Illiterate African Americans: go back to school!

Forced by political correct to apologize: Mitzi Miller (left). Right is Fantasia

Check out this uplifting story from Kenya:

Money quote:

Kimani Ng’ang’a Maruge, 88, is the oldest man in Kenya to attend primary school. At the time of his enrollment four years ago, the Guinness Book of World Records listed him as being the oldest person in the world to start primary school. A Great Grandfather who have (sic) a great dreams. … .

And now check out the comments when the [educated] editor of America’s Jet magazine,  Mitzi Miller, launched a diatribe against 29-year-old Fantasia Barino, a fairly successful R&B singer who apparently still can’t read or write properly. In a nutshell, the comments, no doubt from other African (black?) Americans, heap contumely on the editor for calling Fantasia’s illiteracy out, even going as far as saying that they will boycott Jet magazine.

Utter rubbish. A woman brought up in America is illiterate and that is Jet Magazine’s editor’s fault?

It’s not as though books in America are always terribly expensive

A friend from another forum argues that  “I agree that it’s time for Fantasia to refine herself and embrace some sort of reconciliation with the challenges of her illiteracy. However,  JET magazine editors should NOT be putting down this woman because this wannabe bourgeoisie editor who had a more fortunate life, in her head thinks she is better than Fantasia.”

To which I say … The Jet magazine editor should say what she pleases about Barino’s illiteracy if America wants to continue calling itself the land of free speech.

Actually, the editor is doing Barino and the entire unread black American corps a service by making illiteracy in America an object of derision. In the richest country in the world, if we are harder on people without book learning, that would be the first step towards stigmatizing illiteracy. It’s not the editor’s fault that Fantasia slipped through the cracks. Yes, it was unkind of Miller to point out her “sista’s” shortcomings but that is life – sometimes it is unkind.

Fantasia has been entertaining us for almost 10 years now, yes? In that time, she has sold albums, acted on Broadway and wrecked someone’s marriage. Can you imagine what we would be saying now had she used some of that time to learn to read and write? Instead, you now read that Barino still relies on her daughter to read stuff. She admits she can’t make head or tail of documents put in front of her – and doesn’t seem intelligent enough to hire someone to decipher them for her.

“The fact that I wasted an hour of my workday writing a press release to address an issue created by a person who cannot even read it is just… (Mitzi Miller on Fantasia)

In sub-Saharan Africa men and women go back to finish 7th grade in their 60s. What excuse does a woman who now has some money in the bank have for not hiring a tutor and learning to read and write?.

Mitzi Miller dear … you live in America so you have to think carefully about your choice of words and style of addressing controversial issues. But you have done Fantasia and all the drop-outs of America a favor by pointing out that no adult American citizen has any excuse for being illiterate in 2013.

Illiterate black America, go back and complete your schooling. Please.

Related articles

• Mitzi Miller: Jet Magazine’s Editor-In-Chief Apologizes For Insulting Fantasia (newsone.com)
• Fantasia Wants An Apology From Jet Magazine, Says America Uses Her As A ‘Crash Dummy’ (crunktastical.net)

Is walking off the pitch the answer to racist chants?

A couple of days ago, AC Milan’s Kevin Prince Boateng picked up the ball and led his side off the field 25 minutes into a friendly match in Italy. He was making a statement against the racist chants that were spewing forth from the stands.

Petulant or principled? Kevin Boateng

He made an astute calculation to walk off at a mere friendly match because of course he can’t hope to keep doing that in league fixtures that have so much money, prestige and team reputation riding on the actions of the players.

That  is why I am puzzled by Boateng’s decision to abandon an entire match on account of just … words. It’s inconceivable that this is the first racial abuse he has heard from the stands, and he must know that it will not  be the last because, of course you cannot muzzle an entire population of 40,000+ fans for 90 minutes.

So, how can he think that walking off the field is the solution? Isn’t that playing into the racists’ hands? If all they have to do to frustrate an entire football match is heckle the players, you can bet the tactic will be used liberally.

Even if Boateng wasn’t paid millions to enjoy himself, which he is, he really ought to be man enough to rise above the frothing from the supporters’ stands. Now, if the fans were hurling missiles, I would be singing a different tune.

