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Today's Daily Word - Sunday, November 8, 2009
Healing
I am open and receptive to the divine healing power within me.
I am filled with the breath of Spirit. The unlimited healing power of God revitalizes me in mind and body. If I find myself feeling a bit run down or harried by the tasks before me, I stop for a moment and become conscious of my breathing. I take a break and breathe in the breath of Spirit.
I become aware of the cleansing, renewing, healing power of God. I let go of outer distractions and slow down, just for a moment, and rest quietly. I breathe in the energizing power of God and breathe out any worries or distractions. As I do, I feel peaceful and calm. I know that with every breath I take, I am filled with divine healing power and revitalized in mind, body and spirit.
The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.--Job 33:4
Renaissance Unity
Sunday, November 8, 2009 – Spiritual Recovery Part 1:
"What Are You Addicted To?"
“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today's Affirmation
I am a creative being. I monitor my thoughts and choose my words with great care.
Today's Meditation
Dear God,
I realize that my dominate thoughts and feelings produce my experience.
In this moment, I choose to focus my attention on making Your presence real in our world.
May my thoughts and words be loving.
May my actions be expressions of Loves presence.
You are the very life in me.
Shine in and through me.
Thank You God.
Amen
Today's Daily Word - Saturday, October 17, 2009
Blessings
I give thanks for the gifts of God.
Gratitude has the power to lift my thoughts and renew my faith in God as my unlimited source of good.
When the disciples were concerned there was not enough to feed the hungry, Jesus took what they had and blessed it. Giving thanks for God's gifts, he multiplied them and had more than enough to feed the crowds.
I consider each breath a gift. So, too, are the beauty of the sky and the faces of those I love. I give thanks for all that sustains my physical being, including clean water, shelter and food. I am thankful for opportunities to give and receive love, connect with God and share what I have been given with others.
"Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds."--Matthew 14:19
Renaissance Unity
Saturday, October 17, 2009 – Audacious for God
“I make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God…”
~ Step Four of the Master Mind
It is easy to get so caught up in the activity of this earthly experience that we forget where the real power lies. We can become enamored by the people around us, the exciting events and the enticing opportunities.
We may also seek to overcome the obstacles by placing primary focus upon identifying the right person or resource. In doing so, often people overlook turning primarily to God for guidance, wisdom, strength and power to rise above and to allow a Divine Response to direct our way.
~Ron Scott
Today's Affirmation
I am audacious, Loving Spirit, in entrusting to You the totality of my will and my life.
Today's Meditation
Dear God,
I am so committed to having my life be in Your care,
that I consciously choose to withhold nothing from You.
I know that You are with me, without fail, no matter what,
and that You love me, support me, guide me and protect me unceasingly.
I will follow You forever, trusting Your will and Your way.
Amen
Today's Daily Word Monday, October 5, 2009
Momentum
I have the support I need to succeed.
Many worthwhile endeavors are not completed quickly, but rather take time. I know that each experience I have builds on something I have learned or experienced in the past. It's as though I'm building a life brick by brick.
The decisions I make and the lessons I learn may seem to result in only small steps forward. But with each one, I build momentum toward the accomplishment of my goals.
Whether I'm following an exercise program, learning a new skill or developing a savings plan, the creation process is a spiritual one. I rely on God for help, support and guidance. I trust the creative process, knowing that I have the strength, will and energy I need to succeed.
"Be strong and courageous ... for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."--Joshua 1:9
Renaissance Unity
Monday, October 5, 2009 – This Moment
"When you are on a journey, it is certainly helpful to know where you are going or at least the general direction in which you are moving, but don't forget: the only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That's all there ever is."
~Eckhart Tolle
Today's Affirmation
I am exactly where I need to be at this moment.
Today's Meditation
Dear God,
Help me to stay focused in this moment.
Rather than endlessly reliving the past or worrying about the future, I choose to be fully awaken and aware now.
As this day unfolds, may my mind and heart be aware of You active in each moment.
May my awareness include the love that is available to me now.
I give You my thanks and I let it be.
Amen
Thanks to you, Glenn Beck and Fox are losing money. ![]()
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Help keep the pressure on by calling on advertisers to stay away: ![]()

Dear Michele,
We've got big news -- Glenn Beck's show is making less than half the money it was making when we started calling on companies to pull their advertisements from the show. This is huge and it's thanks to you -- more than 200,000 ColorOfChange members have spoken out, and 62 advertisers have listened.
Data from a media tracking firm shows how deeply we're hitting Fox's pockets; they are now sacrificing more than a half-million ad dollars a week to keep Beck on the air.
Of course, Beck and his supporters are fighting back with everything they've got. Today, we need your help to make sure the 62 companies who have pulled their ads from Beck's show stand strong, and to turn up the pressure on his remaining advertisers. Please join us in thanking the companies that have pulled their ads, and in calling on his remaining advertisers to stop supporting him:
http://colorofchange.org/beck/hold/?id=1744-523806
During the last week in July, Beck's show pulled in over $1 million from advertising. The first week in September, that number was down to less than $500,000, even as his ratings have gone up.1
It's clear that our campaign is making a significant financial impact, despite Fox's insistence otherwise.
What's happening is a simple matter of supply and demand. Fox has a limited amount of time devoted to ads each day. If 62 companies refuse to run ads during Beck's show, the demand for that time is reduced, and the rates the network can charge for the show plummet. In Beck's case, almost no major companies are willing to advertise during either of his twice-a-day broadcasts, so Fox can't collect as much ad revenue as they could before. If we can keep the advertisers away, Fox will have to decide sometime soon whether it's worth losing money to keep Beck's poison on the air.
Beck's smear campaigns
Beck claims to be a patriot who asks hard questions and gives his viewers the facts. In reality, he consistently uses lies, distortions, and exaggerations to stir up anger and fear, and to distract his viewers from working towards real solutions to the problems facing our country. He seems determined to create an atmosphere in which the White House can accomplish nothing, and he's doing it partly by launching vicious smear campaigns on Obama'a character, policies and advisers.
Last week, Beck and his supporters took credit for both Van Jones' resignation2 and for the demotion of Yosi Sergant, who was "reassigned" at the National Endowment for the Arts following vicious attacks by Beck 3. And Beck has made it clear he's got other targets.4
Holding the line
Our campaign is working. Respectable companies don't want to be associated with Beck or support his show with their dollars. It's resulting in a major loss of funding for his show, and at the same time, it's making clear that Beck's race-baiting and fear-mongering are far outside the mainstream.
The longer Beck stays isolated, the more of a problem he'll be for Fox, and the harder it will be for him to spread his lies and distortions. If we can keep the pressure on, Fox will have to make a choice: 1) drop Beck because it doesn't make business sense to keep him; or 2) communicate to the world that they're so intent on providing a platform for race-baiting and fear-mongering that they don't care if they lose money (a serious problem for a public company like News Corporation, the owner of Fox).
More than ever, it's time to keep the pressure on. You can help by joining us in thanking the advertisers that have stopped supporting Glenn Beck, and calling on those whose ads are still running on his show to follow suit:
http://colorofchange.org/beck/hold/?id=1744-523806
Thanks and Peace,
-- James, Gabriel, William, Dani and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
September 14th, 2009
Help support our work. ColorOfChange.org is powered by YOU -- your energy and dollars. We take no money from lobbyists or large corporations that don't share our values, and our tiny staff ensures your contributions go a long way. You can contribute here:
https://secure.colorofchange.org/contribute/?id=1744-523806
References
1. Propreitary study conducted by leading media monitoring organization using industry-standard data.
(for press inquiries, contact beckstudy@colorofchange.org.)
2. "White House Official Resigns After G.O.P. Criticism," New York Times, 9-06-09
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/us/politics/07vanjones.html
3. "Beck Strikes Again; Yosi Sergant Reassigned at NEA," Washington Post, 9-10-2009
http://tinyurl.com/oa5oyn
4. @glennbeck on Twitter, 9-03-09
http://twitter.com/glennbeck/status/3749169499
Michele,
Thanks for signing our petition to Censure Rep. Joe Wilson. We'll keep you updated on progress.
If you're on Facebook, please click here to share the petition.
Would you like to join the Twitter conversation on the petition page?
Just include @CongJoeWilson, #CensureWilson, http://bit.ly/1hUrqM in your Twitter message and it will appear. Click here to get started on Twitter with a sample Tweet.
Or spread the word by simply forwarding the below email to your friends.
Thanks for being a bold progressive,
--Adam Green, PCCC co-founder
Tonight, during a speech in which President Obama explained the need for a public option, right-wing Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) played the roll of teabagger and yelled, "You lie!" |
Hi--Tonight, we saw a momentum-shifting speech from President Obama -- and progressives who had the courage to speak up in recent days helped make it happen.
After an emergency, 6-day campaign -- launched as the West Wing was debating what would be in the president's speech -- President Obama did what so many of us hoped he would do, and urged him to do.
Obama embraced the public health insurance option and explained why insurance companies that profit by denying care need competition. To be fair, there were downsides, such as framing a public option with overwhelming 60%-70% support as a left-wing proposal.
But overall, his speech put big momentum in our direction and he used fighting words: promising to "call out" anyone who spreads misinformation to kill reform.
One person immediately deserves to be "called out." Right-wing Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) played the roll of teabagger by yelling "You lie!" at the president. Let's go on offense -- will you sign this petition to Congress?
PETITION: "Enough is enough. On an issue as critical as health care reform, it's time to stop the lies, the misinformation, and the uncivil disruptions. Rep. Joe Wilson went way over the line by yelling 'You lie' during President Obama's speech, and Congress should censure him immediately." Sign here.
It's getting late at night -- but let's see if we can get 20,000 signatures by noon tomorrow. Can you send this email to your friends who watched the speech?
After you sign the petition, you'll have the option of chipping in for an ad targeting Wilson.
