What Book Am I?

I can’t resist a good quiz, so when I recently came across this test on recent visitor, Vivian J. Paige’s Blog, I had to jump on it. Almost wish I hadn’t. Sounds kinda ominous and bleak with a tinge of hope at the end.

You’re Invisible Man!
by Ralph Ellison
Most of your life, people have either ignored you or told you that you were wrong. You’ve been duped, mistreated, misled, and neglected. Maybe it was because of your race, or some other uniqueness that people were quick to condemn, but now you just want to crawl into a hole and disappear. After all, nobody knows your name. But you just might speak for everyone.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Ebony and Jet Swear off the N-Word

“N-word” has been swung like a clumsy nightstick by Whites for
years, trying to demean, dehumanize and destroy the dignity of Black
Americans,” Bryan Moore writes. “We have a generation who have been
desensitized to – or never were taught – the real origins and impact of
such a hateful term. But whether it ends in ‘-er or -ah’ or -a,’ the
word – and the pain – is still the same.”

So speaks Bryan Monroe, vice president and editorial director of Johnson Publishing Co. epitomizing my thoughts on the use of the word. Both Ebony and Jet, two out of the three largest black audience targeted magazines, have decided to do away with the word in print. No one will ever read the N-word in Ebony or Jet from now until the end of forever.

Well, it’s about damn time!

About a year ago, I watched a documentary called what else, but “The N-Word,” and featured such names as Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Mooney, Ice Cube, Whoopi Goldberg, and loads and loads of other celebrities, both dead and alive, weighing in and giving their takes on the controversy.

It seemed, to me, that an overwhelming majority of the people interviewed saw it being okay to use the word amongst each other, but caught a quick attitude when used by others outside of the race. Many others thought that by using the word it is a way of deconstructing the negative connotations of it, much like feminists have done with “bitch” and certain lesbians have done with “dyke.”

One of the people viewed in that video, Paul Mooney, a comedian I find ridiculously humorous, has since recanted his position on the usage of the word after Kramer (I refuse to call him by his real name) decided to act a fool over there in California.

Why did it take a white man’s public humiliation to call people’s attention to the ugliness of the word? And how many other folks have since rethought their usage of the word?

My experience with words in general has been this: Don’t call yourself anything you wouldn’t want someone else to refer to you as. If I call myself fat, shouldn’t get offended if someone else calls me fat. It’s about self-respect. And by referring to yourself as a n***er (or fat, or crazy – my personal vice-, or anything else), it construes a complete lack of self-respect.

I understand the logic behind attempting to reroute the word and give it a different flavor, but you can’t do that when the word has had such an ugly history. When there are still people who use it in a derogatory manner, people who still feel its okay to refer to blacks by the n-word and treat blacks as if they were no better than cattle, how can you possibly use the same word to refer to your brothers, sisters, cousins and friends?

I applaud Ebony and Jet for setting an example, even though I’d be interested to hear the statistics on the words appearance in their publications over the last decade. Their February issue that came out on Monday has guest editorials giving folks opinions and also provides a timeline for the usage of the word. I am making sure I run out and get my copy soon since I can’t steal my mother’s.

I’m still wondering, though, what took ya’ll so darn long?

Oprah and Others – the Saviors of Africa??

Suddenly, everyone wants to save Africa.

Oprah, the woman with more money and more charities than seems humanly necessary, is being applauded for her recent opening of The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. It is being opened in a small town called Henley-on-Klip which is just south of Johannesburg. The facility reportedly cost $40 million and will house 152 11 and 12 year old girls where they will enjoy a yoga studio, beauty salon, wellness center, theater and library.

What the hell do 11 and 12 year olds need with a freaking yoga studio? Hmm?

Apparently anticipating the criticism of her lavish attention to these hand-picked young ladies, Oprah responded in Newsweek, “I understand that many …feel that I’m going overboard, and that’s fine. This is what I want to do. I wanted to take girls with that ‘it’ quality and give them an opportunity to make a difference in the world.”

Now when I first heard about the school and what Oprah was doing, I was under the impression that she would be helping teenagers, preparing them for college and what have you. To find out that these are kids she’s pouring all of this into is unfathomable to me.

Oprah’s reasons for doing this are also credited to a promise she made to Mandela and an opportunity to “change the face of a nation.”

Perhaps it is just my ignorance, but what happens when these girls are 13? What happens when they are “expelled” from the lushness of Oprah’s Academy for Transnational Guilt, and they are plopped back into their villages and homes where their parents may be proud of them, but they have to deal with hostility and anger from other children who were not given those same luxuries and who are hungry or perhaps have had to go to work to support their families? And how are the girls themselves supposed to go back to their homes after living in the lap of luxury for however long?

And that raises another question I have. How long are these girls going to be allowed to remain in the school? Is it until they graduate? If so, that would make a lot more sense to me. Are they being taught how to help their country? Are they being given the tools to help with the hopelessness, the corruption, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, etc.? What are they being taught at this wonderful academy that made it so necessary for Oprah to spend $40 million dollars on the facility alone?