Which brings me to my own view about this sort of walk-off:

It’s foolish to think that you are going to fight racial abuse by walking off the pitch. You should stay on and play and show the frothing mouths in the stands that you are bigger than their insults. No one can do away with this sort of conduct by taking the ball and walking off with it. At the professional level these guys play, it is mourning ninny, cry-baby, behavior to walk off the pitch because you have been racially insulted.

Kevin Boateng should get some balls or he should find another profession.

Related articles

• Gennaro Gattuso: Kevin-Prince Boateng racist chants are no worse than when white players are booed (metro.co.uk)
• Boateng walk-off alone will not end racism

The HIV war in black America has been lost!

It’s official. The war  to combat HIV/Aids among men who have sex with men (MSM) in black America is irretrievably lost.

Rod 2.0 summarizes the underlying issues. What stands out, in no particular order, is that:

• black youths, aged 13-19 have totally thrown caution to the wind and are having bareback sex at will
• black MSM  are too reluctant to be tested
• black MSM are too poor to get access to medical care when they find out they are HIV positive (which likely informs why they are reluctant to go for testing)
• black MSM are more likely not to know their HIV status than their white or Latino counterparts
• black gay activist/advocacy groups have not paid enough attention to HIV/Aids in the black community
• mainstream black organizations (such as churches) have largely ignored the gays and, thus, the HIV problem

Of course many will wax lyrical, a la Pollyanna,  about how we must all work together, get empowered,  face up to the problem, unite, sing Kumbaya and so on and so forth. Others still will wax indignant that the problem is … homophobia, implying that once the ‘homophobia’ is tackled, the problem will be brought under control.

All that is wishful thinking of course because most black gay men are not listening and, if they are, they don’t care about the message they are hearing.  We are thus faced with the same conundrum that those fighting to stamp out smoking know only too well; once you tell adults about the risk of smoking, there is practically nothing you can do if they choose to light up.

And so it is with the HIV/Aids prevention message.

Everyone, young and old, knows how HIV is mainly contracted, yet black MSM are continuing to catch it at epidemic rates. That points to willful volition, and there is nothing anyone can do about someone who has the information and still chooses to act in a way that puts him at risk.

The only solution to this runaway epidemic among black MSM is a cure. Not even the preventative Truvada development will help as that is too expensive for most black folks – even if they were willing to take a daily pill for when they may sleep with someone with HIV.

Unless a cure is found, HIV among black MSM will only continue to spread unabated. It’s time to accept that reality and focus on dealing with it.

An unplifting summer story from black America

Here is a feel-good story coming out of Miami.

Juwan Howard and his wife’s 10th marriage anniversary is a timely reminder that we black people can actually be responsible fathers (and mothers), raising our children, paying our taxes and not falling foul of the law by beating up our wives, getting addicted to illegal drugs, pimping, abusing animals or failing to make our child support and/or mortgage  payments.

I am not sure I am allowed to use it but here is one photo from the Howards’ 10th anniversary bash. I shall keep it up until I am asked to pull it down.

The Howards family at their 10th wedding anniversary

Aah!!

Check out The BTF.com  for more of the fabulous pictures.

Happy anniversary.

Related articles

• The Education of Juwan Howard (slamonline.com)

Africa’s square-peg mentality will not fit into a round-hole world 5

Check out this story about a man who spent half a life-time, and almost $2m planning to walk across the Niagara Falls on a tightrope.

You will never see this sort of thing in Africa in my lifetime and here is my two pennies’ worth why this type of adventurism has been, will continue to be alien to the black (African) way of thinking.

We black people are still happily ensconced in the mentality of 300+ years ago; go hunting, kill only what you need for lunch and supper, till the land for subsistence and worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes. As a friend from another discussion forum said when we discussed this, “it is the way we be.”

When the white man, long forced to plan by extreme weather temperatures and lack of raw materials/resources, brought the idea of planning to Africa, it threw us for a loop because, yes, planning is un-African, un-black. Even in the US or UK, you find that planning is a difficult discipline for black people. You can take the black man out of Africa but you can’ take the African-ness out of the black man.

Of course no white person can say this because it is politically incorrect, might even seem racist. But it is the truth.

In our black minds, we are still living a subsistence existence of 300+ years ago. Our mindset sits uncomfortably in a modern world that demands carefully planned, regimented, time-bound, livelihoods with the results always measurable and comparable to past results. Ours is still a mindset of laissez-faire, ostentation and fly whisk waving  ‘big man’ existence and our attempts to intermingle the two is what leads to even educated Africans turning into corrupt, impenetrable, village chiefs in the nature of Robert Mugabe.

