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Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Malcolm X's youngest daughter pleads guilty to ID theft, will get conditional probation
Malcolm X's youngest daughter pleaded guilty Thursday to ripping off the 70-year-old widow of one of her father's bodyguards by running up $55,000 on credit cards taken out in the woman's name.
Malikah Shabazz will be sentenced to five years probation next month as long as she pays back the $55,000 owed to various credit card companies, Queens prosecutors said. If not, she could be locked away for seven years.
"The defendant, who preyed upon the trusting nature of a once-close family friend, has admitted her guilt in committing a serious felony offense and will be ordered to make her victims financially whole," said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.
Shabazz, 46, remains held in lieu of a $100,000 bond while she awaits a July 28 sentencing. She pleaded guilty to a single count of first-degree identity theft during a hearing before Queens Supreme Court Justice Fernando Camacho.
Shabazz was arrested at her North Carolina home in February amid allegations she stole the identity of Khaula Bakr, the widow of a Malcolm X bodyguard who was with the slain activist when he was assassinated at Harlem's Audobon Ballroom in 1965.
Bakr sensed something was wrong when Wells Fargo bank notified her that she owed nearly $30,000 on a credit card account she never opened, prosecutors said. The address used to open up the account came back to Shabazz's South Carolina home, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors said Shabazz moved to a remote farming town in North Carolina with her teenage daughter days before her arrest as questions swirled about a fraud scheme that dates back to 2006.
Shabazz is in the middle of a long-running legal dispute with her five sisters over their parents' $1.4 million estate.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2011/06/10/2011-06-10_malcolm_xs_youngest_daughter_pleads_guilty_to_id_theft_will_get_conditional_prob.html#ixzz1P9hWlBLJ
Sunday, June 12, 2011
WIZ KHALIFAH WAS TREATED LIKE A THIEF AT BARNEYS DEPARTMENT STORE. . . DESPITE SPENDING $16K ON GIFTS FOR AMBER!!!
According to Radar Online, Amber took her family on a SHOPPING SPREE at Barneys, courtesy of Wiz "Make-It-Rain-TRICK" Khalifah. Shortly after dropping down 16K on women’s shoes for Amber and her family, Wiz headed up to the men’s department. Unfortunately, he was unrecognizable to the store’s employees who treated him like he was going to steal something.
A patron who claimed to be in the store at the same time as Amber and Wiz said:
“After his spending spree on the shoes, Wiz went up to the ultra expensive men’s department floor, but instead of rolling out the red carpet for him they refused to help the poor guy! Not only did they fail to recognize him they actually thought that that he was a thief and treated him like one! It was only when somebody pointed out to them who the guy actually was that they back-tracked somewhat.”
After the snub, Wiz is said to have rejoined Amber and crew, and they continued SHOPPING, before leaving the store.
SHEEEEIIIT!! If they would have did US like that . . . we would have returned all the shoes and walked the FREAK OUT!!!
MIAMI HEAT PLAYER CLAIMS THAT JASON TERRY'S TRASH TALK . . . HAS GOTTEN INTO LEBRON JAMES' HEAD!!!
According to the insider, Jason Terry's trash talk goes WAAAY overboard. The insider explained, "He tells LeBron that [his fiance Savannah] is f*cking other players. He talks about f*cking LeBron's mom . . . [Jason Terry] says whatever he has to to get under LeBron's skin."
And the TRASH TALK seems to work. According to LeBron's teammate, "LeBron may [even] believe some of that [stuff]. It's effecting his play."
Dang LeBron . . . you let a man TALKING SLICK TO YOU f*ck up your game. Somebody better get this dude to MAN THE F*CK UP!!!
RAPPER SOULJA BOY IS IN TROUBLE WITH THE GAY POLICE . . . FOR FIGHTING WITH RACISTS FLOOD HIS FACEBOOK PAGE WITH RACIST COMMENTS!!! (DETAILS)
Well Soulja Boy tried to FIGHT BACK, by posting the following message:
"pus*y ass white boys make me sick man. LET A BLACK MAN SHINE AND DO SOMETHING POSITIVE!!! DAMN YALL ALREADY GOT MONEY AND LIVING RIGHT STOP HOLDING US BLACK PEOPLE DOWN TRYING TO DO SOMETHING POSITIVE WITH THEIR LIVES! YALL BEEN fu*kING WITH US SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME. if I don't like a artist im not going to like their facebook and talk to them. use common sense and stop being stupid."
"IM TIRED OF WHITE PEOPLE DOING US LIKE THIS MAN!! THEY TREAT US SO WRONG!! fu*k THEM MAN ON GOD!! fu*k THEM FOR LIKING A BLACK MANS FACEBOOK JUST TO TALK sh*t!! fu*k RACIST I HATE YOU"
"Maybe I finally said the right sh*t to get these racist to unlike my page. Fans i'm sorry you had to read this. but we must take a stand. they WILL not treat us like this any longer. I dont give a fu*k."
We understand what dude was TRYING to do. But errr. . . . the GAY POLICE is watching . . .
Thursday, June 2, 2011
A Cure For HIV/AIDS ?!?!? ***CLICK HERE***
LONDON (Reuters) – For his doctors, Timothy Ray Brown was a shot in the dark. An HIV-positive American who was cured by a unique type of bone marrow transplant, the man known as "the Berlin patient" has become an icon of what scientists hope could be the next phase of the AIDS pandemic: its end.
Dramatic scientific advances since HIV was first discovered 30 years ago this week mean the virus is no longer a death sentence. Thanks to tests that detect HIV early, new antiretroviral AIDS drugs that can control the virus for decades, and a range of ways to stop it being spread, 33.3 million people around the world are learning to live with HIV.
People like Vuyiseka Dubula, an HIV-positive AIDS activist and mother in Cape Town, South Africa, can expect relatively normal, full lives. "I'm not thinking about death at all," she says. "I'm taking my treatment and I'm living my life."
Nonetheless, on the 30th birthday of HIV, the global scientific community is setting out with renewed vigor to try to kill it. The drive is partly about science, and partly about money. Treating HIV patients with lifelong courses of sophisticated drugs is becoming unaffordable.
Caring for HIV patients in developing countries alone already costs around $13 billion a year and that could treble over the next 20 years.
In tough economic times, the need to find a cure has become even more urgent, says Francoise Barre Sinoussi, who won a Nobel prize for her work in identifying Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). "We have to think about the long term, including a strategy to find a cure," she says. "We have to keep on searching until we find one."
The Berlin patient is proof they could. His case has injected new energy into a field where people for years believed talk of a cure was irresponsible.
THE CURE THAT WORKED
Timothy Ray Brown was living in Berlin when besides being HIV-positive, he had a relapse of leukemia. He was dying. In 2007, his doctor, Gero Huetter, made a radical suggestion: a bone marrow transplant using cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation, known as CCR5 delta 32. Scientists had known for a few years that people with this gene mutation had proved resistant to HIV.
"We really didn't know when we started this project what would happen," Huetter, an oncologist and haematologist who now works at the University of Heidelberg in southern Germany, told Reuters. The treatment could well have finished Brown off. Instead he remains the only human ever to be cured of AIDS. "He has no replicating virus and he isn't taking any medication. And he will now probably never have any problems with HIV," says Huetter. Brown has since moved to San Francisco.
Most experts say it is inconceivable Brown's treatment could be a way of curing all patients. The procedure was expensive, complex and risky. To do this in others, exact match donors would have to be found in the tiny proportion of people -- most of them of northern European descent -- who have the mutation that makes them resistant to the virus.
Dr Robert Gallo, of the Institute of Virology at the University of Maryland, puts it bluntly. "It's not practical and it can kill people," he said last year.
Sinoussi is more expansive. "It's clearly unrealistic to think that this medically heavy, extremely costly, barely reproducible approach could be replicated and scaled-up ... but from a scientist's point of view, it has shown at least that a cure is possible," she says.
The International AIDS Society will this month formally add the aim of finding a cure to its HIV strategy of prevention, treatment and care.
A group of scientist-activists is also launching a global working group to draw up a scientific plan of attack and persuade governments and research institutions to commit more funds. Money is starting to flow. The U.S. National Institutes of Health is asking for proposals for an $8.5 million collaborative research grant to search for a cure, and the Foundation for AIDS Research, or amfAR, has just announced its first round of four grants to research groups "to develop strategies for eradicating HIV infection."
THE COST OF TREATMENT
Until recently, people in HIV and AIDS circles feared that to direct funds toward the search for a cure risked detracting from the fight to get HIV-positive people treated. Even today, only just over five million of the 12 million or so people who need the drugs actually get them.
HIV first surfaced in 1981, when scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered it was the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). An article in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of that June referred to "five young men, all active homosexuals" from Los Angeles as the first documented cases. "That was the summer of '81. For the world it was the beginning of the era of HIV/AIDS, even though we didn't know it was HIV then," says Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has made AIDS research his life's work.
