Response to “Fox News…you guys are cunts”

http://thet-word.blogspot.com/2008/06/fox-newsyou-guys-are-cunts.html

The funny thing is that your bias is clearly shown in your critique of a so called bias network. If Fox News is so bad why does it lead all networks in ratings? If it is so bad who’s watching. Your right its extreme punditing and people are allowed mistakes. However, take away all the stuff fox talks about, what is there left? MSNBC, an equally as biased liberal network could be described as bad as you destroy on the flip side why don’t you write about them? The truth is liberal have their networks and conservatives have theirs. The real issue that no one addresses in that there are more conservatives in this country, which is why Fox exist. Not to support the KKK. If more black people watched Fox maybe Barak would get better coverage. If more black people were Republicans, maybe we as a race wouldn’t be at the living mercy of the Democratic Party.

Letter to the Incoming Class of 2012 to Hampton University

Empathy is defined as the mental process of identifying with the character and experiences of another person. Although the word is now used freely very few people can know you, understand your strengths and weaknesses, or could have shared your experiences close enough to really empathize with you. So, while I could write this from the perspective of understanding and knowing what you are thinking right now, we know better. So, I would rather give you a few words from one person to another person who is about to go through what the former has already survived and the latter is about to tackle.

Moving from one level to another in anything is never easy, but it is not necessarily difficult. What is difficult is what you have to do to stay “on top of the mountain” once you have arrived at the summit. I imagine many of you feel like you have arrived, and you should. By making it to Hampton University you have beaten the odds and transcended a society of can’t into a world of possibilities. However, you need to be careful because in reality you have not done much just yet. Getting here was the easy part, staying here and excelling is difficult. It takes an education for life to excel. For most of you getting here was not easy, and you refuse to allow anyone to tell you can’t enjoy it. That is fine, but I remember a proverb that says the journey of 1000 miles begins with just one step. Well, I imagine that at mile 350 when you look back it seems like you have come a long way, but if you then look forward you realize that the next step to mile 351 is as daunting and important as the first step so long ago, because 650 miles is still a massive task to accomplish.

If there is anything I can say that will help you excel at our home by the sea it is stay focused and forever hungry. Treat your first like your last and your last like your first, as one Brooklyn rapper once said. A challenge a day will keep you having to go home angry away, so strive to excel at all aspects of your life at Hampton University. Of the twelve young men I hung out with regularly freshmen year in James Hall, I was the only one to keep my scholarship. We were all on scholarship. I was the only one to apply for Honors College. Some of the people that started with me, where you are now, are not with me today because they keep looking back instead of forward. I hope your dreams don’t allow you to make the same mistake. I look forward to working with all of you in the future, and make sure you always speak truth to power. Thank you.

A Lose, Lose, LOSE Election.

I consider myself a proud political junkie on the level of Pookie from New Jack City. I am a CNN addict, when things are going well during the day I suffer from political argument withdrawal, and I can’t seem to get enough of this year’s Presidential election cycle. The three politicians that remain had to survive an Odyssey’s like epic struggle to get here today, minus the Greek Gods and tempting sirens of course.

John McCain was all but dead just seven months, when he fired most of his campaign staff and was polling behind Ron Paul in states that he would eventually go on to win. Barak Obama, well he is black and that has its own built in obstacles, but he has had to say he is not Muslim so many times you would think he was a descendent of Syrian crusades conquer Saladin, first he wasn’t black enough then he was willing because he was black, and they even attacked him by attacking his pastor for God’s sake. As for Hillary, well lets us all remember that if New Hampshire voters were not being so politically independent all the time, or if it was not for Texas and Ohio remembering why they liked her in the first place, she may not be here today. Yes, this year’s presidential election certainly has had more twist and turns then a good Agatha Christie novel, and the best part is that they real July, 4 like fireworks haven’t even begun because the general election is still seven full moths away.

So, with the prospect of one of the Democratic candidates drooping out soon and then a winner coming out of the race between the Democrat and John McCain becoming President, I wanted to take a minute and assess what we might lose after election day rather then what we might win.