Let's send a signal to President Obama that if he is willing to fight and win on the public option, a grassroots movement will be there with him -- including going to bat against crazed teabaggers who want to kill reform.
Can you sign the petition, and pass it on to others? Click here.
Censure could be a real possibility if we go on offense now. Sen. John McCain called Wilson's yelling "totally disrespectful." Wilson later called his own actions "inappropriate and regrettable" but repeated the same misinformation he yelled out at President Obama -- about illegal aliens.
Frankly, an apology is not enough. Apologies weren't enough for Van Jones, the bold progressive who right-wingers forced to resign from the White House this past week for remarks taken out of context. And House Rules of Decorum specifically state that it is not permissible to call the President a "liar" -- let alone yell it.
Can you sign our petition today asking Congress to censure Wilson -- and pass it on?
Thanks for being a fighting progressive!
--Adam Green, Stephanie Taylor, Michael Snook, Andrew Perez, Evan Miller, and the PCCC team
Everyone Let us Sign the petition, and if possible donate . Let's Act Now!
The power of misinformation is profound.
(A Message to all Black people]
There exist a type of deplored warfare that is commonly used by governments against the masses and targeted groups. It is a covert method that prevails from a psychological perspective using manipulative misinformation. Manipulative misinformation is so profound that it may cause an individual to take his own life. Lets us, for example, imagine that a man was being held prisoner within a small room. And that he was forewarned that highly dangerous poisonous gas would be pumped into the room. Even if this gas was replaced by a few harmless puffs of baby powder, the man being totally convinced and expecting the lethal gas would response accordingly to that expectation. He would panic causing his heart rate to race out of control perhaps causing a fatal heart-attack. He might also break his hands or rip his nails off as he struck them against the solid wall trying to escape. The terrified man may also resort to holding his breath-- to prevent from inhaling the gas he believes to be poisonous-- causing himself to pass out, thus falling to floor hitting his head and dying. In this scenario the man is killed by manipulative misinformation and it is a very plausible example. The power of manipulative misinformation is so immensely profound that it can deeply crush one’s spirit a thousand times over in but an instant. It only requires the proper circumstances and setting.
Such circumstances and setting exists within the corporate owned and governmentally controlled media. The media’s ability to manipulate the masses is incredible. A few news reports about a swine flu out break can convince millions of people not to attend work tomorrow and pull their children out of schools even if there was in fact no swine flu at all. The media’s immense ability to manipulate the masses should never be under estimated nor is it ever overstated. In fact the media’s ability to manipulate is so powerfully effective that it can even convince a loving mother to kill her only child.
The effectiveness of the media’s ability to profoundly influence and a control mass population was made obvious as a result of one of the most infamous mistakes in history. It happened on Oct. 30, 1938, when millions of Americans tuned in to a popular radio program that featured a plays directed by, and starring, Orson Welles. The performance that evening was an adaptation of the science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, about a Martian invasion of the earth. But in adapting the book for a radio play, Welles made an important change: under his direction the play was written and performed so it would sound like a news broadcast about an invasion from Mars, a technique that, presumably, was intended to heighten the dramatic effect. News of the panic was conveyed as a via genuine news report. As the audience listened to this simulation of news broadcast, created with voice acting and sound effects, a portion of the audience concluded that it was hearing an actual news account of an invasion from Mars. This quickly generated immense scare. People packed the roads, hid in cellars, loaded guns, fought among themselves, even wrapped their heads in wet towels as protection from Martian poison gas, in an attempt to defend themselves against aliens, oblivious to the fact that they were acting out the role of the panic-stricken public that actually belonged in a radio play. These people listening to the false broadcast were taken in by the totally false accounts and became confused, disarray and distrusting of their neighbors even resulting in immense violence. This example proves more potently than any argument, Dr. Edward Bernays claims of the enormous effectiveness of the media at affecting masses of people.
Most people are unaware of the profound power of misinformation when it is systematically deployed as a psychological weapon against an individual or group. However the white elites are well aware of its immense power. They have researched it thoroughly and have used it repetitively -as a sort of psychosocial weapon-- against individuals and targeted groups. According to researcher Mack White, Psychologist Dr. Hadley Cantril conducted a study of the effects of the broadcast and published his findings in a book, The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic, (1939). This study explored the power of broadcast media, particularly as it relates to the suggestibility of human beings under the influence of fear. Dr. Cantril was affiliated with Princeton University's Radio Research Project, which was funded in 1937 by the Rockefeller Foundation. Also affiliated with the Project was Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) executive Frank Stanton, whose network had broadcast the program. Stanton would later go on to head the news division of CBS, and in time would become president of the network, as well as chairman of the board of the RAND Corporation, the influential think tank which has done groundbreaking research on, among other things, mass brainwashing.
Two years later, with Rockefeller Foundation money, Cantril established the Office of Public Opinion Research (OPOR), also at Princeton. Among the studies conducted by the OPOR was an analysis of the effectiveness of "psycho-political operations" (propaganda, in plain English) of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Then, during World War II, Cantril and Rockefeller money assisted CFR member and CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow in setting up the Princeton Listening Center, the purpose of which was to study Nazi radio propaganda with the object of applying Nazi techniques to OSS propaganda. Out of this project came a new government agency, the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS). The FBIS eventually became the United States Information Agency (USIA), which is the propaganda arm of the National Security Council. Thus, by the end of the 1940s, the basic research had been done and the propaganda apparatus of the national security state had been fully established.
Over time the techniques continued to increase in their sophistication. Since the 1950's, U.S. experimental psychologists and Cognitive scientists have developed ideas about the unconscious mental process that proposes that most of our mental processes happen outside of our awareness suggesting that the ability to control the behavior of people around us subconsciously is now a distinct possibility. Moreover, over the past five decades, human sociobiology has transformed into an evolutionary psychology that has gained science the means and ability to control and, therefore, predict the actions and feelings of individuals or groups merely by the messages conveyed against them. According to this controversial use of psychology, the human mind is the most extraordinary part of the human body, and there seems to be little doubt, wrote biologist David Barash, "that the unconscious is real and that in certain obscure ways the forces of culture are all-powerful in shaping human behavior.
People’s definition of themselves, their definition of other people and the definition of values by which people operate and act towards other are greatly influenced by the media. Perception created by the media leads to non-deliberate thoughtful decision-making or decision below the level of consciousness. It has been called “thinking without thinking”, and it ultimately leads to unconscious similar behaviors.
The U.S. Government has longed used the media’s mass manipulation abilities to steer society towards its objectives. These media manipulation practices are used to promote certain political policies, ideologies and governmental objectives. It also used to intrinsically define targeted groups and or populations. --- Intrinsically, definition; particularly definitions that are developed to harm other people have been described as “radical simplifiers” that position for marginalization or for destruction, those they defined---. It can either involve outright lies, or a distortion of the truth. This latter example is precisely what is being done to African Americans as a means of meeting the U.S. government’s unrelenting objective of maintaining its white racial dominance and control. The U.S. government now secretly uses this same proven method of media manipulation against its Black population through a media deployed psychosocial program of where in which African Americans are perpetually misled and manipulated by way of fraudulent negative media reports and false statistics that are designed to corrupt their sense of unity and lesson pressure for social change in their behalf thus facilitating a national consensual setting for their exploitation and suppression. It is an insidious yet very sophisticated system of control that creates deplorable false misinformation and media reports about its Black population.
Most African Americans are totally unaware of this method of emitting white racism; therefore many will find it too shocking to contemplate. Unlike the blatantly overt system of racism used in the past that resulted in African Americans unifying themselves against it, this modern system of racism is not easily recognized or comprehended by its Black victims. Nevertheless, it is directly intertwined with the extensive challenges negatively impacting Black America today. It is so well disguised that although many of its Black victims may instinctively feel that there is something wrong, they are however unable to sufficiently conceptualize it so that they can unify and defend themselves against it. It is so sophisticated that even the very brightest of African Americans may have little, if any hope of extricating themselves from its detrimental effects.
It is a psychosocial program of where in which African Americans are denigrated within every aspect of American society through reports about their educational failures, crime statistics, and national health statistics. In fact based upon the U.S. Government’s national health statistics and reports concerning the health of Black America, it appears as if the bodies of Black people are literally genetically and physically inferior to the bodies of Whites. However, when examined outside of governmental discretion and control, we see, to the contrary, that Blacks are often America’s greatest athletes. In other words, it is only when statistics are totally in the hands of the White government that the bodies of Blacks appear physically inferior to Whites. Clearly there is a psychosocial manipulative conditioning programs being applied against African Americans. We can no longer ignore the obvious indications that the U.S. government is using its proven method of mass psychological manipulation against us African American. The mounting evidence is too great to be purely coincidental for us not to connect the dots -- it is in fact an exact match. The routine subjugation of African Americans could not occur so effortlessly without psychological warfare. It is too prevalent to be merely dismissed as an oversight or as being the work of a few local governments. It is being deliberately instituted at the national level. Given the preponderance of noted evidence and facts clearly then connecting these dots should be made rather easy. African Americans are being deliberately psychologically mortified by a governmentally media deployed mass manipulation program. This method of deploying white racism is so thorough and proficient that many African Americans will disregard any disclosure of its existence as mere nonsense and preposterously inconceivable. In fact, this form of racism is so proficient at damaging Black self-perception that tragically it has become easier for many Blacks to accept that the problems lies with themselves rather than being a modernized system of institutionalized racism implemented by the ruling white governmental elites.
The media is corporate owned and government controlled. How else is it possible that these so-called independent newspapers and independent television channels remain so succinctly synchronized in their news presentations each and every day? Clearly the free press in America is a myth, for no matter what happens in the world, and no matter what channel you turn to, you hear the identical news reports from network to network -- only the faces reading the reports changes. This is far too much of a coincidence given that the media have separate journalists. Much of the news comes from syndicated news sources and these accounts for the overlapping identical news report and explains how is it that the national media may be used to controllably influence, and therefore socially engineer society. These factors combined with the fact that the media’s fraudulently inaccurate deplorable depiction of African Americans and its produce outcome of causing internalized turmoil and disunity among their group are totally consistent with those applied psychological mind-conditioning programs and systems developed by the federal government makes this conclusion inevitable.