In the subsequent three decades, the disease ignorantly branded "the gay plague" has become one of the most vicious pandemics in human history. Transmitted in semen, blood and breast milk, HIV has devastated poorer regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, where the vast majority of HIV-positive people live. As more tests and treatment have become available, the number of new infections has been falling. But for every two with HIV who get a chance to start on AIDS drugs, five more join the "newly infected" list. United Nations data show that despite an array of potential prevention measures -- from male circumcision to sophisticated vaginal or anal microbicide gels -- more than 7,100 new people catch the virus every day.
Treatment costs per patient can range from around $150 a year in poor countries, where drugs are available as cheap generics, to more than $20,000 a year in the United States.
The overall sums are huge. A recent study as part of a non-governmental campaign called AIDS2031 suggests that low and middle-income countries will need $35 billion a year to properly address the pandemic by 2031. That's almost three times the current level of around $13 billion a year. Add in the costs of treatment in rich countries and experts estimate the costs of HIV 20 years from now will reach $50 to $60 billion a year.
"It's clear that we have to look at another possible way of managing of the epidemic beyond just treating everyone forever," says Sharon Lewin, a leading HIV doctor and researcher from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
In some ways, we have been here before. Early AIDS drugs such as AZT came to market in the late 1980s, but within a decade they were overtaken by powerful cocktail treatments known as HAART, or highly active antiretroviral treatment. HAART had a dramatic effect -- rapidly driving the virus out of patients' blood and prompting some to say a cure was just around the corner.
But then scientists discovered HIV could lie low in pools or reservoirs of latent infection that even powerful drugs could not reach. Talk of a cure all but died out.
"Scientifically we had no means to say we were on the way to finding a cure," says Bertrand Audoin, executive director of the Geneva-based International AIDS Society. "Scientists ... don't want to make any more false promises. They didn't want to talk about a cure again because it really wasn't anywhere on the horizon."
GENE THERAPY
The ultimate goal would allow patients to stop taking AIDS drugs, knocking a hole in a $12 billion-a-year market dominated by Californian drugmaker Gilead and the likes of Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck.
It's unlikely to happen anytime soon, but Brown's case has opened the door to new ideas. "What it proved was that if you make someone's cells resistant to HIV...then all the last bits of HIV, that hang around for a long time in patients on treatment, did in fact decay and disappear," says Lewin.
Now scientists working on mimicking the effect of the Berlin patient's transplant have had some success. One experimental technique uses gene therapy to take out certain cells, make them resistant to HIV and then put them back into patients in the hope they will survive and spread.
At an HIV conference in Boston earlier this year, American researchers presented data on six patients who had large numbers of white blood cells known as CD4 cells removed, manipulated to knock out the existing CCR5 gene, and then replaced.
"It works like scissors and cuts a piece of genetic information out of the DNA, and then closes the gap," says Huetter. "Then every cell arising from this mother cell has this same mutation."
Early results showed the mutated cells managed to survive inside the bodies of the patients at low levels, remaining present for more than three months in five. "This was a proof of concept," says Lewin. Another potential avenue is a small group of patients known as "elite controllers", who despite being infected with HIV are able to keep it under control simply with their own immune systems. Researchers hope these patients could one day be the clue to developing a successful HIV/AIDS vaccine or functional cure.
Scientists are also exploring ways to "wake up" HIV cells and kill them. As discovered in the late 1990s, HIV has a way of getting deep into the immune system itself -- into what are known as resting memory T-cells -- and going to sleep there. Hidden away, it effectively avoids drugs and the body's own immune response.
"Once it goes to sleep in a cell it can stay there forever, which is really the main reason why we can't cure HIV with current drugs," says Lewin. Her team in Melbourne and another group in the United States are about to start the first human trials using a drug called SAHA or vorinostat, made by Merck and currently used in cancer treatment, which has shown promise in being able to wake up dormant HIV.
WHAT ABOUT PREVENTION?
As scientists begin to talk up a cure, the old question of whether that's the right goal has re-emerged. Seth Berkley, a medical epidemiologist and head of the U.S.-based International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) is concerned.
"From a science point of view, it's a fabulous thing to do. It's a great target and a lot of science will be learned. But from a public health point of view, the primary thing you need to do is stop the flow of new infections," says Berkley. "We need a prevention revolution. That is absolutely critical."
Vuyiseka Dubula agrees. The South African activist finds talk of a cure for HIV distracting, almost disconcerting. "This research might not yield results soon, and even when it does, access to that cure is still going to be a big issue," she says. "So in the meantime, while we don't have the answer on whether HIV can be cured or not, we need to save lives."
BUSTED!!! FOR THE 500TH TIME . . . WE CAUGHT ACTRESS MEAGAN GOOD WEARING THE SAME OUTFIT TWO DAYS IN A ROW!!!
June 02, 2011. Now y'all already KNOW that we love us some Meagan Good. But MaMa you really need to UPGRADE your wardrobe. You look LIKE YOU'RE NASTY coming out with the same leggings two days in a row . . . SMH!!
Two Black Men Sue Apple Store For Racial Discrimination
Apple staff ‘told’ black men: your kind not welcome. Law suit’s racism claim against New York store employee is latest in spate of racism accusations
Apple has become embroiled in a racism scandal after a lawsuit was filed accusing an employee at the company's flagship Broadway store of telling two African-Americans their "kind" was not welcome.
The incident allegedly occurred on December 9 2010 when Nile Charles, 24, and Brian Johnston, 34, entered the Apple shop in Manhattan's Upper West Side at around 3.20pm. Dressed in "baggy jeans and large sweaters with hoods", the plaintiffs say they were looking to purchase headphones, but soon attracted the attention of an Apple staff member.
The unnamed employee – said to be white and in his fifties – allegedly approached the customers in an "intimidating fashion", invading their "personal space", and saying: "You know the deal. You know the deal."
Having been asked to leave the store unless they made a purchase or saw a Mac Specialist, Charles and Johnston were then supposedly told: "And before you say I'm racially discriminating against you, let me stop you. I am discriminating against you."
The employee continued: "I don't want your kind hanging out in the store."
The incident didn't end there, according to the lawsuit. Feeling "shocked and humiliated" by their treatment, the two customers began to use their mobile phones to record the conversation when a second Apple employee approached them.
"Now you have to go," one of the employees is accused of saying. "If you want to know why, it's because I said so. CONSIDER ME GOD. You have to go."
Demanding to see the store manager, Charles and Johnston's request is said to have been ignored. Having eventually found the manager of their own accord, the two men tried to make racial profiling allegations, only for the manager to ask the store's Head of Security to call the police.
The lawsuit, evidence of which appeared on the website Apple Insider, is currently working through the New York legal system. While the incident is yet to be substantiated – they remain allegations, nothing more – it is the latest in a growing number of racism accusations levelled at American Apple employees.
Last year Owen Stone, a black American who blogs under the pseudonym 'OhDoctah', set the blogosphere alight when he described an incident in which he claims he was accused of attempting to steal a MacBook Pro by staff in Apple's Santa Monica branch.
In June 2010, New York's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said he was investigating claims by local politician Grace Meng that Apple's SoHo store was discriminating against Asian people by refusing to sell iPads without proof of American citizenship. Not yet released in Asia at the time, employees allegedly feared iPads would be bought in America and sold on the Asian black market.
Child Protection Services drops Mariah Carey case
The Child Protection Services investigation against Mariah Carey has been dropped.
The singer and husband Nick Cannon -- who became parents to son Moroccan Scott and daughter Monroe on April 30 -- were shocked when an anonymous tip to the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family (DCFS) accused her of putting the babies at risk by drinking alcohol and taking drugs in her hospital room.
Mariah -- who brought the babies home from hospital two weeks ago -- admitted to investigators she drank a Guinness but only on the advice of medical staff who informed her a dark beer would help with lactation.
Laura Wasser -- a lawyer for the singer -- was present during questioning before the DCFS decided not to pursue the matter, website TMZ reports.
Earlier this month, 'America's Got Talent' host Nick explained the couple were shocked at the "ridiculous" allegations.
He said: "Recently, the Child Protective Services were called with allegations that there was some drinking and drugs and all that going on, wild in the hospital, which makes no sense to me -- how would a hospital allow that?
"It all started when a nurse suggested to my wife that if you drink Guinness, the dark beer, the yeast improves breastfeeding. I don't know if someone heard that, but then they were saying my wife was drinking beer. People will do anything to try to conjure up a story.
"I spoke to the person from the Child Protective Services, I was like, 'This is ridiculous. We're going to make sure that this isn't a case.'
"To even have to deal with that, my wife in the state that she's in, we're in the hospital, to even have to think about someone possibly wanting to investigate your children. It's sad at the end of the day."
The singer and husband Nick Cannon -- who became parents to son Moroccan Scott and daughter Monroe on April 30 -- were shocked when an anonymous tip to the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family (DCFS) accused her of putting the babies at risk by drinking alcohol and taking drugs in her hospital room.
