Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007

It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.

To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.

Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.

Steve meant so much to us.

We will miss him terribly.

blksista: "The Shame of America"

Labels: black, homeless, racism

Labels: black, sharpton, slavery

Labels: black, racism

HAMPTON, Va., Feb. 11 — At a gathering here Saturday of roughly 10,000 people who came for a conversation concerning the problems confronting blacks, Tom Joyner, the conference co-host, told the audience he had been “ready to be angry” as he took a tour about the Jamestown settlement nearby and thought of slave ships. What he experienced instead, he said, was not anger but something akin to his feelings about mainstream media coverage of blacks: a story certainly not from a black perspective.

“We’ve got to stop going to other people to get what we need,” Mr. Joyner told the predominantly black audience, here for “State of the Black Union,” an annual event, held this year at Hampton University in conjunction with the 400th anniversary celebration of the establishment of the first permanent English colony at Jamestown.

For the past 13 years, Mr. Joyner has been the host of “The Tom Joyner Morning Show,” which is dedicated to offering what he thinks blacks need: an unfiltered conversation about black life and black issues from a black perspective. Far less known outside African-American communities than other radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern, Mr. Joyner has an estimated eight million listeners in a given week in the roughly 120 markets where his show is syndicated, making it the nation’s largest black-oriented radio show.

Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Democrat of Illinois, said that black radio was “probably the most central vehicle for communicating with the masses of African-Americans.” And within that niche, he continued, Mr. Joyner’s show is “the pre-eminent vehicle.”

Unlike Mr. Stern or Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Joyner does not aspire to shock his audience or to hammer home a partisan position. In Mr. Joyner’s town square on the radio five mornings a week (with a recap on Saturdays offering highlights of the week’s shows), the conversation ranges from speculation about the White House to jokes about Whitney Houston. His guest list in the last year has included former President Bill Clinton; the actors Will Smith and Jamie Foxx; Senator Barack Obama of Illinois; the singers Lionel Richie and Aretha Franklin; the comedian Bill Cosby; the scholars Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker; and Bishop T. D. Jakes, the televangelist.

Mr. Joyner’s show blends such interviews with radio staples like news, sweepstakes and comedy. There’s a “cash call contest” and a humorous soap opera called “It’s Your World,” about a fictional, prosperous all-black town. The four-hour show also includes news analysis with Jacque Reid and celebrity news with Jawn Murray. Mr. Joyner’s site, BlackAmericaWeb.com, includes news, surveys and games.

As Martin Luther King’s Birthday approached last month, Mr. Joyner and his crew — which includes Sybil Wilkes, a newscaster, and the comedians J. Anthony Brown, “Ms. Dupre” and Myra J., who delivers tongue-in-cheek tips to single moms — joked on the air that listeners should remember to wish their white colleagues a happy holiday.

Mr. Joyner has had his share of setbacks, of course. He has failed to make a go of it in either Los Angeles or New York, the biggest markets in radio. His comedy-variety television series, “The Tom Joyner Show,” which was syndicated in 2005 in more than 100 markets, including New York, lasted only one year; Mr. Joyner blamed production costs for its demise.

Some critics say Mr. Joyner’s emphasis on his core audience — mostly female, middle-aged and middle-class — has led him to neglect certain issues. “A lot of issues on the younger end don’t get touched,” Paul Porter, a founder of Industry Ears, a research group dedicated to promoting justice in the media, said of Mr. Joyner’s radio show. Mr. Porter said that Mr. Joyner had largely missed the debate over the misogyny and violence found in the lyrics of some rap music. “There are topics he can’t discuss because of the advertisers,” Mr. Porter speculated.

Still, some people believe that Mr. Joyner is poised for greater visibility. Donna Brazile, the Democratic political strategist, is among them. “He is the black version of Rush Limbaugh, but he’s a lot different,” she said, in a telephone interview. “Rush Limbaugh speaks only to conservatives, the true believers. Joyner crosses over all the lines in the black community.”

Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of black popular culture at Duke University and the director of the university’s Institute of Critical U.S. Studies, said: “I think you could make the argument that he’s the most important black man in black America. There are 32 million African-Americans and he reaches about one in four. He’s impacting people in their cultural quarters and in their everyday lives.”