So, we drive flashy, expensive, cars through disorganized, dusty, pot-hole-filled capital cities on borrowed or stolen money. We spend millions to build mega-mansions that are white elephants even at the blue-print stage solely because we want to show that we have arrived. We still go around cup in hand to raise money for ridiculously expensive weddings (and now even funerals) – exactly the way we did 300 years ago when weddings were a community affair and we put more stock in impressing the entire village than in being practical.

Planning remains alien to the African mindset which is why we see no problem with Uganda’s Parliament (for instance) repeatedly signing off on supplementary budgets for ‘entertainment’ or  ‘medals’ for State House. Rain-induced landslides killed goodness knows how many in Bududa in 2010 and they have again just killed scores in the same place. Floods, too, are washing away bridges willy-nilly because of shoddy construction in all parts of Uganda. But Uganda has a minister of disaster preparedness whose salary and allowances alone can build three bridges in Nebbi District. Landslides will continue to happen in Eastern Uganda and floods will destroy lives and property as surely as night follows day. ‘That’s how we be.’

For how well Africans plan, look to Ethiopia or Somalia. They are still dying of starvation, 18 years after Bob Geldof’s Live Aid appeal that brought a lot of attention to many great musicians but came up with no long-term food solution for the intended recipients. You would think the Ethiopians would have learned then that their food needs depended on organising themselves, not on outsiders. But no, the horn of Africa is still grappling with the same food shortages it did in 1984.

The entire concept of planning is alien to our psyche which is why we have to get on planes, made by white people, to go away and study it. Then when we come back, and talk about it, we are drowned out by the voices that proclaim that all those are foreign concepts. Look at so and so … his business has run for 5 years, he drives a Mercedes, his children speak only English and he lives in a massive house on top of the hill. Yet he has never lived abroad.

We are impressed by 5-year achievements and any kind of tangible wealth even if obviously ill-gotten. We wax lyrical about investing in knowledge but do hardly anything practical about it because education is not showy, doesn’t sit us with smart suits in fancy hotels or cruise us around in gas-guzzling shiny Prados that impress onlookers.

The other element, of course, is that we black people are quite simply not curious in a way that looks beyond the here and now. This is, again, a throwback to our day-to-day existence of 300+ years ago. Back then, we found out how to make fire and did nothing more with it beside making muchomo (barbeque meat) and sitting around it to tell stories. We weren’t interested in anything else fire could do if it didn’t meet our immediate basic needs.

Today, we will shun a water tap brought to our door-step by modern living and continue walking to the well because that is a social event that allows us to catch up on the village gossip. And, of course, our relatives, with acres of land they could cultivate for money, prefer instead to come begging for their children’s school fees – in the name of family solidarity.

Most worrisome for us Africans in Africa, in my view, the cost of modern living has killed our work ethic, replacing it with an “I want it now” mentality that should ultimately make many African countries totally ungovernable  in our lifetimes due to the dishonesty and lack of probity that kind of attitude engenders. Television is raising children who immediately want “things” that have taken their parents 25 years to accumulate. After all they have seen 50 Cent ‘getting rich or die trying’ and Justin Bieber become a multi-millionaire, literally off no talent whatsoever.

So, our young people are increasingly not interested in studying or working hard for an honest living – they are looking for short cuts. Yet, there are really no short cuts in life unless you turn into a crook. So, we are raising a generation that thinks they are entitled to everything immediately because they see it streamed on their laptops and their latest smart phone.

Parents are giving in. How could they not when they are too busy trying to accumulate the ‘things’ they now need to keep the peace with their extremely demanding offspring?  Our children, with an entitlement gun to their parents’ heads, are growing up to be selfish, egotistic, introverted but extremely tech savvy brats before our very eyes. The ICT age should thus fire the levels of fraud for short-term gain in Africa into galactic realms, again in our lifetimes.

In the meantime, the West continues to fine-tune the iPods, iPads, Galaxy tabs that so mesmerize us because the geeks that design the programs that run them attend schools funded by alumni endowments that were set up 100 years earlier. Those geeks also plough the profits back into the universities and research centers that engender yet more creativity.

