So this is where we’re at right now, black folks? Shoot, and here I thought the Love & Hip Hop Atlanta boycott petition on change.org was bad. Now Al Sharpton’s outfit is leading a boycott of the Django Unchained action figures being sold. Jesus Christ! Do we need another black kid armed with Skittles and Ice Tea to be shot because black rage is idle? But seriously, I could think of many other things to be pissed about as a person of color, other than some $299.00 collectibles being sold on Amazon. But hey, I suppose that’s just me being tired of being the angry black dude.

This from NewsOne:

Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network has been largely silent on the raging controversy surrounding Quentin Tarantino‘s ‘Django Unchained’ — until now.

In the wake of the release of action figures in the cast’s likeness, Rev. K.W. Tulloss, NAN’s president in Los Angeles, the progressive, civil rights organization called for a national boycott of the slavery toys which can be purchased for $299 on Amazon.com.

“Selling this doll is highly offensive to our ancestors and the African American community,” Rev. K.W. Tulloss, said to the NY Daily News. “The movie is for adults, but these are action figures that appeal to children. We don’t want other individuals to utilize them for their entertainment, to make a mockery of slavery.”

Now  yesterday I mentioned how this movie has made some of my “cousins” upset. And as I said then, some of them are probably more upset because the film was written and directed by Quentin Tarantino who happens to be white. I firmly believe that most are upset for no other reason than that fact. So, as far as the action figures go? Well, let’s just say that I don’t see them being packaged with chains, branding irons, or any of those ghastly iron masks used to torture slaves. That said, I really don’t see the big deal; because, it’s not like kids are running out to buy them.

It’s just standard movie marketing actually, and the National Action Network is doing a fine job by boosting sales with this frivolous attempt at a boycott of these dolls. Besides, it’s not like black folks are going to break their necks to drop #299.00 on Amazon to buy them anyway.

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So there’s a “Django” action figure being sold now; and, of course, some of my cousins are upset about it — yep, yet another reason yo hate this movie for some. The action figure isn’t actually a stocking stuffer, but I hope it doesn’t have a Kung Fu grip like G.I. Joe. Nope, no need to get Spike Lee any angrier about the movie than he already is at this point. Seriously, how much more disrespectful can they get with this thing? Oh well, it could have been worse. Yes, somebody could have had the bright idea to start selling a crack head action figure after the movie Do The Right Thing.

Oh, and speaking of “angry black men who hate white men with the audacity to make movies that illustrates what it was like for black folk back in 1853″. Did you hear what Tavis Smiley had to say about Tarantino and the movie Django Unchained? Well, like Spike Lee, he too hasn’t seen the movie nor intends to “pay to see it,” like he said in a recent interview featured on The Daily Beast. Like Lee, he too takes issue with a white movie director using his craft to bring to the big screen a film that revels in the painful but often avoided legacy of slavery. Responding to a question about his first reaction to the film, Smiley opens up the interview with the following:

Quentin Tarantino’s film, Django Unchained has as much to do with the history and culture of American descendants of African slaves as Dumbo has to do with the plight of Weimar Jewry. Spike Lee says that it disrespected his ancestors. It does not. It has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with one white man’s fevered, second-hand vision of what it would be like to be something he probably can’t conceive. It’s like me attempting to write an intimate account of the pains of childbirth. I may have held a baby and changed a diaper, but one would doubt my authority on the subject.

Tarantino obviously knows black people, but only a white man in America could believe that this provides him with the authority to speak on the black American experience. Like 99.9999 percent of the white population, he has minimal intimacy with the culture of the descendants of American slaves. That culture, imbibed from birth by American blacks raised in black American households, involves an intimate, often subconscious acknowledgment of history, of a unique place in the American hierarchy, of a struggle against mainstream paradigms of who and what we are. These are intimacies of which whites are necessarily ignorant — they’re white. Just as I, as a male, have no intimate knowledge of birthing pains, whites have no knowledge of being black. They can gain an abstract conception, but that’s it.

Um, excuse me, I know Tarantino is white and all, but I sincerely doubt whether anyone alive today — including black folks — are able to have more than an abstract conception of what slavery was like. Yes, though many of its scars still run deep throughout the diaspora, to suggest that by virtue of one being charged with melanin comes with a certain esoteric knowledge of slavery even if we’re fifty years removed from Jim Crow. Which is funny because it’s as though being able to endure “the struggle” was woven into our cultural and biological DNA — it’s as if unlike any other race, we’re predisposed to endure any struggle. And thus, we’re exceptional or something.

Of course, Tarantino has every right to make a film on any subject he chooses, and he knows his audience well. The film has become the white literati’s preferred lens into the forbidden territory of black rage (a sort of reverse Uncle Tom’s Cabin). But when blacks discuss it as if this product of white Hollywood is a legitimate expression of our culture or our rage, we do ourselves a gross injustice; we follow the pattern of outsourcing our history and self-image to the majority; we marry ourselves into the grotesque self-images that their history has tried to stamp upon us.

Django Unchained is nothing more than one white Hollywood director’s fantasy of what black revenge would look like. It would be no more to us than another big screen cartoon if we dealt honestly and independently with our own history — a history white studios or directors would never touch. Such history puts the lie to the frames and simplifications with which Americans maintain our halo of historical innocence on matters related to race.

