Black Youth Out of Control. Has Black America Lost Total Control ?

Black Youth Out of Control? What is going on black America? Why are we as black adults allowing our children to control adults? Run amuck in our own homes, neighborhoods and communities? Why are we allowing these types of activities to occur across our communities? What's going on Black America! OK, what am I talking about? Is it time to bring back reform schools? oops that's called prison - Right? So what should black adults be doing?

Check this out:

As reported by WRC Channel 4 - KENSINGTON, Md. -- Two 15-year-olds arrested in connection with a cache of guns found at Albert Einstein High School conspired to steal guns and sell them at school, according to Montgomery County police.Five students and a 20-year-old man have been charged after Montgomery County police said they found the weapons Wednesday while investigating a report of a shot fired at the school in the 11100 block of Newport Mill Road.Investigators said a 15-year-old boy and his 15-year-old girlfriend stole guns and other items from the girl's home in Silver Spring last week so they could sell them for cash. The weapons were locked up, police said, and the girl, who knew where the key was kept, allegedly let the boy in through a window.

AAPP - There is more:

As also reported by WRC Channel 4 Police said the boy brought three guns to a second-floor boys' bathroom at the school to show possible buyers. One gun was given to a 14-year-old boy, who accidentally pulled the trigger, police said. No one was injured.A student at the school alerted administrators after hearing the gunshot between 11:30 a.m. and noon, prompting a lockdown and search. School security officers found a bullet lodged in the bathroom wall, according to Kate Harrison, a school system spokeswoman.

AAPP: Not Feeling Me Yet, well how about the beating of a black teacher by black students in Baltimore? As reported by Sara Neufeld at The Baltimore Sun, The trouble began, Jolita Berry said, when she asked a girl in one of her art classes at Reginald F. Lewis High School to sit down.

Watch the video:



The student did not obey, coming closer to confront the teacher. "She said she's gonna bang me," Berry said. "I said, 'Back up, you're in my space. If you hit me, I'm gonna defend myself.'"

But Berry, who is 30 and started her job teaching art at the Northeast Baltimore school in December, did not defend herself. The girl caught the teacher off guard as other students cheered her on and screamed, "Hit her!"

April 10: In an exclusive interview, Matt Lauer talks to a Baltimore high school teacher who was attacked by a student while the rest of the class watched — an incident captured in a disturbing video. Teacher beating caught on video

"She just started beating on me relentlessly," Berry said, recalling the Friday morning incident that left her with a sore shoulder and a broken blood vessel in her eye. Read More HERE.

Black Accountability

Paul Farhi at the Washington Post reports that one of Sen. Barack Obama's toughest African American critics has quit his long association with a national radio show after listeners decried his views.

Tavis Smiley kissing up to Hillary Clinton at the "State Of The Black Union" symposium on February 23, 2008 in New Orleans. (Richard Alan Hannon - Getty Images)

Tavis Smiley has resigned as a twice-weekly commentator on the syndicated "Tom Joyner Morning Show" after 11 years on the air, citing fatigue and a busy schedule in a personal call to Joyner. Joyner disputed that on the air and in his blog, however, writing: "The real reason is that he can't take the hate he's been getting regarding the Barack issue -- hate from the black people that he loves so much."

Read more here on how Tavis Smiley has resigned from 'Tom Joyner Morning Show'

AAPP: Hey Tavis, If 70-90% of black American voters are going against the candidate that you want to be President, while you kiss up in public to Hillary and Bill Clinton, sorry buddy, you are on the wrong side of black America.

It seems that your can't take the heat, and you know your wrong.

I guess you will be Bill and Hillary's publicist real soon. You should be ashamed of yourself. But then again, there is no shame in your political "GAME."

See Yah!

Humor for the weekend

Weekend Political Humor

Civil Rights In America, "A Chain of Change"

AAPP: Yesterday I wrote about listening in pure amazement and disgust to a broadcast over at one of the best bloggers in America, (also from Texas) Gina McCauley from the blog What About Our Daughters. As I noted, she was joined by her roundtable, along with Adora Obi Nweze, President, Fl State Conference NAACP and a member of the NAACP National Board of Directors and Richard "We Will Not Be Blamed" McIntire, the NAACP national spokesperson. The NAACP was invited to speak about their decision to support the bail request for the release of black boys who are alleged to have brutally raped, sodomized and beat a mother and son on June 18.