White people do not have to be smarter than Black people to maintain their dominance they merely just have to convince Black people that they’re smarter and this system provides that for them. In that it mortifyingly conditions Blacks to not only accept, but to also prefer white institutions and dominance over their lives.
Franklin Jones aka Thanubian www.DivineBlacktruth.org
How is it that today so many African Americans, perhaps more now than ever before in history, so favorably and adamantly refer to themselves by the derogatory "N" word? How is it that a word that we as a people once fought so adamantly against is now seen as a favorable term of endearment and empowerment among so many of us? Why are so many of our male youths now admiring the deplorable behaviors of thugery and pimping? Moreover, how have Black unity, racial pride, and educational aspiration, once hallmarks of Black identity -especially as so overtly demonstrated during the 1960's- so dramatically declined? How and when did we African Americans become living contradictions of our former selves? Do we continue to accept the easy and convenient answer that we as a people merely “just changed” – therefore our admirable cultural traits all merely disintegrated-- when integration and other subsequent opportunities became available? Are we really to believe that the white race’s unmatched proclivity for racism magically disappeared and that it is only we that are now our own worst enemy? (Our thoughts of contempt has now been turned psychologically inward; it is a common combat strategy to turn a people against themselves)
Within this same breath the question should also be asked of how and when did the white race become the litmus test and standard for all humanity despite their brutally racist history to the contrary of where of which all other races has been either their enemies or their victims?
Many people of African descent-- those possessing the mental fortitude to remain psychologically awaken within a white dominated world that wants them asleep-- have pondered upon these very same profound questions their entire lives. They know that there is something going on. Many often can not fully explain it, but have felt it their entire lives like a splinter in their minds that something is terrible wrong. Rather than partaking within the pathological struggle created by these profound questions this literature will instead reveal the long awaited answer. It is a terrible truth that many Black people have intuitively always known was happening.
These profound questions regarding the present state [and apparent mind set] of Black America is not void of a rational and intelligent explanation. The present state of Black America [as with Blacks else where within a white governed society i.e. the U.K, Canada, etc...] is the result of a governmentally deplored modern method of control. Although today most African Americans do not experience racism the way their parents experienced it, they do, however, still experience White racism. White America's practices of economically exploiting and suppressing its Black population were never actually abandoned, but instead sophisticatedly reincarnated. White America's methods of institutional racism has been secretly modified into a more contemporary and stealthy design.
As a means of maintaining its white dominance and control over its Black population, the U.S. Government now secretly deliberately disseminates false deplorably racially devaluing statistics and propaganda about its Black population that are deliberately designed to adversely manipulate and shape the minds and collective consciousness of its African American population-- corrupting African Americans sense of unity, cohesion, and reason -- and facilitates a consensual national environment of where in which its Black population is more easily divided, exploited and ultimately suppressed. When most people hear the term of psychological manipulation they usually think in terms of the classic "conspiracy theory" that refers to overt mind control such as mind altering drugs with carefully hypnotic programming. However, the real and true dangers are Bernays well proven methods of affecting the unconscious mind by using deception, and psychological manipulation. It is neither magical nor mystical, but a process that involves a set of basic social psychological principles.
This modern system prevails by using misinformation as a tool to spread false beliefs and fears to influence the masses to ensure that its white dominance and control is maintained. The usage of information is rarely considered when discussing method of emitting white racism; however information is the single most important thing that moves the global economy, influences political regimes, and constructs human behavior. Information management, social engineering, and traffic shaping are the evil crafts of the digital age. Information is the single most important thing that moves the world economy, influences political regimes, constructs human behavior and, when put together, defines meaningful thoughts. It is a tool of our trade and a powerful ally, but it can also be used as a weapon of mass destruction.
The constant relentless bombardment with deplorably negative images of themselves that of which African Americans are so inundated with is a very carefully and deliberately designed mass media social manipulation program that subjects African Americans--through a white controlled media --to seeing only the fraudulent worst in themselves. Its unrelenting daily assault on the Black psyche drills the message that Blacks are powerless, of lesser moral, and intelligence and that they need whites to govern over their lives. It totally detaches African Americans from their sense of power and reality. Moreover, it corrupts African Americans’ sense of racial unity and cohesion, mold the character of self-hatred, engender self-doubt, self-loathing, and distrust among their group while insinuating that Blacks admire, respect, and trust only Whites
Unlike the blatantly overt system of racism used in the past that resulted in African Americans unifying themselves against it, this modern system of racism is not easily recognized or comprehended by its Black victims. It is so subtle, pervasive, well-organized, complete, and proficient and yet most African Americans are totally unaware of this method of emitting white racism. In fact most African Americans will find it too shocking to contemplate.
Nevertheless, it is directly intertwined with the extensive challenges negatively impacting Black America today. It is so well disguised that although many of its Black victims may instinctively feel that there is something wrong, they are however unable to sufficiently conceptualize it so that they can unify and defend themselves against it. It is so sophisticated that even the very brightest of African Americans may have little, if any hope of extricating themselves from its detrimental effects.
Unfortunately for Black America, this modern racist system will not be discontinued by the white elites because of the historic and unprecedented presidency of Barrack Obama alone. America’s true rulers, the white elites that maintain their powers and status regardless of who is president, merely intends to use this presidency as a global marketing campaign as a means for restoring America's eroded global image and standing in the world. They will also use it to solidifying their positions of white dominance and control by perpetuating the false hood that America has truly become a fair and equal society thus making all minorities cries for true equality even lesser heard.
Unless the masses of Black people are made aware of this modern racist system and unify themselves against it, the white elites will continue to use it against us --even with one Black president.
From the perspective of the white elites this action against its Black population is deemed necessary as a means of preserving its White dominance and control. If the U.S. government did not treat its Black population in a manner which promoted maintaining its White dominance and control, it would be diametrically opposed to itself--its white preservation and dominance. This hidden scenario has always necessitated the U.S. Government to secretly use every conceivable means and opportunity to suppress the advancement and growth of its Black population; even those suppressive methods that contradict its own stated moral and ethical values. [This statement is affirmed by evidential facts of history’s Jim crow laws; Tuskegee experiments, Federally funded eugenics program targeting Black birth rates; CIA’s involvement in disseminating drugs and high powered weapon into Blacks communities ; Federal enhance sentencing laws that targets Black populations; FBI COINTEL programs that negatively targeted Black enhancement programs and groups.]
Through this sophisticated media deployed psychosocial program African Americans are perpetually misled and manipulated by way of fraudulent negative media reports and false statistics that are designed to corrupt their sense of unity
This psychological manipulation program works by affecting the unconscious mind through deception. It uses the psychology of deceit to adversely affect the recipient group in terms of their behavior. To the detriment of many African Americans, it has been an extremely effective. It has successfully conditioned many African Americans to accept the dominance of Whites and white institutions over their lives by misleading them to believe that they are, themselves, their own worst enemies, therefore engendering an aberration of internalized self contempt that pulverizes Black unity and halts Black upward mobility. It is at the root of both the profound division and self hatred now afflicting so many Black Americans and is at the heart of internalized feelings of superiority that many whites possess.
IT ALSO ENGINEERS CONSENT FOR THE MISTREATMENT OF BLACK PEOPLE
. Not only does this massive governmental psychological manipulation campaign negatively impacts Blacks self perceptions, it also lesson pressure for social change in their behalf thus facilitating a national consensual setting for their easier exploitation and suppression. This media driven psychosocial program conveniently provides a more socially acceptable and covert means of ensures that the masses of African Americans remains the most racially devalued and most economical exploited and suppressed group in America.
The media’s constantly depicted deplorable imagery of Black Americans creates a shift of victimization that changes the root problem of racism in America to be due to Black’s behavior rather than White’s proclivity for racism. Therefore engendering increasingly prejudiced distorted perceptions and acrimonious beliefs about African Americans that are designed to makes the nation and the entire world insensitive to their plight, tranquilizes efforts on their behalf, lessens pressure for social change on their behalf, and makes any serious criticism of White racism almost impossible today. Therefore fostering a national setting of where in which Blacks are more easily exploited and ultimately consensually suppressed. It also creates a false justification for the legal system’s mistreatment of African Americans wherein they are disproportionately incarcerated, given stiffer sentences, and are more likely than other racial groups to be treated brutally, beaten, and fired upon by police officers while they are unarmed. These injustices now goes ignored because the perception has subconsciously become that it’s all now justified. When contempt of Blacks is made to appear to be justifiable, it is the fiercest and most effective type of racism because its witnesses, bystanders, and even world audiences will sit by idly allowing African Americans to be brutally mistreated under the belief that it is justified. This method of control and suppression is based upon the methods of propaganda techniques of renowned psychologist and United States propaganda specialist Dr. Edward Bernays. This is what mass manipulation propaganda specialist Dr. Edward Bernays referred to as “engineering consent”.
The effects of this social program are also manifested in ideas, education, governmental policies, economic stratification, social segregation, housing markets, hiring and promotion practices, psychological issues, and minority access to a variety of social services and opportunity. It also affects attitudes that when enacted through governmental policies, laws, and other legislation actions, serve to ensure that African Americans will not advance. Through the usage of mass psychological manipulation White America’s methods of institutionalized racism has been secretly modified into a more sophisticated and stealthy design. Unfortunately to the detriment of many African Americans this modern system of deploying white racism has been very proficient. Some studies have shown that this social program has engendered increasingly acrimonious beliefs and prejudiced perceptions about and against African Americans that are arguably stronger today than they were after emancipation.
This is not an attempt to shirk our own personal responsibilities as Black people but is instead a truth that needs to be recognized and address if Black people are to be apart of the future. This present stated of Black America is the results of this detrimental social engineering program.
