitigating factors, in what became his regular rants on poor blacks in this country. For example, last of civil rights laws was passed in 1965, so it's been forty years since physical signs of government sanctioned racism have been in place. Please explain to me how in forty years we are to undo centuries of terror and government sponsored segregation, emasculation and murder? While I don't believe blaming white man for your problems is answer, preaching to a roomful of upwardly mobile blacks who are probably doing nothing to help those who are less fortunate then they are is pointless and doesn’t do anything to help cause of those you’re complaining about. Poverty is a hard cycle to break; especially if you're black and suffer a history where, in not to distance past, if you dared to assert yourself as an entrepreneurial, educated black person you could find yourself hanging from a tree. This is a country that used to burn blacks alive for fun. That not to long ago raped a man with a broom handle and two years ago sent a young black boy to prison for having sex with a white girl. This is a country where there are several states that have never sent a white man to death row for killing a black man but routinely send black ones to death row for crimes that they may not have committed, look at Illinois, and that is not even a southern state. Now as a young black woman who was raised by a single mother, one who was welfare and who only has a GED, I could so easily be one of those non English speaking, uneducated loud dressing, black folk he was talking about. But I'm not. I'm well educated and I am quite familiar with English language. But guess what, I've been denied jobs and treated horribly because I am black and for no other reason. And if Cosby or anyone else thinks that that doesn't have an effect on those who are not blessed to have a parent who recognizes value of an education and who adequately prepares you for racist country in which we live, then he and everyone else who feels that way are sadly mistaken.
| | Downing In The MainstreamWritten by The Indy Voice
Look, I know world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power and frankly I'm tired of hearing that as an excuse to allow our President to lie to us. The Downing Memo (READ IT HERE), authenticity of which hasn't been disputed by British government, details minutes of a very high level governmental meeting in which British were certain that Bush administration was setting up intelligence to make a case for war in Iraq and come hell or high water they were assured that we were going to war. I just want to get a couple of things straight about what went on before start of war. First of all, nutcases like myself from all around this nation and world were screaming that Iraq did not possess WMD. We repeatedly asked question of how a country with such debilitating sanctions imposed against it by world community to point of causing death to untold numbers of people could create sophisticated weapons programs. We asked why inspectors on ground were continually unable to find any shred of evidence pointing to Iraq building up its weapons programs. We asked why Hans Blix was so adamant about non-existence of WMD in Iraq and why George Bush was so impatient with inspections that were successfully proceeding. We asked how a country that we walked all over in 1991, who wasn't a threat to us when it was at full strength could ever be a threat to us after sanctions. We questioned reasoning behind attacking a country that had absolutely no connection to 9/11 or American directed terrorism. So please don't tell me that it is with hindsight that I am now aware of these things. I said it then, I say it now and I said it all along. We all said it. Me and billions of my closest friends. I say this not to rehash past but to point out that we cannot move forward until we address these major issues. The world won't let us, karma won't let us and insurgents certainly won't let us.
|