You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.
“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Matthew 24: 6-11

I remember being a little boy and it was snowing in April and my mother quoted that the bible said when the end was near we would not know the difference between the seasons. Now I am far from suggesting that the world is about to end tomorrow but I was drawn to this verse last night via a Common song called Heaven Somewhere. Maybe I have to much free time on my hands but I surf the internet an awful lot and the news gets more disturbing by the day. Wars and rumors of war; are we not in Iraq and some folks are trying to push us into Iran while we watch beautiful young men and women die for unjust causes. Are people in Haiti not creating a revolution because they have no access to food and bare necessities for survival. Today I read that 50 students have been found in the wreckage of a high school in China after a powerful earthquake, and over 7600 are feared dead throughout the country. The economy is spiraling downwards, people are losing their jobs with no new work in sight or means to provide food for their families.

All of this despair would make me think we would get closer to God and pray for a true blessing. Yet the word says you will be hated, and that many will turn astray. While watching Forrest Gump, the handicapped sergeant summed it up. Where is Jesus now, why would he let me live this way. This is the way people look at you who choose to believe in such tough times. And then others in such despair turn to those who claim to profess the word of God. Millions of viewers turn into youtube fanatic preachers, who spew venom and ask for money preying on people’s fears and using the word to sound as an authority. Don’t ask me why I brought this message to you today, I just wanted to share my thoughts and think objectively about the times we are living in. Be careful during these times of trials and tribulation to not fall victim to false hope. Keep your faith in God for he predicted that rough times would come. Remember that if you ask you shall be given (sometimes you gotta keep asking, I know I do lol). Peace and Grace be unto you.

Being my bloodline is one with the divine, in time brother you will discover the light.

Photo courtesy of New York Times

Wear all black on Monday for the injustice verdict in the Sean Bell case Please pass this on to anyone who can receive a text.

I received this text message numerous times throughout the course of the weekend and again I ask “Is wearing all black the new activism”. Has wearing all black taken the place of such notable activism as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I remember back when the Jena 6 movement was thriving and we were all wearing black as a means to show the masses our “black solidarity”. I participated and heard many say that they felt good walking into their corporate offices and seeing other people of color representing the injustice that was being served in Jena. But does our action stop there, does what we wear really signify that an injustice has been done?

So today I woke up and threw on my black shirt and my black Chuck Taylor sneakers in memory of the brother Sean Bell. I walked into my classroom and unlike that glorious Jena day, barely any people of color were wearing all black. What does wearing all black mean anyway; do the people who we want to see our solidarity even know that we are wearing this color to represent the fact that a brother was murdered by the NYPD. That yet again the NYPD walked out of a court of law not guilty of all charges. My own Constitutional Law professor had no idea who Sean Bell was and that this verdict had drastically affected the lives of many people. He was unaware that many young brothers and sisters had taken to the streets and were seeking Justice for the loss of yet another young talented black man. He definitely had no idea why one of his students had on black today; all he wanted to know was if I was familiar with the material that will be on his exam next week.

I checked through my usual news media outlets hoping that I would see something in the headlines about the injustice the Bell family was served this past Friday. Instead, I was inundated with news of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Democrat Primary’s, but there was no sign of any measures that would be taken towards the Bell family finding JUSTICE. And why should their be, a brother is dead and we all go back to our regularly scheduled lives. More concerned with celebrity gossip than the fact that black men can be killed in this country and their murderers receive absolutely no punishment.

The NY Times had a brief article about this issue however, and it largely dealt with the few people who were outraged by the verdict and were protesting in Harlem yesterday. One of the brothers on the bull horn asked “why aren’t more people out here”. The days of marching and blocking traffic for a day or two didn’t work then and they will continue not to work now. All the police do is re-direct the traffic and the protest becomes more of a nuisance than a movement that affects change. So what my generation has come up with as a means of fighting injustice is wearing all black; then we are really fighting institutionalized racism and brutality, we’ll show em!

Wrong, we need a strategic effort on a variety of fronts to fight the injustices that are facing our people. I refuse to believe that we are as lazy as the Civil Rights Guard of Leadership paints us. No we are not lazy at all, we are the internet generation; the text message generation. All of that to say we have the fastest and often most effective modes of communication to get messages across to our peers and move in a organized manner. We have to fight these different injustices on many different fronts. The Judge who rendered the verdict; we have to find out if he was elected or appointed; if elected we make sure that those who are eligible to vote in that district show up in record numbers to relieve him of his position.