Because this literature exposes the profound dimensions of hidden, conspiratorial racism that secretly still exists at governmental levels in the United States, these are therefore very dangerous areas that the author is exploring. For if this disclosure was to become better known among African Americans, the U.S. Government would most certainly initiate a national campaign of spin control and coverage through the national media and the Internet with experts lined up to dispute its premise. The reason of why is because this article offers the truth for those who will listen for it. The many problems now facing Black America will not be corrected by implementing outdated strategies of foot marches, speeches, or the commemoration of fallen Black martyrs. We can also no longer survive as a race addressing this modern system of racism using nineteen century strategies. Nor will these problems be corrected by the preaching of scriptures from any of our religious texts but instead only by exposing and addressing this modern covert system of control that I refer to as the “Black Matrix”. It is the fiercest and most lethal system of institutionalized racism now facing Black America. A reality of truth must prevail if we Black people are to be a part of the future. We can no longer survive as a race hanging on to given white misinformation used to confuse, divide, exploit and ultimately suppress us as a means of maintaining their white dominance.
We Africans and African descendants throughout the world must educate our selves about what is really going on. This understanding is in fact extremely imperative if Black people are to be a part of the future. In order for Black people to acquire real positive change within the entire global community it is imperative that we understand how white racism has sophisticatedly evolved and then confront it unrelentingly.
The Black Matrix is very real. To see how deep that the rabbit hole really goes visit www.divineblacktruth.org and order your copy of the book The Black Matrix: The modern mental and social suppression of African Americans Under national interest. 2006, 2008.
Today's Daily Word Saturday, August 29, 2009
Create Space
I am open to the good that enriches my life.
If I buy books but never take time to read them, my bookcase will soon be full. But if I read them, I have the pleasure of exploring other worlds, learning about the inspiring lives of real people, and enjoying the imaginary characters found within the pages. Then, as I pass these books along, I make room in my bookcase for new ones.
I also create space in my inner life. Clearing away the clutter in my thoughts and in my schedule, I make space for new ideas and new opportunities.
Do I want a new career or interesting hobby, a friend or companion, a degree or a vocation? I make space for whatever enriches my thoughts, my faith, and my heart.
"You shall eat old grain long stored, and you shall have to clear out the old to make way for the new."--Leviticus 26:10
Renaissance Unity
Saturday, August 29, 2009 – Learning
“An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life.”
~Author Unknown
Today's Affirmation
I am learning something new everyday.
Today's Meditation
Dear God,
Autumn is very near in this part of the world.
All around us, students of every age are preparing to reenter the classroom.
We bless them all and their teachers and schools.
May each of them be inspired to learn how to learn.
Learning is a lifelong endeavor.
Each day holds opportunities to learn and grow.
Thank You for the innate desire to expand in knowledge and consciousness.
Our minds and hearts are open to the Truth.
Amen
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Why I love African Americans
History affirms that African Americans have done more towards the obtainment of equality in the United States than other ethnic group. Where of which other ethnic groups, victimized by white racism, such as Asians, Latin’s, Native Americans etc had painfully accustomed their lives around America’s blatant system of white institutionalized racism African Americans however unified themselves and fought against it. During the 1960’s African Americans fought white institutionalized racism on every front using militant means, non violent civil disobedience methods and through Black lawyers pleading their cases for equality within America’s Supreme Court. The brilliant organization and mobilizations of mass bus boycotts, marches, freedom riders, and sit ins that were peacefully conducted through the unified protest of civil disobedience by African Americans was remarkable and demonstrated an immense degree of Black unity.
These methods of civil disobedience gave the world images of African Americans being violently attacked by Whites and not violently responding to them in return. These images touched the hearts and consciences of others, gaining national and global support that eventually lead to white America abandoning its blatant and legalized forms of Jim Crow racism. The degree of unity and organization demonstrated among African Americans then was extraordinary and arguably remains unrivaled by any other group in the history of America.
Additionally African American contribution towards the advancements in the fields of science and technology during and following reconstruction has also been remarkably astounding. This was made evident by the overabundance of patent applications submitted by African American inventors to the U.S. Patent office. Many of us know that the Wright Brothers invented the airplane but most of us are deliberately eluded of the fact that the motor and the propeller required to fly the airplane were invented by African Americans. It was also an African American that performed the first open heart surgery, made advancements on the light-bulb, invented the method used for blood banks around the world etc… These significant contributions are especially miraculous considering they were done under such racially oppressive conditions and so relatively shortly after slavery. It was even an African American that invented the cell phone; an invention that has impacted the entire world and millions of people.
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What is more, the premise that there exists an innate proclivity for divisiveness among African Americans is also totally inaccurate. This premise is inconsistent with the true history of African Americans. While perhaps difficult to believe, Black unity (Umoja) was historically, the cornerstone of the African American community and a crucial factor in the survival of Black America for more than four-hundred years of White racial oppression. It is credited for the success of the Underground Railroad system that secretly led to the escape of hundreds of African slaves to the North. Black unity and cohesion also contributed to the survival of millions of African Americans not only during slavery, but also during the aftermath of brutal Jim-Crow era lynching and through the financially crippling years of the United States’ great depression era. Black unity was the most significant factor in the success of the 1960's civil right movement.
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This positive narrative of Africans Americans is a factual one but it is also one that is deliberately never heard neither within America’s educational system nor within its media. In fact their common portrayal of African Americans is deploringly contradictive of what has been presented here.
Within the American society African Americans are most often depicted as the race and or group that can’t get it together, being intellectually inferior, more prone to crime, as having health disparities and diseases and as being societal burdens that have contributed very little if anything at all to the American way of life.
Although sadly many Blacks themselves have come to accept these given negative assessments of them, they are however harmfully untrue. Despite what is most often presented in the U.S. media, most crimes are not being committed by Black males and nor are Black women the largest recipients of welfare and affirmative actions. (White women are) Also regardless of the prominent showings of Black athletes that marry white women, most Black men in the United States do love, prefer and most often marries Black women. In addition the down low gay life style is not highest among Black males and nor are Black women more prone to possessing the most abrasive and rudest attitudes among their gender.
Furthermore, the belief that Blacks don’t enjoy reading is also totally fallacious, because Black readership is at its all time highest. For never before have there been more published African American authors, publishers and Black owned book stores. The Johnson publishing company, for example, is one of several African American publishing companies that have made the fortune five hundred list almost exclusively on the backs of millions of Black readership alone. Thirty years ago the popular Jet Magazine was published once a month now it’s published once a week if African American our reading less today how then is this possible?
The more pressing question is why are African Americans being so grossly inaccurately portrayed within the United States media? The monumental answer to this profound question will be answered within this article; however it will be quite difficult for many African Americans to accept because they have been conditioned away from realizing the truth. Also because of its immense degree of sophistication therefore many will find it too shocking and stunning to contemplate. However, it is imperative that all Black people become cognizant of what is really being done to them.
Malcolm X once said (paraphrasing) that the media has the ability to turn villains into heroes and turn victims into villains. He also said (again paraphrasing) that the white controlled media and educational system bamboozles and hoodwinks us. His profound words uttered some forty years ago are precisely what is being done to African Americans today. Moreover it is now the most detrimental, proficient and sophisticated system of racism ever deplored against African Americans.
As a means of maintaining its white dominance and control, the U.S. government now uses a modern covert system of control and suppression of its Black population that uses false disinformation disseminated through the national media that is deliberately designed to confuse, and divide its Black population and to create a consensual environment of where in which Blacks are more easily exploited and ultimately suppressed.
The white controlled media deplorable portrayal of Black people is a
deliberate psychosocial program that is designed to engender self hate, disunity, and confusion among African Americans as a means of maintaining America’s white dominance and control. Not only does it conditions African Americans to accept white dominance over their lives, but also conditions them to prefer it.
This covert revamped system of white racism is so proficient that it directly contributes to the ill self perceptions among millions of African Americans and the myriad problems now adversely affecting Black America. Black people’s images of themselves are being defined to them by white men whom they’ve never met. Powerful elites white men that are secretly still committed to maintaining white dominance and control in the United States and therefore are doing so by feeding Black people those fraudulent stories of themselves that convinces them of white superiority and their own inferiority .
It is these media reports comprised completely by white men, that African Americans can in fact neither confirm nor refute, that tells Black people who and what they are. As a result of this unfair arrangement many millions of African Americans have now come to accept the deplorably inaccurate perceptions of themselves as a race; a view that Black unity, racial pride, and educational aspiration-- collective characteristics that were once hallmarks of Black culture and identity-- all merely disintegrated when integration and other subsequent opportunities became available and that they themselves are totally the blame and now their own worst enemies. The harmfully inaccurate self perceptions among millions of African Americans today are not merely coincidental.
It no random coincident that so many Black people in the U.S. are now saying that they hate Black people. These feelings are the result of a deliberate covert psychosocial mass manipulation is program that is being deplored against America’s Black population as a means for maintaining white dominance and control.
Because African Americans are inundated with fraudulent negatively depictions of themselves they are therefore operating from a false perception of themselves. Although some blacks may experienced negative interactions with their fellow Blacks that make these negative portrayals appear accurate they are however not. Blacks own negative experiences with their fellow blacks merely acts as a confirmation of what is being fraudulently perpetuated. For example, a Black woman who has been hurt by three Black men in her life time may become totally convinced, when such hurtful experiences are constantly support by the media’s negative portrayals of Black men, that all the other 12 million Black men in the U.S. that she hasn’t met are all dogs incapable of love.