One of my first questions after I read this was if the woman wants to help kids who aren’t being given an opportunity to excel, then why doesn’t she build it in inner cities here in the United States?

This is her response to that question:
“I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I
just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there,”
she said. “If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an
iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or
toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.”

Now, again, I could be wrong, but aren’t some areas in Africa just as status, label driven as the inner cities here in the states? And if Oprah was able to send out a call to girls, receiving over 3,500 applicants of worthwhile ambition, talent and intelligence in Africa, is she saying that those qualities are not present in the states or that inner cities girls here who meet those criteria have enough opportunities to make it without her help?

I am not taking away the fact that Oprah donates millions and millions of dollars annually to historically black colleges and foundations to help her hometown and inner cities, but what I am saying is “Do you know what $40 million dollars could do in a school here in the states?” or even if her current passion is to help Africa, why not use that money to build several schools?

Chris Rock, one of the attendees at the grand opening of the school, visited Kenya during his visit to the continent. Madonna has adopted an African child as well as Angelina, who I would gladly stalk just for the sexual enjoyment of having her cuss me out, but what about all the children here!!??? Why must we go save another country when this one is such a pathetic mess?

I recognize the issue is complicated. Oprah did what she felt would help better a group of people. Madonna and Angelina, well, I can’t vouch for their reasons. They look crazy walking around with two African children in their pale arms. What if I decide to go into the Peace Corps? Will I be subject to that same criticism for helping a South American country?

Maybe one day it will make sense. Maybe one day, someone will build a school in Flint, or open a business to create more jobs since the plant has closed, or help alleviate the strain of drugs and alcoholism, etc. etc. etc. Maybe I will be that person. Or maybe they’ll just go and build another academy in Africa and spend $50,000 adopting a foreign baby. Who knows.

Africa has been under attack from within by corruption and AIDS and famine for decades upon decades. Why the rush now? What is the deal now? Oprah, Chris, Angelina and Madonna didn’t just now get money.

So why is Africa suddenly the “in” place to save?

Six Sentences… Again

On Monday, January 8, I’ll again be featured on the site, Six Sentences, with a short little story called, “The Ghost in My Bed.”

Please check it out on Monday, leave a comment, check out my last story, Cadillac Knockin’, or try your own hand at Six Sentences.

Damn Crazy Cheerleaders

Boozing, bikinis and bullying: how the scandalous behavior of five high-school cheerleaders rocked a bedroom community near Dallas

This is the title of a web exclusive article published January 2, 2007 on MSNBC about 5 crazy little white girls from an affluent neighborhood near Dallas, Texas. The five were reportedly running shit at McKinney North High School, taking pictures of themselves pretending to fellate a penis-shaped candle, taking pictures of themselves having drunken house parties and even showing up to prom in a limo filled with booze and fellow inebriated teens.

Are you serious?

Now, I know plenty of people who find the idea of going to school with metal detectors at the door a little foreboding. Perhaps they changed their minds after hearing about these little terrors. One of the girls reportedly told a teacher to “shut up” after being asked to get off her phone in the middle of class. After all, she was talking to her mother so it must have been important. The five girls, all cheerleaders, were most likely to blame for disposing of five coaches in three years. That’s a pretty sad ratio, folks. One of the teachers interviewed by a man conducting an investigation into the incident, the school, and its leadership, is quoted as having said, “Gang members were nothing compared to these girls.” Ouch. That’s harsh.

It took the courage of one coach who had been pushed too far, what with sticking a chocolate-spiked tampon up her you know what and having her phone hacked in order to send nasty little text messages, to bring down these atrocious little devils.

I don’t know about you, but I sure am scared of them, as my grandmother would say.

It amazes me how these types of girls can still exist. We’ve all gone to school with them. The ones who walk around like they’re owning shit, causing “peons” to go scattering in fear, while others flock to their sides in awe. Frankly, they disgust me, and unfortunately, it doesn’t change the older we get. These bitches still exist.

And why do they still exist? Well, for one, the mother of one of these varmints was the principal of the high school. She has since been forced to resign, but was given a nice little severance as well as a letter of recommendation. Let’s see if she takes her daughter with her so she can raise hell elsewhere. Its not uncommon fro these idiots to be saved by their mothers, fathers, associates with pull. Secondly, there are no checks with chicks like these. There will always be some idiot willing to fall for the batting eyelashes, false attention or the dangling promise of monetary compensation or threat of punishment.

These were “children” for goodness sakes.

And when they are adults, they will have an ingrained sense of entitlement that oozes out of their flimsy little skirts. Think Paris Hilton. But these girls don’t even have to be super rich or famous. Just regular run-of-the-mill, spoiled, self-indulgent, pompous little brats.

They make me sick. And for all the hell they raise, they make the news at MSNBC. Go figure.