If Barak were to win the nomination the Democratic Party would lose one of its smartest politicians ever and the best chance to break that seemingly unreachable glass ceiling of having a woman in the oval office giving rather than taking. Hilary Clinton is just as smart as Obama and just as tough as McCain. Graduating from Wellesley College and then Yale Law School with better grades then President Clinton and having served on the board of directors of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action, she has survived the collapse of her health care plan, and the “other woman”. Should she not be President we miss the chance to see how a female leader of the free world would be received in Saudi Arabia or Iran. We miss the chance to see how a former President plays the role of CEO of the East Wing rather than the West. We also miss the chance to tell the world that, in this country were freedom reigns you don’t have to provide sperm to call the shots and enforce the laws. We miss the chance to give the women of America who cook our meals, change our dippers, and birth our future a voice that shares their unique experience. Survey the Democratic landscape, there seems to be few replacements for this historic figure in the horizon. Junior Senator Claire McCaskill from Missouri may be the only viable Democratic female perspective candidate, she is said to be on the long list if Senator Obama wins the nomination. However she was only elected in 2006, and has not been a Governor or Mayor to show executive experience.

If Hilary or McCain were to win the Democratic Party would lose the chance to anoint its best politician since President Clinton and President Kennedy before him. The dream seems to die if Barak does not win, and that is the perception whether you dream with him or not. I think it is fair to say that no one actual knows if Barak can bring the change he speaks of or the change we need. It is also fair to say that if he does not win the energy, excitement, and hope he has brought these last few mouths dies as well. The future perspectives of African American Presidential candidates are worse than that of the party’s perspectives for females. I can think of no current African American Congressmen, Mayor, or Governor that can come close to matching the story, skill, and genius of the Junior Senator from Illinois. If Barak loses in the primary or in the general election we has a country and a free society would have passed up a once in a life time opportunity to single to the world ( but mostly ourselves) that race does not matter and the American dream is real for all who are willing to work hard and seek it.

When the Democrats come out of the sandbox and pick a nominee if that nominee beats McCain America would lose its best chance to tell the far right that they don’t matter in American politics. Through the straight talk express has slowed as he has tried to “unite” his party, John McCain is his party’s best hope to move away from the ideal, zeal, zero substance politics of the Regan era and back to the moderate politics of Eisenhower. At 71, John McCain would bring a life time of American history and service that the Democratic candidates lack. If he loses the Republican Party’s far right would undoubtedly jump on the opportunity to say that a Republican coalition of independents and mainstream America cannot win, and that a need to move back to courting the religious right and extremely rich existed. Newly minted “super conservatives” are waiting in the wings for a Democratic blow out of 2008 to bring “their” party back to that all time religion. Should John McCain not be President we miss the opportunity to tell the world that moderates not extremist dominate America’s policy.

No matter what happens in November we all know, someone will lose. America while accruing a future will lose an opportunity to set right one of the many wrongs of its past, no matter who wins. One thing we can be sure of is that we are now living history and I for one am enjoying my front row seat, even if it means I cry at the end of this cliff hanger.

BY D.W

What kills more Black Boys then bullets, guns, or war?

As I read Tonyaa Weathersbee “Putting blacks in prison is latest legacy of slavery” from Black Voices in Commentary, I couldn’t help but think of another tragedy that is nothing more the minority genocide. It is true that the amount of balck people, especially balck males, incarcerated is dangerous and warrants our attention. However, what about the number one killer of balck men in America? No, I am not talking about bullets, gangs, marijuana, crack cocaine, white women, or fried chicken. I am talking about abortions, and as a read Ms. Weatherbee’s story I thought to myself that, rather than jail this is the next big problem black people will face.

Now, I am as liberal as anyone who is willing to call themselves liberal but when there is a problem out that affects a race of people ideology should go out the window. I consider myself pro-choice, I fully support gay marriage, and I believe in universal health care. So please don’t revoke my Democratic Party Plus card when I say that I think that abortion was one of just the many things produced by the feminist movement of the 1970’s that destroyed the Black American family. More than any of our brother and sisters locked up behind bars, abortion as it is used today has robbed the black race of opportunity and future. Now, I could tell you that about 1,200 African-American babies are killed by abortion in the United States every day. I could tell you that since abortion was legalized in 1973, more than 14 million African-American babies have been killed. I could tell you that something like 35% of all abortions in the United States are performed on African-American women, while they represent only 13% of the female population of this country. However, I rather tell you that abortion is a crutch we no longer can afford to use as contraception. Unlike jail that simple disenfranchises African Americans, the Black American use and abuse of abortions eradicates any chance of that potential African American child becoming a functional citizen at all. In a democratic society in which numbers equal power, jail is a stumbling stone while abortion has turned into the wall of Jericho. Young Black males need to stay out of jail, but once out of jail if they don’t become more productive citizens, if they don’t take responsibility for the lives they produce and affect, if they don’t stop killing their dreams before they have a chance to blossom, they might as well stay in jail because they will never be free. Slavery was designed not just to enslave the body, but the mind and the soul of the African. Slave masters beat the biggest Negro to death in front of the rest to prove they could. They raped the black women in front of her husband and her son’s to prove that the men were powerless to do anything about it. Now as we enter the 21^st century, if we as black males continue to perpetuate a situation in which makes abortion more instead of less necessary, we may as well be giving our women to slave master and we are still powerless to do anything about it.