Let’s take it back to the boycott days since the loss of revenue is the only thing that makes politicians and businessmen understand that we are angry about something and are seeking some type of remedy. This shouldn’t be hard to do because we are spawning into a recession anyway and people are already strapped for cash. We need to find out exactly what businesses that if we stopped patronizing would affect Michael Bloomberg the fastest. Once those major businesses are affected they will call up their high powered friends ad say “hey we have to do something about this’ its affecting my pocket”! You see when when we start to use our creativity and organize our efforts we begin to fall upon the ears who really create change in our cities. Maybe then the NYPD will stop believing that it is perfectly fine and legal to kill young black men. But if all we are doing is wearing black; trust me the courts, the politicians, the police and definitely the law are not hearing our voices.

We need to tap into the resources in our communities who have the know how and ability to propose legislation for stricter monitoring practices over the police departments who brutalize communities of color. All cops are not the scum who murder and harass people of color so we need to reach out to those who are fed up with their colleagues behavior and off the record find out what we can do to upset their internal situation that will help us make the changes we wish to see. I could write on for days about different measures that we could take however my one voice will not create this change. Our collective voice will not change these scenarios but our collective voices coupled with our strategic collective actions will create this change. In memory of Sean Bell and all of the other forgotten fallen soldiers; please let’s Make It Happen!

ps. I will be at the Black and Male In America Conference the weekend of June 15 - 17 in Brooklyn, NY. I think we all need to be there!

Living in Philadelphia from 2002 to 2007, I watched the neighborhood which surrounded Temple University transform. Blacks were moved out and whites were moved in; we had many town hall and discussions about this topic as concerned students. Depending on who the speaker was we would hear different terms used to describe this process. If white property owners were speaking ,we learned that what was happening to the community was a “beautification program”. If Black community members were speaking, this displacement was called “negro removal”.

No matter how you frame the situation, gentrification was happening in a community that was historically black and becoming increasingly white. I have many thoughts on this topic that I will save for now but I want to share with you something I recently read. This piece is an honest reflection of what it’s like for a caucasian man who moves into one of these neighborhoods that is not quite gentrified yet. I bring to you the words of famed author Marty Beckerman and his well written piece “Gentrify This”.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

When I moved to New York, I only had two days to find an apartment. Rents in “affluent” neighborhoods with numerous “young professionals” are considerably higher than in “up-and-coming” neighborhoods. Whereas I lived in a luxury building in D.C. with a gym, pool, doorman, deck, chandeliered lobby and (most lavish of all) dishwasher, I was suddenly—thanks to my desperate rush and journalist’s budget—in a neighborhood where the only appetizing-looking restaurant is a McDonald’s, save for a Mexican eatery that gave me a gastrointestinal holocaust.

To read more of this article go to:

http://www.jewcy.com/index.php?q=post/gentrify

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJusbALMMKI&hl=en]

Today’s piece is not written by myself. I came across this piece via a very inspiring young woman who is committed to bridging truth and words to make profound statements that speak to communities of color. I hope you enjoy, I know I did!

Where black people meet the law?
by Ma’at

Where black people meet the law?
Where a single mother gets evicted from her apartment…
Because Bill, Bob and Dick moved in upstairs
Mary, Jane, and Sue moved in downstairs
And now her property value rises too high for her meager earning

Where the long are of the law shoves a hollow gun against the temple of a black man while shouting
“YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT”
Right?

Where basketball player signs a contract that gives his lawyer 40% when Mr. Esq. knows he should only get 10%
Where a 6 year old boy watches his mother sue his father for child support
He stares into a strangers brown eyes and wonders how that face could look just like his
Where a PO meets the guilty till proven innocent…..
Until innocent become guilty
Filthy
Right-less
Less than
Three fifths of a person
3/5ths of the men in prison
Yall though when slavery ended we became more than 3/5ths?

