Teeth (Grille) Bling
African American (Black) Opinion.com
A weekly journal and forum for discussion & debate about current issues affecting African American (Black) communities. Providing the most comprehensive links to African-American opinion on the web.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Lynn Swann gets campaign support from Bush
African American Political Pundit says: The headlines read "Lynn Swann, Happy to Be on the President's Team". When a read those headlines I said, "this guy Swann has got to be one real idiot" but I guess that's why he is down by 20 percentage points. You see Lynn Swann is politically stupid enough to think the President has coat tails. Lynn Swann must be placing his head in the dame sand. Has he not read the polls? High gasoline prices, flat wages, the Bush war in Iraq, all have left most Americans pissed off if not anxious.
Enter in-experienced Swann, a Republican, who is facing a 20-point deficit and a huge fundraising gap in his race against incumbent and popular Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell. A recent Poll indicates Swann Gained No Ground on Rendell the 2006 Pennsylvania Governor Poll shows Rendell holding big lead in race for governor.
Wth all the polls showing he is done like a Thanksgiving "turkey"Lynn Swann says, I'm Happy to be on the President's team". Although Bush has Helped Swann Raise Campaign Cash.
Donors paid $10,000 per person or couple for a private reception and photo opportunity with the president, and $650 a person or $1,000 for a couple for a general reception. Swann campaign spokesman Leonardo Alcivar said the event raised about $700,000.
Most of the donors probably know Swann has no chance of winning the election, they just wanted have a photo op with Bush. I guess it will be a swann song come November for Mr. Swann during his concession speech. Hopefully one of Bush's speech writers are preparing now. Candidly, Swann seems like a nice guy, he just should have stayed out of politics and coached football.
He was a better football player than a politican.
Black Leaders Urge Fight Against AIDS et al
Source: acting white
Black Leaders Urge Fight Against AIDS - AP
Why the U.S. Has Not Stemmed HIV - Washington Post
Black America Must Confront AIDS - Washington Post
Julian Bond, the NAACP, and other Black leadership are finally taking to the stage to collect their ‘better late than never’ awards for calling overdue attention to the AIDS epidemic. Sadly, and with the scourge of the disease firmly resident in the Black community, the highest-level Black leaders have finally found their voices.
But it will take more than a few words to move Black clergy and their congregations from the homophobic sermonizing that has been a hallmark and distracting gauntlet, over the past 25 years. Yes, twenty-five years!
Now that AIDS has completely jumped to the heterosexual community, one fear is that Black church leaders will figure out how to partition Black gay men out of their initiatives for battling the disease. This continuing blame-game would only compound the tragedy, and further the spread.Is there hope that Black clergy, across the nation, might experience a level of divine inspiration that will allow them to set aside judgments and tend to the whole ‘flock’?
Perhaps, but homophobia runs deep in the Black community, driving gay men even deeper into their closeted lives.Only timed will reveal if therapies to treat and prevent AIDS, which have gained significant footing, will continue to face their biggest challenge, in part, from the pulpit.
James C. Collier
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
African American (Black) Hair Care - taken over by Koreans?
Check out these videos collected by Black Introspection.com from UTube. This documentary chronicles the 'take over" of the Black Hair industry by the Koreans. Visit the Black Introspection Blog. The publisher of this blog will be writing a piece detailing his opinion about what has happen with the Black Hair indusrty.
Black Hair Documentary Part One I wanted to share ...
Black Hair Documentary Part Two Start with the bot...
Black Hair Documentary Part Three Start with the b...
Black Hair Documentary Part Four Start with the vi...
It's not only hair its nails too.
In Texas, 300 nail salons open "each month," most owned by immigrants.
Tooth Whitening Products - Do they really do that?
Who wants yellow teeth? Nobody. Would you like teeth like Haley or Denzel? Would you like to know which whitening treatment really works? Well here is a great guide to the bewildering array of rinses, pastes, trays and treatments only your dentist can do. Ready for that perfect smile?
‘Don’t Date Him Girl’
Source:TalkLeft.com.
When is a website liable for posting nasty stuff about other people? Take a look at Don’t Date Him Girl, a website that allows women to post trashy stuff about men they think have cheated on them, as a warning to other women. (You can search their site here to see if you are listed.)
