USA Radical Black

Minneapolis NAACP President “Uncovers” Corruption in Minneapolis’ Coalition of Black Churches and African American Leadership Summit

Minneapolis NAACP branch president Booker Hodges digs deep to find out who is behind the Coalition of Black Churches and African American Leadership Summit. There seems to be a $4 million dollar catch 22 attached to these unknown groups – to include the question: “What do they do?”

USA Radial Black wanted to find out a little more information about the Coalition of Black Churches and African American Leadership Summit. All we found was a Google link to the University of Minnesota – Northside Partnership page.

I could possible owe Mr. Booker Hodges and the NAACP an apology. It looks like we are on same team, maybe playing different positions…

By Donald W.R. Allen,II – Editor in Chief/IBNN and USA Radical Black.com

Poverty pimps, community hustlers and clergy bamboozlers have made a good living off the Black people in Minnesota. I have been writing about this for over three years – still today, a few of you still don’t get what’s going on. Now I have to lay some more information on you. Read More »

Haiti – The Politics of a Human Disaster

By Donald W.R. Allen,II – Minister of Information-USA Radical Black

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.”-Rahm Immanuel, Chief of Staff, President Obama

On Sunday, January 17 the BBC reported from Port-au-Prince: “We have been hearing the constant roar of high-powered engines for days as transport planes take off and land. But like the people of Haiti, we have wondered why the cargo has not been getting to its final destination.

The incidents of unrest over food and water have been few and far between, but many people still want answers.

At one of the makeshift camps in the capital, hundreds of people made homeless by the earthquake shelter from the intense heat under a patchwork quilt of tarpaulin, zinc sheet, and blankets.

There are hundreds of men, women and children on the rough ground surviving without the basics.”

While we watch the Democratic machine go in to over-drive to raise funds for Haiti  – the country has just become another photo opportunity for President Obama and his cabinet. Our hearts go out to the brothers and sisters and their families who have lost loved ones.

President Obama, who has not addressed the state of Black America, or for that matter stated his position on Africa, might have to finally take a strong stance in regards to the people of Haiti.

Haiti was a human disaster long before the earthquake. Haiti is a by-product of the United States’ gross neglect. The problems with Haiti’s infrastructure could have been addressed decades ago– but we have to keep in mind, this is a Black-led nation. What is most sad is that Haitians were living a nightmare even before this horrible situation (their unemployment rate is 65%), and we need to see the nightmare come to an end.

Long after the fanfare is over, Haiti will continue to be a “human disaster area” much like New Orleans.

Haiti’s regional, historical and cultural position is unique for several reasons. It was the first independent nation in the Americas, the first post-colonial independent Black-led nation in the world. The independence of Haiti was gained in 1791 via a successful revolt of enslaved Africans and free people of color who overthrew the slave regime and the colonial system at the same time.

Why does this become an issue for the Obama administration?

When US President Barack Obama announced that one of the biggest relief efforts in US history would be heading for Haiti, he highlighted the close ties between the two nations. President Obama said, “With just a few hundred miles of ocean between us and a long history that binds us together, Haitians are our neighbors in the Americas and here at home.”

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have indeed become neighbors of Americans.

Some 420,000 live in the US legally, according to census figures. Estimates of the number of Haitians in the country illegally vary from some 30,000 to 125,000.

The history that ‘binds us (Blacks) together” is Slavery and our Blackness.

Haiti has been a poor country past, present and will be in the future. The so-called “curse” of Haiti is its perpetual poverty and the United States’ continuous interference with Haiti’s government, while overlooking the needs of its people. The basics, “food, water and shelter” have never been the top priority- shaping the government to the desires of the U.S. has. The people of Haiti have been starving for too long.

Why does it take a disaster to address an on-going disaster?

American administrations from President Nixon to Obama have well known the  true state of Haiti. They knew that the Haitian people mixed dirt with sugar to make “cookies” to have something to eat. A significant part of the population of Port-au-Prince eats dinner out the garbage cans of tourists from the First World.

The catastrophic disaster in Haiti has gained worldwide attention. Nations like Haiti deserve the assistance of the United Nations in a humanitarian way, without the politics of government interference.

Haitian native, Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti at www.yele.org, has come under-fire by larger charities for his fund raising that have gone on long before all eyes where on Haiti. This blog endorses Wyclef and his ongoing efforts to assist his homeland.

Americans give over $100 billion dollars per year to churches, so if we simply gave one month of tithes to genuine Haitian charities, this would be nearly 8 times the Haitian government’s annual budget. Sure, there might be some corruption in charitable fund-raising, but there is corruption everywhere, including the US government.