Labels: black, race, radio

Labels: 2008 race, black, obama, politics

Those of us who were born black in the years just after World War II had front-row seats for the collapse of American apartheid. We started out confined to all-black communities and schools at a time when skin color was still destiny. But as segregation gave way, many of us were vaulted out of this sequestered world and into colleges, jobs and walks of life that had been closed to us pretty much since the nation’s founding.

The rush of upward mobility produced the inevitable identity crisis, which led in turn to endless discussions about the meaning of blackness in a world where skin color was beginning to matter less and less.

At their best, these discussions, held in college dorm rooms at night, were probing, serious and heartfelt. At their worst, they turned into lectures by the race police — ’60s-era ideologues who characterized blackness not as a matter of individual interpretation or choice, but as a narrow set of attitudes and experiences that were said to make up the authentic black identity.

Back then, black Americans who came from successful, suburban and upwardly mobile families were regularly dismissed as white or inauthentic. The authentic black experience, it was said at the time, was limited to the hard-core, impoverished upbringing that black people often chose to brag about, even when they had actually grown up with private prep schools in the lap of luxury.

The race police ran rampant in the black community itself, but were rarely heard in the white world. But they have been parading up and down Main Street since Senator Barack Obama of Illinois — the son of a black African father and a white American mother — made clear that he intended to seek the Democratic presidential nomination.

The arguments being raised about Mr. Obama’s blackness — or his lack of blackness — seem positively antique at a time when Americans are moving away from the view of ancestry as a central demographic fact and toward a view that dispenses with those traditional boundaries. Even so, the complaints about Mr. Obama provide an interesting opportunity to examine the passing of the old and the rise of the new.

Labels: 2008 race, black, obama

Just as it would be a relief to arrive at the place in time when the color of the coaches in the Super Bowl matters not one bit, it would be fabulous to reach the day when a male athlete in a team sport doesn't have to worry about the reaction of declaring his homosexuality.

But that day isn't here just yet, as we found out this week now that John Amaechi has become the first former NBA player to publicly say he's gay. The reaction to Amaechi's announcement in advance of his soon-to-be-released autobiography, "Man in the Middle," is all over the place, from appropriate indifference to utterances that border on homophobic to, well, stock ignorance.

NBA Commissioner David Stern, in trying to make plain that a player's sexuality simply isn't important, said: "We have a very diverse league. The question at the NBA is always, 'Have you got game.' That's it, end of inquiry."

While we knew Stern's approach would be enlightened, the diversity of his league is reflected in the diversity of opinion we've been hearing from players throughout the NBA, from the sensible to the idiotic. For instance, the 76ers' Shavlik Randolph, who likes to throw his religious beliefs in everybody's face, is quoted as telling reporters, "As long as you don't bring your gayness on me, I'm fine." And Steven Hunter of the 76ers said: "As long as he don't make any advances toward me, I'm fine with it. As long as he came to play basketball like a man and conducted himself as a good person, I'd be fine with it."

So clearly, not everybody is in line with Stern's thinking, which is why it's so difficult for male athletes in team sports to say they're gay. No, Amaechi isn't the first such athlete to go public. In fact, he's the sixth professional male athlete from one of the four major U.S. team sports to openly discuss his homosexuality.

But they've all been former athletes, not active ones, which speaks to how difficult it is for men in team sports to deal with an issue essentially every other workplace in America deals with continuously. The fact that a great number of heterosexual male athletes actually believe they don't already share locker rooms and showers with gay teammates is laughable.

Labels: black, culture, gays, sports

Many young blacks believe they are treated as third-class citizens in the U.S., ignored by a government that considers them the lowest of the low, researchers said yesterday.

The most comprehensive survey of black youth for years has found a community that sees itself as ravaged by poverty, crime and poor education - and kept down by leaders who represent only white America.

The University of Chicago survey found 48% thought even new immigrants are treated with more respect than blacks are.