Pittsburgh criminal defense attorney Todd Hollis wasn’t amused when he was listed. He sued Tasha Joseph, the website owner, two other women, one of whom he alleges wrote the initial post, another he says wrote a follow-up post, and five unnamed “Does” who posted or commented about him on the site. The complaint is here (pdf). How Appealing has been following the case and posted links to the website owner’s Motion to Dismiss (pdf) and accompanying affidavit (pdf).
Now, according to How Appealing,
Murders are up more than 50 percent this year in suburban New Orleans
Crime down, but murder rate up 70 percent in Jefferson
Murders are up more than 50 percent this year in suburban New Orleans' Jefferson Parish, and the sheriff blames drug dealers who have set up operations here after being driven out of the big city by Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans Police Say Drug Trade Relocated to Suburbs. Thirty-five people had been murdered in the parish as of Tuesday night. Through mid-August of last year, the number was 23. Sheriff Harry Lee released statistics showing that 18 of this year's killings were drug-related, compared with six at this time last year. Speaking of New Orleans Will Spike Lee's Katrina Documentary Do The Right Thing? LEE COMPARES KATRINA TO HIROSHIMA - SPIKE LEE was stunned when he saw New Orleans, Louisiana for the first time after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city, because it looked like nuclear ...
Widening the racial divide
Opportunists distort boy's tragic shooting
blackcommunity.blackvoices.aol.com
Dennis Byrne, a Chicago-area writer and consultant
August 14, 2006
Residents of the Near North Side Cabrini-Green low-income housing project may have a lot to complain about, but not the shooting of a 14-year-old boy who menaced police officers with a gun.
It doesn't matter that the boy was wielding "only" a BB gun that happened to look like the real thing. When you show police officers any kind of weapon, fake or otherwise, you shouldn't be outraged when cops defend themselves. Even if the weapon can "only" fire a projectile at 400 feet a second.
As Mayor Richard Daley said, it was a tragedy that the boy was shot, and we hope for his recovery.
But, it is no reason to storm City Hall and the police station, peacefully or otherwise, with complaints about everything from inadequate housing to police brutality.
But that's what the usual band of opportunists are doing, taking to the streets and media, attempting to drive another wedge between the races. In their protests and warnings, they too easily equate an apparently justified defensive response by police to years of outrageous police torture. A complaint about a single event becomes elevated into blanket statements of condemnation and disgust.
Talk about "disproportionate" responses.
Talk about demagoguery.
For some, the temptation to elevate an individual event into universal statements about white or black people and law enforcement is irresistible.
It's more than intellectually dishonest or ignorant; it jeopardizes the workings of our civil society. It drives the community and police further apart, and makes law enforcement, especially in the neighborhoods that need it most, all the more difficult.
As are the attempts to turn this into another "blame-the-victim" episode.
The boy, we are tutored, is a victim of poverty and racism, of an environment of police brutality, and of a gentry plot to force residents out of Cabrini.
Therefore, we're further tutored, you can ignore his displaying a BB gun that looks identical to a 9mm handgun to police who were investigating an attempted arm robbery just minutes before.
The cycle of poverty and ignorance will never end as long as this dodge is deployed for every upsetting or tragic event.
Funny, while I was researching this latest cause celebre among the racial dividers, I came across something else, something positive, that has received virtually no attention. Responding to community concerns, police in early August announced that they had shut down two open-air drug markets and charged 21 people in separate undercover investigations on the West Side. For the racial dividers, this good news has no substance.
But maybe we can learn something from the racial dividers, when it comes to Salomeja Januska.
They had nothing to say about the 94-year-old woman who was mugged in her old Marquette Park neighborhood she had dared to revisit to purchase some Lithuanian groceries. Outside an old favorite deli, a 30- to 35-year-old man "came out of nowhere," grabbed her purse and then pushed her to the ground, shattering her right arm. She's expected to recover after undergoing surgery at Holy Cross Hospital.
Ironically, the mugger escaped by running down the gangway of her former home, which she had moved from three years ago to escape the growing number of muggings and sexual assaults.
