How insulting is Colored (vs. African American)

[sdeason1]

it seems that some are more interested in history and what names were used in the past eras than those that actually used those names who lived it. one thing needs to be learned, you cannot erase history.

[Senusret I]

Originally Posted by sdeason1

it seems that some are more interested in history and what names were used in the past eras than those that actually used those names who lived it. one thing needs to be learned, you cannot erase history.

It also seems that some are Tom Earp.

[DrPhil]

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Unless you know the people behind the usernames, they can be whomever and whatever. Madmax is probably a Black person who is really really really bored. Knitting would be a great idea.

[lovespink88]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Unless you know the people behind the usernames, they can be whomever and whatever. Madmax is probably a Black person who is really really really bored. Knitting would be a great idea.

Maybe, but that still doesn't change the fact that he/she/it needs to get a hobby.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by lovespink88

Maybe, but that still doesn't change the fact that he/she/it needs to get a hobby.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Unless you know the people behind the usernames, they can be whomever and whatever. Madmax is probably a Black person who is really really really bored. Knitting would be a great idea.

[lovespink88]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Unless you know the people behind the usernames, they can be whomever and whatever. Madmax is probably a Black person who is really really really bored. Knitting would be a great idea.

Maybe I should have been more specific. I was more so replying to the part where you said "Unless you know the people behind the usernames, they can be whomever and whatever." To me, it sounded as though you were defending him/her/it by saying I was being unfair to judge madmax because I don't know who/what he/she/it really is. I was just agreeing by saying, while that may be true, it still doesn't change the fact that I think he/she/it needs a hobby. Just agreeing.

[madmax]

Originally Posted by lovespink88

Maybe, but that still doesn't change the fact that he/she/it needs to get a hobby.

Are you afraid of the truth?

Breaking the Silence
By HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.

Published: August 1, 2004


Go into any inner-city neighborhood," Barack Obama said in his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, "and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white." In a speech filled with rousing applause lines, it was a line that many black Democratic delegates found especially galvanizing. Not just because they agreed, but because it was a home truth they'd seldom heard a politician say out loud.

Why has it been so difficult for black leaders to say such things in public, without being pilloried for "blaming the victim"? Why the huge flap over Bill Cosby's insistence that black teenagers do their homework, stay in school, master standard English and stop having babies? Any black person who frequents a barbershop or beauty parlor in the inner city knows that Mr. Cosby was only echoing sentiments widely shared in the black community.

"If our people studied calculus like we studied basketball," my father, age 91, once remarked as we drove past a packed inner-city basketball court at midnight, "we'd be running M.I.T." When my brother and I were growing up in the 50's, our parents convinced us that the "blackest" thing that we could be was a doctor or a lawyer. We admired Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, but our real heroes were people like Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Benjamin Mays and Mary McLeod Bethune.

Yet in too many black neighborhoods today, academic achievement has actually come to be stigmatized. "We are just not the same people anymore," says the mayor of Memphis, Dr. Willie W. Herenton. "We are worse off than we were before Brown v. Board," says Dr. James Comer, a child psychiatrist at Yale. "And a large part of the reason for this is that we have abandoned our own black traditional core values, values that sustained us through slavery and Jim Crow segregation."

Making it, as Mr. Obama told me, "requires diligent effort and deferred gratification. Everybody sitting around their kitchen table knows that."

"Americans suffer from anti-intellectualism, starting in the White House," Mr. Obama went on. "Our people can least afford to be anti-intellectual." Too many of our children have come to believe that it's easier to become a black professional athlete than a doctor or lawyer. Reality check: according to the 2000 census, there were more than 31,000 black physicians and surgeons, 33,000 black lawyers and 5,000 black dentists. Guess how many black athletes are playing professional basketball, football and baseball combined. About 1,400. In fact, there are more board-certified black cardiologists than there are black professional basketball players. "We talk about leaving no child behind," says Dena Wallerson, a sociologist at Connecticut College. "The reality is that we are allowing our own children to be left behind." Nearly a third of black children are born into poverty. The question is: why?

Scholars such as my Harvard colleague William Julius Wilson say that the causes of black poverty are both structural and behavioral. Think of structural causes as "the devil made me do it," and behavioral causes as "the devil is in me." Structural causes are faceless systemic forces, like the disappearance of jobs. Behavioral causes are self-destructive life choices and personal habits. To break the conspiracy of silence, we have to address both of these factors.

"A lot of us," Mr. Obama argues, "hesitate to discuss these things in public because we think that if we do so it lets the larger society off the hook. We're stuck in an either/or mentality - that the problem is either societal or it's cultural."

It's important to talk about life chances - about the constricted set of opportunities that poverty brings. But to treat black people as if they're helpless rag dolls swept up and buffeted by vast social trends - as if they had no say in the shaping of their lives - is a supreme act of condescension. Only 50 percent of all black children graduate from high school; an estimated 64 percent of black teenage girls will become pregnant. (Black children raised by female "householders" are five times as likely to live in poverty as those raised by married couples.) Are white racists forcing black teenagers to drop out of school or to have babies?