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I discussed how I felt after listening to the state and national NAACP representatives make fools out of themselves. I pointed out I came to the same conclusion that Lee Walker and others have about what I termed a now disgraceful national organization. I posed questions like, When will black folks hold the NAACP Accountable? When will the NAACP hold itself accountable? When will black folks as the NAACP Board Chair to resign, and take that 60 Member Board with him? When will black women start a national organization that really fights for black women and their families? WHEN?

Well I must honestly say I did not know that The Washington Post (H/T Dallas Progress for the link) would provide additional answers to the questions raised, and in some ways pose additional questions for Black America and all America in its article, Civil Rights Groups see Gradual End of Their Era - Many groups that helped propel movement struggling, some have vanished. The article written by By Darryl Fears of the Washington Post highlights how after "Forty years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, the storied organizations that propelled the modern-day civil rights movement alongside him are either struggling to stay relevant or struggling to stay alive.

in Atlanta, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) -- which was founded in 1957 after Alabama's Montgomery bus boycott and was led by King through the most difficult days of the movement -- clings to life. Three years ago, utilities shut off the lights and the phones when the group did not pay its bills.

In New York, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which helped shape the movement's philosophy after adopting Mohandas K. Gandhi's doctrine of nonviolent protest, is scarcely known outside Manhattan. CORE conceded that it now has about 10 percent of the 150,000 members it listed in the 1960s.

In Baltimore, the near-century-old NAACP, which tore down racial barriers with deft lawyering in the courts, recently cut a third of its administrative staff because of budget shortfalls. For decades, the NAACP asserted that it was the largest civil rights group, with about half a million dues-paying members, but one of its former presidents recently acknowledged that it has fewer than 300,000.

Some groups have disappeared, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which organized the Freedom Rides that drew sympathy to their cause and which was later led by firebrands such as Stokley Carmichael and H. Rap Brown. Others, such as the National Urban League, remain viable but have diminished visibility.

"They don't really exist now," said the Rev. C.T. Vivian, a former interim director of the SCLC, who spoke with pain in his voice. He added: "They're just names. There has been so little activity from so many of them. SCLC rose from the dead, but we're not so certain life has been blown into it yet. And the NAACP is vital, but they're not doing what I'd expect."

The groups' decline has been slow but inexorably driven by factors both within and outside their control. They were the subjects of government spying and harassment. A proliferation of black organizations with niche audiences -- lawyers, engineers, accountants, journalists -- took away middle-class members. The rise in the 1970s of groups such as the Black Panthers, which espoused a melodramatic militancy, made them seem tepid."

AAPP: The article provides commentary from many former insiders of the NAACP like
JoAnn Watson, a Detroit City Council member who ran the local NAACP office in the 1990s, who said the organizations are living off their reputations. "They benefit from the name that has been earned by the blood of the ancestors."

Check out what other former NAACP and Civil Rights organization official had to say in the article:

Michael Meyers, a former NAACP executive, recalled when the group's initials inspired fear. "People answered the phones; they thought they were going to be sued," he said. "But not now."

The drop in stature may have been inevitable, said Roger Wilkins, an assistant attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson who advised the groups. "Black people didn't have opportunities in the '30s and '40s and '50s," he said. "They couldn't be mayors, so they became presidents of black colleges or leaders of civil rights organizations. But at the end of the '60s, all kinds of pathways opened up, and civil rights organizations had to compete for leadership."

With advances in education, employment and buying power, some have argued, civil rights organizations have become passe. But group leaders bristle at the notion.

A report released this week by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank, said that black America remains troubled. Despite marginal advances in education and jobs, the income gap between black and white Americans has grown so large since King's death that it would take more than 500 years for black people to catch up under the current pace of change, the report said. The divide between black and white wealth is so wide that achieving parity would take more than 600 years.

Organization leaders said that they have made mistakes since King's death but that they were also weakened by outside forces. As the White House was enacting civil rights laws, the FBI was infiltrating organizations under the secret Counter Intelligence Program known as COINTELPRO. After the 1970s, media attention turned away from the civil rights movement, the group leaders said."

AAPP: Get this folks, in the article the NAACP, Chairman Julian Bond said the future "looks good." He contends what I term his "board of the living dead" (OK not all the board) helped lead efforts to reauthorize the voting rights and civil rights acts, and provided relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. The article also reports that "NAACP officials say that their voter registration drives led to a surge of black voters in the past two presidential elections and that the group continues to fight discrimination in the courts, as it did with Brown v. Board of Education." More of the article HERE

AAPP: Whatever Julian Bond, Whatever! You and the other National NAACP 60 member "board of the living dead" are still believing your own bogus press releases." the NAACP has been Missing In Action on so many issues.