Januska is white. The police said the attacker is black, a fact that didn't make it into many, if any, stories.
Now, if the racial dividers were white, they'd be turning this attack into a universal statement. About how it proves that crime goes up with the appearance of blacks in the neighborhood. About how young black men are preying on old white women. About how blacks are ruining the city. And so forth.
You might hear this in bars and rec rooms. But you didn't hear much, if any, of this in the media, because saying such things is inexcusably racist. Even though these are empirical questions, which may or may not be true.
The point here is an old one: You can openly march on City Hall making the most outrageous claims about how an individual event involving a black "victim" proves the most racist hypotheses. And the press will dutifully report those claims, often sympathetically.
But stretching an individual event, such as a black man's attack on an old white woman, into sweeping generalizations about race is intolerable, never to be publicly uttered.
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Jeffmet
Monday, August 14, 2006
Smell the Racism
Source: Jack and Jill Politics
A lot of people are writing about this Washington Post story and I think there's a good conversation in the comments here. I am willing to bet that Sen. George Allen never thought that anyone would understand his own inside joke. He probably didn't even think his apparently all white audience would get his "Macaca" reference. I love that he talks straight into the camera right at Siddarth, an American citizen born and raised in Virginia. I think the "Macaca" = "Macaque" assessment especially given Allen's Francophone heritage from his mother is probably spot on. Having been called many different variations of higher primate as a kid, I've seen his type before. Guys like him have learned to be smooth and politically correct, saying all the approved phrases like "diversity" and "equal opportunity" while really secretly thinking: "Why is this raghead allowed to follow me around with a camera? Isn't this what homeland security is supposed to take care of???"
I think it's less the "Macaca" jab than the "Welcome to America" language -- that he repeats for effect just before he segues into a discussion about "the war on terrorism". The all-white crowd presumably was supposed to get chills because an uninvited young man whom many of them might think look like the terrorists we're "fighting over there so we don't have to fight them over here" is present with a camera.
Allen misfired. That's what happens when you pander to your audience. You never know who else might hear you out there among those crazy bloggers. So far it looks like most right wing bloggers are steering clear of the story -- but strangely so are many African-American bloggers on the left and the right -- despite the implications for all minority VA residents and anyone impacted by Allen's votes in the Senate on issues important to minorities in the U.S.
Read more>>>
marijuana (Weed) Kills
Source: blackblogdigest.com
Of all the things that prevent black youth from succeeding, nothing does so more than
marijuana. Yet thanks to so-called prophets like Bob Marley and virtually everyone involved in hip hop, weed has become a sacrament of black youth.
But "weed" is just that -- a killer of life. This is fact. No more guessing. The harmful effects of marijuana are thoroughly documented and readily available to anyone wanting to know the truth. Hop heads don't want to know the truth. Hop heads ignore the science and in its place adopt the same suicidal creed Bob Marley promoted all of his life.
But what we now know is that the cancer that ravaged and killed Marley at age 36 was caused by his insane, unrelenting marijuana smoking. His body was rife with tumors. His doctors had never seen anything like it before. The man actually had cancer in his toes. Nobody gets cancer in their toes. Simply put, Marley killed himself. He was a degenerate marijuana addict. He smoked non-stop-- from the moment he woke till the moment he went to bed. The man could not function without a headful of ganja.
He couldn't sleep without a headful of ganja. In fact, it is doubtful that during the last 10 years of his life there was period lasting more than an hour when he wasn't high -- awake or asleep! I remember seeing one of his rare taped interviews. The disastrous effect of decades of ganja smoking was horrifying to behold. His confusion was grotesque. No matter what question the reporter asked his answers were incoherent. the reporter asked him to explain his music and he couldn't. the reporter asked him to explain the rasta way of life, and he couldn't. Then he began getting angry with himself for his grotesque performance.
That's when he began attacking the reporter for being a "tool of the oppressor" only interested in spreading lies.This was the first time I had ever seen a Marley interview. I could not believe what a pathetic human being he was. Never had I seen such vivid evidence of how weed rots the brain and soul.
And this is precisely what the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) says smoking marijuana will do to YOU! No guessing here, people. Smoke marijuana and the THC will rot your brain. Look forward to it.