Mariah -- who brought the babies home from hospital two weeks ago -- admitted to investigators she drank a Guinness but only on the advice of medical staff who informed her a dark beer would help with lactation.
Laura Wasser -- a lawyer for the singer -- was present during questioning before the DCFS decided not to pursue the matter, website TMZ reports.
Earlier this month, 'America's Got Talent' host Nick explained the couple were shocked at the "ridiculous" allegations.
He said: "Recently, the Child Protective Services were called with allegations that there was some drinking and drugs and all that going on, wild in the hospital, which makes no sense to me -- how would a hospital allow that?
"It all started when a nurse suggested to my wife that if you drink Guinness, the dark beer, the yeast improves breastfeeding. I don't know if someone heard that, but then they were saying my wife was drinking beer. People will do anything to try to conjure up a story.
"I spoke to the person from the Child Protective Services, I was like, 'This is ridiculous. We're going to make sure that this isn't a case.'
"To even have to deal with that, my wife in the state that she's in, we're in the hospital, to even have to think about someone possibly wanting to investigate your children. It's sad at the end of the day."
NAACP Tackles African American HIV/AIDS Crisis
The NAACP issues a call to action to the faith community to champion the importance of HIV testing and prevention in their respective congregations and communities.
"We need to acknowledge that, in America, health is a true civil right. It is essential that we enlist leaders from every corner of society to fight back against a disease that is devastating our community," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP. "Normalizing the conversation about HIV/AIDS in our churches is critical to reducing the stigma, making testing a routine part of health care visits and ensuring those who test positive receive medical care earlier - all of which can curb the spread of this disease."
"Dialogue with the Black Church" is part of NAACP's ongoing two-year national initiative to address the disparate impact of HIV/AIDS in the African American community. The program will create a strategic roadmap for faith leaders to follow in helping to reduce the spread of HIV throughout his or her community. Key components include:
- In-depth assessments of the barriers and challenges faith leaders face in trying to effectively educate their congregations on HIV testing and prevention. Research to include interviews, surveys and focus groups among faith leaders in highly-impacted communities.
- Toolkits with practical, action-oriented steps, as well as best practices to shape services currently offered within communities as well as to serve as a springboard for those who may want to initiate these services.
- Personal accounts from community champions.
- Technical assistance to ensure local faith leaders can effectively implement the recommended strategies that are in line with their communities.
- New HIV-focused content and blogs on the NAACP website.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), African Americans represent 13% of the U.S. population but account for more than half of all new HIV diagnoses. 1 in 30 Black women and 1 in 16 Black men will be infected with HIV in their lifetime. One in five HIV-positive Americans - close to a quarter of a million people - have yet to be diagnosed. Alarmingly, African Americans make up the majority of the undiagnosed. Evidence shows that individuals who are unaware of their HIV status are more likely to transmit HIV and less likely to access care and treatment that could improve their quality of life. Additionally, many are diagnosed late in the course of the disease when treatment is less effective. The CDC cite the reasons for the racial disparity as not just related to race, but rather to barriers faced by many African Americans. These barriers include poverty, access to healthcare, and the social stigma associated with HIV/AIDS.
The NAACP maintains a legacy of serving as a voice for persons unheard and underserved, and is therefore committed to its role as an agent of change in the domestic HIV/AIDS crisis. Faith leadership can play a critical role in changing the course of HIV/AIDS diverse communities, by reaching those who need a voice - those who are unaware of their status and those who do not think they are at risk.
Support for the initiative is provided by Gilead Sciences, Inc.
"We need to acknowledge that, in America, health is a true civil right. It is essential that we enlist leaders from every corner of society to fight back against a disease that is devastating our community," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP. "Normalizing the conversation about HIV/AIDS in our churches is critical to reducing the stigma, making testing a routine part of health care visits and ensuring those who test positive receive medical care earlier - all of which can curb the spread of this disease."
"Dialogue with the Black Church" is part of NAACP's ongoing two-year national initiative to address the disparate impact of HIV/AIDS in the African American community. The program will create a strategic roadmap for faith leaders to follow in helping to reduce the spread of HIV throughout his or her community. Key components include:
- In-depth assessments of the barriers and challenges faith leaders face in trying to effectively educate their congregations on HIV testing and prevention. Research to include interviews, surveys and focus groups among faith leaders in highly-impacted communities.
- Toolkits with practical, action-oriented steps, as well as best practices to shape services currently offered within communities as well as to serve as a springboard for those who may want to initiate these services.
- Personal accounts from community champions.
- Technical assistance to ensure local faith leaders can effectively implement the recommended strategies that are in line with their communities.
- New HIV-focused content and blogs on the NAACP website.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), African Americans represent 13% of the U.S. population but account for more than half of all new HIV diagnoses. 1 in 30 Black women and 1 in 16 Black men will be infected with HIV in their lifetime. One in five HIV-positive Americans - close to a quarter of a million people - have yet to be diagnosed. Alarmingly, African Americans make up the majority of the undiagnosed. Evidence shows that individuals who are unaware of their HIV status are more likely to transmit HIV and less likely to access care and treatment that could improve their quality of life. Additionally, many are diagnosed late in the course of the disease when treatment is less effective. The CDC cite the reasons for the racial disparity as not just related to race, but rather to barriers faced by many African Americans. These barriers include poverty, access to healthcare, and the social stigma associated with HIV/AIDS.
The NAACP maintains a legacy of serving as a voice for persons unheard and underserved, and is therefore committed to its role as an agent of change in the domestic HIV/AIDS crisis. Faith leadership can play a critical role in changing the course of HIV/AIDS diverse communities, by reaching those who need a voice - those who are unaware of their status and those who do not think they are at risk.
Support for the initiative is provided by Gilead Sciences, Inc.
Exploring blacks' high rate of abortion
Among the most contentious issues in America today are race and abortion. Fuse them into a single issue and you've got a nuclear bomb.
And so, when a Texas minister last month posted pro-life billboards in African-American neighborhoods in Chicago, more than feathers were ruffled. With a picture of President Barack Obama, they proclaimed, "Every 21 minutes our next possible leader is aborted." It's part of a national campaign that warns, "Black children are an endangered species."
The campaign is designed to draw attention to the higher incidence of abortion among African-Americans. According to the Census Bureau, the rate of abortions in 2006 among black women was 50 per 1,000, compared with 14 for white women and 22 for "other" women. Those figures fairly reflect historical trends, although rates generally have declined somewhat over the years.
The rate of African-American abortions should trouble everyone and call for a calm, intelligent exploration of the causes. Not so was the response of the wedge-driving Planned Parenthood. It called the billboards an "offensive and condescending effort to stigmatize and shame African-American women while attempting to limit their ability to make private, personal medical decisions."
More thoughtful was the exploration of the issue by the Tribune's Dawn Turner Trice ("Debate over black abortion disparity," April 20, 2011), and although I'm neither black nor female, I hope to join the discussion. I'll start by saying that any implication that Planned Parenthood or other pro-choice people are waging racial cleansing against black Americans is goofy in the extreme. It's also counterproductive for activist champions of life in the womb to make the claim.
Trice's survey of experts reveals complex reasons for the higher rate among African-Americans: more unintended pregnancies, substandard health care, inadequate health insurance, ineffective use of contraceptives, poor sex education, higher rates of sexual violence and poverty. Combined, they all crush many into believing that abortion is their only choice.
Indisputable as these explanations are — and I agree with all of them — looking beyond them is necessary. And here we would wade into what sociologists call "multivariate analysis" of some other factors that are not so easily defined or as clearly measurable as demographics. Like culture, which is defined as the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic or age group.
Political correctness and ideological dictates discourage discussion of the culture of some black communities as explanative of violence, ignorance, high rates of abortion and other dysfunctions. But for those communities, culture is described by the growth of a matriarchy, as displayed by the many grandmothers raising their daughters' children. By the absence of men in child rearing. By men who prey on young women who have never learned what to expect from decent, caring and responsible men. By the collapse of the family and the destruction of men's and women's traditional, balanced roles in making children strong enough to resist the challenges of today's broader culture of irresponsibility, casual sex, substance abuse and other plagues.
Unfortunately, such dire circumstances have encouraged the thinking that "some communities" are better off with fewer children. Such thinking is found in the writings of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and an icon of pro-choice activists. She advocated exclusionary immigration policies, sterilization of the severely mentally challenged, birth control to improve society and other policies characteristic of eugenics.
This lends a kernel of truth to the odious suggestion that abortion supporters are complicit in a conspiracy to kill off blacks. You might also get the idea from reading my mail every time I write about abortion. Claiming to be compassionate, the writers declare that some children are better off never being born. Especially if they are born into disintegrating or dysfunctional communities. Especially certain black communities.
The pro-life billboards, as "offensive" as some find them, force us to face an issue that many prefer to ignore: Is the high incidence of abortion in the black community a civil rights issue? Is it a symptom of control and suppression of women that is endemic to the community? And more profoundly: Who "deserves" to live and whether mass extermination of babies in the womb on a scale that is under way in the black community is good for anyone?