If we lavished similar imagination upon the history of the blacks who fought for the British during the American revolution to escape slavery, the German Coast uprising, the Prosser and Vesey rebellions, the ‘Crazy as St. Paul’ Nat Turner rebellion, the Black Seminole rebellion of 1835, the innumerable anecdotal tales of black resistance against slave-owners, perhaps we wouldn’t glom onto the work of a white director who (with his infantile insistence on his right to fling the word “nigger”) seems frightfully similar to the clueless character in Lou Reed’s infamous, “I Wanna be Black.” If we taught ourselves to regard the Civil War as “a failed war to protect and extend slavery,” and not “a war to free the slaves,” we would be less seduced by the siren song of second-hand revenge fantasy. If we debated among ourselves the virtues and vices of real old-west outlaws like the notorious Rufus Buck Gang, Cherokee Bill and Isom Dart, perhaps one white man’s notion of blacks in the old west would be less noteworthy. If we knew that black freedman populated Indian Territory and that a black lawman named Bass Reeves served as a Deputy U.S. Marshall for “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker, we’d have a far richer, more complex view of our history than that promoted by the likes of Hollywood and Tarantino.

Yes, blacks are giving this film too much credence, but it’s our own fault. We have outsourced our history to the majority and failed to devise the means to teach our history to ourselves. In a country in which we have been historically subjugated and reviled, we accept instruction about our history and our place in it from those who subjugated and reviled us. That’s a bit insane. As long as we continue to do so, the likes of Django Unchained will rise from the level of mainstream curiosities from black-cultural dilettantes, to fake nipples mimicking the teat of cultural sustenance.

Listen: We can only imagine just what it must have been like for African slaves not just in America, but also those spread all throughout the new world; but even so, we have no earthly idea, despite the documented research, of just how bad it actually was. So what is the point to this post? That I can’t wait for Tarantino to do the sequel where Django and Madea try to bust John Brown the abolitionist, out of prison for killing white folks so everyone can be happy. Yep, let’s try to rescue a white man in the next one, since folk wanna act like he had Harriet Tubman giving lap dances in this one. as cathartic as this film isn’t for some, maybe my suggested sequel will be received with open arms only if a black guy produces, writes, and directs it. Because quite naturally, who else is there better to tell stories of the black struggle than black people, right? After all, last time I checked, black kids are still picking white dolls over black dolls; and, it ain’t like y’all Negroes supported Akeela And The Bee anyway.

So yeah, blame Tarantino for that too.

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I never realized what assimilation was or is. I never gave a thought about genocide or Manifest Destiny and I thought the holocaust only pertained to what Hitler did to the Jewish people. And it didn’t matter to me, because I never gave a thought about it. I was busy living life as I knew how, a Lakota woman. I was raised in our traditional ways but never taught all those things until I was older. I just thought life was about being traditional, with our ceremonies, songs, traditions, and ways. Sure, I went to a Christian church with my friends, went to Vacation Bible School for a popsicle, and I tested out other religions as if dipping my toes in cold lake water, but I never felt right about it. I didn’t feel wrong about it, I just felt as if it wasn’t my thing. And I made my way back to who I was and who I knew myself and my people to be. Lakota. That is where I belonged and where I feel centered.

The first time I realized that a child raised without their culture and forced into another way of life develops a huge hole in their soul was in college. I read an essay by a Vietnamese American student. She was adopted as a baby, from Vietnam, by white parents here in America. She was given a good life, she was raised with little blonde brothers and sisters and she had a suburban sounding name like Caitlyn or something. She did everything right and everything she was supposed to do in life, plus she won a scholarship to a college away from her family. It was her first time on her own and she discovered herself questioning who she was. She was drawn to other Asians and began hanging out with them. She learned of their likes, dislikes, cultures, foods, and she felt “at home and at peace.” Many of them were also adoptees, taken from their families and countries and grew up American. They were drawn to each other to fill a need in their souls. Yet she felt this with a great deal of guilt towards her American family. She loved her adopted family but felt at home, finally, with her friends, who in turn felt the same.

That is the first time I realized how taking the culture away from someone can be somewhat traumatic or really traumatic. How lost it makes that person feel. As I grew older and started seeing cases of this same thing happening with my own Native people and it was shocking. I remember the first time, was when I met a lady in her twenties. I saw her at the casino we both worked at and asked her what tribe she was from. She became angry and said “The lady that gave birth to me was from so and so reservation but I’m white. I grew up white. I was raised white, so don’t ever ask me that again.”

All I could say was “Whoa.” I stood there shocked. I never in my life met another Indian who hated being Indian, and she had to nerve to say she was white, when she was a few shades from midnight? That’s when someone told me she was raised in a foster home, who eventually adopted her.

I began then to understand what it meant to be assimilated and colonized. I began reading of our history and how children were taken by the US government from Native families once they were put on reservations. Children were forcefully taken out of their homes at the age of 5 and put in residential schools until the age of 18. They made handcuffs so small to detain these children. They were beaten for speaking their language, hair was cut, and all for the purpose of “Kill The Indian, Save The Man.”

This generation was our grandparents and great grandparents, who suffered physical, sexual,and emotional abuse in the residential schools. They were never given the chance to heal because these stories were never told. They were kept on the down low by the Catholic church and the government who ran the residential schools. Many of these boarding schools who are now in operation are now making monetary payments, now wanting to hear the stories of abuse and now trying to make amends. After a few were hit with class action lawsuits.