The U.S. government has used fake news reports to support its governmental objectives for several decades. Its unrelenting objective of maintaining its white racial dominance and control unrelenting has resulted in it secretly uses this same proven method of media manipulation through fake news reports against its Black population. It is an insidious yet very sophisticated system of control. Deliberate fraudulent statistics, media and news reports about African Americans are disseminated unrelentingly everywhere through news releases in magazine articles, radio, television, press releases, documentaries, and false census reports perpetuating and framing the myth of Whites’ racial, moral, and ethical superiority over its Black population. However, the weapon is not in how the message is carried, but is instead within the messages that it carries and how these messages adversely affect its targeted Black recipient group. Its constant relentless bombardment of deplorably negative imageries of African Americans is a very carefully and deliberately designed psychological conditioning program. It is designed to adversely manipulate and shape the minds and collective consciousness of America’s Black population by subjecting them to seeing only the fraudulent worst in themselves. Its unrelenting daily assault on the Black psyche drills the message that Blacks are powerless, of lesser moral, and intelligence and that they need Whites to govern over their lives. It totally detaches African Americans from their sense of power and reality. Moreover, it corrupts African Americans’ sense of racial unity and cohesion, mold the character of self-hatred, engender self-doubt, self-loathing, and distrust among their group while insinuating that Blacks admire, respect, and trust only Whites. Additionally it conditions America’s Black population to accept the dominance of Whites and white institutions over their lives by misleading them to believe that they are, themselves, their own worst enemies, therefore engendering an aberration of internalized self contempt that pulverizes Black unity and halts Black upward mobility. Its propaganda and manipulations practices divides to conquer and misinforms to exploit and suppress it Black population and it is being deployed in all sectors - government, media, health and welfare, entertainment, and education, etc- nationally and internationally.
It is surmised that this modern method of control was implemented in 1968 in the face of widespread violence that ensued after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King’s brutal assassination led to many demonstrations of unrest and rioting disturbances; that of which were reported in more than 100 cities across the nation. This violence resulted in the loss of lives and property that cost the nation and taxpayers millions of dollars and increasingly placed the peace and stability of the nation in dire jeopardy. America’s brutal racial mistreatment of African Americans had appeared to have reached its boiling point creating much unrest and discord. These factors, combined with the rapidly tarnishing American global image, led the U.S. Government’s agents of White supremacy to quickly reform their techniques of institutionalized racism.
The problem led to the then president, Lyndon B Johnson, ordering that a commission be formed, later known as the Kerner Commission, to investigate and prescribe a cure or recommendations for the problem. The Commission concluded that blatant White racism was the single aggravating factor for the collective problems.
The Kerner report’s findings required that the U.S. Government abandon it’s condoning of open, blatant forms of racism to control and maintain White dominance. This abandoning of dated tactics led to the need for developing an improved method of controlling and suppressing its Black population. Changing times made it necessary for the U.S. government to change its methods to a much more subtle and socially acceptable means of continuing its racial suppression of Blacks and to maintain its White dominance. Clearly, the sophisticated method of psychological warfare met such a need. It was the logical choice, perfect for the changing times. Unlike the blatantly brutal forms of racism used in the past, which Blacks were able to identify easily and therefore unify and form counter strategies, this modern method of racism works from a psychological perspective. This provided the U.S. government a more socially acceptable method of continuing the White racial hierarchy for dominance and control given that it is not as easily recognized. This new method exists in the space between overt racism and racial respect. Its methods include the ability to both influence the national climate and engender personal psychological feelings among Americans that meet the U.S government objective.
The basis of this concept of mind manipulation is that the human being's most critical aspect is the mind and it works by affecting the unconscious mind through deception. Its weapon is the message that it carries and the way that it adversely affects the targeted recipient group in terms of their behavior. Here is a simplified example of how this is being implemented against African Americans. Let us, for example, imagine that a crew of people was aboard their own massive ship and that this ship was being shadowed by another neighboring ship that was constantly broadcasting derogatory messages to the first group. Such messages as that their ship was lesser, smaller, not seaworthy, perhaps slowly sinking or that their crew was incompetent and was planning a mutiny. With time, the group receiving the negative messages, being unable to refute or to confirm these derogatory messages and deficiencies will grow weary and paranoid of the negative messages and will eventually comes to accept these negative assessments of themselves. The perception created by the taunting now unconsciously influences how the taunted group perceives themselves, subsequently causing them to become distrustful of themselves, doubting themselves, hating themselves and, eventually, fighting among themselves. The taunted group may even become so besieged by deep feelings of inadequacy that they may even jump into the sea and attempt to swim towards the taunting ship now believing it to be superior to their own boat even if their own ship was in fact better.
Within a real life setting this mortifying psychological manipulation is precisely what is being done to African Americans through an immense campaign of false derogatory misinformation and false negative media reports, fake news, and statistics that are created by U.S. governmental agencies and then leaked to its collaborators in the news media, which either knowingly or unknowingly carry the stories as their own. These false information about African Americans is then disseminated unrelentingly everywhere; it is deliberately perpetuated through news releases in magazine articles, radio, television, press releases, documentaries, and false census reports perpetuating and framing the myth of Whites’ racial, moral, and ethical superiority over its Black population. However, the weapon is not in how the message is carried, but is instead within the messages that it carries and how these messages affect the targeted recipients.
The constant relentless bombardment with deplorably negative images of themselves that of which African Americans are so inundated with throughout the media is a very carefully and deliberately designed psychological conditioning program. It is designed to subject African Americans to seeing, through a controlled national media, only the worst in themselves-- while insinuating that they admire, respect, and trust only Whites. This unrelenting daily assault on the Black psyche is designed to corrupt African Americans’ sense of racial unity and cohesion, mold the character of self-hatred, and engender self-doubt, self-loathing, and distrust among their group. Many Blacks may even begin to feel that there is something not quite right about their Black humanity. To the detriment of Blacks, this system of applied psychological conditioning has been an extremely effective. It has successfully conditioned many African Americans to accept the dominance of Whites and white institutions over their lives by misleading them to believe that they are, themselves, their own worst enemies, therefore engendering an aberration of internalized self contempt that pulverizes Black unity and halts Black upward mobility.
Moreover, all African Americans have experienced the burden of this psychological warfare, some more severely than others have. It is experienced every time we [Blacks] read a newspaper, watch the evening news, enter a classroom, and read its racially biased textbooks. And while many Black Americans have successfully navigated through the psychology mortifying mine field and have gone on to lead successful, productive lives, but for far too many African Americans this immense devaluation can seem inescapable and tragically, over time, many begin to accept subconsciously and painfully the negative portrayals of themselves. Many also become discouraged by the acceptance that their society is also preconditioned to see the worst in them and that, therefore, if they were ever to gain acceptance, if it is to be won at all, that success would be hard won and likely to manifest negative internalized psychological pain and distress within many African Americans that can take many forms. In fact, this governmental mortifying psychological warfare against African Americans may be the most aggravating, if not core, factor of the national phenomenon of self hatred; loss of educational aspirations; loss of unity, cohesion and racial pride; and fragile psyches of many African Americans today. Moreover, this type of psychological manipulation program has been proven very effective in rapidly destroying a group’s ethical and moral values and cultural norms with regard to violence, brutality, and even murder. All people are products of cultural conditions and their worldviews operate outside of their level of consciousness. Therefore, no group can be preconditioned to see only the worst in themselves and not exhibit some degree of negative psychological impact. This mass manipulation program is In fact, so proficient at damaging the Black self-perception that tragically it has become easier for many Blacks to accept derogatory premises of themselves rather than recognizing this program.
This mass psychological conditioning program also significantly influences society as a whole. Its ultimate goal is to foster a consensual national setting of where in which Blacks are more easily divided, exploited and ultimately suppressed. The media’s constant negative imagery of Black Americans is not only fraudulently inaccurate but is actually being done to engender a shift of victimization that changes the root problem of racism in America to be due to Black’s behavior rather than White’s proclivity for racism. Therefore insinuates that America would be a better society as a whole if African Americans were gone, thus engendering increasingly prejudiced distorted perceptions and acrimonious beliefs about African Americans that are designed to makes the nation and the entire world insensitive to their plight, tranquilizes efforts on their behalf, lessens pressure for social change on their behalf and makes any serious criticism of White racism almost impossible today and attempts discourage miscegenation between Blacks and whites. It also creates a false justification for the legal system’s mistreatment of African Americans. Wherein they are disproportionately incarcerated, given stiffer sentences, and are more likely than other racial groups to be treated brutally, beaten, and fired upon by police officers while they are unarmed. These injustices now goes ignored because the perception has become that it’s all now justified.
When contempt of Blacks is made to appear to be justifiable, it is the most fiercest and effective type of racism because its witnesses, bystanders, and even world audiences will sit by idly allowing African Americans to be brutally mistreated disproportionately incarcerated under the belief that it is justified.] It also affects attitudes that when enacted through governmental policies, laws, and other legislation actions, serve to ensure that African Americans will not advance. Its effects are manifested in ideas, education, governmental policies, economic stratification, social segregation, housing markets, hiring and promotion practices, psychological issues, and minority access to a variety of social services and opportunity. This campaign successfully stripped African Americans of the national and international support that was acquired during the 1960's civil rights struggles. This anti Black governmental campaign of psychological warfare also creates a false justification for the legal system’s mistreatment of African Americans wherein they are disproportionately incarcerated, given stiffer sentences, and are more likely than other racial groups to be treated brutally, beaten, and fired upon by police officers while they are unarmed. Moreover, some studies have shown that this shift of victimization now reflects increasingly acrimonious beliefs and prejudiced perceptions about and against African Americans that are arguably stronger today than they were after emancipation.
The objective of the United States government has always been to maintain its White dominance over its Black population, and clearly, psychological warfare meets this need—because it covertly creates a national climate that allows the government to suppress consensually the advancement of its African American population and to maintain its White dominance and national stability.