The questions remain, that I posed in my previous post: When will black folks hold the NAACP Accountable? When will the NAACP hold itself accountable? When will black folks ask the NAACP Board Chair to resign, and take that 60 Member Board with him? Maybe the Wichita NAACP President would consider becoming the National Chaiman, replacing Julian Bond. When will black women start a national organization that really fights for black women and their families. That time, is now! Groups like the Color of Change, The Afrospear (black bloggers group), Black Political and Internet social activist are now taking a leadership role. A Black While Brown Conference is planned for Atlanta, Georgia spearheaded by Gina McCauley from the blog What About Our Daughters. There is is now a sea of change in Black Political and social leadership in Black communities across America and around the world. Black bloggers are now leading the way. A word of caution to blacks ready to take the lead. There are still groups and organizations, including the media that will attack our new efforts. Let us stay focused. United we stand divided we will fall like the Civil Rights groups and political leaders we all know about.

Martin Luther King April 4, 1968

Today we mark the 40th Anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr Assassination
Dr. King was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic contender Hillary Clinton will be in Memphis Friday, to mark the anniversary. It's interesting that Hillary Clinton is using this day to politicize this moment. It's to bad that she was a card carrying Barry Goldwater supporter when Martin Luther King was working to end segregation. OK, enough politics, lets listen to Martin Luther King:

In His Own Words

The NAACP and black Women

AAPP: I listened in pure amazement and disgust last night to a broadcast over at one of the best bloggers in America, (also from Texas) Gina McCauley from the blog What About Our Daughters. She was joined by her roundtable, along with Adora Obi Nweze, President, Fl State Conference NAACP and a member of the NAACP National Board of Directors and Richard "We Will Not Be Blamed" McIntire, the NAACP national spokesperson.

The NAACP was invited to speak about their decision to support the bail request for the release of black boys who are alleged to have brutally raped, sodomized and beat a mother and son on June 18.

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This is a case, as reported by MSNBC a mother and son huddled together, battered and beaten, in the bathroom — sobbing, wondering why no one came to help. For three hours, the pair say, they endured sheer terror as the 35-year-old Haitian immigrant was raped and sodomized by up to 10 masked teenagers and her 12-year-old son was beaten in another room. hen, mother and son were reunited to endure the unspeakable: At gunpoint, the woman was forced to perform oral sex on the boy, she later told a TV station. Afterward, they were doused with household cleansers, perhaps in a haphazard attempt to scrub the crime scene, or maybe simply to torture the victims even more. The solutions burned the boy’s eyes. The thugs then fled, taking with them a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of cash, jewelry and cell phones. In the interview with WPTV, the mother described how she and her son sobbed in the bathroom, too shocked to move. Then, in the dark of night, they walked a mile to the hospital because they had no phone to call for help. More HERE

AAPP: After listening to the state and national NAACP representatives make fools out of themselves, I came to the same conclusion that Lee Walker and others have about this disgraceful national organization. As Lee walker wrote, " It is neither the powerful organization of my youth nor the courageous and dignified body I identify with Roy Wilkins. After Mr. Wilkins died, he was succeeded by Ben Hooks, a former judge from Tennessee. After Mr. Hook stepped down, the bottom fell out and the NAACP lost touch with black America. A survey taken in 1992 by the Detroit News revealed that 94 percent of black Americans thought the NAACP was out of touch with the everyday problems of most blacks, and the poor in particular.

One glaring problem with the NAACP is the enormous board of directors, over 60 at last count. Mr. Wilkins once advised me over lunch never to run an organization with too many board members. From the statements of former CEO Ben Gordon, it appears that the board’s meddling played a significant role in his decision to step down. Unless the absurdly large board contributes significant amounts of money or brings in new members, the board will be more of a hindrance than a help. And at the moment, it looks to be doing neither."

Read more of Lee Walkers thoughts in the post below:

NAACP Needs New Leadership

Written By: Lee Walker
Published In: Chicago Defender
Publication Date: March 9, 2007
Publisher: Chicago Defender

This Op-Ed originally appeared in the Chicago Defender on March 9, 2007

The current leadership crisis at the NAACP raises an interesting question, did black folks win or lose when Booker T. Washington died in 1915 of high blood pressure and overwork? At the age of only 59, Washington could have led the black race for many years had his health not deteriorated. His untimely death allowed the NAACP, founded and run by northern white liberals, to take over leadership of black America.