Also, the fact that alcohol causes liver disease in no way lessens what THC does to the body, so please, Negro, don't even bring that dumb shit up.
Also, according to NIDA smoking the shit doubles or triples the likelihood of developing cancer of the head or neck. Marley died of a cancer tumor in his head. So why do you idiots contiueconsume this poison? Why?
Rastas will tell you that ganja is a "gift from God" that it was placed on the earth to "give humankind enlightenment and love." But Rastas will also tell you that Haile Selassie was a prophet and blacks are descended of the five tribes of Israel. Do you believe that idiocy too or is it you just believe them when they say weed is good for you?
Brothers and sisters, if you don't know about the science or reject the science you are a ignorant fool. Smoke weed and in a little time you will end up a confused, incoherent, cancer-riddled basket-case just like Marley.
Weed kills. And Bob Marley was no hero.
In Honor and Memory of LeRoy Homer
In Honor and Memory of
LeRoy Homer
August 27, 1965 - September 11, 2001
Co-Pilot of United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11th, 2001.
"So long as we live, they too shall live, for they are now a part of us, as we remember them"
For more information on Leroy Homer visit:
suntimes.com
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Where My "BLING" Reparations At
By Terry Lynn Howcott
At "A Thinker's Greenspace" You know, I am very defensive of people's full right of artistic expression and free speech. I see the cable stations slowly whittling away at gullable people's thinking processes - getting them prepared to hate all things having to do with MYSPACE or your space or our space. But, just when you hang up your Civil Liberties defender phone for the evening, you learn MTV has aired a cartoon with Black, sistah' women kneeling on all fours with leashes and collars around their necks - with the caption - "Where My Dogs At." Perhaps worse, there is no progressive media who would express absolute outrage about the incident, and analyze it using a time frame this terrible incident deserves. The Reuters article I have before me reports some "prominent African Americans" (whatever that means) called the episode "degrading." Perhaps the journalist preferred not to print the full weight of what "the prominents" had to say. But at this point, I find no Black commentary on the matter. Proving we are being violently shaken upside down, a representative with MTV whose President and CEO is an alleged Black woman referred to the cartoon as "social satire." Another representative says the segment "is in fact, parody." It's reported that in the cartoon, "Snoop Dogg" uses a rubber gloved hand to clean up after these "Woofies" who have defacated on a "pet shop floor."
Worse still, I guess the cartoon is an offshoot of a previous episode in which "Snoop Dogg" has already made a physical appearance with women wearing neck collars and chains in an episode entitled "Woofie Loves Snoop."
Weak in their analysis, some suggest that this cartoon's 12:30pm Saturday afternoon showing is the sole issue. Televising this during the height of children's hour - is one huge problem, but certainly not the point. A publication entitled "Industry Ears" headed by Black woman "activist" Linda Fager, references the episode as "racially insensitve" and "lacking in context." This is someone who is either mind-altered or anesthetized - or has been provided specific motivations to keep her comments light.
The best response I can find comes from public intellectual Stanley Crouch who is described as a "harsh critic" of the incident. He calls "Snoop Dogg's" and "MTV'S depiction of Black women "an assault." He is closer to accurate. What these people have done is a drive-by shooting of Black women's humanity. They were perfectly comfortable making an all-out assassination attempt against the character of Black women that has the power to affect Black girls to women for years to come. More>>>
A nation at war with itself cannot stand - Abraham Lincoln, June 1858
Murders, robberies and aggravated assaults in the United States are on the increase. FBI Data indicates an overall rise in violent crime for the first time since 2001. Murders rose 4.8 percent, meaning there were more than 16,900 victims in 2005. That would be the most since 1998 and the largest percentage increase in 15 years. A recent Washington Post article notes, America is a Neighborhood of War Zones. The Post article says, "It is a story being repeated up and down the East Coast and across the nation. In Boston, where the homicide rate is soaring, Analicia Perry , a 20-year-old mother, was shot and killed several weeks ago -- while visiting the street shrine marking the site of her brother's death on the same date four years earlier. Last Tuesday, Orlando's homicide count for this year reached 37, surpassing the city's previous annual high of 36 in 1982. And in Washington, D.C., where 14 people were killed in the first 12 days of July, Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey declared a state of emergency".