Their sense of marginalization is so strong that the overwhelming majority believes the government sidelined the struggle against AIDS because it affected more blacks that whites.

"The most disheartening thing about this is that these are young people who have this feeling of isolation and secondary status," said Cathy Cohen, who led the research.

"What shocked me was the matter-of-fact way that young people, in what's supposed to be the post-civil rights period, just expect that the government will not respond to their needs," she said.

The nationwide survey questioned 1,590 blacks, whites and Hispanics between 15 and 25.

Labels: black, survey

African American conservatives have and continue to be ineffective in reaching the African American electorate for a number of reasons. Foremost, they can be found extoling ideas within the conservative canon concerning personal responsibility, a color blind society and equal opportunity with no regard for the actual realities of the landscape.

Some Black Conservative Talking Heads (BCTHs) such as Armstrong Williams, Larry Elder or Ward Connerly speak with such disdain about a certain segment of the African American populace or the entire African American populace without reference to themselves, without identifying with being African American or doing so tangentially such that the African American electorate defensively, after consideration and even instinctively disregard their positions and dialogue.


Black Conservative Talking Heads (BCTHs) sound like any other conservative. That being said, the African American electorate is heterogeneous and unique which renders the conservative ideology with regard to the African American community, the Pick Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps AddressTM wholly ineffectual and unproductive. When Tucker Carlson disingenuously argues that the Black Caucus is racist for not allowing the inclusion of a white member, he is mimicking the conservative radio talking heads and others employed to continue racist, zenophobic, treasonous, Nancy Pelosi is the antichrist dialogue that is the present staple propping President Uniter at 30%. When BCTHs come along with the same mimicry, it is no wonder that they are not regarded by the African American electorate.

When BCTHs address the ills of the African American community, they do so without addressing relevant causative factors as well as failing to propose solutions that factor in these extant, critical points. We refer to this as the Cosby Rant. It is intrinsic to the African American community as a whole that discussion of some of our poor, underperforming schools in our neighborhoods in terms of giving vouchers so that a few escape these schools instead of addressing the schools inadequacies is not supportive of the community. Any African American can see that affirmative action sometimes benefits affluent African Americans and that financial factors may need to be a new consideration. It is disingenuous to suggest that Black folk won't have a sense of pride because they went to school by affirmative action unless you give that student a 4.0 and not make him go to any classes.

BCTHs reality blindness and refusal to address the particular ills of the African American community furthers the cause of the progressive community by pushing the African American community away from them and toward us. Any conservative that cannot understand the advantage that my high school best friend, Murray, whose grandfather attended Vanderbilt while my Big Daddy didn't finish sixth grade, whose father attended Vanderbilt and got help from his Dad to get a small business loan when my father went to the Air Force to go to college while Murray went to Vanderbilt as a legacy and was employed by a fraternity brother of his father upon exiting college while I exited and sought employment(not to say that I am doing bad, I love who and where I am) does not want to see reality and will remain hopelessly lost. Many BCTHs fall in that category.

Ultimately BCTHs will continue to fail to bring the African American electorate to the Republican Party. The appeal for most of the minute African American conservative electorate is a religious one, values issues of abortion and gay rights. As more and more clergy and religious organizations and national bodies address the message of Jesus Christ and the conservative disregard of the poor of which Jesus championed as well as the selfish, politically motivated and tunnel visioned co-opting of religion by the Right, the "values" appeal will continue to wane in this electorate.

The Democratic Party needs to enlist vibrant, young and savvy African Americans to represent the party and its ideals to bring a new wave of voters to the 2008 election. We need individuals that can "take it to the streets", speak the vernacular and inform the African American youth, underrepresented and disadvantaged that the ideals of the party are the ideals of their families and the communities. We need to communicate that although they may feel a certain powerlessness insofar as a failed or poor educational opportunity (theirs, the system's or both), their failure to recognize their responsibility and poor choices already made and the lack of jobs and opportunities in the immediate and surrounding community, that if they want to begin to make a small difference toward their lives and their futures, register to vote and here is the registration form right here. The Democratic Party shoud employ a street brigade similar to the advance teams used to promote the release of rap albums or concert tours. The youth I engage are eager to skeptically ask a barrage of questions and listen; those who aren't felons and can register to vote are often surprised the process is so simple.