White people, for the most part, seem to understand that you are carted out in a small box,  however much money you make in life, so they make plans for their fortunes to do good that lasts beyond them and their children’s children. We black Africans simply build large mansions in the middle of nowhere and bask in the adulation of the envious villagers  who invite us to their whole-day fetes (in the hope that we will give generously as used to happen  300 years ago) and then let us make rambling 2-hour speeches.

Just look around you and see if you can name the last really seriously rich Ugandan (African) who ever set up a meaningful endowment for his or her alma mater. Yet the ritzy stuff in some of our living rooms could fund a mini-research center or kit out an entire sound recording studio at our former schools.

We are going to die and leave the mansions and all the stuff  in them here; idle, obsolete because the next best gadget will arrive on the market from Research in Motion, HTC and Apple before our bodies are lowered into our respective graves.

But the truth is that asking Africans to be organized, or to rise from being rich to being wealthy, is akin to fitting a square peg into a round hole. Any development initiatives thus need to factor in the need to accept that it’s impossible to achieve a Western standard of living while the African mindset is firmly rooted in the 17th Century.

Indeed there might not be anything wrong with accepting that this “is the way we be.”

Perhaps this is what the South Koreans meant when they encouraged tourists to come and see our “primitive energy.” Hm …

GLAAD leadership under fire for being ‘too white’ 2

Can an all white jury pass objective judgment against a black man or woman? Can an all-male panel speak authoritatively for or against female contraception and/or right to abortion? Can a man ably represent the International Federation of Women Lawyers? Can an all-male parliament or cabinet (Saudi Arabia’s refers) advance the interest of both men and women in any country?

In other words, in order for fairness, justice, objectivity,  and empathy to not only be established, but to be seen to be established, must any panel of leaders or opinion formers reflect every hue and facet of those it seeks to represent?

Most, if not all, of the GLAAD executives are white men and women

That is the issue that has pitched Gays & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) against gay bodies that should logically be its natural allies.  Tthe anti defamation body that seeks to (some might say lives to) ferret out anything negative said about LGBTI issues and expose it, with the intention of ensuring that gay and lesbians are fairly represented in the media and out in the world where we homosexual men and women walk.

But African Americans, even gay African Americans, are not buying it as this recent thinly veiled sarcastic blog publication indicates.

When a black journalist called Roland Martin made what was construed to be a homophobic joke (yours truly called GLAAD out on their response to it, but for a different reason), black gay spokesmen lacerated GLAAD on the grounds that, as an all-white-led organization, they had no moral authority to call out a black man, even one who might have made a homophobic joke because “GLAAD is a white organization.” The article in Dsicreet City is still making the same point a couple of months later.

As it turned out, GLAAD forced CNN to suspend Roland Martin for a couple of days, Martin groveled to GLAAD and got his job back, but he will have been chastized by the entire experience. You will not hear or see him making gay jokes soon so one can argue that GLAAD successfully muzzled him.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) amplifies the voice of the LGBT community by empowering real people to share their stories, holding the media accountable for the words and images they present, and helping grassroots organizations communicate effectively. By ensuring that the stories of LGBT people are heard through the media, GLAAD promotes understanding, increases acceptance, and advances equality. GLAAD’s Mission Statement

Now, that would rate as a success given GLAAD’s avowed mission. But, no, the black gay community is most concerned that an all white jury (if you like) basically put upon a black man and brought him to his knees. The implication is that had there been some black gay representation on the GLAAD leadership, the criticism would have been more palatable.  Note the implicit suggestion that a black man was the victim of a white ambush, as well as the clear suggestion that, for not having a black face in its ranks, GLAAD was not qualified to remark on comments made by a black man.

Are GLAAD doing a good job? I have no idea since I don’t know much about the organization. I sense, though, that they exist to find “haters,” that they, to quote Maslow,  “have a hammer, [and so] every problem looks like a nail.” That has its own perils that are beside the point at this time. That said, they have made their mission public and can thus be judged on whether they are delivering or not by any interested parties.

Should they add black and Latino faces to their ranks in order to be representative of the entire LGBTI? What might the transvestites say then? Add one of their own, too? The list would go on and on, wouldn’t it?

In another era I would have argued … no … and I would have gone on and on about looking for the best people who can do the job. In 2012 where perceptions so often are the be all end all, it seems to me it makes sense to be more inclusive  – or at least show that you have attempted to recruit the best people from the spectrum of those you represent and have just failed. I also don’t know if GLAAD has done this.

