Project 21: New Visions

"Ghettopoly," a parody board game, recently made big news and drew a lot of protestors. But the protesters were selective in their anger. Based on the popular board game "Monopoly," "Ghettopoly" claims to satirize ghetto "culture" and gangsta-rap stereotypes. Properties players can buy include "Tyron's Gun Shop" and "Smitty's XXX Peep Show," while game pieces include a crack rock, pimp, prostitute and an Uzi machine gun. "Hustle" and "Ghetto Stash" replace "Chance" and "Community Chest" cards. The game's objective is to get the most money through stealing and cheating. "Ghettopoly" is sold on the Internet and, until the controversy erupted, ...
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  A New Visions Commentary paper published December 2003 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. In the early 20th century, black educational pioneer Booker T. Washington noted: "There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their ...
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  A New Visions Commentary paper published December 2003 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. As a product of Cleveland's public school system, I can attest to its dismal state. To say that poor, inner-city students in Cleveland were not receiving a quality education would be like saying Michael Jordan is good at basketball. The school district couldn't meet any of the 18 performance standards set for it, and only one in ten 9th graders could pass a basic proficiency exam. In 1995, three years after I graduated ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published November 2003 by The National Center for Public Policy Research. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Select Steel, Inc. couldn't build a steel mill in Genesee County, Michigan due to "environmental justice" concerns. Now a federal commission is suggesting that environmental justice regulations be strengthened, meaning more companies might also find their expansion plans disrupted. To environmental activists and policymakers, "environmental justice" means all communities ought to receive equal environmental protection and regulatory enforcement regardless of race, income or culture.1 Controversies related to the topic thrive on the notion that minority and economically depressed ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published November 2003 by The National Center for Public Policy Research. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Not many people can boast resumes like Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor's. Unfortunately, discrimination plagues him in the U.S. Senate and may block his appointment to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Pryor graduated magna cum laude and was first in his class at Tulane University Law School. After clerking for Appeals Court Judge John Minor Wisdom, a renowned civil rights advocate, Pryor spent seven years practicing law and teaching at the Cumberland School of Law. In ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published November 2003 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Ever wonder why the poor are poor? Many believe there's a conspiracy to keep blacks in the underclass. And there may actually be something to it. The identity of those who are behind it and their justification, however, might surprise you. Dr. Theodore Dalrymple examines the British underclass in his book Life at the Bottom: The Worldview the Makes the Underclass. From his years ...
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  A New Visions Commentary paper published November 2003 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. I noticed him first. We were on our way to church when a boy of two, maybe three, appeared in front of us. Before I could wonder about his mother, he saw my husband. With a shriek of "Da!," he ran up and clung to his legs. While my husband tried to peel the child off, I looked for the mother. She showed up a few seconds later. She apologized, and told us ...
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"I don't think he's been that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there's a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he really didn't deserve. The defense carried this team." - Rush Limbaugh on Philadelphia Eagles' quarterback Donavan McNabb Who would've thought these 80 words from the mouth of Rush ...
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Our Declaration of Independence begins, "When, in the course of human events it becomes necessary..." This is important wording because it points out that we must always have the means to end a tyrannical government. Tyranny doesn't always come with a bang. Sometimes, it comes as a myriad of little whimpers. Likewise, the means and will of the people to rise up against tyranny can be stolen incrementally by convincing us to voluntarily yield it. Patriot's Day, observed on April 19, marks the anniversary of "the shot heard 'round the world" when the colonists committed themselves to throwing off their ...
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In 1998, the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, maintaining that the world's largest maker of software held an illegal monopoly and stifled competition. Microsoft was found to use its monopoly power to harm competitors. This leads me to the question, "Couldn't the Justice Department then file a lawsuit against the United States Government for its blatant monopoly status in postal delivery?" The first official notice of a postal service appeared in the Colonies in 1639 to handle the correspondence between the colonists and England, and between the colonies. The establishment of a central postal organization in ...
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Do you ever get the feeling you're being used? The black voter has become a virtual pawn in the liberal political strategy. Our "disfranchisement" was an issue in the elections of 2000, 2002 and in the recent California recall. While voting problems may, in fact, exist, it's the pattern of selective outrage that tips the liberals' hand. Disfranchised voters who don't help their cause apparently aren't really disfranchised. In California, the ACLU wanted to put off the gubernatorial recall for months (the day of the Democratic presidential primary, most likely) based on fears that voting plans were unfair to minorities ...