And so, when a Texas minister last month posted pro-life billboards in African-American neighborhoods in Chicago, more than feathers were ruffled. With a picture of President Barack Obama, they proclaimed, "Every 21 minutes our next possible leader is aborted." It's part of a national campaign that warns, "Black children are an endangered species."
The campaign is designed to draw attention to the higher incidence of abortion among African-Americans. According to the Census Bureau, the rate of abortions in 2006 among black women was 50 per 1,000, compared with 14 for white women and 22 for "other" women. Those figures fairly reflect historical trends, although rates generally have declined somewhat over the years.
The rate of African-American abortions should trouble everyone and call for a calm, intelligent exploration of the causes. Not so was the response of the wedge-driving Planned Parenthood. It called the billboards an "offensive and condescending effort to stigmatize and shame African-American women while attempting to limit their ability to make private, personal medical decisions."
More thoughtful was the exploration of the issue by the Tribune's Dawn Turner Trice ("Debate over black abortion disparity," April 20, 2011), and although I'm neither black nor female, I hope to join the discussion. I'll start by saying that any implication that Planned Parenthood or other pro-choice people are waging racial cleansing against black Americans is goofy in the extreme. It's also counterproductive for activist champions of life in the womb to make the claim.
Trice's survey of experts reveals complex reasons for the higher rate among African-Americans: more unintended pregnancies, substandard health care, inadequate health insurance, ineffective use of contraceptives, poor sex education, higher rates of sexual violence and poverty. Combined, they all crush many into believing that abortion is their only choice.
Indisputable as these explanations are — and I agree with all of them — looking beyond them is necessary. And here we would wade into what sociologists call "multivariate analysis" of some other factors that are not so easily defined or as clearly measurable as demographics. Like culture, which is defined as the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic or age group.
Political correctness and ideological dictates discourage discussion of the culture of some black communities as explanative of violence, ignorance, high rates of abortion and other dysfunctions. But for those communities, culture is described by the growth of a matriarchy, as displayed by the many grandmothers raising their daughters' children. By the absence of men in child rearing. By men who prey on young women who have never learned what to expect from decent, caring and responsible men. By the collapse of the family and the destruction of men's and women's traditional, balanced roles in making children strong enough to resist the challenges of today's broader culture of irresponsibility, casual sex, substance abuse and other plagues.
Unfortunately, such dire circumstances have encouraged the thinking that "some communities" are better off with fewer children. Such thinking is found in the writings of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and an icon of pro-choice activists. She advocated exclusionary immigration policies, sterilization of the severely mentally challenged, birth control to improve society and other policies characteristic of eugenics.
This lends a kernel of truth to the odious suggestion that abortion supporters are complicit in a conspiracy to kill off blacks. You might also get the idea from reading my mail every time I write about abortion. Claiming to be compassionate, the writers declare that some children are better off never being born. Especially if they are born into disintegrating or dysfunctional communities. Especially certain black communities.
The pro-life billboards, as "offensive" as some find them, force us to face an issue that many prefer to ignore: Is the high incidence of abortion in the black community a civil rights issue? Is it a symptom of control and suppression of women that is endemic to the community? And more profoundly: Who "deserves" to live and whether mass extermination of babies in the womb on a scale that is under way in the black community is good for anyone?
HIV/AIDS Now Leading Cause Of Death For Black Women Read more: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/health/28037669/detail.html#ixzz1OATkHIM9
ROXBURY, Mass. -- According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, women now account for more than 1 in 4 of all new HIV/AIDS cases in the state.
Of them, more than half are African-American women, and black women are 38 times more likely to contract the disease than white women.
"It's certainly an epidemic," said Dr. Bela Bashar, clinical director of HIV services at The Dimock Center in Roxbury, Mass. "It is one of the leading causes of death in African-American women."
"I was in a steady relationship. We were using protection, and one day, in a heated discussion, you know, he yells out, 'That's why I'm HIV positive!'" said Chevelle, who wanted her last name withheld.
That bombshell shocked her system, and led to her own diagnosis.
"How long to do I have?" she had asked at the time. "Who's going to look after my kids? What are people going to think?"
Her diagnosis challenged what she thought she knew about the disease.
"It's not about drug use. It's not about risky behaviors," Chevelle said. "You can be, you know, thinking that you're doing everything safe, but you never know what the other partner is doing."
Her story is all to familiar to Bashar.
"Really a lot of women, African-American women, don't really know what their partners are doing or their partners are keeping certain aspects of their life shielded from their female partners," said Bashar.
So much so that it's now the No. 1 cause of infection among black women. According to the Health Department, 60 percent are unknowingly infected by their partners, boyfriends and husbands who either didn't know or didn't come clean about their HIV status.
"If a person who doesn't know they're infected, who is completely asymptomatic, which a lot of people are in the early stages of disease, they may go about with their regular behaviors," said Bashar. "They're putting tremendous amount of risk to the general public."
According to the Health Department, the leading cause of infection among white women is injection drug use.
To help increase HIV/AIDS awareness, The Dimock Center offers medical care, education, and rapid, confidential HIV testing, free of charge, to the community they serve.
Of them, more than half are African-American women, and black women are 38 times more likely to contract the disease than white women.
"It's certainly an epidemic," said Dr. Bela Bashar, clinical director of HIV services at The Dimock Center in Roxbury, Mass. "It is one of the leading causes of death in African-American women."
"I was in a steady relationship. We were using protection, and one day, in a heated discussion, you know, he yells out, 'That's why I'm HIV positive!'" said Chevelle, who wanted her last name withheld.
That bombshell shocked her system, and led to her own diagnosis.
"How long to do I have?" she had asked at the time. "Who's going to look after my kids? What are people going to think?"
Her diagnosis challenged what she thought she knew about the disease.
"It's not about drug use. It's not about risky behaviors," Chevelle said. "You can be, you know, thinking that you're doing everything safe, but you never know what the other partner is doing."
Her story is all to familiar to Bashar.
"Really a lot of women, African-American women, don't really know what their partners are doing or their partners are keeping certain aspects of their life shielded from their female partners," said Bashar.
So much so that it's now the No. 1 cause of infection among black women. According to the Health Department, 60 percent are unknowingly infected by their partners, boyfriends and husbands who either didn't know or didn't come clean about their HIV status.
"If a person who doesn't know they're infected, who is completely asymptomatic, which a lot of people are in the early stages of disease, they may go about with their regular behaviors," said Bashar. "They're putting tremendous amount of risk to the general public."
According to the Health Department, the leading cause of infection among white women is injection drug use.
To help increase HIV/AIDS awareness, The Dimock Center offers medical care, education, and rapid, confidential HIV testing, free of charge, to the community they serve.
Queen Latifah Launches New Clothing Line ‘Queen Collection’
Queen Latifah is branching out into the fashion industry - she's launching her own clothing line.
The actress and COVERGIRL spokesmodel has teamed with cable TV bosses at America's Home Shopping Network for The Queen Collection, a venture which includes clothes, handbags and other accessories.
Latifah says, "I wanted my collection to reflect my personal style while giving women the tools to build a wardrobe they can feel good in.
"I partnered with HSN because it's the ideal platform to share my story and the stories of women who inspired me. I hope to instill confidence in hundreds of thousands of women across the country."
But The Queen Collection is just the start of Latifah's fashion endeavours - she's also working on a range of clip-on hair extensions, which she will debut on the network in September, weeks after unveiling her clothing line on air.
Maternal Mortality (Death) Rates Are Increasing For American-American Women
Washington, DC (June 1, 2011) -- High rates of obesity, high blood pressure and inadequate prenatal care cause death from childbirth more often for African-Americans in the United States than for whites and other ethnic groups. Worsening this trend are the increasing numbers of cesarean sections nationally. These procedures can result in deadly complications for women dangerously overweight or suffering from hypertension or other ailments.
Nationally, blacks have a four-times greater risk of pregnancy-related death than whites - a rate of 36.1 per 100,000 live births compared with 9.6 for whites and 8.5 for Hispanics, according to a 2008 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Click here to find out more!
Maternal mortality rates have been rising in the United States since the mid-1990s. In 1997, the black maternal mortality rate was 21.5 per 100,000 live births compared with 8.0 for Hispanics and 5.2 for whites, according to the CDC. The rate for other races was 8.8.
By 2007, the black maternal mortality rate had jumped to 28.4, roughly three times the rates among whites and Hispanics at 10.5 and 8.9 respectively. Statistics were not broken out for Asians/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans.
Trends show that black maternal mortality rates are increasing in some parts of the country, and two recent studies highlighting the problem have renewed calls for increased focus on reducing the deaths.
According to the new reports, the pregnancy-related mortality rate in some states rivals that in some developing nations. The problem is particularly acute in New York City, where blacks are nearly eight times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than whites, and in California where pregnant blacks are four times as likely to die from childbirth.