In the near future, the African American scholarly and engaged leadership, brothers like Michael Eric Dyson and Cornel West will have to engage the community on a wide scale as to the co-opting of African American megachurches by the Republican Party by those that receive faith based initiatives, misrepresent the realities of our community and or fail to address the unattended problems. This is not to say that those African American church clergy/leaders are disingenuous solely because they are Republican, receive faith based initiatives or champion the conservative ideal. Simply, there are those who have been co-opted just as there was Republicans asking parishioners to identify fellow church members and turn in church rolls to Republican party workers.

Finally, many refer to BCTHs as Uncle Toms or sellouts, that they have betrayed their community for power, career or financial advancement. I do not engage in such rhetoric finding it counterproductive and leading to the sidetracking of the conversation. Suffice it to say that if you are a member of the African American community and you are not addressing the causation of the ills of my community, then you do not represent my community. Leaders represent the community. They are informed, they walk among us and they reflect the anguish, the helplessness and the hope, the problems and the multitude of possibilities and solutions.

We need plain and honest discussion about Black folk. A caller to the C-Span morning show Washington Journal said "Blacks won't vote for Barack Obama." This wasn't the first time I had heard the idea that some African Americans have a self hate and distrust still embedded from a previous era. These are the conversations that must occur in earnest as we move toward casting the most important vote of my lifetime, the 2008 presidential race (congressional as well). A sneeze in the wrong direction and we will have engaged with Iran as the deluded continue to swill the kool-aid as their king, Vice President Cheney declares in interview after interview the fantasy of our herculean progress and sidesteps what he finds to be minutiae, the Iraq civil war a teensy bit of sectarian violence in the capital.

Every vote counts and it is the duty of African American Democrats to put to rest the idea of the neglect of the African American electorate by the Democratic National Party. In comparison with the neglect by the Republican Party of African Americans, the poor, middle America and everybody else except their corporate amours, we are talking pebbles to planets. The BCTHs are doing their part to insult the community, pitch the same BootstrapTM rhetoric, getting paid to champion the administration a la Armstrong Williams and sit up front at the Republican National Convention. If they keep this up and we do our part, the Democratic nominee may get 100% of the African American electorate votes cast and that electorate may swell in numbers as well.

Labels: black, conservative, wingnuttery

NOT THAT HE'S APPROVING OF STEPIN FETCHIT -- WHY, THAT FELLOW WOULD MAKE AN AWFUL CLERK AT TARGET. Did you catch James Lileks' passionate defense of olde-style Negro servitude?

The Steward was one of those peculiar archetypes of American apartheid – along with the Porter and the Maid. Unlike the domestic servant, though, he contained no sass. Think Uncle Ben: big toothy smile, yassir. Domestic servants, however, were allowed a great deal of sass – listen to the old Great Gildersleeve shows, and you get a perfect picture of the popular idea of this idealized relationship. Gildy is henpecked and outdone by all his domestic associates, but the only person who comes across with any degree of pride or level-headedness is Birdie, the servant, and Gildy’s relationship to her is one of kindness and deference. You could say that’s easy: she didn’t count, so it was easy to be nice to her. But that’s wrong. There was a fundamental decency and mutual affection in their relationship. Yes, yes, idealized depiction of inherent inequalities, etc. As the argument no doubt goes, the shows perpetuated inequality by pretending they really didn’t exist. But it’s instructive to note what the popular culture held out as the ideal. Equality, not subjegation. Birdie was fully integrated into the family, and shared the same values. Nowadays I suspect a sitcom with a Black servant in a middle-class family would milk the clash of cultures, not the similarities. Wanda Sykes would star.

There's something missing here.... something... oh yeah -- the wounded, pre-emptive dismissal of accusations!

I am now bracing for the mail that accuses me of missing the days of Jim Crow. Whatever.

That's how the pro wingnuts do it, folks! Next up: why the passing from the scene of Joe Jitsu harmed our relations with China.

Labels: black, race, wingnuttery