THE ills/blindness of Black America!

[LancYorkYankee]

AOL's Jason Whitlock- Time for Jackson, Sharpton to Step Down - AOL Sports

This is an incredibly straight forward article by a Black man about the problems with American Black Leadership and the blind sheep that follow them. (IMHO) It's really just straight up common sense but most Blacks who read this overhere will probably consider this man an Uncle Tom. I find it extremely sad.

I was really impressed with this man's thoughts and wanted to get my English brethren's thoughts, if any!

Brian

[grego]

Tried to view but it says "Not available in my area?"

[shillelagh]

Here you are grego and anyone else who cant see it:

I’m calling for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the president and vice president of Black America, to step down.
Their leadership is stale. Their ideas are outdated. And they don’t give a damn about us.

We need to take a cue from White America and re-elect our leadership every four years. White folks realize that power corrupts. That’s why they placed term limits on the presidency. They know if you leave a man in power too long he quits looking out for the interest of his constituency and starts looking out for his own best interest.

We’ve turned Jesse and Al into Supreme Court justices. They get to speak for us for a lifetime.

Why?

If judged by the results they’ve produced the last 20 years, you’d have to regard their administration as a total failure. Seriously, compared to Martin and Malcolm and the freedoms and progress their leadership produced, Jesse and Al are an embarrassment.

Their job the last two decades was to show black people how to take advantage of the opportunities Martin and Malcolm won.

Have we at the level we should have? No
Rather than inspire us to seize hard-earned opportunities, Jesse and Al have specialized in blackmailing white folks for profit and attention. They were at it again last week, helping to turn radio shock jock Don Imus’ stupidity into a world-wide crisis that reached its crescendo Tuesday afternoon when Rutgers women’s basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer led a massive pity party/recruiting rally.

Hey, what Imus said, calling the Rutgers players "nappy-headed hos," was ignorant, insensitive and offensive. But so are many of the words that come out of the mouths of radio shock jocks/comedians.

Imus’ words did no real damage. Let me tell you what damaged us this week: the sports cover of Tuesday’s USA Today. This country’s newspaper of record published a story about the NFL and crime and ran a picture of 41 NFL players who were arrested in 2006. By my count, 39 of those players were black.

You want to talk about a damaging, powerful image, an image that went out across the globe?

We’re holding news conferences about Imus when the behavior of NFL players is painting us as lawless and immoral. Come on. We can do better than that. Jesse and Al are smarter than that.

Had Imus’ predictably poor attempt at humor not been turned into an international incident by the deluge of media coverage, 97 percent of America would’ve never known what Imus said. His platform isn’t that large and it has zero penetration into the sports world.

Imus certainly doesn’t resonate in the world frequented by college women. The insistence by these young women that they have been emotionally scarred by an old white man with no currency in their world is laughably dishonest.
The Rutgers players are nothing more than pawns in a game being played by Jackson, Sharpton and Stringer.

Jesse and Al are flexing their muscle and setting up their next sting. Bringing down Imus, despite his sincere attempts at apologizing, would serve notice to their next potential victim that it is far better to pay up than stand up to Jesse and Al James.

Stringer just wanted her 15 minutes to make the case that she’s every bit as important as Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma. By the time Stringer’s rambling, rapping and rhyming 30-minute speech was over, you’d forgotten that Tennessee won the national championship and just assumed a racist plot had been hatched to deny the Scarlet Knights credit for winning it all.

Maybe that’s the real crime. Imus’ ignorance has taken attention away from Candace Parker’s and Summitt’s incredible accomplishment. Or maybe it was Sharpton’s, Stringer’s and Jackson’s grandstanding that moved the spotlight from Tennessee to New Jersey?

None of this over-the-top grandstanding does Black America any good.

We can’t win the war over verbal disrespect and racism when we have so obviously and blatantly surrendered the moral high ground on the issue. Jesse and Al might win the battle with Imus and get him fired or severely neutered. But the war? We don’t stand a chance in the war. Not when everybody knows “nappy-headed ho’s” is a compliment compared to what we allow black rap artists to say about black women on a daily basis.

