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 Margaret Kimberley is a woman of the people.
                She speaks for the people, and is not encumbered by corporate
                constraints.  Her weekly
              column on BC is the best-read item on our menu.
              We are honored that she writes for us, and writes so well. She also speaks truth to power, and to the
                powerless, and to those who purport to speak for the powerless – the
              false leadership that is subsidized by outside forces. False leadership comes in various flavors.
                Sometimes it is licorice, simulating Black. It stains your tongue,
              but doesn’t tell the truth.  Margaret Kimberley’s weekly columns hit hard – like they’re supposed
              to do. In the Blackest major city in the nation, Detroit, misguided
              politicians tried to set aside a few square blocks for Africa Town.  This
              is crazy. Most of Detroit is “Africa Town.”  The whole city should
              be developed to serve African Americans. Ms. Kimberley said so,
              on October
              7, 2004: 
              ”Detroit’s population is
                  80% black. In
                theory, the entire city should be a boom town for black people. If
                a majority black population and black political leadership can’t
                provide economic development for Detroit, then the African Town
                discussion is a waste of time and energy that might be better
                spent developing a real plan for that city.” 
              We must speak the truth, especially to our
                  own people. Halfway measures don’t get us the whole way to
                  freedom and prosperity. And half-ass politics gets us nowhere.
                  Margaret Kimberly spares
                no one, in the search of truth. Certainly, the Democratic Party,
                to which Blacks have been wedded for generations, is an actor
                in the racist game. Senator John Kerry conceded, in the face
                of massive voting fraud in Ohio, Florida, and many other states,
                almost before the sun came up on the day after the election.
                He was complicit in the crime, as Ms. Kimberley wrote on November
                11, 2004: 
              
                ”The same politicians who looked over the Democratic
                  field and decided that Senator Empty Suit was going to be the
                  savior of the party are now blaming gay marriage for the loss.
                  They have said nothing about electronic voting irregularities
                  in Ohio and Florida that disenfranchised their most loyal voters.
                  They have said nothing about the system of electoral racial separation
                  that condemns black voters to use punch card ‘hanging chad’ machines
                  and provisional ballots that aren’t counted.” 
              Ms. Kimberley cuts no slack. Nor should any
                  of us. White people are determined to choose our leaders. At
                  Harvard, the leadership
                factory, a committee of white men decided that a know-nothing,
                twenty something Black man would be our next leader. His only
                credentials were that he bad-mouthed Black society.  That seems
                to please Harvard. So Roland Fryer became the Black flavor of
                the month, according to the New York Times Magazine.  Margaret
                Kimberly wasn’t having it, as she explained, in a  March
            31, 2005 column, “Self Hatred at Harvard”: 
              ”Unfortunately the Fryers among us are more
                dangerous if they are allowed to get some book learnin’ than
                if they had none at all. Immediately after winning the brass
                ring they begin the stale lamentations about the state of black
                America. What is wrong with black people? Why don’t they do better?” 
              Apparently, we don’t do better, because we don’t please white
                people. Or more accurately, we don’t please white people ensconced
                in corporate offices. The kind of white people who give money
                to Harvard, to pay for those racist professors who chose Fryer
                as our next leader. 
 The pharmaceutical industry in the United States is a band of
                bandits, that have forced drug prices in the U.S. to astronomical
                levels. They are, literally, killing people. The Bush administration,
                like the Clinton administration before it, has given them a license
                to do so. Now the NitroMed Corporation, out of Lexington, Massachusetts,
                is cashing in on the high rate of Black heart disease, a condition
                that is directly connected to the daily harassment and oppression
                that is meted out to African Americans every time they step out
                of the door. Instead of national health insurance, they offer
                a pill called Bidil. Margaret Kimberly was outraged: 
              ”There should be an outcry
                  over Bidil. A system that allows millions of people to go without
                  health insurance,
                and consequently creates conditions such as heart failure, is
                now using those same people to repackage two generic drugs as
                a sort of medical magic bullet. Surely many of the African American
                heart failure patients would have been better off with universal
                health care, not a profit making gimmick that does them little
                good.” 
              Ms. Kimberley takes on the powers-that-are. She is unafraid,
                and a heroine of The Black Commentator.  Visit our Google powered  Search page
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