Murders jumped from 272 to 334 in Houston, a 23 percent spike; from 330 to 377 in Philadelphia, a 14 percent rise; and from 131 to 144 in Las Vegas, a 10 percent increase.
These statistics reflect the nation's complacency in fighting crime here in America. We are spending billions of dollars in Iraq while abandoning effective programs that emphasized prevention, putting more police officers on the street and controlling the spread of guns in urban (mostly black and hispanic) communities.
Here is an interesting stat, last year in Senator Joe Lieberman's state, Hartford, Conn; murders jumped more than 50 percent.
Abraham Lincoln was right, "A nation at war with itself cannot stand".
African American Political Pundit says: I must add, my gut feeling tells me, America will never win a war outside of the U.S. until it puts its own house in order.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
MTV Don't Like Black People
There was a time when MTV didnot allow Black People on it's Network. Now even with an African-American President (Christina Norman), MTV depicts black women being led around on leashes as dogs.
Enter MTV president Christina Norman who is responding to anger within the African American community over the aired cartoon. As reported in EURweb.com MTV2’s half-hour animated series “Where My Dogs At?,” which pokes fun at pop culture and celebrity, aired an episode last month in which a Snoop Dogg character leads two bikini-clad women around on leashes. The women squat down on their hands and knees, scratch themselves and defecate on the floor. At the end of the episode, the Snoop character curbs his women with a rubber glove.
Norman said the July 1 episode was meant to satirize an actual appearance the rapper made, flanked by two women on leashes. Whatever!
African-American Political Pundit says: I don't buy that satire explanation. It's a disgrace that MTV president Christina Norman, an African-American, is not offended by the dehumanizing depiction of Black Women and Black Men. She has really taken leave of her senses in the name of the MTV dollar bill.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Brutal Murder of "Perfect" Kid
16 year-old Chanel Petro-Nixon didn't deserve to die this way.
Friends and family call Chanel Petro-Nixon the "perfect" kid. She got straight A's, went to church every Sunday, and lit up a room with her smile. The question detectives now have is, who would want to see her dead?
On Father's Day of 2006, Chanel left her home in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn to walk down the street to meet a friend and then go to a job interview at Applebees. She wanted to get a summer job -- and she had the interview all lined up. But, she never made it to the restaurant -- or to meet her friend. A few days later, Chanel's strangled body was found in a trash bag, just blocks from her home.
The startling and downright scary part for investigators: no one is telling them anything. Chanel went missing on an extremely busy stretch of road in Brooklyn in broad daylight. Dozens of people were most likely sitting on stoops in front of their homes or shopping across the street at a line of stores. But so far, no witnesses can be found. And it's not for lack of trying. Detectives have put in thousands of hours searching for whoever killed Chanel. But so far, police haven't been able to find a motive for the crime. They haven't even been able to find anyone who disliked Chanel.
"The startling and downright scary part for investigators: no one is telling them anything."
Mystery: Three Days, No Chanel
Chanel Petro-Nixon was found stuffed inside of this garbage bag.
Another puzzling part for detectives: the timeline of this case. Chanel left her home around 6:00 pm on Sunday July 18, 2006. Her body was found on July 22, 2006 around 8:30am. The Medical Examiner puts her time of death at less than 24 hours before she was found. The question: where was she between the time she left her home and the time she was killed?
That's more than 48 hours unaccounted for. Was Chanel kidnapped and taken somewhere and tortured? The torture part is unlikely because when Chanel was found she wasn't sexually assaulted and had no marks on her body. Was she taken somewhere and locked in a room for two days before she was killed? And, where was she strangled?
These are all questions NYPD detectives are struggling to answer. You can't go anywhere in Brooklyn without seeing posters that scream "Somebody Knows Something." But so far, people are silent.
One Man's Crusade
Errol Louis has used his column at the "New York Daily News" to try and find whoever killed Chanel Petro-Nixon.
Errol Louis is a life-long New Yorker who now lives in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn where Chanel's body was found. His father was a cop; he is a columist for the "New York Daily News." This case has hit Errol hard for many reasons. For one, it happened in his neighborhood. But, he's mainly outraged because no one has spoken up and told police anything about what may have happened.