See the parallel between New Orleans and Haiti by reading this story posted on the Black Agenda Report: Katrina’s Legacy: Poor Blacks Have No Right to “Be”

The Incredible Transition of Dr. King

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole Peralta writes

A long time ago in the fabled southlands of America, the authorities told black people they had to use the “colored” restrooms – not the “white” people ones. It was thought at the time that “mixing the races” would lead to rape, diseases or other unfortunate circumstances. One public restroom each in a building’s common area was supplied for colored men, colored women, white men and white women; pretty idiotic, don’t you think?

It did make four “water closets” available, two apiece for each sex, which admittedly allowed for somewhat easier restroom availability. But it also undermined the dignity of the American Deep South, which was thus stuck moving from the lack of fair human rights to the promotion of greater civil rights, and eventually to manifesting independent living rights. After all, the involved country was America, and being a democracy, it couldn’t long maintain such hostile acts of racial segregation – or discrimination against the physically disabled, challenged, or handicapped.

You could say the 1950s and 60s were a time of incredible transition when it came to the full legal rights of American citizens. What was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s role in this so-called “incredible transition?” For one thing, changing racially segregated public restrooms back to the usual men’s and women’s ones was considered to be politically important. This sort of thing, along with the Deep South’s municipal bus boycotts, was to enable “colored” people to get away from such underhanded referencing to their darker and harmless black, brown or mulatto skin color.

Uniting the public restrooms enabled people to continue their normal way of life, unhampered by racism or any presumed “need” for such segregated facilities. Plus, there was the further needed transition of the municipal city buses, where black people had been forced to sit in the far backs of the buses. As with the public restrooms, there was no need for such isolation, which at the time was being corrected by the acting Civil Rights Movement, headed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., so that people could use most public facilities without suffering from further racial segregation. Read More »

MLK Breakfast Part II: Go Ahead “Celebrate,” while your having breakfast…2 Million Black Households With Children Face Hunger

Source: Feeding America

Again the community is pimped, played and starved.

1.8 million Black Households with children are food insecure – Black households with children experiencing very low food security up 92%

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDA) reported yesterday that almost one in four children living in the United States are food insecure. According to the 2009 report on Household Food Insecurity in the United States, there is a striking disparity in the prevalence of food insecurity among black children. Nearly two million black households with children were food insecure at least some time during the year, an increase of 25 percent over 2007. In 2008, there were 3.76 million non-Hispanic white households with children that were food insecure. The study also revealed that 146,000 black households with children — a 92 percent increase over 2007 — experienced very low food security, meaning that the food intake of one or more of the household children was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money.

This marks the largest increase in food insecurity rates among African-American households with children since the USDA has been collecting data. Very low food insecurity for non-Hispanic whites rose 35 percent during the same period.

“Importantly, these numbers reflect the state of the nation one year ago, in 2008. Since then, the economy has significantly weakened, and there are likely many more children of varying ethnicity struggling with hunger than this report states,” said Vicki Escara, president and CEO of Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger-relief organization. “It is an outrage that one in four children in this nation lives on the brink of hunger and doesn’t have access to adequate amounts of nutritious food.”

The new data reinforces recent findings from a research study conducted by Feeding America reflecting a dramatic increase in requests for emergency food assistance from food banks across the country. Conducted in September, the Feeding America study shows that more than half of its network food banks reported seeing more children as clients.

“This study reveals particularly tragic realities facing many black families with children. We know that inadequate nutrition in children often delays their cognitive development and cannot be restored later in life,” said Escarra. “Feeding America will continue to focus on expanding programs to hungry and at-risk kids to ensure that our future engines of economic growth are strong adults.

“Feeding America’s 200 food banks continue to work on the front lines feeding more than 25 million people each year, through our country’s food pantries, soup kitchens, and emergency feeding centers — more than 63,000 agencies in total,” said Escarra. “These establishments, many of which are grass root and faith based centers operated solely by volunteers, serve as an oasis for the more than 4 million people who seek relief weekly to help feed themselves and their families. Emergency food assistance is a critical link in the nation’s response chain to help people through times of crisis.”

Escarra observes, “Our network food banks are calling us every day, telling us that demand for emergency food is higher than it has ever been in our history. Feeding America will continue to work closely with our partners at USDA to ensure that the public and charitable sectors are keeping pace — as best we can — with the dramatically increasing needs for food assistance.”

Instant Blackness with a ticket and a name badge at the General Mills Foundation’s – MLK Breakfast 2010

The closer we get to the beginning of 2010, and the possibility of Corporate America getting closer to “Blackness” in anticipation of Martin Luther King’s birthday and Black History Month, there are important questions that we must ask ourselves.  Why has Black America let the commemoration of our history and achievements slip into the hands of White commercialization?

(Source The Independent Business News Network)

Minneapolis, MN (IBNN)…In 1961, my birth certificate said I was born a Negro. In 2009, given the existence of a playing field that is only semi-level—and even that, only for certain blacks- black Americans as a whole are still in the “Realm of Negroism.”