The present despairing state of Black America is neither a baffling phenomenon, nor the result of some innate racial deficiency among Blacks, but is rather, in fact, a deliberate design and out come of a very sophisticated, more detrimental and proficient system of racism t hat has been secretly implemented against African Americans--as a means of maintaining America's white dominance and control. In order to recognize it requires that African Americans reexamine some of their most basic beliefs and prior assumptions. It will also require that African Americans first overcome a psychologically ingrained “White is right” preferentiality that has been thoroughly indoctrinated upon the Black psyche. To learn and support the cause order your copy of the book the Black Matrix: the modern suppression of Black People at www.DivineBlacktruth.org
[The essential purpose of defining people through the media is to create two sets of consciousness, in other words, to establish two sets of realities. The first set of realities is to put limitations on those defined and create a demarcation to exclude them and constrain them to accept such definition as providence or inevitability. The second set of realities is to subjugate the conscience of the one who defines, in order to create a disposition that justifies or rationalizes his actions, however contrary to reason they are, for example the mistreatment of others —the people they have defined.
The definition of people by other people has fundamental implications. Definitions such as “race” establish attitudes of racial superiority and inferiority, prejudice and bigotry. These attitudes ultimately evolve into an institutionalized system of discrimination, exclusion, deprivation, and oppression; based on superficial and imposed qualities or characteristics such as skin color, other racial definitions and sentiments associated with race definition—superiority and inferiority complex, prejudice and bigotry. Through the ages, definition has been used as an instrument of domination, exclusion, and oppression.
Such definitions also bring about racial and cultural aggression, all of which are highly destructive to the people so defined. This is particularly true of African Americans, who have experienced extreme cases of the impact of definitions that inspired and established racism and cultural aggression towards them.
Historically, the definition of people, such as race or race definition, constitutes a system of special privileges and benefits. It guarantees psychological, symbolic, and material rewards for those who have successfully defined others as to exclude those they have defined from the benefits of privilege. It also guarantees special privileges to those included, by reason of based on the object of definition, for example skin color, ethnicity, etc. In essence, the purpose of defining people is to establish a system of privilege, designed to exclude or include them.
Definition has been used and is still being used as a servo and strategy to divide, exploit, and destroy people. Such is the color complex associated with dark skinned people, particularly Africans. Increasingly, poor and low wage working “class” of people are subjected to similar treatments, albeit without the destructive power of the presuppositions that inhabit racial definitions. ]
Lie #1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma!!!
The truth: These accusations—of "death panels" and forced euthanasia—are, of course, flatly untrue. As an article from the Associated Press puts it: "No 'death panel' in health care bill."4 What's the real deal? Reform legislation includes a provision, supported by the AARP, to offer senior citizens access to a professional medical counselor who will provide them with information on preparing a living will and other issues facing older Americans.5
Lie #2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan!!!
The truth: With reform, choices will increase, not decrease. Obama's reform plans will create a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options.6 Included in the exchange is the public health insurance option—a nationwide plan with a broad network of providers—that will operate alongside private insurance companies, injecting competition into the market to drive quality up and costs down.7
If you're happy with your coverage and doctors, you can keep them.8 But the new public plan will expand choices to millions of businesses or individuals who choose to opt into it, including many who simply can't afford health care now.
Lie #3: President Obama wants to implement Soviet-style rationing!!!
The truth: Health care reform will expand access to high-quality health insurance, and give individuals, families, and businesses more choices for coverage. Right now, big corporations decide whether to give you coverage, what doctors you get to see, and whether a particular procedure or medicine is covered—that is rationed care. And a big part of reform is to stop that.
Health care reform will do away with some of the most nefarious aspects of this rationing: discrimination for pre-existing conditions, insurers that cancel coverage when you get sick, gender discrimination, and lifetime and yearly limits on coverage.9 And outside of that, as noted above, reform will increase insurance options, not force anyone into a rationed situation.
Lie #4: Obama is secretly plotting to cut senior citizens' Medicare benefits!!!
The truth: Health care reform plans will not reduce Medicare benefits.10 Reform includes savings from Medicare that are unrelated to patient care—in fact, the savings comes from cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.11
Lie #5: Obama's health care plan will bankrupt America!!!
The truth: We need health care reform now in order to prevent bankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals, families, small businesses, and the American economy.
Right now, we spend more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care.12 The average family premium is projected to rise to over $22,000 in the next decade13—and each year, nearly a million people face bankruptcy because of medical expenses.14 Reform, with an affordable, high-quality public option that can spur competition, is necessary to bring down skyrocketing costs. Also, President Obama's reform plans would be fully paid for over 10 years and not add a penny to the deficit.15
We're closer to real health care reform than we've ever been—and the next few weeks will decide whether it happens. We need to make sure the truth about health care reform is spread far and wide to combat right wing lies.
Can you forward this email to your friends today? And remember, also post it on Facebook by clicking here: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51746. And on Twitter, by retweeting: @MoveOn Check out the Top 5 Health Care Lies—and How to Fight Back. http://bit.ly/Bncs5
Thanks for all you do.
–Nita, Kat, Ilya, Michael and the rest of the team
P.S. Want more? Check out this great new White House "Reality Check" website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/ or this excellent piece from Health Care for America Now on some of the most outrageous lies: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51729&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=1
Sources:
1. "More 'Town Halls Gone Wild': Angry Far Right Protesters Disrupt Events With 'Incomprehensible' Yelling," Think Progress, August 4, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51733&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=2
2. "Fight the smears," Health Care for America NOW, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51729&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=3
3. "Palin Paints Picture of 'Obama Death Panel' Giving Thumbs Down to Trig," ABC News, August 7, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51728&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=4
4. "No 'death panel' in health care bill," The Associated Press, August 10, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51747&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=5
5. "Stop Distorting the Truth about End of Life Care," The Huffington Post, July 24, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51730&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=6
6. "Reality Check FAQs," WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 11, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#i1
7. "Why We Need a Public Health-Care Plan," The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51737&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=7
8. "Obama: 'If You Like Your Doctor, You Can Keep Your Doctor,'" The Wall Street Journal, 15, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51736&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=8
9. "Reality Check FAQs," WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#r1
10. "Obama: No reduced Medicare benefits in health care reform," CNN, July 28, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51748&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=9
11. "Reality Check FAQs," WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#s1
12. "Reality Check FAQs," WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#c1
13. "Premiums Run Amok," Center for American Progress, July 24, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51667&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=10
14. "Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies," CNN, June 5, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51735&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=11
15. "Reality Check FAQs," WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#c1
Sources for the Five Lies:
#1: "A euthanasia mandate," The Washington Times, July 29, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51732&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=12
#2: "It's Not An Option," Investor's Business Daily, July 15, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51743&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=13
#3: "Rationing Health Care," The Washington Times, April 21, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51742&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=14
#4: "60 Plus Ad Is Chock Full Of Misinformation," Media Matters for America, August 8, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51734&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=15
#5: "Obama's 'Public' Health Plan Will Bankrupt the Nation," The National Review, May 13, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51744&id=16782-15306616-hUs.5vx&t=16
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Two white police officers were recently exonerated for killing a Black man in Texas, yet the biggest racial story we can talk about all week is how Professor Henry Louis Gates Baited a white officer, who was sent to protect his property, into arresting him.
I believe that while slumming in search of “a Black Experience” lil Skippy Gates; AKA Chicken Little, took advantage of the opportunity to create the results he was seeking.
Meanwhile, we real Black men in the trenches, without “Drivers” who don’t have the luxury retreating to “white world” to engage in discourse at a distance, we’re the ones suffering the brunt of his little contrived experiment.
This incident is all about Gates and his next production. Just like the Black community can’t financially afford his fees to come out and talk to young Black kids, we can ill afford these non productive self indulging antics staged under the guise of helping race relations. Contrary to Gates beliefs, I ‘m sure he isn’t the only affluent Black that these officers have encountered in this community; although he’d like to think so.
I agree, cooler and smarter heads should have prevailed on both side. So much for the credibility of the so called “Black Scholar”
I am a 57 year old Black man who was raised on the Westside of Chicago. I have never been a big fan of police officers or their tactics in dealing with Black men. That said;
I think Henry Louis Gates was as wrong as two left shoes. Another example of how a little bit of education can hurt you. He’s recognized as the most recognizable “Black Scholar in America (whatever that means) yet he couldn’t figure out how to defuse this situation with a high school graduate beat cop.
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The average high school drop out with minimum street smarts could have managed to not get arrested in this situation. As Black men, we’re raised with “Police etiquette”
Which means, if stopped “Sir him down” Cooperate and keep living.”
That’s good advice for anyone encountering a cop doing his job.
Was Gates approached because he was a Black man? Absolutely! He fit the profile of the subject of the call.
I think he took advantage of this situation providing him with a platform to further his high profile agenda on the bully pulpit and possible next production on the ills of racism in America.
The officer had a right to ask him to step out of the house for several reasons. If this had been a home invasion, this would have provided Gates an opportunity to escape if he was being held hostage. Refusing was unnatural and should have raise suspicion. There are basic proceedures for police officers executing their job in situations like this.
Gates said the officer followed him to get his ID. Again, good move. How did he know that Gates wasn’t going to get a gun?
Again an average person of average intelligence could have avoided getting arrested in their own home.
Gates arrogance and flair for the dramatics and love for media attention caused this. He should have thanked the officer for coming out, Identified himself and got on with his evening.
Henry Louis (Skip) Gates did every Black man in America a dis-service as well as the cause against profiling by crying wolf. I’m very uncomfortable with my position because like I said, with my experience as a “Real Black man in Real America” I have no love for the police; still wrong is wrong whoever is wrong. In this case, I think Gates was WRONG. Based on Gates version of the story The cop has nothing to apologize for.
If I was a burglar in the Massachusetts area, I would be all over Gates house today. It’s a good chance that the police would not be in much of a hurry to get there.
PS: The President missed a good chance to stay of this or at least be a little more dipomatic. His buddy Gates played him. Now he says the only people living in "Post racial America" are the four in the White House. What kind of friend is this?
Shame on you Skippy!
TNT
Today's Daily Word Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Centered
I live in harmony with all Creation.
