Project 21: New Visions

I was just a young black lad during the civil rights marches and rallies of the early 1960s, but I will never forget what I saw during those dark days. I remember the hate, the violence, the water hoses, the vicious dogs and batons that bloodied old women and children. War was declared on us as a race. We were called "sons of bitches" and other vile names. The agenda of the most vicious of the racists was to "take us out" in any way possible — violence undoubtedly being a preferred method. Vitriol and violence was similarly directed against ...
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In tough economic times, such as those Americans are currently experiencing, there are some ways that black churches can perform services that could help parishioners weather financial crises more effectively. For instance, a church might be able to reduce the cost of food staples considerably. Using today's technology, churches can provide a wholesaler's catalog of products — taking orders and payments for a wide range of food and other products across its congregation. On an economies-of-scale basis, a church can make bulk orders of certain goods from wholesalers and pass them on to congregants at cost. Volunteers can receive delivery ...
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As President Obama crossed middle America last August to promote his economic policies, Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) complained he was ignoring black communities. Feeling his political base crumbling, however, Obama now appears in Detroit to sell his new stimulus bill. He claims more spending on unemployment benefits and less collection of Social Security funds (but plenty of other new taxes) will win the future. Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and others seem to think the problem is that Obama lacks an agenda for "Black America." Do blacks need a separate agenda? When our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, it was for ...
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"I accept my niggerdom. All you niggas get down with me!" — Michael Eric Dyson Back in 2005, at a panel discussion during Tavis Smiley's "State of the Black Union" event, Michael Eric Dyson urged attendees and C-Span viewers to "embrace their niggerdom." Media gadfly Dyson — then a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, now at Georgetown University — explained that blacks don't have a monopoly on being a "nigger" or "nigga" (the word seemed to be used interchangeably in Dyson's talk). "Nigga is a global phenomenon," Dyson explained. He said Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hammer and ...
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As a society, we highly value those who "make." Whether it's a dollhouse, tree house or a real house, we admire the makers. If it is a Soap Box Derby car, a Ferrari supercar, a jet or a space shuttle, we marvel at the engineers and extend high accolades to them for their efforts. We are wowed by well-designed, functional and elegant cyber systems that attract customers and can efficiently manage a company's finances. On a less glamorous but delicious level, we value the farmer who grows an exquisitely ripe tomato or an acquaculturalist who coaxes succulent flesh from the ...
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Black folk can be forgiving, but, when it comes to President Obama's recent speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, forgiveness is tough. Everyone — and not just blacks — should be insulted at Obama's transition into a pseudo-black vernacular during his September CBC speech. Did he really need to get up in front of this group of successful, educated black professionals and start jive-talking? Isn't that just a little condescending? As a Chicagoan who watched Obama's political rise, I admit that I never trusted him — not as an organizer, not as a state lawmaker, not as a U.S ...
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It's not news that far too many environmentalists prefer trees, animals and insects over people. In 1962, environmentalist icon Rachel Carson — a government bureaucrat at the time — chose nature. She created a stink about the highly-effective pesticide DDT, and countless millions of children have since paid the ultimate price as a result. According to the World Health Organization, there are between 300 million and 500 million cases of malaria every year, resulting in more than one million deaths — with about 90 percent of these deaths occurring in Africa. Most of those deaths are children under the age ...
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As I was headed to a recent television interview in Chicago, the driver sent by the network asked me what topic I was going to discuss on television. "President Obama is losing the support of his base." The driver, black like me, laughed. He told me he didn't vote for Obama in 2008 because he knew Senator Obama lacked the experience to run the nation. So much for Obama's monolithic black support. As I reviewed my interview notes, I reflected on how I had predicted that Obama would be a lackluster leader. Most folks at the time thought I was ...
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Jesse Jackson, Andre Carson, Maxine Waters and Walter Fauntroy are the new face of black-on-black crime. The term "black-on-black crime" was coined in the eighties to publicize shockingly disproportionate amounts of violent crimes perpetrated within the black community. Now, instead of Bloods and Crips, the new gang threatening black neighborhoods can be called the "Elite Liberal Libelers." With political power and acceptance, the ELL holds an even tighter grip on black America's throat. The ELL's rhetorical drive-by shooting style wounds the spirit and kills hope and the notion that blacks can find equality and prosperity by their own toil and ...
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In a September 23 interview with CNN's Piers Morgan, award-winning actor Morgan Freeman claimed the moral high ground, saying tea partiers have a "racist" motivation against President Obama "to do whatever [they] can to get this black man outta here." Sadly, another Hollywood liberal elite has dealt the race card against the tea party. I will admit that Freeman is a great actor. Years ago, I had the opportunity to see him live in action. I was excited and proud of my role as an extra in the 1989 biographical movie "Lean on Me," starring Freeman, who played the role ...