Errol is now using his section in the widely-circulated paper to call people to action. The Daily News has thrown five thousand dollars into a reward fund in this case. That boosts the reward to more than thirty thousand dollars. And, Errol has written more than a half dozen columns urging the community to 'Find Her Killer.'
In one of his columns Louis writes, "We need to find and punish whoever committed this unspeakable crime. I'm pleased to report that the hunt is turning into the story of an awakening by a community and a city that risks becomeing shell-shocked and indifferent to the rising tide of violence in our midst."
In another column Louis writes, "The heavens wept - lightly at first, then in a torrent - as friends, family and neighbors packed a small church in Bushwick, Brooklyn, yesterday to say farewell to Chanel Petro-Nixon. The gruesome death of the 16-year-old honors student, whose strangled body was stuffed in a trash bag and dumped on Kingston Ave. in Crown Heights, has sparked a fire. A growing number of my friends and neighbors are standing up to say: no more. No more looking the other way while drug dealers sell their deadly poison, creating zones of lawlessness where thieves and addicts run wild. No more letting politicians shuffle, spin and double-talk while the body count rises. Above all, no more waiting for somebody else to take action."
Contact: 1-800-crime TV
Police Brutality in Chicago Then and Now
African-American Political Pundit says:
I Just finshed reading two articles about Chicago and wondered if there is any connection between a recent shooting of a 14 year old by police in Chiacgo and another article.
The first article is about a young 14 year old boy and a group 0f 150 residents who marched from Chicago's infamous Cabrinit Green housing to attempt to meet with the mayor. The Chicago Tribune reports that this march was protesting police brutality and was a successful show of unity, organizers said.
Tribune reports that on Thursday after about 150 people rallied at City Hall, though they did not learn more details about the shooting of a 14-year-old boy by police. The group marched one-and-a-half miles from Cabrini-Green to the mayor's office. Since Ellis Woodland was shot Monday near the housing complex, several community members have wanted to know what witnesses told officers--particularly if the boy was surrendering his own weapon when he was shot.
The victims 7th grade teacher, Monique Redeaux, 23, said she was drawn to the march because she believed officials were attacking the character of a soft-spoken pupil who made good grades.
This is a case in which the teen was shot after officers were flagged down by a juvenile near Cabrini-Green at about 5 p.m. Monday, saying two teens had tried to rob him. When officers confronted Woodland, the boy refused orders to stop, instead pulling a gun from his pocket, police said.
Now lets go back 20-30 years, same city, same neighborhoods, same poverty, same police department, same black communities, more black politicans, same Mayor (ok it's a family thing). Different Newpaper articles and different reports on a history of police brutality against Chicago blacks. You get the picture. Here's the headlines, Special prosecutors said today that scores of criminal suspects were routinely tortured by police officers on the South Side in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but that extensive legal research convinced them that there was no way to skirt the statute of limitations preventing prosecution.
My question is are these stories of yesterday and today somehow connected? I guess everything has changed and nothing has changed - Same Brutality. What ever happened to U.S. Justice? Oh yeah, We are fighting wars all around the world. ooops... We don't have time to think about injustice in America.
Read more about Chicago police Torture:
Report on Chicago Police Torture Is Released - New York Times
Prosecutors said today that scores of criminal suspects were tortured by police officers in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
NPR : Chicago Police Torture Deemed Too Old to Act On
Members of the Chicago police routinely tortured suspects, predominantly black men, during the 1970s and '80s, special prosecutors say in a new report ...
Chicago Police Torture Exposed—And Upheld
Chicago Police Torture Exposed—And Upheld ... On July 19, the findings of a four-year investigation into police torture in Chicago were made public. ...
United Press International - NewsTrack - Report finds police ...
Report finds police torture in Chicago. CHICAGO, July 19 (UPI) -- A 4-year investigation by special prosecutors has found a fired Chicago police commander ...
MTV has a Race Problem
The episode was first featured on a July 1 airing of the entertainment network's series "Where My Dogs At?" a half-hour show lampooning real-life celebrities and pop culture as seen through the eyes of two wise-cracking stray dogs--Woofie and Buddy--voiced by comedians Tracy Morgan and Jeffrey Ross, respectively. Because the show airs on Saturday afternoons it has become popular with youth.