Mr. Cosby got a lot of flak for complaining about children who couldn't speak standard English. Yet it isn't a derogation of the black vernacular - a marvelously rich and inventive tongue - to point out that there's a language of the marketplace, too, and learning to speak that language has generally been a precondition for economic success, whoever you are. When we let black youth become monolingual, we've limited their imaginative and economic possibilities.

These issues can be ticklish, no question, but they're badly served by silence or squeamishness. Mr. Obama showed how to get the balance right. We've got to create as many opportunities as we can for the worst-off - and "make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life." But values matter, too. We can't talk about the choices people have without talking about the choices people make.

Reaad the rest at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/op...1gates.html?hp

[lovespink88]

Originally Posted by madmax

Are you afraid of the truth?

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN. How dramatic of you.

[BabyPiNK_FL]

Does MM remind any one else of Uncle Ruckus? Or is it just me?

[KSUViolet06]

What is with this article?

Do you have it on "speed post?"

You need a hobby.

Crochet much?

[madmax]

Originally Posted by KSUViolet06

What is with this article?

Do you have it on "speed post?"

You need a hobby.

Crochet much?

I am just posting a speech by the messiah.
Do you have a problem with the speech?

[knight_shadow]

Originally Posted by KSUViolet06

What is with this article?

Do you have it on "speed post?"

You need a hobby.

Crochet much?

That's the only example he has in his arsenal.

It's funny, though, that he quotes an article by a black writer that includes references about our black president, considering none of us have jobs, education, or the will to take care of our children.

[madmax]

Originally Posted by knight_shadow

That's the only example he has in his arsenal.

It's funny, though, that he quotes an article by a black writer that includes references about our black president, considering none of us have jobs, education, or the will to take care of our children.

Would you like additional examples? How about every speaker at the Million Bro March. Bill Cosby also speaks the truth.


One black writer and a half black President doesn't outweigh MILLIONs of blacks that don't have jobs, don't care about education and don't take care of their kids.

[knight_shadow]

Originally Posted by madmax

Would you like additional examples? How about every speaker at the Million Bro March. Bill Cosby also speaks the truth.


One black writer and a half black President doesn't outweigh MILLIONs of blacks that don't have jobs, don't care about education and don't take care of their kids.

WOW! When you put it like that, I'm convinced.

Must have this reply on "speed post" as well. Dumbass

[madmax]

Originally Posted by Tired Black Man

Mutha f*cka please. You white mutha f*ckuz don't have a clue. Your bitch ass is brainwashed, because black people in general are not celebrated. I'll used my home town as an example. The first nonnative to settle in what is now Chicago was a black Haitian man. He built a house and a trading post near the Chicago River where the first elections took place, the first marriage was held, and first court handed down justice. But only two tiny streets bear his name, while you white mutha f*ckuz have your names all over the entire city. The father of Chicago is still uncelebrated at the annual ceremonies marketing the city's birth. That's f*cked up. Then you say we're not educated. wtf? Did your white ass know that Dr. Gabriel Oyibo solved the unified field theory in physics? That was a feat Albert dumbass Einstein could not accomplish. This unified field theory is considered the holy grail of physics. But the black man who solve it was not celebrated with the most recognizable prize. It blows me away knowing you white mutha f*kuz didn't want to see a black man in the White House. We built the White House from the ground up as we did this whole goddamn country, and FOR FREE so it's about time we live in it. Talk about black men not taking care of his kids? You dumb mutha f*ckuz don't even know. You all have stolen everything you own, have oppressed everybody and were too damn lazy to do your own work, so you had us do it for you, FOR FREE. Do you know U.S. history, bitch? You obviousy don't. If your dumbass did you would know throughout history, the white male and black female have had an open sexual relationship. Not consensual, by any means. It was born out of RAPE, humility and control. During slavery, whites, introduced the house slaves to white ways, minimal education and non concensual sexual relations. It has long been held that even "The Father of the United States" George Washington (a rapist himself) had sexual intercourse with his female slaves and it is this behavoir that may have resulted in his death. He reportedly caught pneumonia because of his frequent visits to the slave quarters, which were less fit for human habitation. All of this rape was the beginning of the soiling of black women in America. It was especially devastating when seen through the eyes of black men. Not only do we take care of our own kids, we've taken care of you white mutha f*ckuz nasty kids for over 400 years because white women were considered to be pure so they couldn't breast feed the little white mutha f*ckuz, so you have the balls to say we don't take care of our kids. F*ck you! You white mutha f*ckuz are savages. I haven't even begun. Keep this shit up and I will beat you with an extension cord. Do you understand me?

And it's the "Million MAN March", you dumb mutha f*cka.

You are hilarious. Do you have a Malcolm X poster?