"The magnitude of this black-white gap in maternal mortality is the greatest among all health disparities . . . and that gap is growing. It's unacceptable," Michael Lu, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and public health at UCLA and an expert in racial and socio-economic disparities in maternal and infant health, recently told PBS NewsHour.
The black-white gap also stubbornly persists for a variety of socio-economic reasons, including education and income levels, access to and quality of health care, and lifestyle and diet. Improved health care could reduce the maternal death rate by 40 percent to 50 percent, according to CDC estimates, but medical attention has been focused more often on reducing infant mortality during the past decades.
"When we look at some of the factors associated with maternal mortality, most of the underlying factors tend to be dominant in the African-American community, and it is manifested in the health disparities that affect our population," says Dr. Kerry M. Lewis, chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Howard University's College of Medicine and chief of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
Lewis, who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, says the mortality rate reflects lack of access to specialized health care that integrates comprehensive skills and technology. Too often, he says, patients are treated by family practitioners, nurse midwives, general obstetricians and gynecologists instead of specialists trained in high-risk pregnancies and medical problems that can cause complications during birth.
Obesity and hypertension are the major contributors to the black maternal mortality rate, leading to death from strokes, renal failure and other complications associated with obesity, Lewis says.
"We have to look at the reality of where we practice," he says. "Obesity is much greater among African-Americans. I deal with a gamut of high-risk problems, but complications from obesity are an underlying problem in all of them.
"Even young patients when they come in for prenatal visits have very elevated rates of high blood pressure. It really starts with obesity, so when they become pregnant, it places them at a higher risk for infections and other complications." To a lesser extent, sickle-cell disease, a genetic disorder more common in people of color, also causes complications, he says. Lewis, who also chairs the District of Columbia section of the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecology, says the increase in C-sections has compounded the problem because they can lead to hemorrhage, infections and pulmonary embolisms, or blood clots in the lungs. One-third of births in the United States are now by C-section compared with 20 percent a decade ago.
"Women who have C-sections have higher rates of complications and maternal mortality than with vaginal deliveries," Lewis says.
The California study bears this out. Of the 386 women who died in the state during childbirth in 2002 and 2003, it found, 65 had undergone C-sections "and most were unplanned or emergency surgeries to try and save the life of the mother or the infant." Additionally, more than one-third of the deaths "were determined to have had a good to strong chance of being prevented and some causes of death appeared to be more preventable than others."
The study also found that:
* Blacks in California had a four-times higher risk of maternal death and were more likely to have been overweight or obese and to have risk factors identified in the prenatal period.
* High rates of obesity or excessive gestational weight gain were contributing factors in one of four deaths.
* From 2006 to 2008, the black maternal mortality rate in the state was 46.1 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with 12.8 for Hispanics, 12.4 for whites and 9.3 for Asians.
* Although blacks account for only 6 percent of California births, they represented 22 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in 2002 and 2003. Hispanics had the largest number of pregnancy-related deaths, 44 percent, and account for 51 percent of births statewide.
* Cardiomyopathy, or heart disease, was the leading cause of death for blacks with pregnancy-related deaths and accounted for 36 percent of the 22 deaths in that group and 62 percent of all deaths due to the disease.
* Thirty-one percent of mothers who died had not completed high school.
Conrad Chao, department chair and program director of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco, who worked on the report, has said that he was surprised by "the magnitude of the disparity" and that the quality of care given these women needs further exploration.
The CDC issued a report in 2001 calling for comprehensive, broad-based public health surveillance of pregnancy-related deaths to identify factors, from pre-pregnancy through six weeks after birth, that affect a woman's chance of survival and that place minority and older women at increased risk of death. The report said surveillance must include reviewing the causes of deaths, analyzing the findings and coordinating action among public health agencies.
"Too often, surveillance stops after identifying and counting deaths," the report states. "With the resources available today, we should be able to eliminate this gap in such an important health outcome."
America's Wire is an independent, non-profit news service run by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. America's Wire is made possible by a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. For more information, contact: Michael K. Frisby 202-625-4328.
The "N-Word": What's In A Name, Black America?
Nationwide (June 1, 2011) -- Whenever the "massa" gave the enslaved black man something, no matter what it was, he took it - whether voluntarily or by coercion. Sadly, no matter how demeaning or dreadful the thing may have been, he had no choice but to accept the token, allowing it to become a part of his identity.
For instance, the black man was given the name 'N**ger' by the massa. When asked: "What is your name?" He responded: "N**ger". "What? Say it loud so they all can hear you, what is your name?" "N**ger!!!" was the replied. And yet again he was asked, and he replied: "I am a N**GER." Finally, the white man said, "Right!! That's a good n**ger. Never ever forget - who and what you are - and your proper place."
Click here to find out more!
Today, as opposed to being ruthlessly, physically and emotionally beaten into submission and acceptance of the n-word by a brutal white social system, black people find themselves courted and conned by other blacks to voluntarily remain in their pre-appointed place of a n**ger/n**ga. In this contemporary era, White supremacy is most effective when it uses a black voice as a ventriloquist, and today, many rappers, comedians and black scholars validate the premise.
It is incredulous and appalling how some black scholars encourage their college students to greet each other as n**gas. An uninterrupted indoctrination process that began almost 400 years ago by a brutal racist social system is now carried on by cloned black representatives. The definition of self is only limited by who that person thinks they are, and far too many black scholars - who are, by definition of their roles, leaders and influencers in the community - have a diminished image of themselves and their race.
The American institutionalized systemic has always identified Black America with the n-word and, therefore, finds Black Americans' willingness to accept and relate to their pre-appointed place and category of being a n**ger/n**ga both gratifying and an ease on their guilty conscience.
So long as black people restrict themselves to saggin' pants, referring to one another as n**ger/n**ga, b*tches, mf's; and limiting their thinking to sex, cars, drugs, guns, sports and life in the hood, all is well in the American institutionalized systemic. However, a far more challenging and graver concern to the systemic are Black Americans retaking control of their minds, demonstrating the ability to think and act rationally, and possessing demeanors of royalty - walking with dignity; that who boldly declare their independence and rightfully return any unfitting or cursed gifts to the systemic - one primarily is being the n-word.
Black historians and scholars such as Dr. Asa Hilliard, Dr. John Henri Clarke, Dr. Chancellor Williams, Dr. Richard Williams, Kimani Nehusi, Dr. Kwaku Person-Lynn, Dr. Ray Higgins, Dr. David Pilgrim and a few others serve as examples of liberated, independent thinkers. As such, the American institutionalized systemic refrains from parading these gentlemen before a sound-asleep Black community in fear that the knowledge of these thinkers may awaken the slumbering masses.
However, they will parade and promote the likes of a Dr. David Bradley, Dr. Randall Kennedy, certain rappers, black comedians and some other hand-picked high profile blacks - all of whom are proponents of the n-word - before an unsuspecting and sleeping Black community. The systemic will and does make every effort to keep the sycophants - n-word supporting blacks - constantly before the public to trick blacks into remaining blinded to the truth even though they believe they are in control of their thoughts and aware of what's occurring.
The ravages of centuries of brutal mistreatment at the hands of whites through slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and lynch mobs still have a powerful psychological effect on black people to this very day. The intent and purpose of being categorized as the n-word was far more sinister than just a mundane racial insult.
The term was used as an identifier and a method of separating blacks from the remainder of the populous; it was used as a psychological conduit to breed thoughts of inferiority and, thus, no self-dignity, -pride, or –respect. The definition of a n**ger/n**ga painted blacks as sub-human, 3/5 a person, a bestial savage beast who needed to be tamed. The term was white America's way of not accepting blacks as their equal - but as a burden. And because blacks were considered non-human, and instead, animalistic, Whites believed that in the eyesight of God, classifying black ancestors as n**gers made it okay to dehumanize, brutalize and subject them to anything and everything ungodly.
The Holy Bible was interpreted in many self-justifiable ways to support White America's idea that blacks were a cursed race and that it was God's word that instructed them to "cleanse the world of impurities" by enslaving and dehumanizing them. They found it necessary to browbeat, brainwash and indoctrinate the black slaves into believing that they were indeed n**gers, and that whatever harm came to them was an act of God because they were nothing more than n**gers.
N**ger is an inferior category and place, reserved for those black folks who are gullible enough to accept the term. During slavery, our ancestors had no choice but to accept such categorization; today, their descendants have a choice but are timid about leaving their comfort zone, their pre-appointed place of being n**gers. So, what do they do? They dupe themselves into accepting the ghetto vernacular n**ga as some BS term of endearment. That action in itself basically safeguards White America's plight of destruction against the black community at the black community's own hand.
The embracing of the n-word serves as a sanctioning of all the evil deeds committed upon Black African Americans' beloved ancestry. This is not a consensus or opinion but a fact. Deliberate or not, it is sanctioning nonetheless. Such actions are neither magnanimous nor altruistic but indeed the opposite - malevolent, mean-spirited, self-centered and narrow-minded. Black ancestors deserve better - in the perspective of reverence and honor of their sacred and hallow memories. The n-word should be taboo and forbidden to be a part of the Black African-American culture.