We look foolish and cruel for kicking a man who went on Sharpton’s radio show and apologized. Imus didn’t pull a Michael Richards and schedule an interview on Letterman. Imus went to the Black vice president’s house, acknowledged his mistake and asked for forgiveness.

Let it go and let God.

We have more important issues to deal with than Imus. If we are unwilling to clean up the filth and disrespect we heap on each other, nothing will change with our condition. You can fire every Don Imus in the country, and our incarceration rate, fatherless-child rate, illiteracy rate and murder rate will still continue to skyrocket.

A man who doesn’t respect himself wastes his breath demanding that others respect him.

We don’t respect ourselves right now. If we did, we wouldn’t call each other the N-word. If we did, we wouldn’t let people with prison values define who we are in music and videos. If we did, we wouldn’t call black women bitches and hos and abandon them when they have our babies.

If we had the proper level of self-respect, we wouldn’t act like it’s only a crime when a white man disrespects us. We hold Imus to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. That’s a (freaking) shame.

We need leadership that is interested in fixing the culture we’ve adopted. We need leadership that makes all of us take tremendous pride in educating ourselves. We need leadership that can reach professional athletes and entertainers and get them to understand that they’re ambassadors and play an important role in defining who we are and what values our culture will embrace.

It’s time for Jesse and Al to step down. They’ve had 25 years to lead us. Other than their accountants, I’d be hard pressed to find someone who has benefited from their administration.


2007 America Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
2007-04-11 11:38:00

[LancYorkYankee]

Huh, that's weird, I just clicked on it and it came right up. Probably some kind of technology issue. I guess I can cut and paste just didn't want to take up the space:


Time for Jackson, Sharpton to Step Down
Pair See Potential for Profit, Attention in Imus Incident

By JASON WHITLOCK
AOL
Sports Commentary

I’m calling for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the president and vice president of Black America, to step down.


Controversy Rolls On






Their leadership is stale. Their ideas are outdated. And they don’t give a damn about us.

We need to take a cue from White America and re-elect our leadership every four years. White folks realize that power corrupts. That’s why they placed term limits on the presidency. They know if you leave a man in power too long he quits looking out for the interest of his constituency and starts looking out for his own best interest.

We’ve turned Jesse and Al into Supreme Court justices. They get to speak for us for a lifetime.

Why?

If judged by the results they’ve produced the last 20 years, you’d have to regard their administration as a total failure. Seriously, compared to Martin and Malcolm and the freedoms and progress their leadership produced, Jesse and Al are an embarrassment.

Their job the last two decades was to show black people how to take advantage of the opportunities Martin and Malcolm won.

Have we at the level we should have? No.


Whitlock: 'Imus Irrelevent'
AOL Sports columnist Jason Whitlock takes on
Rev. Al Sharpton over the firing of Don Imus.






Rather than inspire us to seize hard-earned opportunities, Jesse and Al have specialized in blackmailing white folks for profit and attention. They were at it again last week, helping to turn radio shock jock Don Imus’ stupidity into a world-wide crisis that reached its crescendo Tuesday afternoon when Rutgers women’s basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer led a massive pity party/recruiting rally.

Hey, what Imus said, calling the Rutgers players "nappy-headed hos," was ignorant, insensitive and offensive. But so are many of the words that come out of the mouths of radio shock jocks/comedians.

Imus’ words did no real damage. Let me tell you what damaged us this week: the sports cover of Tuesday’s USA Today. This country’s newspaper of record published a story about the NFL and crime and ran a picture of 41 NFL players who were arrested in 2006. By my count, 39 of those players were black.

You want to talk about a damaging, powerful image, an image that went out across the globe?

We’re holding news conferences about Imus when the behavior of NFL players is painting us as lawless and immoral. Come on. We can do better than that. Jesse and Al are smarter than that.

Had Imus’ predictably poor attempt at humor not been turned into an international incident by the deluge of media coverage, 97 percent of America would’ve never known what Imus said. His platform isn’t that large and it has zero penetration into the sports world.