The short of it is that if a cross-section of the people you claim to be representing show their resentment on the grounds that you lack the qualifications to represent their views, it makes sense to sit up and listen – actively.

Related articles

• Roland Martin Meets With GLAAD (huffingtonpost.com)
• Update: GLAAD claims CNN should fire Roland Martin over ‘anti-gay’ remarks (examiner.com)
• GLAAD Elects Herndon Graddick President (muhsadam.wordpress.com)

Terrell Owens needs a real job – badly 4

Not a lot to smile about anymore: deadbeat sperm donor Terrell Owens

If only looks and an impressive physique were enough to make anyone a responsible person, Terrell Owens (38) would be holding the torch for “best dad ever.”

Sadly, being a father, let alone a good one,  requires being around for your children, paying their way, respecting their mother (Owens slept around like a dog with four of them that we know about), and saving money to ensure that you are someone the children can look up to when the looks (and, in Owens’ case, the athletic prowess from which he made his living) are gone. No one seems to have told Owens any of this when it really mattered – before he impregnated four women.

Terrell Owens went on television and tried to show the world … what did he try to show the world? That he is sorry for making $80m and spending it on everything else but his four children by four different mothers? That he is sorry that the whole world knows that he made $80m over an illustrious football career and frittered it all away? That he … that he what?

Pull yourself together T.O. The tears won’t provide love to the children

It doesn’t matter.

Owens appeared on television yesterday with Dr. Phil and three of the four women whose children he has let down. He deserves respect for that since he showed at least that he is man enough to confront his demons. Unfortunately, he still has four children aged 12, 7 (two of them) and 5 to look after. And the $80m is no longer there to help him put right the wrong he has, thus far, done by them.

Reality show didn’t work either. Now Owens needs a real job

Owens seems to want to try to blame his own irresponsibility on a father he didn’t know till he was about 12 despite that man living across the street. Yes, that is sad, but it is in the past, I fear. You could have thought about that and bought a condom (no, picked up free condoms from anywhere since, as a celebrity you would have had access to freebies by the ton) before you took down your pants four times to plant your seed in those women.

Okay, perhaps the first baby was a mistake. Let’s imagine that you didn’t know at the time that when you got an erection and planted your penis in a woman, she could have your baby nine months later. What of the other three, two of them brought into the world in one year and all conceived in the dying shadows of your career?

Clearly Terrell Owens needs a proper job to support his children. Stay at home dad perhaps?

Related articles

• Terrell Owens headed to iPhone nudesville (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Athletes with the most children by the most women
• No one believes Terrell Owens’ media conspiracy theory except T.O. (cbssports.com)
• Terrell Owens Was on Dr. Phil Today [Video] (cosbysweaters.com)
• ‘Deadbeat dad’ Terrell Owens is broke and on Dr. Phil (twitchy.com)
• You can take the man out of the gutter …
• The crisis of the black male athlete. Does anybody care?

Is homophobia the main reason for runaway HIV infections in Black America? 2

Take the trouble to read this report by Charles Stevens on the White House conference that was convened to look at the issues behind the runaway spread of HIV among young black gay men.

While it is gratifying to see that this matter is gaining such prominence, and Stevens makes the same observation, some of the conclusions reached leave one wondering how a set of grown up experts can be so cowardly in the face of their own overwhelming evidence.

Take this conclusion which was reached at the Morehouse School of Medicine conference:

Homophobia must frame how we think about the devastating impact of HIV. This was a key insight to the entire conference. Anti-gay stigma, HIV stigma, and environments that dehumanize and demean sexual minorities and gender-nonconforming people create a perfect storm for HIV and other public health disparities. Young, black MSM and transgender people are vulnerable in a variety of ways, including to physical and psychic homophobic violence,  familial and community rejection, discrimination, and a litany of other kinds of social stigma. These vulnerabilities fuel health disparities, particularly with regard to HIV. As Dr. Patrick Sullivan, an Emory University professor and researcher, stated, “homophobia is a public health hazard.”  In this sense, the scientific and social, negative health outcomes and human rights and, by extension, sexual rights, are not separate spheres but are intricately connected within a wider spectrum of issues we must work on together, and not separately.

While homophobia plays a role (mostly in Africa where social and political regimes are still at a loss about how to deal with the gay question itself), it is a stretch to blame homophobia for the rampant spread of HIV in the black American population in 2012 if you set aside the cases of rape, sexual violence, down low conduct and other practices that may be against the will of the participants.