I’ll tell you where we don’t meet
We don’t meet in Law School
In a world where knowledge of the law provide the tools through the confines of this so called “JUSTICE SYSTEM”
SYSTEM yes
JUSTICE…it depends
Depends on who defends the rights you though you had
You don’t have shit…
Pause
You have what your lawyer knows (minus) your ignorance (minus) his ignorance (times) each previous charge
(Equals)… it depends

I walk into class my first day of class
The room filled with pink faces
Folks who see the world in black and white without the black
Issues in black and white, without the black
My blood pressure rises as a privileged woman raises her hand and implies that all black men who are not in suits are thugs
My brother is a thug…
My nephew is a thug……..
Where black people meet the law………

Where do black people meet the law?
In Us.. Law Students
Us… the privileged few with the knowledge to change
Educate
Inform
Inspire to rebuild that which has been done

I’m so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women, or black students behave as though they can only read blacks, or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer. - Bell Hooks

My “Fascination” with Greeks (Response)

Earlier today I was introduced to an article written in Blacklisted Magazine (http://www.blacklistedmagazine.org) discussing one woman’s opinions on Black Greek Lettered Organizations at the University of Florida. She later responded to my posting of her article with this comment, “Please keep in mind that the critique in this article, is specific to my University– and I did that mindful of the fact that I couldn’t speak for every cluster of BGLO’s. (I’d be willing to wager that some of the same critiques ring true, however).”

Unlike the typical reply to such an article that looks to minimize the efforts and necessity for members of Black Greek Lettered Organizations and defame this young lady as a possible “reject”, or “hater”, I wish to engage her in an intellectual discourse surrounding her topic of choice. Initially her article looks to speak to the efforts or lack thereof of the National Pan Hellenic Council members at the University of Florida, and having attended Temple University in Philadelphia; I have a very limited view of the dealings at the University of Florida. However her response on my blog attempted to over-generalize these views and place them upon the many members of these organizations throughout the world.

I have several issues with this article that I will address throughout this response; first and foremost I have an issue anytime someone presents us with a problem, however is not kind enough to afford their readers or the audience that they wish to engage with any type of solutions. We all know the saying, “if you are not a part of the solution than you are a part of the problem”. Secondly, I find the tone of this article to be divisive and condescending to not only members of these organizations, but also the black students of the University of Florida as a whole. Lastly, I wish to present a record of current achievements and community service that members of these organizations have engaged themselves in and highlight their social activism, which was grossly neglected in the previous article.

I do not wish to rebut every element of this crafty article, for that would be asinine for her article represents her experiences. I do however find her male on male sexual harassment, and hazing assaults to reek of ignorance to a system she clearly has no direct dealings with. I would only ask that as a journalist, writers take a more objective role in the information that they put forth, both informing their public and stating the issue they wish to address and not presenting a highly biased work of literature.

I.
Throughout the article “My “fascination” with Greeks”, the young lady presents many issues that she finds with the caliber of undergraduate members of bglo’s at the University of Florida. She finds that these young individuals lack a consciousness or awareness surrounding different issues that affect people of color. Ms. Albert contends that these circumstances should have warranted support from the Greeks to collectively enjoin the student body in fighting these issues as well as bring attention to the school’s administration about such situations. Having not been a member of the student body at this institution, I will take her account of such a lack of response from the Black Greeks as fact.

However, nowhere in her response do I see that she attempted to address this issue with the Greeks and possibly gain their support in these battles of social activism at the University. Nor do I see this article creating a healthy dialogue between herself and these organizations on this campus to promote future support of such issues. So here we have a well-defined problem with no solutions, this is problematic for many reasons. It is clear that people are disappointed by the lack of support from the Black Greeks on this campus. However, by looking to “blast” them and their feeble efforts rather than engage them this article stands to do less good for the overall community who could benefit from a healthier discussion that creates an alliance rather than dissention.

II.

“Did they starve the consciousness out of you during hazing?” I have never seen a conversation be productive when you start the dialogue attacking the person you are hopefully seeking to come to some sort of common ground with. Bro. Dr. Cornell West said it best when he said that we as black people “must engage in a love language”. Meaning, we can no longer condemn each other and speak harshly towards one another and expect to affect real change within the communities in which we live.

Not only did the writer call the Black Greek members “shallow and self- serving”, she extended this assault to the entire community of black students as a whole, calling them “shallow and disengaged”. Such rhetoric only furthers the divide between our people and does little to combat the ills that plague communities of color.

I am confused by such verbal assaults, because as she invokes the need for activism and awareness amongst people of color at the University, I see this writer more so utilizing the ways of the oppressive media to effectively get her points across. To simply gloss over those who are making a difference, those who are engaged, and hone in on those who are not is no better than when people make pre-determined judgments about our people as a whole based on the actions of the “few”. Is there anything different when someone assumes that a young black woman is a promiscuous, gold-digging, uneducated woman simply because these are the common stereotypes and sometimes actions of young women of color? While I am sure that this intelligent young lady is none of the above, she has to understand that her assertions and generalizations on members of these organizations and black people as a whole is a microcosm for how blacks are treated and misrepresented in this very country that we live in.