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  A New Visions Commentary paper published October 2003 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. America's 34-million African-Americans should be outraged by the campaign of economic blackmail that a handful of profit-driven personal injury lawyers are waging against the financially beleaguered Republic of South Africa. Against the expressed wishes of the revered Nelson Mandela and President Thabo Mbeki, the lawyers are filing class-action lawsuits in courts against U.S. corporations who did business in South Africa during apartheid - ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published October 2003 by The National Center for Public Policy Research. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Probably thinking of himself as being on the cutting edge of the civil rights struggle, rapper Snoop Dogg broke his ties with Mantra Entertainment - makers of the "Girls Gone Wild" videos - because it doesn't feature enough black and Hispanic girls getting naked.1 "Girls Gone Wild" is a perverted outgrowth of Reality TV. Producer Joe Francis has made a mint filming usually drunk females exposing themselves at beaches, bars and other public places.2 Francis enlisted Snoop to ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published October 2003 by The National Center for Public Policy Research. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Across America, bouncing basketballs are heard a little more often. "Professional basketball player" reigns as the top answer when young black boys are asked what they want to be when they grow up. A close second is being a rapper. In local talent shows, young men believe they are stars and wait for an agent or producer to bring them a life of money, women, jewelry, videos and fame. On the surface, there's nothing wrong with playing in ...
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Project 21 Members Attending WTO Talks on Agriculture Policy Two members of the African-American leadership network Project 21 are attending the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico (September 10-14) and are available to the media for comments on the proceedings. Project 21 National Advisory Council member Deroy Murdock is a syndicated columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service as well as an adjunct fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Niger Innis is a member of the Project 21 National Advisory Council and national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality. Interviews can be arranged by contacting Project ...
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New York City now has a high school exclusively for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children, an expansion of a two-classroom alternative school that has operated for years. Its principal claims, "This school will be a model for the country, and possibly for the world." I consider it an egregious example of social engineering. Most children, at one time or another, question or are confused about their sexuality. It's not abnormal. When an agenda-driven group seizes upon adolescent confusion to engineer it into something it's not, I think it's criminal. It is a draconian plot to create a cadre of ...
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Endorsement of affirmative action policies that allow schools to continue using race as a factor in student admissions can, at best, be seen as a mixed blessing for the black community. But while the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledges that blacks should be guaranteed the opportunity to attend our nation's best universities, their decision also carries the assumption that blacks can't get there without preferential treatment. Every American university wants the "cream of the crop." They set their own standards, and only those meeting these criteria are offered admission. Less qualified applicants are encouraged to look elsewhere. This competitive environment means ...
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A child of the 70s, I grew up in a typical two-parent, middle-income household. My father, then a U.S. Navy man honorably serving his country, carried much of the discipline he acquired in the military into parenting. Much of that order and discipline continues to permeate my thought processes. My mother, then part of the hustle and bustle of corporate America, was - and still is - a paragon of hard work and good work ethics. My parents instilled in me traits that benefit me to this day. Politics in general was not a recurrent topic of discussion in our ...
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Legal segregation of the races is an embarrassing part of America's history. Called Jim Crow after a black character from an 1840s minstrel show, the laws prescribed separate facilities for blacks and whites from around 1865 until the 1960s. "Separate but equal" proved separate and unequal for black Americans. Considered lesser humans, blacks were held to a lower standard. The object was to keep us subjugated, subordinate and "in our place." You don't have to watch PBS or read books to know what Jim Crow was like. Just look around. It still exists. Even in the post-civil rights era, a ...
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I was invited to review a recently released movie titled "Buffalo Soldiers," a movie previously released in Europe under the title "Army Go Home." It's about corrupt and incompetent American servicemen in Germany in the late 1980s. My invitation to review "Buffalo Soldiers" was prompted by a controversy over the mistitling of the movie. Buffalo Soldiers is a well-known label given to the African-American soldiers who defended the southwestern frontier of the United States after the Civil War. Native Americans likened the African-Americans to buffaloes because of the color and texture of their hair and their tenacious, never-die spirit in ...
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