These young black men in urban America who constitute the highest numbers of new HIV cases are not ill-educated or put upon. They have a multitude of choices: free condoms, non-penetrative sex, abstinence, masturbation all of which they know about. Now, if we were talking about sub-Saharan Africa, one might understand the argument about lack of information but that kind of argument is silly in America today.

In Washington, DC (for instance) where the spread of HIV in the black gay community seems totally out of control, being gay is the new black. Yes, to be gay in DC is so old hat that people are more surprised when anyone gets away with looking at a gay man or woman in a way that might be construed as remotely homophobic.

Condoms can be picked up free of charge in any gay bar in DC, including predominantly black gay bars that our boys frequent. Yes, the family, pastor or community might be homophobic but how does homophobia prevent these young men from picking up free condoms as they  leave The Fireplace or the Bachelors’ Mill (DC) and, more pertinently, using them? ? At what point during the sexual encounter does homophobia rear its ugly head to make bareback sex the preferred form of sexual gratification when condoms and lube were available where the hook-up happened? It would be interesting to hear the answer to that.

Homophobia is a convenient scapegoat because these “experts” are totally frightened of admitting that the HIV battle in the black community is lost largely due to personal volition.The “experts” are afraid of saying this openly because of the obvious racial hornets’ nest it would stir up. If homophobia were the main culprit, there is more homophobia in Idaho than in Washington, DC or Atlanta, Georgia which is where every gay man runs to find himself. But the incidences of HIV infection in Idaho are far below those in the respective cities mentioned. Why is that?

The truth lies in a combination of factors of course, but the chief ones must be the following:

We black people are traditionally very secretive about sex, sexuality and sexual conduct, much more so than white folks who are not as prudish about sexual matters. So, even when we know the risks, we throw caution to the wind in greater numbers than our white counterparts because the of the level of furtiveness in how we conduct ourselves sexually. It is not for nothing that the term Down Low (DL) was coined with black men in mind.

Overbearing Catholicism explains why the spread among the Latino gay population is on a firm upward trajectory, too; religion makes Latino young men hide from uncomfortable truths about the need for safe sex because they will not want to talk condoms when they are still grappling with the significance of having homosexual sex. But the condoms are available in shopping mall dispensers (which of course don’t ask you who you are going to have sex with), straight and gay bars as well as in specialized centers all over major cities. Yet the spread of HIV/Aids is greatest in these same cities where, rather ironically, we are always told, one can be anonymous and be oneself.

Secondly the battle to stem the tide of new HIV cases getting out of control has been lost because HIV/Aids no longer carries the stigma it did 20-25 years ago. In this article by The Atlantic.com, they grasped the nettle and touched on this thorny subject.  Black boys are not picking up the condoms provided because they don’t give a damn about HIV/Aids anymore. The conclusion from the ‘experts’ interviewed’ was/is that there is no other solution to check the spread of HIV short of finding a cure.

Their conclusion makes sense.

Young people didn’t witness the devastation that HIV/Aids wreaked upon the world in the late 80s and early 90s so they don’t really relate to the HIV/Aids is a scourge message. Well, one might argue, how about white young men who are not catching HIV in the same numbers?

My guess is that white folks have an inbuilt advantage over blacks and Latinos because they are not as prudish about sex and sexuality. So, they tackle these subjects openly from when their children can talk, remove the stigma about sex and create an atmosphere where STDs and how to avoid them are dinner topics. HIV/Aids and its impact is thus all too familiar with white people who, let’s face it, are more circumspect about how illnesses like that might affect their long-term outlook, economic prospects and cost of health care. Black people on the other hand shun such discussions (homophobia can rightly be blamed here) and their children find out through trial and error even when there are parents to guide them through the landmines of unprotected sex.

That means, in my mind, that the spread of HIV/Aids is out of control in the black and latino populations due to racial reasons. Homophobia has a small role to play, especially when and how we discuss sex and sexuality, but our racial attitudes towards matters sexual are more to blame than the idea that haters are preventing us from picking up a condom and putting it on when we have sex with whoever. That is manifestly not true in the United States where information, condoms, testing and medication are as accessible to gay men as they are to heterosexuals especially in urban areas where the spread of HIV is highest.