Washington was never a fan of the NAACP, and the feeling was quite mutual. Washington was, however, a trustee of the National Urban League, an organization that stimulated black business development and facilitated educational progress for blacks. Sadly, it was unable to stay the course. Although the National Urban league also had white leaders, they encouraged the blacks running it to buy a building for the organization. Due to their paternalistic attitude towards blacks, the white NAACP leaders never encouraged blacks to take this step. The result of course was that high rent prices forced the NAACP to leave Manhattan in the mid 1980's. Today, the NAACP is the oldest surviving civil rights organization in the country. Unfortunately, though it is the oldest tree in the forest, it is also the deadest.

To make clear my long-standing relationship with the NAACP, I should disclose that I was vice president of the Brooklyn Chapter in the 1970's. I was a personal friend of Roy Wilkins, the national executive secretary, and I keep a picture of us, decked out in three bottoms vest and suit ensemble, in my office. The dignified Mr. Wilkins actually wore that three bottoms vest to work every day. During my years at the Brooklyn NAACP he became my role model.

I had dreamed of volunteering for the NAACP ever since high school. When George Wallace banned the organization from the state during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, I knew I needed to be a member. Since the group was banned, however, blacks had to send their membership forms to individuals at the 42nd street address in Manhattan without referencing the NAACP directly. Additionally, the NAACP could not send us the Crisis Magazine in the standard organizational package lest white postal workers identify us as members.

Unfortunately, I no longer recognize the once great NAACP. It is neither the powerful organization of my youth nor the courageous and dignified body I identify with Roy Wilkins. After Mr. Wilkins died, he was succeeded by Ben Hooks, a former judge from Tennessee. After Mr. Hook stepped down, the bottom fell out and the NAACP lost touch with black America. A survey taken in 1992 by the Detroit News revealed that 94 percent of black Americans thought the NAACP was out of touch with the everyday problems of most blacks, and the poor in particular.

One glaring problem with the NAACP is the enormous board of directors, over 60 at last count. Mr. Wilkins once advised me over lunch never to run an organization with too many board members. From the statements of former CEO Ben Gordon, it appears that the board’s meddling played a significant role in his decision to step down. Unless the absurdly large board contributes significant amounts of money or brings in new members, the board will be more of a hindrance than a help. And at the moment, it looks to be doing neither.

Leadership has been the central problem for the NAACP since the 1990's and Ben Gordon’s departure shouldn’t encourage any of us that these problems are being solved. It is now time for Chairman Julian Bond to step down. It was mentioned recently that Ben Gordon did not have a civil rights background and was therefore unqualified to serve as CEO. However, it is worth remembering that neither Roy Wilkins nor Martin Luther King Jr. had extensive civil rights experience before assuming the mantle of leadership. Indeed, King had only recently earned his Ph.D. when the Montgomery Bus Boycott thrust him into a national leadership role.

Regardless of who leads the NAACP, there is no dispute that the organization is still needed. Whether it will ever again be the force for change it once was, will depend on its ability to refocus and develop new leadership.

As one New Yorker said in a NY Times article in 1994 "I don't see the N.A.A.C.P. as an organization for the masses of black people, and that's the problem," said Mr. Rhymes, who lives in a city housing project named after an early civil rights crusader, Ida B. Wells. "They're looking for that mainstream, middle-class person who doesn't need half as much help as the people I know. The N.A.A.C.P. is lost on the Yellow Brick Road somewhere."

AAPP: Now the question is WHEN.

When will black folks hold the NAACP Accountable? When will the NAACP hold itself accountable? When will black folks as the NAACP Board Chair to resign, and take that 60 Member Board with him? When will black women start a national organization that really fights for black women and their families? WHEN?

UPDATE: Maybe once organized, a new national black womans organization can get the blacks in the media to highlight important issues like not allowing bail for alleged rapist. Oh, but that's right black media, like white media, seem to be more concerned about Naomi Campbell being released on bail.

Is "Sunday Morning Apartheid" really gone?

Is Sunday Morning Apartheid gone? Is there still a very clear division, an exclusion of blacks to a large degree on Sunday Morning Talk shows? Is America still a nation involved in " Sunday Morning Apartheid" or is Felicia Lee at New York Times right when she wrote, "Like the Candidates, TV’s Political Pundits Show Signs of Diversity?