The next generations, also suffered and still suffer. By the foster care systems. Children were taken from their homes and given to white foster families to raise. The families receiving funding for every foster child, would often take on many foster children. The state holds the households they take the children from to the standards set by white society. Without ever listening to how we set family structures, how we take care of our own, or how we live with our traditions, they set everything up to fit a mold, that they live by.

Based on a 1976 study by the Association on American Indian Affairs found that 25 to 35% of all Indian children were being placed in out-of-home care. (Eighty-five percent of those children were being placed in non-Indian homes or institutions.) Congress then passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (25 U.S.C. § 1901) in 1978 in order to keep American Indian Children with American Indian families.

However, this is not being followed in South Dakota. Why? Because South Dakota has a dirty little secret. According to a wonderful and very thorough investigation by National Public Radio that inspired me to find my brother who was lost for 21 years due to failure of the fact that DSS didn’t follow ICWA regulations and place him with family. I was 19 years old when he was taken from his mother. I was employed and had my own place and he was 8 years old. When I asked them why they didn’t ask me, all they said was sorry and also ,sorry we can’t help you find him now. That is when I began to search for him and I also began to investigate why so many of our Indian children in South Dakota are taken from their homes and placed in Non-Native homes, this is when I found their dirty little secret.

South Dakota’s Department of Social Services receives money for Native children they take custody of. They receive more money than the non-Native children they take from their homes. Native children in South Dakota make up 15% of all the children of South Dakota, yet over half the children placed in foster care are Native. And only 13% of those children are placed in Native foster homes. While Native foster home sit empty for months. South Dakota removes children from their homes at a rate 3 time higher than any other state. But according to state figures, less than 12 percent of the children in foster care in South Dakota have been actually physically or sexually abused in their own homes. That’s less than the national average.

I still didn’t get to the dirty little secret yet. South Dakota, years ago, designated all Native children as “special needs.” Which means every Indian child in every school benefits that school with more funding and it also means that every Indian child taken from their home by DSS benefits South Dakota more than non-Native children. And although the state says they match all the money coming in from the feds dollar for dollar, the match is not exact. According

to records from 2010, the feds reimbursed the state three quarters for what it spent on the children they removed from their homes. There is also an adoption incentive program nobody hears about. The federal government gives the states $4,000 for each child who is placed into adoption from foster care. That amount is $12,000 for “special needs” children. And of course over half the children removed from homes in South Dakota are Indian children, who, you guessed it, are designated by the state as “special needs” just for being American Indian. The state has made almost a million dollars in the last ten years off of our most precious resource. Our children. They moved us to dry, barren lands that cannot be farmed, the took the gold and every resource from the lands they stole. And now they are after our children.

Why is this not making a splash? Why is it not news? Especially , in South Dakota? Because they will go to any length to cover up what they do to take our children away. Even as our children are being violated in the homes they are placed in. Here is one case that will blow anyone’s mind and still has yet to reach the media in South Dakota.

Former assistant state attorney Brandon Taliaferro and court appointed child advocate Shirley Schwab go to trial tomorrow, January 7, 2013 for crimes they didn’t commit. Mr. Taliaferro and Ms. Schwab have been indicted by SD Attorney General Martin Jackley with witness tampering and disclosure of confidential, Department of Social Services information. They are being accused of these crimes for encouraging two teenage Lakota foster girls to tell the truth about being molested by their non-Native foster parent, who is now serving a 15 year prison sentence for rape of a child under 10.

According to the Daily Kos: Mr. Taliaferro and Ms. Schwab now assert that South Dakota is engaged in a criminal conspiracy to discriminate against Lakota foster children and their mothers, fathers, grandparents and relatives. “It is financially beneficial for the DSS to remove American Indian children from their homes and place them in [white] foster homes,” said Attorney Taliaferro to the Aberdeen News on December 19, 2011. “[Had I followed] the orders of [my boss with respect to the Mette investigation, it] would have required [me] to violate the law, and ethical rules that govern attorney conduct.” Mr. Taliaferro asserts that in 2011 he refused to participate in “a cover-up of misconduct” by the DSS.

The charges are believed to be a direct response to Mr. Taliaferro and Ms. Scwab for criticizing the state’s payroll during the NPR investigation. According to reporter Stephanie Woodard in her article for 100 Reporters “Rough Justice In Indian Child Welfare” where two state Department of Criminal Investigation agents are seen on a Youtube video planning the cover-up by the state against Mr. Taliaferro and Ms. Schwab. They are unaware, that though they are off camera, they left their microphones on.

This is all dirty, low down, Gestapo like tactics used by the Department of Social Services . And it shows how far the state will bend, how low they will go, to keep the millions of dollars they have coming in by stealing yet again from the Indigenous people of this land. Instead they don’t take from the land, they take from the womb.

They won’t get away with this much longer. Something has to be done.

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OK, let’s get something straight: Django Unchained is not about Martin Luther King Jr, nor is it the black version of the epic The Birth Of A Nation. However, it’s a very timely film.