Yes, I am suggesting that even when we black people know how HIV spreads, we are hamstrung by our own laissez-faire, live and let live, attitudes towards sex which makes us throw caution to the wind far too quickly, which makes us act in sexually reckless ways despite knowing what the consequences might be, which makes us go for testing far too late, and which renders us mute even when the truth about the rate at which we are catching chronic but preventable diseases is staring us in the face. We are great at talking about HIV/Aids (there goes the argument that we don’t have the information) but are terrible at following up on our talk because … that is the way we are about matters sexual.

Homophobia is still the number one culprit in the spread of HIV/Aids in the gay populations of  sub-Saharan Africa – see this report from Uganda’s New Vision which says that 18,000 men who have sex with men were ignored in the provision of HIV/Aids services in 2011. Twenty years hence, arguing that homophobia is also the culprit in the United States is plain, simple refusal to face the uncomfortable truth.

African-Americans are disproportionately catching HIV because of the same reasons African-Americans are having unplanned babies at such a high rate despite the information overload: young black people are ignoring the ‘safe sex’ messages and carrying on regardless.

That is why finding a cure is the only solution to the HIV/Aids crisis in America. The message is well-known but not many people in the black population are paying it, will pay it any attention – unless, we again begin to see our friends, neighbors and lovers popping off like fire flies in agonizing deaths. In other words, the return of stigma (fear) towards HIV/Aids might halt its spread. Short of that, a cure is the only solution.

Related articles

• Money fights AIDS where homosexuality is illegal (76crimes.com)
• African Americans are still most severely impacted by HIV/AIDS (gangsgoonsandgunz.rahrahrecords.com)
• Bareback vs condom porn
• Black Gay Men, HIV and Raw Sex
• HIV infections [in Uganda] shoot up
• Center For Disease Control: 1 In Every 16 Black Men Are HIV Carriers! (politicalvelcraft.org)
• Center For Disease Control: 1 In Every 16 Black Men Are HIV Carriers! (politicalvelcraft.org)
• HIV and Africa (4b2012.wordpress.com)

The Gay Christian Watch oxymoron

Darian Aaron: branded a pornographic, lustful, perverted liar by GCM

The predominantly white Gay Christian  Movement Watch knows exactly what is good for all black people in the world – and they are not afraid to say it.

There I was thinking that Christians follow Jesus (who never said a word about homosexuals or homosexuality) because his overwhelming message was one of love, tolerance, inclusiveness and leaving the final arbitration to God.

Reading this Gay Christian Movement Watch [GCM] article, you might be forgiven for thinking that GCM wrote their own Bible and are now disappointed that Ebony Magazine is not waving it  with them along  their road of cant pontificating.

It is tough stuff and the particularly stomach-churning point is when a white commentator decides that he is qualified to lecture inclusive black churches:

After I became a Christian, I had (and still have) enormous respect for the African-American Christian community for standing strong on traditional Christian morality. The gay community can say its backwards or oppressive or whatever, but I really respect that strong, group-level acceptance of God’s Word.  As a man who grew up in PCUSA, I know what happens when a church becomes a social club by abandoning God’s wisdom. So, even though I’m white, I find this sort of thing very sad. Black churches are being pushed to be “tolerant” of a very serious sin, all in the name of “love” or whatever. (Comments)

Even if the parable of the pig wasn’t insulting enough in of itself, it is difficult to see how anyone could be more condescending. Black churches are being pushed to be tolerant? With what are they being pushed? Bulldozers or gay “fornication?” Should we thus assume that inclusive black churches have no minds of their own, have no ability to interpret the Bible and need lectures from white Christians to see the light?

And if you are not going to be tolerant in the name of love, what on earth are you professing to be Christian for?

Check out Darian Aaron’s blog here.

Related articles

• Homosexuality and homo-sodomy: are we splitting hairs?
• Where Is God In The Black Community/Church? (jenniferkeittpointofview.wordpress.com)
• Black Churches, Gay Marriage and Nuance (theroot.com)
• Hadassah’s Voice: How Christians Can Bridge America’s Racial Divide (faithmilkandhoney.wordpress.com)
• The Gay Debate: The Bible and Homosexuality (slog.thestranger.com)
• Huskers aide: Faith demands anti-gay stance (espn.go.com)
• Boris Johnson faces legal action over banned anti-gay bus adverts (guardian.co.uk)

Shelby Steele needs Martin Luther King Jr’s pulpit 1

We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. … I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr

 It was with those words reverberating all around Washington, DC that I read Shelby Steele’s essay, The age of white guilt; and the disappearance of the black individual (Harper’s Magazine, November 30, 1999). By pure coincidence, I read the essay around the same time that Barack Obama’s own words to his black audience to “Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do” were still ringing in my ears. To which the perennial black apologist, the Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy duly complained that Obama should not be lecturing the black folks, adding a curious observation that  “The unemployment rate among blacks stands at 16.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 11.5 percent when Obama took office. By some accounts, black people have lost more wealth since the recession began than at any time since slavery. And Obama gets to lecture us?”