There is nothing empowering about embracing the n-word; it has no benefit or value. Continually holding on to the name given blacks by a racist society through using, defending and supporting the use of the word, as well as trying to rationalize that it has been changed into something positive, is sheer insanity.
N**ga/n**ger is an empty sign of self-hatred masquerading itself as a term of endearment. The idiom serves as perpetual imprisonment and is the detonator to the absolute extermination of an entire race of people's pride, dignity, honor and state of mind. Some may feel that the term carries no weight and plays no role in the current status and eventual outcome of the black community.
However, the name "N**ga/n**ger" was always meant to demean and destruct. And as blacks continue to use the term, the community's ill-development will continue to occur. Words are a mighty source of power (Proverbs 23:7), and there is power - a negative, evil, conniving power - in the name "N**ga/n**ger".
For instance, the black man was given the name 'N**ger' by the massa. When asked: "What is your name?" He responded: "N**ger". "What? Say it loud so they all can hear you, what is your name?" "N**ger!!!" was the replied. And yet again he was asked, and he replied: "I am a N**GER." Finally, the white man said, "Right!! That's a good n**ger. Never ever forget - who and what you are - and your proper place."
Click here to find out more!
Today, as opposed to being ruthlessly, physically and emotionally beaten into submission and acceptance of the n-word by a brutal white social system, black people find themselves courted and conned by other blacks to voluntarily remain in their pre-appointed place of a n**ger/n**ga. In this contemporary era, White supremacy is most effective when it uses a black voice as a ventriloquist, and today, many rappers, comedians and black scholars validate the premise.
It is incredulous and appalling how some black scholars encourage their college students to greet each other as n**gas. An uninterrupted indoctrination process that began almost 400 years ago by a brutal racist social system is now carried on by cloned black representatives. The definition of self is only limited by who that person thinks they are, and far too many black scholars - who are, by definition of their roles, leaders and influencers in the community - have a diminished image of themselves and their race.
The American institutionalized systemic has always identified Black America with the n-word and, therefore, finds Black Americans' willingness to accept and relate to their pre-appointed place and category of being a n**ger/n**ga both gratifying and an ease on their guilty conscience.
So long as black people restrict themselves to saggin' pants, referring to one another as n**ger/n**ga, b*tches, mf's; and limiting their thinking to sex, cars, drugs, guns, sports and life in the hood, all is well in the American institutionalized systemic. However, a far more challenging and graver concern to the systemic are Black Americans retaking control of their minds, demonstrating the ability to think and act rationally, and possessing demeanors of royalty - walking with dignity; that who boldly declare their independence and rightfully return any unfitting or cursed gifts to the systemic - one primarily is being the n-word.
Black historians and scholars such as Dr. Asa Hilliard, Dr. John Henri Clarke, Dr. Chancellor Williams, Dr. Richard Williams, Kimani Nehusi, Dr. Kwaku Person-Lynn, Dr. Ray Higgins, Dr. David Pilgrim and a few others serve as examples of liberated, independent thinkers. As such, the American institutionalized systemic refrains from parading these gentlemen before a sound-asleep Black community in fear that the knowledge of these thinkers may awaken the slumbering masses.
However, they will parade and promote the likes of a Dr. David Bradley, Dr. Randall Kennedy, certain rappers, black comedians and some other hand-picked high profile blacks - all of whom are proponents of the n-word - before an unsuspecting and sleeping Black community. The systemic will and does make every effort to keep the sycophants - n-word supporting blacks - constantly before the public to trick blacks into remaining blinded to the truth even though they believe they are in control of their thoughts and aware of what's occurring.
The ravages of centuries of brutal mistreatment at the hands of whites through slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and lynch mobs still have a powerful psychological effect on black people to this very day. The intent and purpose of being categorized as the n-word was far more sinister than just a mundane racial insult.
The term was used as an identifier and a method of separating blacks from the remainder of the populous; it was used as a psychological conduit to breed thoughts of inferiority and, thus, no self-dignity, -pride, or –respect. The definition of a n**ger/n**ga painted blacks as sub-human, 3/5 a person, a bestial savage beast who needed to be tamed. The term was white America's way of not accepting blacks as their equal - but as a burden. And because blacks were considered non-human, and instead, animalistic, Whites believed that in the eyesight of God, classifying black ancestors as n**gers made it okay to dehumanize, brutalize and subject them to anything and everything ungodly.
The Holy Bible was interpreted in many self-justifiable ways to support White America's idea that blacks were a cursed race and that it was God's word that instructed them to "cleanse the world of impurities" by enslaving and dehumanizing them. They found it necessary to browbeat, brainwash and indoctrinate the black slaves into believing that they were indeed n**gers, and that whatever harm came to them was an act of God because they were nothing more than n**gers.
N**ger is an inferior category and place, reserved for those black folks who are gullible enough to accept the term. During slavery, our ancestors had no choice but to accept such categorization; today, their descendants have a choice but are timid about leaving their comfort zone, their pre-appointed place of being n**gers. So, what do they do? They dupe themselves into accepting the ghetto vernacular n**ga as some BS term of endearment. That action in itself basically safeguards White America's plight of destruction against the black community at the black community's own hand.
The embracing of the n-word serves as a sanctioning of all the evil deeds committed upon Black African Americans' beloved ancestry. This is not a consensus or opinion but a fact. Deliberate or not, it is sanctioning nonetheless. Such actions are neither magnanimous nor altruistic but indeed the opposite - malevolent, mean-spirited, self-centered and narrow-minded. Black ancestors deserve better - in the perspective of reverence and honor of their sacred and hallow memories. The n-word should be taboo and forbidden to be a part of the Black African-American culture.
There is nothing empowering about embracing the n-word; it has no benefit or value. Continually holding on to the name given blacks by a racist society through using, defending and supporting the use of the word, as well as trying to rationalize that it has been changed into something positive, is sheer insanity.
N**ga/n**ger is an empty sign of self-hatred masquerading itself as a term of endearment. The idiom serves as perpetual imprisonment and is the detonator to the absolute extermination of an entire race of people's pride, dignity, honor and state of mind. Some may feel that the term carries no weight and plays no role in the current status and eventual outcome of the black community.
However, the name "N**ga/n**ger" was always meant to demean and destruct. And as blacks continue to use the term, the community's ill-development will continue to occur. Words are a mighty source of power (Proverbs 23:7), and there is power - a negative, evil, conniving power - in the name "N**ga/n**ger".
Beyonce covers Essence magazine
Beyonce graces the July cover of Essence magazine, and in her self-penned feature she dishes on taking a break, celebrating the little things and new music.
Check out the highlights:
On taking a 9-month break:
"I had talked about taking a vacation before, but always ended up in the studio after two weeks, so no one believed me. This time, though, I was serious. I was going to give myself a year to do the things I never get to do. Simple things like play with my nephew, pick him up from school, visit museums, go to concerts, see some Broadway shows, learn to cook a meal and spend time with my husband... Yes, I needed some relaxation, but I wanted inspiration too, from regular everyday things..."
On new music:
"I feel like my job in the industry is to push the limits and I feel like I have to constantly evolve. I can never be safe... It’s hard to create a new-sounding up-tempo [song] that people are going to love, not only in America but around the world, or for different ages. One thing I’ve always stood for is making people feel good."
Read more: http://www.my1071.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=104650&article=8654352#ixzz1OA7ZLLbo
Lady Gaga's Born This Way sells 1.1 million copies in first week
>The numbers are in for Lady Gaga's Born This Way, and the album broke records, selling 1.1 million copies in its first week.
Gaga's first-week numbers are the highest since 50 Cent released The Massacre in 2005. Additionally, Born This Way is only the 17th album to cross the "1 million copies in the first week" mark since SoundScan started keeping track in 1991.
Gaga also broke records on the digital front. Born This Way was downloaded 662,000 times, and now holds the record for most downloads of an album in a week.
With Gaga taking the #1 spot for the week, Brad Paisley's new release This Is Country Music came in at a distant #2 with 153,000 copies sold, and Adele's 21 was #3, selling 126,000 copies.
Read more: http://www.my1071.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=104650&article=8653150#ixzz1OA5a3DZ2
Black People Are Charged More For Car Insurance
A new study by online auto insurance quote provider 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org finds that African-Americans pay more on average for auto insurance than people of other races. This study, that looked at annual car insurance rates for men in New York City, discovered that black men pay over $800 more than whites or Asians for their car insurance. The report shows that while insurance companies do not intentionally discriminate against black people, they do place emphasis on factors African-Americans score poorly in when determining insurance premiums.
4AutoInsuranceQuote.org surveyed 600 male Manhattan residents in conducting this study. The results, they said, were shockingly lopsided. "Not only did black people pay the most for car insurance," owner James Shaffer said, "they paid the most by a landslide. It was something that really concerned us, so we had to figure out why."