I doubt very seriously whether it was Quenten Tarrantiino’s intent to spark a conversation on race. But with his new movie Django Unchauined, boy did he ever. Having said that, I’m just going to go on record and say that if Jammie Foxx wins an Oscar for his role as Django, that’s when I’m going to start believing all this post-racial talk I’ve been hearing for the last four years. Now, about the movie, I’m not offended that the word “nigger,” is used 110 times. I have yet to see the movie, so I’m not sure why this may be offensive to some.What offends me, however, is that Django has excellent command of the English. No diss to my ancestors, but I’m having a hard time accepting the fact that a slave in the 1950s is able to understand that the ‘D’ in his name is silent. But hey, maybe I shouldn’t complain; yep, at least they didn’t make him come off a bit Green Mile-ish when there are black folks today who you’d swear they’re looking for Harriet Tubman when you hear them speak.

Now of course this movie has seen it’s share of controversy even before its Christmas Day release. In fact, I blogged about how “certain people” were a bit put off by a joke told by Jamie Foxx while hosting Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago. Yes, and apparently it’s beyond reason for an enslaved African with a gun to “kill all the white people,” like Foxx does in this movie. I suppose, to some, the notion of a slave murdering the un-melanined seems to be bad for race relations in America. Of course this was all bullshit, as I’ve already pointed out. That said, you can imagine my surprise when I heard that there were more than a few black folks who took issue with a few things in the movie. Not surprising, however, was the critique that came from my man Spike Lee, who believes the film is “disrespectful,” to his ancestors who were slaves.

This from Rolling Stone:

Although he hasn’t seen the movie, director Spike Lee tells Vibe that Quentin Tarantino’s new Civil War-era Western Django Unchained is “disrespectful to my ancestors.”

Lee, whose latest film Red Hook Summer deals with race and class in the South Brooklyn neighborhood, said he has no plans to see Django Unchained. He elaborated on his dissatisfaction on Twitter, writing, “American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them.”

This isn’t the first time Lee has taken issue with Tarantino’s films, particularly when it comes to the use of a racial epithet that is used myriad times in Django and appeared frequently in Tarantino’s 1997 film Jackie Brown.

Lee spoke out about the film after apparently telling Django star Jamie Foxx that he wasn’t going to. In a separate interview withVibe, Foxx recalled an encounter with Lee at the BET awards saying, “You know Spike, he’ll let you have it whether it’s good, bad or ugly. And he said, ‘I’m not going to say anything bad about this film. It looks like y’all are getting it.’”

Now I respect Spike Lee, and I’m a huge fan — hell, can’t you tell from the banner above? — and he is of course entitled to his opinion. However, I don’t agree with his assertion. Why? Well, maybe I’m wrong, but I’d like to think that African slaves had more important things to worry about other than being called “niggers.” Was it degrading to them? Assuming that they had a grasp of the English language like “Django,” I’m sure it was. However, I’d like to think that they were more concerned about escaping the horror that was slavery, and maybe even trying to get a paycheck. The way I see it: What better way is there to “honor” our ancestors than to use a film to illustrate just what they endured for a very long time? Sorry, Spike, you’re my man and all, and like you I love the Knicks; but, until Kunta Kinte comes forward and says he feels “disrespected,” I’m not hearing you, bro. But Spike isn’t the only one, as I found out while watching Melissa Harris-Perry last weekend

Case in point, check out this from Melissa Harris-Perry:

So, for Melber who writes:

Django is fighting for his life against slavery, torture, rape, and murder, arming him with a moral clearance to go on a killing spree…

[...] The spectacle is more like pornographic violence than a dénouement, and even if the corpses are not total innocents, the nation’s tolerance for wanton, mass shootings is quite low right now.

[...] There is nothing to be gained from sanitizing our nation’s violent, racist history, to be sure, but Tarantino has shown that sensationalizing it is not worthwhile, either. That is unfortunate, because Django Unchained ultimately boils down to a tragedy in search of a point.

I suppose for him and others who share his opinion, the fact that a black man is doing the this killing makes them a little uneasy. I mean, lord forbid if someone makes a movie about John Brown, the white abolitionist who enacted his “vengeance” upon white men for no reason. Yep, for some, it’s as though Django should have employed Martin Luther King Jr’s strategy of non-violence. Because we all know how well that worked out for black folks during slavery. I’m sorry, but something tells me that Dr. King wouldn’t be above bussin’ a cap in more than a few asses to get back to Coretta.

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Way back in the day, well before we were known as Niggers, Negroes, and subsequently African-Americans, we were known as Spearchuckers. It was meant as a derogatory term as did most other terms used to describe Blacks of African descent in America. But you know what? I do not think Spearchucker is a bad term. Actually, I wish we were Spearchuckers today, or rightfully called that in a literal sorta way.

Ok, bear with me as I explain. You see, way back when, when Africans lived on that other planet called Africa, we carried spears as a weapon, right? I was not there, but I suspect, that back in the day in Africa, a Black man without a spear was as worthless as a Black man without a job and unable to pay his child support today. Yup, possessing a spear was important, without it, there was no food, or means of defending the homies in your crew from some other crew that claimed to either be a Crips or Bloods, or whatever. Plus, I seriously doubt the chicks took a Black man without a spear seriously. I mean, why would she if he cannot even bring home a rhino or elephant periodically, right?