In 2006, the National Urban League released a report showing how racially segregated the Sunday morning talk shows are. According to their report, more than 60% of all of the broadcasts of the Sunday morning talk shows had no black guests on them at all. And 80% of the roundtables had no black participants.

Now in the NY Times article Felicia Lee notes, The historic and long-running presidential campaigns of Senator Barack ObamaHillary Rodham Clinton have injected issues of race and gender into politics as never before. With campaign coverage center stage on the cable channels, producers and critics are again assessing the diversity among pundits, who talk (and talk) about things like Mr. Obama’s pastor, the Hispanic vote, Iraq and the economy. and Senator

In the article Felicia notes, "Both MSNBC and CNN this election season have given new prominence to a handful of contributing commentators from varied backgrounds and perspectives: blacks, Hispanics and women."

Felicia's article also points out, "Whether such moves signal real progress in diversifying the punditocracy or merely reflect the needs of a particular news cycle is the question, some media experts say."

Here are some other key points in the NY Times article:

1. The most prominent positions on television remain overwhelmingly with those who are white and male, and some critics note how striking that non-inclusion can seem during this election year.

2. Whatever progress has been made with contributors and commentators as of late, the cable networks have a long way to go before they look like the American people,” said Karl Frisch, the spokesman for Media Matters for America, a liberal television watchdog group. He added that white men were the hosts of all the major Sunday morning talk shows, the major prime-time cable news programs and — except for Katie Couric, a relative newcomer — the network evening news broadcasts.

3. Diversity is not just good journalism but also good business, Ms. Ciara and others said.

Generally Felicia Lee's article is on point. And you know this African American Political Pundit is in agreement with Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, who points out in the article that cable programs relied more and more on people who can analyze campaign developments, rather than just report them. So television needs more pundits and more kinds of pundits."

AAPP: It's great to see and hear, as the article points out, the 2008 lineup at CNN which also includes Alex Castellanos, a Cuban-born Republican strategist, and Leslie Sanchez, a Mexican-American Republican strategist who has also appeared on Fox News. It's also great to see and hear Donna Brazile, journalist and radio host Roland S. Martin; Amy Holmes, a conservative strategist and a former senior speechwriter for Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, the former Senate majority leader; and Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist, Obama supporter and veteran press spokesman. The other networks are making, let us call it "attempts."

As I read the article I wondered when are the Sunday Morning Talk Shows and other Political Talk Shows going to desegregate and include black political bloggers as pundits on these talk shows? Then I had to be honest with myself, the networks are scared to place black political bloggers on the networks. Why? One word "Fear."

We all know black political and social commentary bloggers like The Field Negro, Electronic Village, Jack & Jill Politics, Pams House Blend, Prometheus 6, The Super Spade, Black Agenda Report, Eddie Griffin (BASG), Exodus Mentality, Francis L. Holland Blog, Mirror on America, Anderson at Large, Skeptical Brotha this African American Political Pundit and many others would also bring a fresh perspective that America is unaccustomed to hearing in the mainstream media.

Network Executives may be fearful that America is so unaccustomed to hearing honest political commentary and analysis that the black bloggers noted above and other black bloggers like Back Yard Beacon, Black Political Thought, AfroNetizen, AfroSpear Think Tank, Black Perspective, Black Smythe, Dallas South Blog, Mrs. Grapevine, Republic of T, What About Our Daughters?, Wichita NAACP Blog, Charcoal Ink, Bygbaby's Mind Spill, A Political Season and yes this African American Political Pundit would be to much for America to handle.

Well, Network TV executives and producers who may be reading this post, your wrong. There is no need to fear. By the way, you may want to consider following in the footsteps of the good folks at NPR's News and Notes, Bloggers Roundtable hosted by Farai Chideya. They have been providing bloggers from across America the opportunity to have a conversation with the American people. Farai Chideya and the folks at NPR are accustomed to providing honest political commentary and analysis that the black bloggers bring to America through The Bloggers Roundtable program.

OK now getting back to the question, Is "Sunday Morning Apartheid" gone?

Answer: Not when the most prominent positions on television remain overwhelmingly with those who are white and male. Not when a critical part of the "new media" is left out of the conversation - black bloggers. It's looking just a tad different on America's airwaves. As far as this African American Political Pundit is concerned, but It could be a lot better.

Then again who cares about black faces, for black faces sake. Are the current group of black faces saying what needs to be said? Well, this African American Political Pundit has the hook up. I have my own BlogTalkRadio program and I love being a regular contributor to NPR's Bloggers Roundtable.