The data showed that while Asian men paid $1945/year and white men paid $2193/year, black men paid $2910/year on average. When explaining why African-Americans are faced with much higher auto insurance costs, 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org cited the factors that can affect insurance costs, most notably: your credit score, the safety of your neighborhood, whether or not you are married, and your employment status.
African-Americans, on average, tend to have lower credit scores and live in more dangerous neighborhoods than Asians and Caucasians. They also get married less and have higher divorce rates. In addition, unemployment rates are higher in the African-American community. While insurance companies do not intentionally charge black people more for car insurance, African-Americans do, on average pay more for auto insurance than whites and Asians.
"Statistics do show that African-Americans pay more for auto insurance than Caucasians and Asians," 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org says, "this does not mean, however, that you will pay more for auto insurance just because you are black."
A site offering free insurance quotes for it's users, 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org also conducts research reports on the automobile insurance industry. Recent reports released by them include "The Top 10 Most Stolen Vehicles," "The Most and Least Expensive Cars To Insure," "The Ten Best Auto Insurance Companies," and "The Most Expensive Cars In The World." In addition to research reports, 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org features an extensive content library including insurance-related blog posts and news articles. Apart from their insurance content, 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org has free tools which help users compare insurance quotes from different auto insurance companies in order to find the most affordable rates.
4AutoInsuranceQuote.org is a car insurance company operating out of New York, NY. In business since 2008, 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org's goal is to become the leading destination for auto insurance quotes in the United States.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/05/31/prweb8503917.DTL#ixzz1O9mTIKmI
4AutoInsuranceQuote.org surveyed 600 male Manhattan residents in conducting this study. The results, they said, were shockingly lopsided. "Not only did black people pay the most for car insurance," owner James Shaffer said, "they paid the most by a landslide. It was something that really concerned us, so we had to figure out why."
The data showed that while Asian men paid $1945/year and white men paid $2193/year, black men paid $2910/year on average. When explaining why African-Americans are faced with much higher auto insurance costs, 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org cited the factors that can affect insurance costs, most notably: your credit score, the safety of your neighborhood, whether or not you are married, and your employment status.
African-Americans, on average, tend to have lower credit scores and live in more dangerous neighborhoods than Asians and Caucasians. They also get married less and have higher divorce rates. In addition, unemployment rates are higher in the African-American community. While insurance companies do not intentionally charge black people more for car insurance, African-Americans do, on average pay more for auto insurance than whites and Asians.
"Statistics do show that African-Americans pay more for auto insurance than Caucasians and Asians," 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org says, "this does not mean, however, that you will pay more for auto insurance just because you are black."
A site offering free insurance quotes for it's users, 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org also conducts research reports on the automobile insurance industry. Recent reports released by them include "The Top 10 Most Stolen Vehicles," "The Most and Least Expensive Cars To Insure," "The Ten Best Auto Insurance Companies," and "The Most Expensive Cars In The World." In addition to research reports, 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org features an extensive content library including insurance-related blog posts and news articles. Apart from their insurance content, 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org has free tools which help users compare insurance quotes from different auto insurance companies in order to find the most affordable rates.
4AutoInsuranceQuote.org is a car insurance company operating out of New York, NY. In business since 2008, 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org's goal is to become the leading destination for auto insurance quotes in the United States.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/05/31/prweb8503917.DTL#ixzz1O9mTIKmI
Lil Wayne Almost Married Lauren London, Says Actress
Lil Wayne is without a doubt a ladies man. On Weezy's new single "How To Love" off his upcoming Carter IV album, the dreadlocked rapper get's his Dr. Phil on, handing out advice on how to treat the females. The father of four has made no secret about it his passion for the opposite sex both on and off wax, not to mention his marriage to reality TV star Antonia "Toya" Carter at a very young age age. In addition to Toya, another one of Wayne's children's mother, actress Lauren London, recently revealed that she was almost Mrs. Carter too.
"I met Dwayne when I was 15 years old. I’ve known him a very long time, and we were in a relationship that didn’t make it" London told Kathleencross. "We tried more than once to revive it, and we were engaged briefly years ago, but we eventually parted ways. People see the “Lil’ Wayne” persona and think they know who he really is. My son’s father is an intelligent, loving and lovable person who will always be a dear friend. That is all."
According to London, one of her biggest gripes with the media are the reports that her love child with Wayne was a result of a one night stand.
"That my son is the result of some kind of one night stand or groupie encounter with his father" London responded when asked what the biggest misconception was about her personal life. "I struggle with deciding when to answer or ignore the constant speculation about my private life, because I feel like that doesn’t belong to anybody but me."
NBA Legend Shaquille O'Neal Is Retiring
NBA star Shaquille O'Neal appears ready to hang up his size 23 basketball shoes after a 19-year pro run that saw him collect four championships and reach fifth on the league's all-time scoring list.
"I'm retiring" and "Shaq ooout" was posted Wednesday to his Twitter account, which also links to a video in which he talks of his intentions.
“We did it. Nineteen years, baby. (I) want to thank you very much. That’s why I’m telling you first, I’m about to retire. Love you. Talk to you soon,” Shaq said in the video on Tout.com, linked from his Twitter account.
His team, the Boston Celtics, has not announced his retirement, but it did re-tweet one of O'Neal's retirement posts.
Rare photos of O'Neal | Shaq answers CNN viewers' questions in January
O'Neal, a 7-foot-1-inch center, won four NBA titles and reached the league finals two other times. He is fifth on the NBA’s all-time career scoring list with 28,596 points - short of only Hall of Famers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain - and 12th on the league’s all-time rebounding list, with 13,099.
Drafted after his junior year at Louisiana State University in 1992, O’Neal would earn NBA rookie of the year honors with the Orlando Magic, with whom he played four seasons. He reached the NBA finals for the first time in 1995, but the Magic lost to Houston.
He started collecting championship rings in Los Angeles after signing with the Lakers ahead of the 1996-97 season. He teamed with Kobe Bryant to win three straight NBA titles from 2000 to 2002, earning NBA Finals MVP awards in all three years.
O’Neal eventually went to Miami, where he would pick up his last NBA championship with the Heat in 2006.
He went on to play for Phoenix and Cleveland before signing with the Boston Celtics in August. Limited by injury, his points-per-game average with Boston was under 10 (9.2) for the first time in his career, and he missed the first round in this year’s playoffs before scoring two points in two games in the Celtics’ second-round loss to Miami.
Miami star LeBron James, whose team beat Dallas on Tuesday night in the first game of this year's finals, tweeted his respects to O'Neal - his teammate for one year in Cleveland - on Wednesday.
"What a career for Shaq Diesel!!" a post to James' Twitter account said. "The most dominating force to ever play the game. Great person to be around as well. Comedy all the time!!"
Another former teammate, Phoenix Suns guard Steve Nash, tweeted Wednesday: "Congratulations @SHAQ on your quadruple platinum hall of fame career. I know you're not riding off into the sunset...what's next?"
Riding off into the sunset would be hard to imagine. O'Neal has long pursued entertainment interests off the basketball court, appearing in "Kazaam," "Steel" and the basketball film "Blue Chips." He's set to appear in the upcoming film "Jack & Jill," starring Adam Sandler.
"It’s fun. It’s an opportunity for me to show my funny side," he told CNN International in January.
He's also reveled in tongue-in-cheek public appearances, including turns as a Boston Pops conductor and a human statue in the Boston area's Harvard Square.
As a rapper, O'Neal sold more than 1 million copies of his debut album, "Shaq Diesel." He also expressed interest in pursuing law enforcement opportunities, having worked for the Los Angeles Police Department and the Miami Beach Police Department during some offseasons.
Blacks African-Americans Seemingly Underrepresented in Smartphone Ads
Blacks are fastest mobile internet adopters, though not depicted in advertising
By Corey Washington –
The smartphone landscape has quickly evolved over the past five years, outpacing expert expectations and moving faster than many consumers and technology aficionados can keep up with. And while blacks have historically been used to slight by societal changes, recent studies show African-Americans are outpacing other ethnic groups in mobile internet access and social media. This appears to be a positive indication of where we could be headed in the information age.
[Smartphones are displayed in a mobile phone store in Taipei April 28, 2010. (Credit: Reuters/Pichi Chuang)]
Smartphones are displayed in a mobile phone store in Taipei April 28, 2010. (Credit: Reuters/Pichi Chuang)
But as some critics question how this emerging trend could be separating black culture farther apart in our efforts to bridge the digital divide, I wonder where are the black faces in the smartphone advertising campaigns.
The evidence of African-American buying power has been undeniable for more than a decade, but newer studies on African-American use of technological advancements make a clear case for why African-Americans should be a leading group in the smartphone marketing world.
In 2009, African-Americans spent $9.4 billion on cell phones, up 30 percent from the previous year, according to a report by Target Market News. Heavy hitters in the smartphone arena, such as the iPhone and Android handsets pose the best opportunity for growth with African-American consumers, who mostly own Blackberry devices. According to research by The Nielsen Company, 31 percent of African-American consumers owned Blackberry devices, 27% owned Android phones, and 15% owned iPhones at the end of 2010.