Aren’t those kinds of terrible unemployment numbers precisely the reason why Obama was/is right to exhort black people to stop whining and pull themselves up by the boot straps?

Chris Brown, Anon, Anon

Some black Americans (African Americans) have pulled themselves up from the ‘smaller ghetto’ as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed. Unfortunately, they have pulled themselves into a larger ghetto – exactly what Martin Luther King Jr. feared. The three men above, for instance, might have talents that can move mountains. Given the way they have chosen to tarnish their bodies with ghastly, unsightly tattoos, it is fair to assume that unsightly body adornments make up the sum total of their character. So, regardless of how much money in the bank they might have, you are looking at three individuals who have succumbed to the mentality that because it can be done, it should. You can’t come up with a more childish, impressionable, mindset. After you mar yourself with such messy tattoos, who do you think is going to offer you a job? Indeed, why should any self-respecting woman (or man?) want anything to do with you when you look like a salamander?

Why is such heavy tattooing such a big deal? For the simple reason that the time one allots towards getting that ghastly inking done on one’s belonging can be used for more productive pursuits such getting an education or doing voluntary community service. Chris Brown is lucky to be alive in an era where you require limited talent – just being in the right place at the right time – to make a buck in America. After all, even women like the Kardashians are making money when no one can tell you what it is that they actually do. That is the nature of America today – obsessed with trivialities and willing to pay for anything and everything as as long a clever marketer finds a way of keeping it on television for 15 minutes.

Lil Wayne today and as a 14-year-old

 What should have our black young men pausing for thought is that they are not the only ones who have money in the bank. One can name you any number of white athletes and musicians who wear the badge of celebrity on their sleeve. You will, however, not find any one of them looking the way Lil Wayne has reduced himself to looking – like a tawdry, discarded, ethnic blanket on which toddlers have been set loose with ink and paint brushes. Given the mess that is his appearance, being jailed on gun charges seems like a kindness to him.

Can an adult look any more illiterate?

All this wouldn’t matter much if men like Lil Wayne, Chris Brown and their ilk weren’t seen as role models by a significant number of young black people. The tragedy is that, thanks to the collective guilt which political correctness has inflicted on, especially, the white press, you will not see a white person criticize these nincompoops in any media. The black press, too, chooses to turn a blind eye to the travesty that is staring them in the face. It is dishonest and, frankly, a terrible disservice to a black population that still needs more education, parenting and mentoring than any other race in America.

There are simply not enough adults in the black community demanding that our black boys (especially) quit thinking that the world owes them a living because their ancestors were slaves and live as responsible citizens who don’t beat up women, carry illegal guns or peddle mind addling drugs for a living. The results are embarrassing role models like Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and a whole line of despicable African American men who deserve nothing but disdain for their misogynistic lyrics, homophobic throwaways, serial (and public) philandering, gold plated teeth, pants stuck around their knees, gauche jewelry around their entire belonging, a total inability to string together two coherent sentences in their own language if they can control themselves long enough not to murder each other plus innocent neighbors in drive by shootings.

And the entire press corps (black and white) is totally silent at this ongoing tragedy; the white press because they have been cowed into silence by the white guilt so well articulated by Shelby Steele. The black brotherhood is silent because they are trying to close ranks by refusing to criticize their own even though their intellectual instinct must be telling them that what they are seeing is plainly wrong. That is why Lil Wayne continues to hog the limelight despite the apparent signs that he belongs in a borstal school, and Chris Brown adds yet more ridiculous tattoos to his body every other day, when he is not taking his clothes off and parading his dick in public in order to sell his mediocre music.

One wonders what Martin Luther King Jr. would have made of this large ghetto that black America is now wallowing in unfettered. One thing we can assume with uncertainty: he would have been troubled by the collective silence of those who ought to be showing the way.