Keeping my life in balance gives me stability through life's twists and turns. So if I'm feeling down, I do something good for someone else, which naturally lifts my spirits.
If I feel lack energy, I exercise, which calls forth power from a reservoir within me. I make and keep regular prayer or meditation appointments, ensuring that I have time alone with God each day.
The serenity I experience brings an inner and outer balance to my life. Connected to the good in me, I am in harmony with the good of all Creation.
Centering myself in God, the source of all life, brings life into perspective.
"Agree with God, and be at peace; in this way good will come to you."--Job 22:21
Renaissance Unity
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 – Expect Good
"While we watch the storm clouds gather and prepare for the storm,
let us never forget that the sun still shines behind those dark clouds,
and may somehow break through before the storm descends.
I see sunshine in the real desire for peace in the hearts of humanity,
even though the human family gropes toward peace blindly,
not knowing the way."
~Peace Pilgrim
Today's Affirmation
I open my mind to receive unexpected good from unexpected sources.
Today's Meditation
Dear God,
Thank You for the gift of faith which sustains me.
I know that all things are in Divine Order.
You are my rock, my strength, my peace and my refuge.
No thing, place, person or circumstance can separate me from You.
May it be for me as You will.
Amen
Today's Daily Word Monday, July 13, 2009
Prosperity
I live an abundant life and claim my good now.
If I want more abundance in my life, I need to ask myself: What kind of prosperity do I seek?
Prosperity is more than money. It is also well-being, loving relationships, and an awareness that I am a blessing in my home, workplace, and community.
All that God provides is available to me, for I am God's beloved child. I trust in God. I accept in mind, heart, and soul that I am worthy of God's abundant good in ever-increasing ways.
Wisdom flows through me as divine ideas that lead me to greater expressions of prosperity. I claim my good now. Blessed with health, love, and a sense of purpose, I live an abundant life.
"In him we live and move and have our being."--Acts 17:28
Renaissance Unity
Monday, July 13, 2009 – Be Love
"The recognition and control of your own body of feeling arid emotion is one of the very first lessons to be learnt, if you would develop spiritual insight, because your feelings, if uncontrolled, are going to cause a storm...You see from this that to protect yourself from adverse and disturbing thoughts, and to control your emotional body, you too must seek the love of God, the love of Christ. You must pray for, and strive to become, this gentle love."
~White Eagle
Today's Affirmation
I surrender my emotions to the gentle power of the Christ within.
Today's Meditation
Holy Spirit,
Emotions are a perplexing thing, dear God.
There seems to be a linkage between my spiritual life and my emotions.
As I move deeper spiritually, I am feeling my feelings in a new way.
Guide me as I experience these strong emotions.
Reveal what is true and real for me.
I choose to be gentle with myself.
I choose to be as loving with myself as I am with other people.
Transform my being into Love.
Thank You.
Amen
Today's Daily Word Saturday, July 11, 2009
Forgive
I forgive myself and others.
If ever I am disheartened by my own missteps or careless words, I renew myself emotionally and spiritually through prayer. Opening to God's grace, I affirm: God loves me unconditionally.
The more loving and gentle I am with myself, the more I am loving and gentle toward others. As I understand myself at a deeper level, I am more compassionate. Each day, I am given countless opportunities to gain wisdom, to share compassion, and to convey acceptance. And I do.
With a fresh and positive outlook, it is easier for me to extend forgiveness to myself and others. I accept God's love and know that I am whole and worthy just as I am.
"Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his appearing is as sure as the dawn."--Hosea 6:3
Renaissance Unity
Saturday, July 11, 2009 – Supply
"Depend upon me. I will provide. This is the Word, eternally spoken from on high; and every awakened soul has learned the message, but the few alone have discerned its real interpretation."
~Christian D. Larson
Today's Affirmation
I depend on God alone for everything.
Today's Meditation
Dear God,
Everything that I am,
Everything I have,
Everything I need,
Everything I am yet to be,
Flows to me from You.
There is nothing and no one more important in my life than my Creator.
In You, I am made whole,
With You, I am reborn.
Through You, I am blessed.
Your will is my will.
Your light in my light.
Thank You God!
Amen

What about the face of Michael we didn't like. Rev. Al Sharpton had it right. Michael Jackson wasn't strange.
Prior to the death of Michael Jackson, you rarely heard any Michael Jackson songs on the radio. One of the albums that deserved more air play was Invincible, released in 2001. My favorite tracks from the album are "Butterflies" written by Marsha Ambrose from Floetry, "Break of Dawn", and "You Rock My World" featuring an intro by Chris Tucker. Kudos to 96.3 WHUR in Washington, DC. They were really the only station that gave those tracks any significant airplay. For the most part Black radio and mainstream media in America abandoned Mike.
Overall, Michael became less popular in this country the last ten years of his life, while he continued to maintain popularity around the world. Americans generally thought he was weird. Some may say because he began whitening his skin, the African American community stopped buying his records and supporting him. Or maybe it was the accusations of child molestation that caused his popularity to suffer. One thing for sure, if you don't get radio airplay or video plays it's hard to get record sales.
Maybe corporate radio followed the dictates of the record companies and simply stopped giving his records spins. At the time of the release of "Invincible", if you recall, Michael accused Sony Records and its president Tommy Mattola of racism, think about that for a second, and said he was a devil, because they did not promote the album. He even called on Rev. Al Sharpton to set up a protest and demonstrations at Sony Records in New York. So I ask, what's a recording artist to do to keep themselves popular in the world of entertainment. You do what you deem as necessary. In recent years, we've heard stories of Michael trying to recapture his American audience. We've heard he was seeking advice from everyone from Prince to T.I.
Many in the U.S. look at Michael Jackson as wacky because of the many plastic surgeries he had and of the skin whitening. More specially, African Americans perceived the changes in his features as self-hatred. In this country, skin color is such a politically and socially charged issue we expect the world to take it as serious as Americans do. But that's simply not the case. Michael took a look outside of the United States of America and began to play to a global audience, a world stage if you will. Not to suggest that a "whiter" apearance was Michael's ultimate plan, but let's be real, it didn't hurt.
After the success of the "Thriller" album, the world was ready for more of Michael Jackson. He was determined to become the greatest entertainer the world had ever seen. While Michael's skin condition worsened, he hid it with dark glasses and sparkling military attire which included his infamous glove. The quirkiness of his personality became more apparent and his inability to maintain a private life disappeared. Michael did suffer from the skin condition vitiligo. He also used make-up, bleaching and chemical treatments to even out the absence of skin color on portions of his body. Besides who in the entertainment industry hasn't had plastic surgery that sometimes has gone wrong. By the time the "Bad" album was released, Michael Jackson was definitely different. He was playing to a world audience now. U.S. record sales were only a small piece of the pie. World wide concerts were on the horizon. Michael, a Black man, who was losing his color, had gone global and we didn't understand. He was just "weird Mike."
We've seen the videos from countless countries in Europe and Asia, where thousands of people were in near hysteria over his mere presence. We sit back in this country, in amazement at the adoration of these fans. But we must realize, Europeans and Asians are not Americans. We may share music, but cultures around the world are unique and different. Michael made himself relevant on a global scale. Michael was a genius. What we saw as strange, the rest of the world embraced.
Case in point is the world's fascination with white skin. One aspect about Michael's life that was seen as controversial to Americans especially people like Bill O'Reilly. We in this country would be horrified by seeing skin bleaching commercials. But the rest of the world, even in parts of Africa, sees this as normal. We would never see or hear these commercials on radio or TV in America. Obviously, "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" still hasn't reached most of the world.
So let's be clear, it was not appearance, it was talent nurtured in the tradition of African American soul music from singers like Jackie Wilson and James Brown and nothing else, that caused Michael's star to soar. Which makes him not only a Black icon, but the quintessential World Superstar.
Michael Jackson was built to entertain. What a sacrifice he made to entertain. A sacrifice that included his childhood. So I don't judge Michael Jackson for the choices he made in his life when compared to the humanitarian contributions he made to this world.
In death, maybe we need to think differently or have another perspective about Michael, as Berry Gordy so eloquently put it at the memorial service on Tuesday; he was more than the King of Pop, he was the greatest entertainer the world has ever known. He was brilliant. For that Michael Jackson paid a price we may never understand.
Joe S. Go to my blog post to see more links and videos for this blog http://www.urbanradionation.com/2009/07/before-radio-record-industry-and.html
Considering the times the Jacksons were raised and how a lot of us were disciplined, I think this is a long over due perspective. The difference is black and white.
I didn't write this article but do concur. It's rather long but worth the read.
Enjoy
TNT
What Does A Brother Have to Do? In Defense of Joe Jackson
By Michael A. Lowery
In the wake of Michael Jackson’s sudden tragic death and the incessant media over-coverage thereafter, several themes have taken root that I for one am tired of hearing. There is the constant questioning of what will happen to his children, and the state of his finances at the time of his death. It is highly questionable whether these matters warrant such attention from the public or a responsible news media. However, the one subject that I am most tired of hearing about is the criticism railed against his father, Joe Jackson. It’s time for a reality check America. Joe Jackson is a hero who should be extolled as such, and not derided so cavalierly as has been done by media over the last week, and even over several decades
We are living in a time when only three of ten African-American children born are born into married two parent homes. Our social landscape is replete with statistics and evidence of the consequence of missing fathers. Social service networks have been established by federal, state, and local governments, as well as by private endowments to address the consequences of fatherless homes. Then there is Joe Jackson, a man born in 1920’s Arkansas, long before Black was beautiful, and before Brown v Board of Education outlawed legal segregation in America, and long before an African-American was assured the right to vote in this nation. At some point like many men, Joe embarked on his own life and love story. He married Katherine, and they had dreams, and over approximately a 25 year period, had nine children, several of whom would become among the most renown in the world in their field of endeavor.