“BGLO’s, like other university organizations, will be judged as a whole, not just the sum of its more progressive parts.” Do we like when we as young black students are striving for more progressive ways to better our communities but we are wrongly compared to those who sell drugs, prostitute and wish to further degrade our communities? This is not only unfair, it is unimaginable coming from a woman of color who daily has to face these types of discrimination not based on her own actions but the actions of others. Let us be more objective in our opinions and remember in order to engage those members of her campus it would beseech her to engage in healthy discourse with solutions rather than adding insult to injury.

III.

Lastly, as a member of a BGLO in the Philadelphia area, I will gladly enlighten you as to whether or not these assertions that you have made about Black Greek Life ring true in my experiences. While I would be lying to say that none of these organizations have members who are more concerned with the social and less of the community service and scholarship that they were founded upon. This is not the rule; it is more the exceptions that we unfortunately allow to slip through. We like to call them “shirt wearer’s”. No, actually my experience has been one of watching the women of Delta Sigma Theta garner upwards of $7,500 in monies raised for Sickle Cell Anemia alone, which we all know is a disease that affects the black community at a rapid pace. I have watched the men of Phi Beta Sigma host an annual Ms. Ebony Temple Pageant, where the contestants win scholarship money to help finance their education and many of the proceeds go to local churches and charities that the young ladies find to be beneficial for the betterment of the black community. A member of Zeta Phi Beta from Temple recently started her own magazine, Avenue Report, in which she caters to young professional men of color, educating us about financial literacy and health issues amongst a host of other topics.

We can’t escape the good old stepping stigma, so the Greeks of Temple mentor and help the students of the Young Scholar’s Charter School learn the art of stepping while stressing the importance of higher education, we simply call it Project G.R.E.E.K. The men of Kappa Alpha Psi and Omega Psi Phi also engage the young students of North Philadelphia, a highly impoverished area, with scholastic support and mentorship. The ladies of Sigma Gamma Rho are staunch fundraisers for breast cancer and although this is not their national program, they revolve many of their events, banquets and fundraising around building awareness to this topic. Social activism, the young women of Alpha Kappa Alpha are looking to follow their illustrious leader Barbara McKinzie in attacking issues of social injustice including but not limited to the Jena 6 incident, the Don Imus incident, and issues surrounding misogyny in hip hop. Not only has their national President condemned defamatory statements and social injustices in the media, they recently gave Howard University $1 million dollars toward restoring some of the University’s facilities. While also encouraging their members to utilize their spending habits to fight racial discrimination and the disrespect of black women. These young ladies continue to represent the standard of what it is to be a lady, while selflessly raising funds and awareness for issues endemic to women of color.

Lastly but certainly not least, the men of Alpha Phi Alpha are continuously engaged in providing service to the local community members of North Philadelphia. Along with the members of Omega Psi Phi, these young gentlemen brought awareness to the Millions More Movement and mobilized students to this historic event. Weekly, the men of Alpha Phi Alpha can be seen mentoring the inner city youth at the Y Achievers program. Darryl Matthews, General President of Alpha Phi Alpha, was one of the many black leaders on hand the day of the Jena 6 protest and rallied the people to fight such acts of discrimination. At Temple we do not currently have any men of Iota Phi Theta, however I have worked with members of their alumni chapter and I felt their strong commitment to the upward mobility of people of color as well.

Members of BGLO’s are often very involved in service, however our commitment to our communities is something that is within our hearts. Such service is not always blasted around campus to receive accolades but more so heavily concentrated in neighborhoods where our existence is vital to the successes of our youth. While the article I am responding to may be completely factual, I pray that you will take a different approach so that we may move forward together rather than apart. Please continue to allow your voice to be heard for there are many issues in our communities that I believe we can address as whole rather than separate entities. Peace and Love!

As a member of a Black Greek Lettered Organization, I found the following article “interesting” to say the least. I will allow you the pleasure of reading these words and encourage you to engage in lofty discourse over the tone of this article. Please check back tomorrow where I will then post my response to this article. Enjoy!

My “Fascination” With Greeks By Hananie Albert

By Hananie Albert, on 22-03-2008 20:39

Did they starve the consciousness out of you during hazing?