Imus certainly doesn’t resonate in the world frequented by college women. The insistence by these young women that they have been emotionally scarred by an old white man with no currency in their world is laughably dishonest.

The Rutgers players are nothing more than pawns in a game being played by Jackson, Sharpton and Stringer.

Jesse and Al are flexing their muscle and setting up their next sting. Bringing down Imus, despite his sincere attempts at apologizing, would serve notice to their next potential victim that it is far better to pay up than stand up to Jesse and Al James.

Stringer just wanted her 15 minutes to make the case that she’s every bit as important as Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma. By the time Stringer’s rambling, rapping and rhyming 30-minute speech was over, you’d forgotten that Tennessee won the national championship and just assumed a racist plot had been hatched to deny the Scarlet Knights credit for winning it all.

Maybe that’s the real crime. Imus’ ignorance has taken attention away from Candace Parker’s and Summitt’s incredible accomplishment. Or maybe it was Sharpton’s, Stringer’s and Jackson’s grandstanding that moved the spotlight from Tennessee to New Jersey?

None of this over-the-top grandstanding does Black America any good.

We can’t win the war over verbal disrespect and racism when we have so obviously and blatantly surrendered the moral high ground on the issue. Jesse and Al might win the battle with Imus and get him fired or severely neutered. But the war? We don’t stand a chance in the war. Not when everybody knows “nappy-headed ho’s” is a compliment compared to what we allow black rap artists to say about black women on a daily basis.

We look foolish and cruel for kicking a man who went on Sharpton’s radio show and apologized. Imus didn’t pull a Michael Richards and schedule an interview on Letterman. Imus went to the Black vice president’s house, acknowledged his mistake and asked for forgiveness.





Let it go and let God.

We have more important issues to deal with than Imus. If we are unwilling to clean up the filth and disrespect we heap on each other, nothing will change with our condition. You can fire every Don Imus in the country, and our incarceration rate, fatherless-child rate, illiteracy rate and murder rate will still continue to skyrocket.

A man who doesn’t respect himself wastes his breath demanding that others respect him.

We don’t respect ourselves right now. If we did, we wouldn’t call each other the N-word. If we did, we wouldn’t let people with prison values define who we are in music and videos. If we did, we wouldn’t call black women bitches and hos and abandon them when they have our babies.

If we had the proper level of self-respect, we wouldn’t act like it’s only a crime when a white man disrespects us. We hold Imus to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. That’s a (freaking) shame.

We need leadership that is interested in fixing the culture we’ve adopted. We need leadership that makes all of us take tremendous pride in educating ourselves. We need leadership that can reach professional athletes and entertainers and get them to understand that they’re ambassadors and play an important role in defining who we are and what values our culture will embrace.

It’s time for Jesse and Al to step down. They’ve had 25 years to lead us. Other than their accountants, I’d be hard pressed to find someone who has benefited from their administration.

[LancYorkYankee]

Jen beat me to the print out and it won't let me edit/delete my cut and paste. Sorry. Mods. feel free and encourage to delete!

Thanks.

Brian

[Gayle]

I have a question - when did all the black people in america elect a seperate president?

[grego]

Thanks for that guys, just been back to it and viewed it no problem!

[LancYorkYankee]

That was tongue-in-cheek Gayle! The author is showing his frustration with the majority of Blacks in Americe that follow these self annointed Leaders blindly. Whoever, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others say to vote for, they'll vote for, they speak out against, they will be against.

I would estimate that close to 20% of American Blacks are conservative and/or lean Republicans. Nobody talks about them and Black Leadership dismisses them as "not really representing the Black man" (IMHO) i.e. Condy Rice, Clarence Thomas (Supreme Court), Jesse Watts, Daryl Green, Lynn Swann, Colin Powell, etc.

[grego]

Originally Posted by Gayle

I have a question - when did all the black people in america elect a seperate president?

Yeah, my thoughts exactly!

[WillowTheWhisp]

Originally Posted by Gayle

I have a question - when did all the black people in america elect a seperate president?