On January 18 2010, General Mills Foundation and the United Negro College Fund will present the 20th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Breakfast.

The Breakfast “is an opportunity to celebrate the legacy of service of Dr. King and create an imperative to live out his legacy today in our homes, our communities and our world,” according to the MLK Breakfast website.

But wait.  Next question.

Just what is Dr. King’s legacy?  And how can we claim to honor this legacy, with no real engagement with the urgent issues that affect people of color every day?

Dr. King’s legacy cannot be lived and made real today over breakfast and tea, but requires grassroots organizing, protest, and activism.   To fully understand this fact, we must look at the history of the Civil Rights Movement.

The Civil Rights Movement was at a peak from 1955-1965. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, guaranteeing basic civil rights for all Americans, regardless of race, after nearly a decade of nonviolent protests and marches, ranging from the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycotts to the student-led sit-ins of the 1960s to the huge March on Washington in 1963.

We must realize that Dr. Martin Luther King’s words and actions were considered radical at the time.  They gained popularity because he spoke Truth to the People of the United States. Dr. King said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

Today, Black America has become mute and non-confrontational. Read More »

Black elementary students told to act like slaves – in 2009

By Matt Roberts, November 13 (originally posted 11/8) New Orleans News – The Examiner

WAXHAW, N.C. — A history lesson that asked black elementary students to act like slaves has sparked protests from parents and teachers at a North Carolina school Wednesday.

During a field trip to Latta Plantation, three students from Rea View Elementary in Waxhaw were chosen by tour guide Ian Campbell to wear bags and mimic picking cotton while their white classmates looked on, WSOC-TV, Charlotte, reported Friday.

Many of the teachers and parents from the elementary school said they plan on writing the leaders of the plantation regarding the racially insensitive history lesson.

Campbell said “I was trying to be historically correct not politically correct,” Campbell adds, “I am very enthusiastic about getting kids to think about how people did things in 1860, 1861 — even before that period,”  who added he has been a historian for 15 years.

Kojo Nantambu, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, criticized the lesson.

“There is a lingering pain, a lingering bitterness, a lingering insecurity and a lingering sense of inhumanity since slavery. Because that’s still there, you want to be more sensitive than politically correct or historically correct,” he said.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Black Republican – Racism in the Republican Party

By Conor Friedersdorf – The Daily Beast

The GOP chairman’s comment that some white Republicans are afraid of him is just the latest reminder that our politics are hardly post-racial. Conor Friedersdorf on how the GOP can repair its image—and the myths the left perpetuates.

Did you hear the one about the Republican National Committee Chairman who agreed that whites in his party are afraid of talking to black people?

No joke.

“I’ve been in the room and they’ve been scared of me,” Michael Steele said. His unusual remark is the latest instance of Republican attitudes toward race making national headlines—and causing a headache for GOP officials, who are constantly trying to reverse the perception that their party is hostile to minorities.

The right should rethink its ideological commitment to the notion that racism isn’t a real problem in America anymore, even if they disagree about how it should be fought; and the left should alleviate suspicion that race is being used as an ideological cudgel by helping to stigmatize those who frivolously play the race card.

The single time the news media obsessed about racism in the Democratic Party came during the Election ‘08 primary, when several Hillary Clinton supporters in states like West Virginia were seen on YouTube, during television interviews, and on The Daily Show saying bigoted things about Barack Obama. Soon Bill Clinton himself, sometimes praised in liberal circles as “our first black president,” found himself accused of racially questionable remarks. I wouldn’t put any politically advantageous trick past Slick Willie, but I never imagined that I’d see him being called on multicultural in-sensitivities as though he were a Republican pol. Read More »

Respectfully, A message to the Sharptons, Jacksons, and Farrakhans of the World: The struggle is not over; the gauntlet will be passed back to you

The Collapse of Black America’s Talented 10th, the Deal that made White America Vote “O”

By Donald W.R. Allen,II  – Minister of Information/Editor in Chief – 2009 ©

“This generation will have to learn from damn near scratch what a real social movement looks like.” ~Black Agenda Report 2009

Reports of racism have increased. Black unemployment is sky-high.  The foreclosure crisis has devastated black neighborhoods across the country.  Yet no official stance on race relations in the United States has been taken by our Black President, Barack Obama.

“Is racism only prevalent if you’re a professor at an Ivy League school who is arrested in your upscale neighborhood?”

White America allegedly demonstrated their goodness and racial tolerance in 2008 by voting for a Black man to be president of the United States.  We have learned that a large and decisive number of whites can be persuaded to vote for a certain kind of Black man: one who never speaks about racism, and in no way, resembles Al Shartpon, Jesse Jackson, or Louis Farrakhan. Read More »