Like so many African-American men born in the same period, Joe at some point decided that his life chances and that of his family would be better served if he moved from the American south to its industrial north. So, he moved his family to Gary, Indiana, not a place for the faint of heart. Joe took care of his wife and children by working as a welder in one of Gary’s steel mills. In other words, he carried around a torch while working in a furnace to sustain his family.
At some point in the mid-1960’s, Joe discovered that his five sons seemed to possess the vestige of what appeared to be real talent, so he worked them to develop it. Soon thereafter, the world saw what he had seen, and the rest as is often said is history, literally. His children made history. Among their achievements, they were the most successful “child” act in the history of American music, and one of them sold the most albums that any single album ever sold, among his other astronomical achievements, including signing the biggest record contract in the history of the music business. Another of his children, the baby girl, became for a time the most successful female recording artist of her time, and eclipsed her brother in signing at the time the largest contract in music history. This doesn’t happen in a vacuum people. Fathers either make a difference or they don’t America. You can’t have both ways. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s when Gary, Indiana was for several years the murder capital of the United States, Joe Jackson’s children, due in large measure to his efforts, had long since left their native city and its peril and were safely ensconced in Santa Barbara and other parts of southern California, with two of them reigning as the top male and female entertainers in the world.
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In case you think that all of the family success happened due purely to the talent of the children, you should recall that in the mid-1970’s, Motown had all but written the Jackson family off, essentially saying that they had reached their peak and had no more left. It was Joe Jackson, who wrestled with one of the legendary lions of show business and the Motown empire, and moved his still growing children to another record label, Columbia/Epic. There, the success continued for the group and of course for Michael individually. If further evidence is needed of dad’s role in the success of even his most successful child, it is found in a legendary story in music industry circles about events that led to the making of “Thriller”. After Michael had sold an astounding eleven million copies of his album “Off The Wall”, it appeared that Epic still hadn’t seen enough and pretty much discounted him. It was Joe, again wrestling with an industry titan, who went to the top executives of the label and advised them that they had violated Michael’s contract by failing to provide label support as required by the contract and threatened to leave the label. Embarrassed and panicked, label executives scurried to find a way to resolve this potentially disastrous situation. The result was an agreement for the largest pre-release marketing budget the label had ever undertaken, and again, the rest is history.
We’ve heard the stories that raise the question of whether Mr. Jackson’s discipline of his children rose to the level of abuse. However, as it has often been said, “the proof of the cook is in the pudding”. It would appear that Joe’s pudding turned out pretty good. Joe Jackson pushed his children to work, in a period when black children were admonished by wise elders that “you have to work twice as hard to get half as far”. In reflecting on their achievements, his children have been cited in media quoting Joe’s lesson on work ethic, “plan your work and work your plan”. Joe Jackson raised his children when neither America or the world cared much about the fate of little African-American (Negro for accuracy sake) children, the time of “spare the rod, spoil the child”, “ a child left to himself bringeth his mother shame”, and “children should be seen and not heard”. But his children were seen and heard by the world. The wine and cheese set of today can now see the world through enlightened 2009 eyes; but, it was a different world then, and in the face of every conceivable institutional obstacle, Joe Jackson created a family that impacted the world.
Long before “Thriller”, Joe Jackson’s children were heroes when they were still children. At a time when it was rare to see African-Americans on television in any capacity, they made countless appearances on the top variety shows of the time, including the king of them all, The Ed Sullivan Show, and perhaps most impressive, they were presented to the world in a cartoon series in the early 1970’s, even before the iconic Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert. There were no Black children on television at the time, as heroes or otherwise; but Joe Jackson’s children were. They were on television commercials selling cereal, and the lunch boxes that America’s children carried to school. Unlike other major child stars, his children were not in trouble, and did not disintegrate after the prime of their careers. Joe was never a stage father. Over the 45 year period where his children have been stars in the public eye, you rarely, if ever saw him on camera, and certainly did not hear from him. Unlike celebrity parents of today, he did not seek to impose his presence in his children’s celebrity, no celebrity tell alls, no public feuds, no reality show. He has comported himself with honor and dignity.
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In the face of all that we have seen in America about missing fathers, this father achieved miracles, and is still in the lives of his children, most of whom are now over 50 years old. Just prior to his death, Michael Jackson met with concert promoters attempting to resolve a dispute that threatened to stop his London comeback shows. Who was at that meeting with him, his father, Joe. After 45 years dwelling in the highest echelons of show business, dad was still by his side.
America, there are no Ward Cleavers, and the quest for this false image has contributed to an array of social dysfunction over many generations looking for this idyllic father figure. Fathers, like all people are imperfect; but when we find one worthy of praise, we should take note and celebrate. As the world mourns the loss of Joe’s son, Michael, there are two African-American sisters playing each other on center court for the championship of the premier Grand Slam event in tennis for the fourth time. Their father has noted that he was motivated by the success of the Jackson children, and like Joe, saw the potential in his children and worked them to develop it to world class talent. Like Joe Jackson, he too is much maligned. But in part because of Joe, his daughters and other Black children, a fellow named Woods (whose father was also ridiculed) comes to mind, are changing the world. Joe, I salute you. You have helped change the world! What else can a brother do?
As I observe the racially motivated insults in the last few days, such as First Lady Michelle Obama (insulted by a SC GOPer) and the President insulted by some government employee forwarding an image of all the Presidents that depict President Obama as a pair of eyes open in a dark room, I wonder. I have written about the matter of this Disney film a couple of years ago, when it was nothing more than a thought. Even wrote a letter to them in hopes that they would get this right, by not giving us what they want us to have, but giving us what we want: A great and positive image of a real princess of color and African descent. To the credit of a couple of the Disney board members, a couple of them asked to be involved in the development of the film but were refused by the two men creating the film. I was discussing my thoghts with my business partner, who has twins, one of whom is a little girl. He'd taken them to the movies where a trailer of The Princess and the Frog was shown. His little girl asked him: Why would the princesshave to turn into a frog? My partner was not at all happy with what he saw either.
I had a chance opportunity to speak with an insider who wanted my take on the upcoming movie. He had been given a clip to check out and expressed concern in its content. As a result, in February 2009 I wrote a followup commentary, which includes the original posting. I have included it here and will simply say this: Is it truly a positive thing for us to have our princess become an animal creature, given the history in this country about how we have been viewed as 3/4 human? Is there a reason why they could not portray the prince as a black young man? I am not willing to accept good as enough, when better was always an option.
DEAR PRINCESSES: SOMETIMES A FROG IS JUST A FROG
I wanted a story that would make my niece smile. A story that she could relate to, a story about what really defines her, a fantastic journey upon which she knew she was a passenger. So I researched and wrote her a story. What gives me absolute joy is that smile I see, I hear every time I read that story to her. On March 16, 2007, I wrote the following on my Blog:
Disney has announced that they are finally going to have a black princess. Hmmm.... Makes perfect marketing sense, given that all money is green and this is yet an untapped market. Problem is...the image of this black princess is not dissimilar to what is done by doll manufacturers. Take an Anglo featured doll and color it brown. Further , there is nothing to relate this image to the history or culture of the African American population, unlike Pocahontas or Mulan, which are at least [very] loosely based on the history of the cultures they represent. I can hear the jokes already: A frog princess; if we kiss her will she turn white? and on and on...
Maybe a bit of bias on my part, since as I promised my niece, for whomI took the time to do research and write a really good story about an African princess, yet I cannot get an audience with the powers within the animation industry to pitch it. I am disappointed. Disney has a great opportunity here. Instead of going the usual route of giving the African American market what you want us to have, instead of what we really want -- which is traditionally what happens -- then get mad if we complain about the way we are represented. I am one who believes that if better is an option, good is not enough.
Today, nearly two years later, I read in the online version of USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2009-02-15-disney-black-princess-tiana_N.htm) that Disney was releasing their line of toys for the Princess and the Frog although the movie is not scheduled to hit the theatres until December 2009. I suspect the Disney corporation wanted to leverage the current interest in the Obama family and all things "tween." I contacted Lisa Skriloff,, president of Multicultural Marketing Resources (http://www.multicultural.com/), who the article quoted as saying: "It's [a black princess doll] very significant," says Lisa Skriloff, president of Multicultural Marketing Resources. "It's like a stamp of approval for one of the most outstanding family (entertainment) companies to say this is important." She was kind enough to respond and honest enough to let me know that she wasn't completely aware of the point of view of the African American market when it comes to this subject. She was gracious enough to invite me to her website and open the door of dialogue.
While there are formidable names associated with this animated feature, with Disney casting Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Lewis and Anika Noni Rose, it still does not measure up to my expectations. I am just not so excited about the end product. I am not a fan of being given what they -- who are empowered to provide big screen imagery -- want you to have versus what has been asked for. I think that Mothers of color will take their daughters to see the film, their daughters will clap in delight to see a darker version of the Disney princess line on the big screen, yet the mother will feel a vague sense of disappointment and not really understand why.
Two years ago, I was hugely disenchanted when the producers of this project chose to create this film without a lot of input from those it is targeted toward.the producers even refused volunteered assistance from two Disney board members. For the record and according to a knowledged source, the Asian market was not thrilled with the Mulan feature film either, as it was not a true depiction of who they are, or even remotely depicts their true historic culture. They saw a part of the film and confirmed my expectation of what this film would turn out to be. Yes, this is fantasy, yes these are commercial films, but when you have limited opportunity to be defined on the big screen, you just want a certain degree of truth woven into the tapestry of the story told. While there were some name, title and image modifications since 2007, it is what it is: a sanitized version of the same story, just in living color and voices that they still believe define us. .
I am a realist; my point if view is not enough to derail the Disney train; they have made it clear that they could care less about what I think. The film will be profitable, will likely carry some degree of controversy, if for no other reason than because controversy sells in this country. Most will decide that good is enough, even when better was an option, because that is how we often do. We accept the mediocre as the best we can get, assuming nothing else will be offered. I am however, still hopeful that I will realize the dream I have for what an animated feature of and for African America will look like. And I smile.