Viacom, the cable network's parent company, whose president Christina Norman is African-American, defends the show as social satire, stating that the "Woolfie Loves Snoop" episode was a parody of an MTV Video Awards Snoop Dogg appearance, where he was flanked by two women on leashes. A spokesman for the company stated that the media conglomerate doesn't condone Snoop's actions "and the goal was to take aim at that incident for its insensitivity and outrageousness."
The network has not yet decided if it will ever air the episode again, and also remains uncertain whether the series will return for a second season.
My guess is that Viacom may also soon face criticism for the premiere of VH1’s “Flavor of Love 2,” a reality show where a group of women vie for the love of 1980s rapper Flavor Flav. The episode featured two women fighting and another woman defecating on the floor.
Do you think that MTV2 and its parent company Viacom are handling this situation appropriately?
Will Historically Black Colleges Become Hispanic?
Black Colleges Recruiting More Hispanics
I just finshed reading an article from The Associated Press writer Dorie Turner who writes "faced with stiff competition for their traditional students, historically black colleges are now making a push to recruit Hispanics".
Money talks
I guess money has always talked and Black colleges are no different than historically white colleges when it comes to the dollar bill.
The article goes on te say, Black College that want to shore up enrollment numbers are revising recruitment strategies to include more members of the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority. The campuses are hiring Hispanic recruiters, distributing brochures that feature Hispanic students and establishing special scholarships for Hispanics.
'I tell them 'There's a place for you and a need for Latinos to be present on (historically black) campuses,' said Nelson Santiago, a Puerto Rico native and recruiter for the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., which has about 170 Hispanics out of 11,500 students.
Santiago and recruiters from other schools, including the all-male Morehouse College in Atlanta, are visiting predominantly Hispanic high schools and setting up booths at college fairs to recruit Hispanics. Morehouse sends recruiters to high schools in southern Florida, New York, eastern Texas and Los Angeles _ areas with large Hispanic populations.
'Considering Latinos and African-Americans share a lot of history together that they don't realize, I think it's a good idea,' said John Miranda, the 21-year-old son of Brazilian immigrants who is one of 15 Hispanics enrolled at the 2,800-student Morehouse.
Miranda, of Silver Spring, Md., said he picked Morehouse because he was offered a full scholarship funded by an Atlanta foundation that promotes the education of Hispanics.
Morehouse's goal is for at least 5 percent of its student body to consist of Hispanics within five years. If its current overall enrollment holds steady, the school will need 125 more Hispanic students by 2011 to reach that goal.
In the 1990s, Hispanics surpassed blacks as the nation's largest minority. The number of Hispanics in the United States grew by nearly 60 percent that decade, while the number of blacks only grew by about 15 percent.
I guess times are changing.
Will Historically Black Colleges become Hispanic in the next 10 years?
Comedian Dave Chappelle plans east coast tour
Source: eurweb.com
Comedian Dave Chappelle will launch a month-long East coast tour that will begin tonight in Norfolk, VA and roll through a dozen cities, including Boston, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Toronto and Atlantic City. The actor/comic, who walked away from his Comedy Central sketch series “Chappelle’s Show” last year over concerns about the show’s direction, just completed a sold-out run at San Francisco's Punch Line.
Here’s Chappelle’s August itinerary
August 2006
11 Norfolk, VA Chrysler Hall 12 Richmond, VA Landmark Theatre 13 Pittsburgh, PA Chevrolet Amphitheatre 15 Wallingford, CT Chevrolet Theatre 17 Buffalo, NY Shea’s Perf. Arts Ctr. 18 Detroit, MI Fox Theatre 19 Rosemont, IL Rosemont Theatre 20 Cleveland, OH Tower City Amphitheater 20 Toronto, ON Massey Hall 22 Toronto, ON Massey Hall 23 Boston, MA Agganis Arena 24 Washington, D.C. Warner Theatre 25 Atlantic City, NJ Borgata Hotel/Casino 26 Atlantic City, NJ Borgata Hotel/CasinoPowered by