But if you turn on your television, visit a major cell phone carrier online or pay close attention to billboard advertisements, African-American representation is minimal. African-Americans living in urban neighborhoods may notice modest relative advertising, but most anecdotal evidence points to cell phone and smart phone advertising hanging on the lower end of the total advertising spectrum.
Last year, a Pew Research Center study showed that about six in every ten adults go online wirelessly. This includes Wi-Fi and broadband access on a laptop as well as internet, email and instant messenger use via cell phone. Nearly two-thirds of African-Americans (64 percent) were wireless internet users. English-speaking Hispanics were right behind African-Americans, with 63 percent. Throw in 87% of African-Americans and Hispanics likelihood of owning a cell phone compared with whites and the picture becomes clear.
Technological innovation is non-stop, especially with smartphone and mobile device platforms, with tablets coming into the mainstream and 3G becoming the slower data standard for smartphones. African-Americans need to remain on par with these changes and their buying power or willingness to purchase smartphones should not be taken for granted.
With smartphones accounting for half of new cell phones coming to the United States in 2012, according to a study by In-Stat, one has to wonder when will the advertisers come to African-Americans.
Beyonce and the New Black Feminist Movement
Whenever Beyonce releases new music, she elicits strong reactions from fans and haters alike. Recently, the streak-haired R&B songstress has sparked a vibrant debate in the black blogosphere about whether her latest video single 'Run the World (Girls)' can be considered a legitimate feminist statement.
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'Essence' editor Demetria Lucas argued in her story, 'Is Beyonce Sending the Wrong Message?,' that the video merely inspires male lust. Responding to a reader comment on gossip blog, 'The Young, Black and Fabulous,' which compared the pop star to feminist icon Gloria Steinem, Lucas said there's a difference between "p-popping and actual empowerment."
The post sparked considerable reaction among the young black female writer set on Twitter and Facebook.
Soon after, Arielle Loren penned a reaction piece for Clutch Magazine online, 'Is Beyonce the New Face of Contemporary Feminism?' in which she wrote: "Like Lucas, women pushing the traditional hyper-sexual critique have been focused on the 'male gaze' for far too long."
Clearly struck by the title of Loren's Clutch piece, Jamilah-Asali Lemieux responded to the notion of contemporary feminism by stating, "I think the 'new face of feminism' should be able to articulate what feminism is."
A woman who identities herself only as NineteenPercent, called Beyonce's proclamation - "Who run the world? Girls!" - a lie. She added that Beyonce is merely trying to lure impressionable young women into feeling a false sense achievement, and "distracting them from doing the work it takes to actually run the world."
And Natasha Theory from BeGirlManifesta, a site that asserts that every woman is "multifaceted, complex, and nuanced," chimed in too. In response to NineteenPercent, Theory wrote, "I think Beyonce is an artist doing what artists do...creating her vision of what reality should be."
This isn't the first time Beyonce's version of feminism has been called into question. Back when she was still a singer with Destiny's Child, Beyonce and her bandmates belted out girl-power anthems like 'Bills, Bills, Bills,' and 'Independent Women Part 1,' and suggested a kind of kinship with the black female performance tradition popularized by Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Aretha Franklin. There was much debate then around whether Destiny's Child was male-bashing or offering up a new brand of sexual politics.
Now even as a solo artist, Beyonce seems to be fueling similar discussions. A few years ago, Princeton professor Daphne Brooks claimed in the 'Nation' magazine that Beyonce, beauty and sexy dance moves notwithstanding, "delivers a unique version of black female dissent in pop and R&B music culture." Brooks' point made about the singer's 2006 album 'B-Day' could just as easily describe Beyonce's significance today. Brooks adds, "Beyoncé is part of a tradition of black women's musical expressions of personal and political discontent ranging from singers like Nina Simone (pictured below) and Odetta to MCs Lauryn Hill and Jean Grae to the brilliant new artist Keyshia Cole."
To dismiss Beyonce's lyrical sassiness or the 'I will never disappoint' message in her 'Me, Myself, and I' does us a gross injustice.
As Loren argued in Clutch, there is something that happens when a Beyonce record plays - it's visceral and empowering at the same time. We feel a connection to these songs and they command us to get up and dance. And we react in the affirmative when she says "Who run the world?" just like when we scream "Hell yea!" after a DJ shouts, "Do my ladies run this muthaf**ka?
These black female voices like Lucas, Loren, Lemieux and Natasha Theory, among others in the social media space may recall the debates about how women should define themselves that Patricia Hill-Collins (author of 'What's In A Name? Womanism, Black Feminism and Beyond'), Alice Walker (pictured below), Barbara Omolade, June Jordan and Sherely Ann Williams had in previous generations. Are we feminist, black feminist or Womanist? Or all of the above?
However, perhaps it's time to broaden our definition of feminism so we can transcend the idea that the easiest way to pick a fight is to wear stiletto heels to a conference on feminism. In that case, Beyonce may doing her job.
Bishop Eddie Long Settles Out of Court For Sexual Misconduct Allegations
Atlanta, GA (May 26, 2011) -- Lawsuits brought by four young men who accused a Georgia megachurch pastor of sexual misconduct have been resolved, attorneys for both sides said Thursday, bringing a quiet end to a blockbuster legal complaint that targeted a powerful national religious leader.
Both sides declined to discuss terms of the deal, other than to say the civil suits in state court would not go forward against Bishop Eddie Long, pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.
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The four young men had alleged Long abused his spiritual authority and coerced them into sexual relations with gifts including cars, cash and travel when they were 17. One suit also claimed Long had sexual contact with one of them during trips he took them on in the U.S. and abroad. Long denied the allegations, and federal and state authorities didn’t investigate because Georgia’s age of consent is 16.
Still, the scandal tainted the reputation of Long, who over two decades had transformed his suburban Atlanta congregation of 150 into a following of 25,000 members and an international televangelist empire that included athletes, entertainers and politicians. The 58-year-old husband and father of four has championed strong families and been an outspoken opponent of gay marriage.
Plaintiffs’ attorney B.J. Bernstein said Thursday “we can confirm that the matter has been resolved” but would not elaborate. Phone calls to the young men were not returned.
Barbara Marschalk, an attorney for New Birth Missionary Baptist, confirmed the suits had been resolved and said they would likely be dismissed by Friday.
Church spokesman Art Franklin issued a statement late Thursday saying: “After a series of discussions, all parties involved have decided to resolve the civil cases out of court. This decision was made to bring closure to this matter and to allow us to move forward with the plans God has for this ministry.”
“As is usually the case when civil lawsuits resolve out of court, we cannot discuss any details regarding the resolution or the resolution process, as they are confidential,” Frank said in the statement. “This resolution is the most reasonable road for everyone to travel.”
Much of Long’s appeal was based on a prosperity gospel - featuring his own lavish lifestyle - and his macho appearance, accented by the muscle T-shirts he often wore in the pulpit.
The TV preacher’s ministry was threatened in September when Spencer LeGrande, Jamal Parris, Maurice Robinson and Anthony Flagg sued Long in DeKalb County state court. The Associated Press does not generally identify people who claim they are victims of sexual abuse or misconduct, but Bernstein said the four consented to making their identities public.
Two of the men who brought suit alleged that Long groomed them for sexual relationships when they were enrolled in the church’s LongFellows Youth Academy, a program that purportedly sought to guide teens through their “masculine journey” with lessons on financial discipline and sexual control. Two other young men - one of whom attended a satellite church in Charlotte, N.C. - made similar allegations.
Flagg, who enrolled at the academy at age 16, said Long chose him as a “spiritual son” after learning of the young man’s challenges growing up without a father. Flagg moved into another minister’s home after being arrested on an assault charge when he was 18. The lawsuit alleged Long would visit, crawl into bed with him and the two would engage in sexual acts.
Robinson said his mother enrolled him in the LongFellows program when he was 14. Long started lavishing attention on him the following year, and a church employee soon rewarded the teen with a Chevy Malibu, the lawsuit said. The two began engaging in sexual acts after an October 2008 trip to New Zealand.
Parris, who said his father had not been active in his life, said Long encouraged the teen to call him “Daddy” and later used biblical verses to justify the alleged abuse.
Long denied the allegations in court motions, saying that he often encouraged his flock to call him “daddy” as a term of respect. He acknowledged giving gifts to the plaintiffs, but said he often provided his church members with financial help. During church sermons, he turned to biblical terms to portray himself as an underdog.
Long has remained at the helm of New Birth since the allegations surfaced last year, vowing to fight the allegations.
“I feel like David against Goliath. But I got five rocks, and I haven’t thrown one yet,” Long said during his first sermon after the lawsuit was filed. He said that although he didn’t claim to be perfect, “I am not the man that’s being portrayed on the television.”
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