Some where along the line, some White guy decided to show up in his space ship on planet Africa. Being from another world, and not knowing what he would run into, he carried with him what was known as a gun. And you know what happened? The White guy being forever the forward thinker, decided to trade his guns for a few Africans (who were sitting in the county jail) to give them their freedom to come help said White guys tend to his flower garden. Was not that so nice of the White guy who landed on planet Africa? Of course the ever so curious African do-gooders accepted the guns as bail money. Yup, and the rest is history as they say.

This is why I always say that the gun, is worst invention known to man. Yup, Africans got guns in exchange for other Africans. Then, they put down their spears, (which made it even easier to be kidnapped) and now White people are using spears in an Olympic sport called the Javelin. Ain’t that a bitch? And now here we are centuries later, Black people here in America are killing one another in record numbers every year by using a guns.

If we Black people of African descent here in America had spears, there would more than likely be less murders or Black on Black crime. I mean lets face it, the Bloods & Crips in Africa never really ran around doing throw bye’s, and killing innocent bystanders like they used to do out in L.A. back in the 90′s did they? Seewhumsayin? I mean, just keeping it real, a spear is kinda hard to hide and tuck into the small of your back under a jacket.

Seriously, I think it would be quite uncomfortable to carry a concealed spear. Yeah, you just cannot expect to sneak a spear up in the club, and shit just like that. Are you crazy? And what would that mean for the Black community? Less Black on Black crime, or in particular murders. Not just that, but less cops harassing Blacks like they do looking for guns. Yup, no more racial profiling and all of that racial shit, and we would all be able to live in peace and harmony. Yes, life in America would be different for us folks of African descent if they had just left their guns at home. Now all we have to do is figure out how all these guns get onto our streets everyday.

Can you take a guess how they do?

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But seriously, how dare a slave with a gun “Kill all the White people,” in a movie? A few days ago, Sean Hannity had a huge problem with Janie Foxx and his Saturday Night Live opening monologue last weekend. As you may know by now, in the upcoming film Django Unchained, Jamie plays a slave with an itchy trigger finger — imagine that, a slave with a gun. Yep, leave it to Jamie Foxx to play the first slave with a gun in a movie, who doesn’t start a revolution, right? Yeah, how’s that for Black History? I’m sure Nat Turner would be so proud.

In his monologue, Jamie most pleasurably jokingly mentioned that he kills all the white people in the movie. Now I’m no fan of Jamie Foxx, but even I — though I struggled — had to laugh because it was pretty funny. I mean, if you’re a slave with a gun in the 1850s, um, what else are you supposed to do? Exactly! It’s really a no brainer, right? But no, don’t tell that to Sean Hannity. Forever in search of the elusive Black Bogeyman, Hannity took offense and found Foxx to be racially offensive. Um, isn’t it hilariously funny how a host on Fox thinks that Foxx was racist.

JAMIE FOXX: My name is Jamie Foxx. Give it up, give it up, New York City, Saturday Night Live. Come on, make some noise, man. New York City, New York City, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens, it’s crazy. I’m black, and I’m dressed all black cause it’s good to be black. Black is the new white. I’m telling you, how black is this right here? Nice fly, I’m saying. You know how I know black is in right now? Cause the Nets moved to Brooklyn. How black is that? They got black jerseys, black court. I mean, how black is that? And Jay-z is the owner, a rapper. How black is that? And Jay-z only own about this much of the team. But he act like he own all of New York. How black is that?

And I got a movie coming out, “Django,” check it out. Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson. “Django Unchained” I play a slave. How black is that? And in the movie I had to wear chains. How whack is that? But don’t be worried about it because I get out the chains, I get free, I save my wife, and I kill all the white people in the movie. How great is that? And how black is that?

And of course, Hannity found two not-so-unchained folks to have a discussion:

How does it help race relations in this country when a black actor jokes on national television about killing white people?

One has to believe that his opening monologue was approved by SNL’s writers, meaning they were in on it.

Imagine the uproar if a white actor joked about killing all the black people in a new film he was starring in.

That would probably be the end of his career.

By contrast, for Foxx, this will probably win him another Oscar.

It’s a grave new world isn’t it?

Yes, it is a “grave new world,” indeed; but, obviously not much has changed since there’s a black family living in the White House. The truth is that neither Sheppard nor Hannity are interested in helping race relations in this country. If anything, what we’ve seen for the last four years especially, is that black is not the new white as Jamie Foxx suggested. But that may be my penchant for the tragicomic coupled with my ever-present Negro cynicism coming through. Forgive my pessimism, but when I look at the right-wing’s new black fetish, and how they rarely miss any opportunity to demonize people of color. Let’s just say that though it has been four years, I’m not feeling very post-racial. Case in point, check out the following video. Maybe it’s me, but the obvious appeal to the racial sensitivities of “certain people” in America, is blatantly obvious.

Yep, whether in movies or real life, black folks have done a lot of things in America since slavery. Hell, we’ve even been to space for crying out loud. That said, is it too hard to imagine or accept that we’re at a place in history where a black person can simultaneously be president of the United States, while another one uses a gun to “kill all the White people,” in a movie? Or is that, like truth, too much too fast for some to accept? Sorry, but the days of Blazing Saddles are long gone.