QUESTIONS 4 THE PUBLIC on the Black Athlete

1. Do Black Professional and Colligate athletes perform better in athletics more because of hard work, the share force of their numbers in most competitive major sports, or a natural athletic advantage as opposed to other races?

2. What role does race play in the “competitive nature” of sports?

3. Why do International “white athletes” perform better than American “white athletes” in International and American athletics, when you compare their performance to that of Black American Athletes?

4. What role did sports have in exposing the American Civil Rights Movement to the International community? Do Black Athletes still have any role today in exposing those who would not otherwise be exposed to Black American culture to it, through sports?

5. What is a more realistic dream in society today for a young black American male (economic, social, and societal situation existing without any great drawbacks), being a star in the NBA, MLB, or NFL? Becoming CEO of an established American company? Becoming a doctor or lawyer at a previously all white hospital or law firm?

6. What role does sex, sexuality, and the subsequent sexual exploitation of the Black athlete play in the shaping of their image.

7. Does such a thing as “penis envy” of the Africain American male penis or the Africain American female body actually exist in other American racial and ethnic group?

8. Is it black people as a whole or the black athlete as individual that defines what a black Athlete is in America?

9. Is it the struggle with environments and situations that we all as Black people say are negative that produces the Black athlete? If so, would obliterating such environments, hardships, and struggles of black people lead to the disappearance of the black athlete as we know it? (I.E-single parent households, ghettos and projects, inner-city focus on athletics, racism)

What role does politics and business play in the production of the image of the Black athlete?

Calling on a Lighthouse

Facts make for good arguments, but people are made of opinions. I cannot state this for a fact, but I am of the opinion that it takes men to successfully raise men. It has been my experience, both personal and observed that a strong male role model greatly increases the chances of success in life for young men. This is true especially for African American young men because a strong male role model is too often a luxury item in the communities some of us come from. Some will read this and say that they are the product of a single parent, matriarch household and come out well enough to make it to Hampton University. To that I say, touché. With that said however, I believe it would be hard for anyone to deny that they are benefits young men gets from seeing a figure that they can relate to, has at least the same trials and problems if not the same views and opinions, and is not necessarily a father figure but is at least a “lighthouse” when decisions need to be made. A lighthouse can be defined as a tower or other structure displaying or flashing a very bright light for the guidance of ships in avoiding dangerous areas. It can be viewed as a person sends out light from where they are placed to guide those out in sea to avoid dangerous situations or areas.

There were  about 51 students of Hampton University inducted into Honors College with me, 11 of them (including me) where young men. They are known as Marcel Wallace, Charles Todd, Anthony Starks, Craig Stanley, Jason Sherer, Niko Weaver, Jeffery Eugene, Ianandra Booker, Steven Ballard, Isaiah Ares-Batko, and me, Dwayne Kwaysee Wright. The 21% of new inductees represented by the male gender falls far short of matching Hampton Universities already astonishing 1:3 male to female ratio. Meaning that there are slightly more females that were new inductees to Honors College, then they were proportionality females in the freshmen class.

I am sure the males inducted into Honors College in the spring of 2008 will do their best to improve the University, better the community, and reach a standard of excellence that will make them lighthouses for their peers and eventually the classes that will be inducted after them. My call is for the current male members of Honors College to be more of lighthouse to us. Yes, we saw a few of you during orientation week, and those who were there did an outstanding job. We may see you in the occasional school forum now and then, or at a function specific to your major. We know that you have excelled and inhabit copious leadership roles in numerous organizations and clubs.

Ok, but how many of you when at a forum or stand up to speak at a meeting actually introduces yourself as a member of Honors College? How many of you, that were at the induction, took a couple of the new guys numbers and actually then called to find out how things were going? How many of you where not at the induction tried to find out whom the new guys were and what they were all about? Now some may say this is simply not their job or responsibility. Some may claim that doing such this will not make a difference anyway. While this may or may not be true, we all as new members represent the old members as much as they represent us. As modest or as immense a representation that may be, it should be enough to make showing and giving a little extra acceptable. You don’t really have to go that whole extra mile either; you don’t always have to be your brothers’ absolute keeper to make the necessary influence. Sometimes all young men require is a friendly nudge from a familiar face, rather than a babysitter. This not at all meant to call my brothers out; rather it is designed to get us all thinking. The ocean that is this life we all live in at our home by the sea is vast, why not be a lighthouse?