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Representative Frederica Wilson (D-FL), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, told her constituents at a CBC "job fair" that "[t]he real enemy is the Tea Party." Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA), another CBC member, said the "Tea Party can go straight to hell." Representative Andre Carson (D-IN), a CBC leader, said the Tea Party "would love to see us as second-class citizens" and "hanging on a tree." Hateful rhetoric from the CBC — whose members took an oath in Congress to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" — is showing a ...
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It's common for the black political establishment to claim white conservatives and their policies cause black America's problems. It's a shame this accusation is never challenged because in many ways it is the black establishment that is enabling decline. There is, for example, a chasm of fatherlessness in black America that breeds malcontents. A man-child mentality permeates communities in which morally malnourished minors learn life lessons from pornographic and misogynistic rap songs glorifying "thug life." Yet government programs make single-parent households and absent fathers advantageous. Is this more the fault of Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society welfare-state agenda or ...
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Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter went where few black leaders have gone. And I think I can count those other who did on one hand. Nutter dared speak truth to action on the critical state of black youth in this country. In an address confronting increasing youth violence, Nutter plainly declared: Take those God-darn hoodies down, especially in the summer. Pull your pants up and buy a belt ‘cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt. Bravo Mayor Nutter — I applaud you. It reminds me of Bill Cosby, who scolded black leaders back in ...
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Andre Carson, where's your proof? Carson, a Democratic congressman from Indiana and the legislative "whip" for the Congressional Black Caucus, recently made incendiary accusations about the tea party movement and his colleagues supporting it on Capitol Hill. Those remarks appear to lack even a scintilla of truth. Carson's comments are likely to only further stoke the fires of racial politics and generate unrest in a manner that Barack Obama promised to end with his election in 2008. Instead, as liberal politicians such as Obama and Carson continue losing appeal and support when offered the tea party movement's alternative platform of ...
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Barack Obama promised to transform America. Unfortunately, he is manipulating it toward European-style socialism. American society has been dumbed-down for decades. Too many now ignore the ramifications of current events on their lives and to our future. Much historical evidence of what free-market capitalism delivered to this nation, fostering the greatest prosperity the world likely will ever know, has been lost from our collective consciousness. Responding to charismatic leaders, Americans evidently are willing to condone an increasing rush toward tyranny without showing skepticism or requiring any rationale for radical change. Many Americans lack a working knowledge of how a switch ...
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America — and Washington, D.C., in particular — is mired in angst and frustration. As our nation's economy and morality declines ever further, people demand answers as lawmakers play the blame game. One person seeking to escape culpability is President Obama. That could be the undoing of the man and his movement. Certainly, Obama cannot be saddled with everything that's going on right now. Many current ills have existed for decades and will likely continue to pester society as solutions remain elusive. Well-intentioned politicians and concerned citizens scratch their heads, questioning why the quagmire of moral and economic problems lingers ...
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"Men of experience succeed even better than those who have theory without experience… If, then, a man has the theory without the experience, and recognizes the universal but does not know the individual included in this, he will often fail to cure; for it is the individual that is to be cured." — Aristotle Aristotle's 2,500-year-old wisdom shows why President Obama's statist economic policies are failing miserably today. Followers of economist John Maynard Keynes, including Paul Krugman, believe governments can jump-start economies in times of slowdown by injecting large sums of borrowed money that fund largely make-work projects. This theory ...
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President Obama is an O.P.M. addict. Our commander-in-chief is addicted to spending "other people's money." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is his pusher. The establishment media are his enablers. Consider what's happening in Washington right now with the debt crisis. After tossing the Republican "Cut, Cap and Balance Act" aside without debate, Reid dismissed House Speaker John Boehner's (R-OH) alternative plan to cut $1.1 trillion without raising taxes, saying it was "written for the Tea Party, not the American people." So Reid equates Tea Party members to illegal aliens? Whatever his insult is supposed to mean, Reid insisted Senate ...
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Remember the controversy over that conservative congressman's remark that any toddler who isn't in school will likely end up in jail? Remember the liberal acrimony over this obviously racist insinuation that black kids can either shape up or be shipped off to prison? Of course not. That's made up. Had it happened, one would have had to live on the moon not to have heard about it. But the insinuation was made — just not by a conservative. On March 3, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schulz (D-FL) took to the floor of the House to promote "how vital early education is ...
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Just like when the ringmaster sends in the clowns, Americans watched the recent legislative circus in Washington in uncomfortable shock as lawmakers blustered to an accord on increasing the nation's debt. About the only thing the debt crisis did effectively was push Obama's wars, lack of job creation (and further stagnation of the economy) and the sex scandal of Representative David Wu (D-OR) to the back of the media queue. The agreement to reduce spending by just a trillion dollars over the next decade — after raising the debt limit to around $16.4 trillion — is akin to emptying an ...
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