I have always been wary of those within the black community who pay a superficial homage to black history, only to turn and defecate on the legacies they pretend to uphold. Unfortunately this trait seems inherent to the black Greek system at this university—a cluster of complacent organizations who meander around issues of social justice and command respect because of the actions of their predecessors rather than their own commitments to equality, justice and progress. These groups only seem interested in the performative aspects of black culture and fail to reckon with the significance of their complacency, given their immense influence in the black community.

My time here at UF has been marked by crises that challenged the strength of the black community—from the bitingly ignorant Alligator cartoon, to the lack of funding for the African-American Studies Program to the controversy with the Jena 6. In these instances, individuals from Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLOs) offered their support—but the Greek community at large stood idly by, seemingly ignorant of their power to galvanize the students and the administration to action. Oddly enough, they put this power to great use when it was time to raise awareness for a party or a step show. I began to wonder if these organizations felt at all ashamed to claim great Civil Rights leaders and political figures as alumnus, given the insignificance of their records of local social activism.

A recent forum titled “What’s your fascination with black Greeks?” promised to facilitate a dialogue between the Greek and non-Greek community, and I attended on my editor’s insistence. I was curious to see how the black Greek community would address the stark hypocrisies in their records—the fact that they had stopped earning the respect they demanded, the fact that “brotherhood” came to be marked by well documented instances of hazing and male on male sexual harassment, and the fact that they seemed to privilege mindless assimilation and social mobility over social justice.

The responses at the forum were as contrived and hollow as I had assumed BGLOs to be. When questioned about their failure to live up to their founding tenets, one Greek panelist responded that the public underestimated the efforts put into step shows; others insisted that Greeks were normal people and were unfairly put on a pedestal. Finally, one Greek responded with what seemed to be the default answer whenever a particularly tough question was posed: there was just so much that the public did not know. This implies that the public does not have the right to judge BGLOs because they are not privy to the same information. I doubt that adequate justification for black Greek complacency is somehow written into the founding principles that are beaten into them– or that one acquires intellectual infallibility by “crossing the burning sands.”

If the BGLOs at the University of Florida want to take the cowardly route favored by organizations such as the Black Student Union and respond to accusations of complacency by claiming that they are a “social” organization rather than a “political” one, they have every right. However, black Greeks must understand that they invoke a higher standard every time they mention alumnus like Huey P. Newton, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other prominent figures in black history who might very well be ashamed to have their names associated with the uninspired, unengaged morass that is black Greekdom at this university.

This is not an assault on individuals within the organization—I know several exceptional individuals that join these organizations and strive towards social equality and consciousness—unfortunately the overall character of these groups is impermeable to the progressive intentions of the individuals. BGLOs, like other university organizations, will be judged as a whole, not just the sum of its more progressive parts.

I must note, however, that if black Greek existence on this campus seems shallow and self-serving, it is because black Greek organizations are composed of and cater to a shallow and unengaged black community who love to point out the evils of discrimination but fail to meet these evils with intellectual resistance and social activism. So, critiquing black Greeks for thinking that uplifting the black community entials nothing more than wearing letters on Wednesdays, the occasional self-gratifying forum on Fridays and a routinized and thus hollow commitment to “community service” on Saturdays, is ultimately a critique of the black community as a whole. Assuming that new members have had the consciousness and social awareness beaten and starved from them during the hazing ignores the fact that that many of these new members may not have cared about these issues to begin with.

As an immigrant to this country, I was ignorant of the significance of black Greeks until I stepped foot onto Turlington Plaza. There, I was ushered out of the way in order to make room for the strolling Greeks; a friend even jokingly suggested that looking them in the eye was disrespectful. I didn’t understand how a group could command this amount of unquestioned respect.

After conducting some research, I began to believe that these students were respected because the letters stitched onto their jackets were a sacred covenant—a reminder of the great contributions of past members and a promise to continue while improving upon their auspicious legacies. I believed that the initiation process was well-reasoned and commendable for its commitment to restoring rites of passage, similar to those in tribal Africa.

After several years on this campus, I am starting to realize just how wrong I was.

http://www.blacklistedmagazine.org/

Youth’s SPEAK! is one of the many new additions that will be added to the blog in the upcoming weeks. Our children provide such a wealth of knowledge in respect to all walks of life. We stand to learn a lot from them, if we ourselves would choose to listen.

The following video is a clip of young high school students speaking about our hopeful future President Barack Obama. These you students amazed me with their knowledge and their ability to articulate their thoughts on such topics. Pass this video on, let’c continue to support our youth, they are our most valuable asset!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9IldaegAB0&hl=en]