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Should the Keishas of the world put Karen on their resume? That question was in fact the title to a piece written by Yolanda Spivey that I ran into after hearing her tell her story last week on Current TV’s The Young Turks. You see, last month Yolanda was one of the many unemployed African-Americans in America. Ironically, there were 146,000 jobs added last month, and a dip of the unemployment rate marking a four-year low, at 7.7%. This is good news for the economy and the optimistic job seeker. However, Yolanda’s story as posted recently at Clutch Magazine offers a look at the harsh reality experienced by people of color struggling to find employment across the United States in today’s economy.

My guess is that this is nothing new:

For two years, I have been unemployed. In the beginning, I applied to more than three hundred open positions in the insurance industry—an industry that I’ve worked in for the previous ten years. Not one employer responded to my resume. So I enrolled back into college to finish my degree. After completing school this past May, I resumed my search for employment and was quite shocked that I wasn’t getting a single response. I usually applied for positions advertised on the popular website Monster.com. I’d used it in the past and have been successful in obtaining jobs through it.

Two years ago, I noticed that Monster.com had added a “diversity questionnaire” to the site. This gives an applicant the opportunity to identify their sex and race to potential employers. Monster.com guarantees that this option will not jeopardize your chances of gaining employment. You must answer this questionnaire in order to apply to a posted position—it cannot be skipped. At times, I would mark off “black female,” but then I thought, this might be hurting my chances of getting employed, so I started selecting the “decline to identify” option instead. That still had no effect on my getting a job. So I decided to try an experiment: I created a fake job applicant and called her Bianca White.

First, I created an email account and resume for Bianca. I kept the same employment history and educational background on her resume that was listed on my own. But I removed my home phone number, kept my listed cell phone number, and changed my cell phone greeting to say, “You have reached Bianca White. Please leave a message.” Then I created an online Monster.com account, listed Bianca as a white woman on the diversity questionnaire and activated the account.

That very same day, I received a phone call. The next day, my phone line and Bianca’s email address were packed with potential employers calling for an interview. I was stunned. More shocking was that some employers, mostly Caucasian-sounding women, were calling Bianca more than once, desperate to get an interview with her. All along, my real Monster.com account was open and active; but, despite having the same background as Bianca, I received no phone calls. Two jobs actually did email me and Bianca at the same time. But they were commission-only sales positions. Potential positions offering a competitive salary and benefits all went to Bianca.

At the end of my little experiment, which lasted a week, Bianca White had received nine phone calls—I received none. Bianca had received a total of seven emails, while I’d only received two, which again happen to have been the same emails Bianca received. Let me also point out that one of the emails that contacted Bianca for a job wanted her to relocate to a different state, all expenses paid, should she be willing to make that commitment. In the end, a total of twenty-four employers looked at Bianca’s resume while only ten looked at mine.

Is this a conspiracy or what? I’m almost convinced that white Americans aren’t suffering from the same disparaging unemployment rates as their black counterparts because all the jobs are being saved for other white people.

Yes Yolanda, that conspiracy is called racism; yep, it’s something we as people of color know about all too well. C’mon sister, you, me, and the slew of black folks reading this have either all been down that road; or, we have all at least suspected that stuff like this happens. Like all racism and racist acts, some folks may not want to admit to its existence or occurrence in our lives.

Yes, for some, what Yolanda chronicled is yet another one of those convenient excuses for her circumstances. That is, Yolanda is simply making up this story, and is truthfully unemployed because she isn’t qualified for whatever positions she may have applied for. Yep, never mind the fact that she is educated; nope, never mind the fact that she has years of experience in her field. To some, none of that matters because society has taught them that all black folks are lazy, uneducated moochers , and complainers.

So why are you complaining, Yolanda?

My little experiment certainly proved a few things. First, I learned that answering the diversity questionnaire on job sites such as Monster.com’s may work against minorities, as employers are judging whom they hire based on it. Second, I learned to suspect that resumes with ethnic names may go into the wastebasket and never see the light of day.

Other than being chronically out of work, I embarked on this little experiment because of a young woman I met while I was in school. She was a 22-year-old Caucasian woman who, like myself, was about to graduate. She was so excited about a job she had just gotten with a well-known sporting franchise. She had no prior work experience and had applied for a clerical position, but was offered a higher post as an executive manager making close to six figures. I was curious to know how she’d been able to land such a position. She was candid in telling me that the human resource person who’d hired her just “liked” her and told her that she deserved to be in a higher position. The HR person was also Caucasian.

Another reason that pushed me to do this experiment is because of the media. There’s not a day that goes by in which I fail to see a news program about how tough the job market is. Recently, while I was watching a report on underemployed and underpaid Americans, I saw a middle-aged white man complaining that he was making only $80,000 which was $30,000 less than what he was making before. I thought to myself that in this economy, many would feel they’d hit the jackpot if they made 80K a year.

In conclusion, I would like to once again quote the late, great Booker T. Washington when he said, “You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.”

The more America continues to hold back great candidates based on race, the more our economy is going to stay in a rut. We all need each other to prosper, flourish, and to move ahead.

I hear you, Yolanda; yep, I’m with you when you right. And you know what? You are so right on point that it’s not even funny. That said, I won’t be surprised if one or two of the unconverted non-choir members among us will have something to say about your complaining after reading.