I'm a little confused about that too.

[Gayle]

Originally Posted by LancYorkYankee

That was tongue-in-cheek Gayle! The author is showing his frustration with the majority of Blacks in Americe that follow these self annointed Leaders blindly. Whoever, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others say to vote for, they'll vote for, they speak out against, they will be against.

I would estimate that close to 20% of American Blacks are conservative and/or lean Republicans. Nobody talks about them and Black Leadership dismisses them as "not really representing the Black man" (IMHO) i.e. Condy Rice, Clarence Thomas (Supreme Court), Jesse Watts, Daryl Green, Lynn Swann, Colin Powell, etc.

It may be tongue in cheek, as was my question, but is it not a bit concerning that there is a black 'leadership' in the first place?

[LancYorkYankee]

Hmmm interesting point. I want to give Billcat, SteelJack, Bullseye a chance to give their opinions. I have my beliefs on that question but am afraid of being labelled as racist, bigoted, condescending, etc.

Again, in my opinion, it is quite clear. Okay, just one point really brief. I belief (in the last 40 years) that Black Leaders have done more to keep American Blacks down and under their control than the white man has.

[steeljack]

Brian , heres my 2 bits on the subject ................There is a reason the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are constantly in the media spotlight , it helps keep the rest of "them" in place .
It's like when Idi Amin was in power in Uganda and doing his best to make African leadership look like complete idiots, don't you think the British couldn't have taken him out if they had wanted ? No it was better to leave him in place and use him as an example to other leaders why Africans are unable to rule themselves.
Same with the Rev. Al and Jesse , the Israeli/Zionist owned media in the US portrays them constantly as ranting buffoons in an effort to silence anything else they have to say e.g the Palestinians , the corporate rape of Africa by the international oil and mining companies.
Now Al and Jesse are under fire for not coming down on the Black rappers who denigrate Black women by calling them 'Ho's' , but look a little deeper , who is making most of the the money from this Hip Hop /Rap ........the white owned music companies......where is the moral outrage there , why are these paragons of American business not refusing to stop putting this stuff out on their radio and TV stations ......because they are making millions out of it , so if Al and Jesse act like thugs and shake a bit of money out them so be it, one pimp robbing another pimp.

re. all the past weeks media coverage about Don Imus calling the Rutgers womens basketball player 'nappy headed ho's' , come on give me a break , if he had said they were candidates for the Miss America pagent every person listening would have choked on their morning coffee..........its a slow news week , and for Fox News (Rupert Murdoch owned) to drag the witch Anne Coulter out of her bat infested cave to comment on this is laughable. The hypocrisy shown by the media this past week has been disgraceful and that includes the coverage of the punks from Duke .....future leaders of America , I think not .

I notice not much is being said about the Guy from the World Bank (Wolfowitz) and the corporate sleaze going on there , wonder why the media isn't covering that in a big way , could it be they are protecting one of their own again.

[LancYorkYankee]

I agree that Coorporate America (mostly White owned and/or controlled) will take advantage of anybody and everybody to make an extra buck. Whether that's raping the natural resources of Africa and South America or their obscene pay checks and benefit packages. This all under the guise of free market capitalism.

However, it's mainly the black community buying all that rap music, black on black violent video games and watching the disgusting and degrading music videos. What is this doing to yet another generation of young people. Like the author of the article said, where is the outrage within the Black Community over that.

Imus (IMHO) is an idiot and has always been an idiot. Not sure how anyone can stomach him or Howard Stern, or the Greaseman for that matter.

[WillowTheWhisp]

Originally Posted by steeljack

Now Al and Jesse are under fire for not coming down on the Black rappers who denigrate Black women by calling them 'Ho's' , but look a little deeper , who is making most of the the money from this Hip Hop /Rap ........the white owned music companies......where is the moral outrage there , why are these paragons of American business not refusing to stop putting this stuff out on their radio and TV stations

I don't know what it's like over there but over here they'd probably be classed as racist if they tried to stop or ban it.