You know how it is, girl. Yep, they’re not racist because they have black friends; and, their color blindness doesn’t allow them tor hear their “friends” when they tell these type of stories. But then again, all black folks aren’t the same; yep, some of us complain about racial conspiracy theories a lot less than others, Uh huh, after all, who wants to be known as the against-the-grain shit-starting black person in the bunch, right? Yep, pointing out racism, is in fact, the new racism in America.

Check out Yolanda’s interview below:

The post Post-Racial Update: Black Woman Pretends to be White, Gets Job Offers appeared first on Madness & Reality.

There is something sick and perverse about George Zimmerman selling autographs to raise money for the cost of his upcoming trial. What this says about Zimmerman or willing participants of such a sordid transaction, I’m not sure. But hopefully, it doesn’t reflect the insidiously pervasive direction of larger society. The last thing we need are twisted individuals receiving stars on Hollywood Boulevard for murders in spite of how justified they may be deemed in a court of law.

Speaking of which, by now, hopefully you’ve heard about yet another senseless murder of yet another 17-year-old black male at the hands of a “responsible” law-abiding white gun owner . I wrote about my initial feelings with regard to the lack of national outrage yesterday. But ironically, as I punch keystrokes, I can hear my man Rev. Al Sharpton speaking (very loudly as always on Politics Nation) about the incident itself. Ask any black person: When it goes down, you want Al on your side.

I take some comfort in knowing that if anybody is on the case to give it the national coverage it deserves — unlike the Daniel Adkins case — it is the good brother, Rev. Al Sharpton. Let’s just say that I can sleep a little better tonight knowing that the brother is watching this one very closely.

Having said that, check out what the shooter, 45-year-old Michael Dunn’s attorney is saying:

Now, for the first time, we’re hearing Dunn’s side of the story, from his attorney Robin Lemonidis. She said, “They were blasting some rap music. And he said he rolled down his window, pulled up on the passenger side, and rolled down his window and asked, would you mind turning that down? And said it very politely.”

The attorney says the teenager in the front seat turned down the radio. But then she says her client heard the teens cussing at him, making threats. She says Dunn rolled down his window and said, “He said excuse me, are you talking to me?”

At that point, she says one of the teenagers told Dunn he was dead. “And that’s when the guy in the back seat raised the barrel of a shotgun over the rim of the window,” said Lemonidis. “At that point, he just snapped into self protection mode.”

Dunn’s attorney claims that’s when her client reached for a gun he had in the glove compartment of his car, loaded it, and fired. “Firing at the car, because they’re showing him a gun, and he can’t see their hands,” she said. “And he doesn’t know. They’re about to blast him in the face with a shotgun, as far as he knows.”

Sounds reasonable, right? I mean, if someone gets a bit upset and refuses to acquiesce my request to turn down loud aggravating hippity hop music, and points a shotgun in my direction after exchanging pleasantries (remember this?). Yes, like me, you too would feel threatened and feel the need to protect your life by using the necessary deadly force it requires, right? Because of course, everybody knows how rap music if played loudly, gives black teens super human strength known to rival that of the Hulk. There’s only one problem, however, there was no guns recovered from the car.

How’s that for being a “responsible” legal gun owner?

So yeah, as Michael Dunn’s attorney says, this case is nothing like the Trayvon Martin case. You hear that? This guy isn’t the obvious racist many perceive George Zimmerman to be. Nope, according to his attorney, he is no “vigilante,” Unlike Zimmerman, he was fearful for his life, And listening to her in the video above, if I was a white man, I’d be afraid too. Again, forget the fact that there was no gun, the fact that there was more than one scary black teen in a car with tinted windows, clearly means there had to be a gun involved somewhere — after all, the music was loud.

As a matter of fact, supposedly Dunn’s attorney also stated that police didn’t find a gun because police didn’t look hard enough. Yep, no need to even plant a gun; nope, the kids were black and the windows were tinted;yep, there had to be a gun in that car. Hell, if the cops looked hard enough, I’m sure they’d also find empty KFC fried chicken boxes,empty malt liquor bottles, and a watermelon-chitlin juice mix on the upholstery. After all, the four occupants of the SUV were all black, no? Not that it should matter; but, I’m just sayin’.

“There are no comparisons to the Trayvon Martin situation,” said Robin Lemonidis, Dunn’s attorney. “He is devastated and horrified by the death of the teen.”

Yep, he was so devastated that he drove off, and slept knowing that a black kid was dead…

Listen, I could go on and on about how this is yet another example of how the negative stereotypes of black people in general, and black males in particular often lead to grave consequences. Yes, we’ve been down this road before on numerous occasions. Instead, I’ll close by saying that other than the obvious, what’s overlooked is how the culture of violence in America facilitates a mindset that’s foreign to the concept of proper conflict resolution. After all, America has taught us that if there’s a problem with someone or something the best way to deal with it, clearly, is to kill it.

Don’t blame the NRA, folks; nope, in American culture the bad guy always wears black.

The post Attorney: Jordan Davis Killer Michael Dunn is no George Zimmerman – But is He? appeared first on Madness & Reality.

It has almost been one year since the death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman. You remember that case, don’t you? You now, the black teen armed with Skittles and Ice Tea who was gunned down by an over-zealous neighborhood watch captain for wearing a hoodie and looking suspiciously black? Yeah, I’m only asking because the media hype surrounding the case has all but died down — at least to me it has. I mean, it’s not like anyone on is talking about it.

Well, no need for me to restart that debate; heck, I’m still a supporter of the now infamous “Stand Your Ground” laws across the country; and no, I’m not a card-carrying member of the NRA, nor am I one of these lunatic right-wing lunatics. Simply put, I do believe that if my life is threatened and I’m in imminent danger, I have the right to defend myself without having to retreat as the law allows. Having said that, it’s going to be hard to convince me that the law is designed to kill innocent black people. But just in case you might, check out the following story from Florida.

This via jacksonville.com:

17-Year-Old Jordan Russell Davis

Michael David Dunn will be brought from Brevard County to Jacksonville after entering a not-guilty plea to charges of murder and attempted murder in the Friday shooting death of a 17-year-old student at a Jacksonville gas station.

Dunn, 45, of Satellite Beach, waived extradition and should be en route back to Jacksonville before Thursday to face charges in the death of Jordan Russell Davis, according to Lt. Tod Goodyear, the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.

A gun collector in Jacksonville for his son’s wedding, Dunn told police he felt “threatened” after an argument with the Wolfson High student over loud music coming from a sports-utility vehicle parked next to him at the Gate station at 8251 Southside Blvd. Davis was in the back seat when “there were words exchanged,” followed by gunfire at 7:40 p.m., said Jacksonville homicide Lt. Rob Schoonover.

“Our suspect produced a weapon and started firing into the vehicle. Our victim was shot a couple of times,” Schoonover said. “ … They were listening to the music. It was loud; they [other teens] admitted that. But I mean that is not a reason for someone to open fire on them.”

[...] Davis family members couldn’t be reached for comment. They requested that the school district and Wolfson employees not speak to the news media, according to school system spokeswoman Jill Johnson.

Dunn lives in an oceanfront townhome in Satellite Beach. He is listed on his LinkedIn web page as vice president of software development since 2004 at Dunn and Dunn Data Systems in Fort Pierce.

Schoonover said Dunn and his girlfriend were next to the red SUV containing Davis and three of his friends. Dunn’s girlfriend was inside when Dunn and Davis exchanged words. Shots were fired, leaving Davis hit and eight or nine bullet holes in the SUV, Schoonover said.

The couple drove off after Dunn told her he had “fired at these kids,” Schoonover said. They went to their hotel, then returned to Brevard County when they learned what had happened from local news.

Witnesses gave police Dunn’s license plate number, which led police to his home. Schoonover said Dunn was planning to turn himself in when he was arrested.

Oh, so another black kid gets killed in Florida by a non-black man and not n’aan black person is protesting? Nope, nobody is holding press conferences? Nobody is asking President Obama questions about the case? Hell, nobody is even calling the shooter in this case racist? Shit, where is Sean Hannity and the New Black Panther Party on this one? I mean, unlike the Zimmerman case, this sounds like a serious disregard for black life. Hell, how else can unloading a clip into the backseat of an SUV with kids be characterized if the occupants happen to be black.

But hey, maybe we can do something like a million booming system procession instead of a million hoodie march in protest of the senseless murder of Jordan Russell Davis. Not that playing music too loud is worth dying over; but, maybe it’s the only way we can gain attention and maybe even some justice. Not that this homicide was racially motivated as far as the evidence shows — which is a good thing if you ask me — but let’s hope it stays that way. Really, there’s no need for more talk of race riots in small Florida towns, or any town in America for that matter.

But hey, that’s just me. According to Dunn, Davis had a gun so he shot him to protect himself. Kind of hard to believe his story when you consider that he drove off without as much as making a report to local police. But beyond that, no gun was recovered at the scene by local law enforcement.

The post Florida Man Claims “Stand Your Ground” Defense in Death of Black Teen Over Loud Music appeared first on Madness & Reality.

So, over $1 billion dollars was spent this election cycle to put President Barack Obama — a black man — out of a job. Still think there’s no need for Affirmative Action? Yep, think about that one for a while, folks. Speaking of which, CBS Las Vegas is reporting what I think to be a very disturbing story. A Vegas small business owner who identified himself as “David,” told Kevin Wall on 100.5 KXNT that he had to fire 22 of his 114 employees because of Obama’s re-election.

He also noted that the majority of his employees were Latino, and that “elections have consequences” and that “at the end of the day, I need to survive.” No word on whether the employees fired were overwhelmingly Latino. However, citing an increase in the cost of doing business as a result of regulations brought on by Obamacare, he said his employees were forewarned. Below is a bit from the interview as well as audio of the exchange.

“I’ve done my share of educating my employees. I never tell them which way to vote. I believe in the free system we have, I believe in the right to choose who they want to be president, but I did explain as a business owner that I have always put my employees first. I always made sure that when I went without a paycheck that [I] made sure they were paid. And I explained that I always put them first and unfortunately I’m at a point where I’m being forced to have to worry about me and my family now and a business that I built from just me to 114 employees.

[...] I explained to them a month ago that if Obama gets in office that the regulations for Obamacare are gonna hurt our business, and I’m gonna have to make provisions to make sure I have enough money to cover the payroll taxes, the additional health care I’m gonna have to do, and I explained that to them and I said you do what you feel like in your heart you need to do, but I’m just letting you know as a warning this is things I have to think of as a business owner.”

Check out the audio below:

Stay tuned!

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