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Issue Number 17 - November 21, 2002
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Unfunny Valentine
Despite our best efforts, THE CRISIS, founded by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1910, remains under the editorship of Victoria Valentine, a person who cannot tell the difference between friends and foes of the magazine's parent organization, the NAACP. Valentine gave both praise and space to Cory Booker, the school vouchers advocate and board member of the Right-funded Black Alliance for Educational Options, and Denise Majette, the new Congresswoman from Georgia who rode to victory on a sea of rightwing cash. Both are "liberals," says editor Valentine, apparently oblivious to the NAACP's determined opposition to vouchers for private schools, and unconcerned about the financial backers of those who pose as "new Black leaders." (See "Debate," November 14.)
Our efforts peaked the attention of Niambi Bah, who wrote:
It was so refreshing and uplifting to read your article regarding the removal of Valentine. She absolutely, positively needs to be removed immediately.
P.S. Is there anything you have started (such as a petition to be submitted to the NAACP) to further the process of her removal?
It is not this publication's place to start petitions among NAACP members. However, the board members of THE CRISIS are listed in our article.
Writer Shannon Scott, of Savannah, GA appreciated D.H. Muhammad's November 14 Guest Commentary, The Sniper and The Nation of Islam. Mr. Muhammad stripped intellectually naked those who have attempted to associate the NOI with the crimes of a former member. However, Mr. Scott has one problem with Mr. Muhammad's method.
I'd like to begin by complimenting your email newsletter by saying it's a truly enlightening and refreshing read. Especially in the world where media defines truth by its sense of advertising dollar and "readership/viewer" numbers. Little do they know how they have become pawns for the Bush administration's every whim.
I enjoyed your most recent Guest Commentary article overall as it brought some real levity to the nature of the shooter's personal choices outside of the rules of their own faith. I too feel that the Bush gang seeks to use this story as the beginning to further dividing the races in our country and could become a desired catalyst to further bamboozle the American people as regards his war on terrorism.
However, on the author's phrasing, "homosexual cannibal," I am left feeling stuck. Within the article itself I found its use very off key to the overall feel of the writing and what appeared to be the point of the article. I think its excellent that the tone is seeking "justice for all" if you will, but found the use of "homosexual" to be derogatory to that point as any who might be [homosexual] would feel instantly slanted. So what if Dahmer was homosexual? As for the "cannibal" use - well, he was born a human being first who fell prey to cannibalism on his deranged path. Dahmer is still a man even so.
Needless to say the article carried itself objectively well, but I also doubt that I'm alone in feeling that the author's picking of "easy targets" sends a portion of those points to the realm of questioning the author's own emotional agenda.Keep up the good work.
We urge readers who missed D.H. Muhammad's commentary to revisit our last issue. Although we anticipated that some readers would react as Mr. Scott did, we believe that Mr. Muhammad's method did not single out homosexuals. He also pointed to the Boy Scout, U.S. military, Republican, Democrat and Christian backgrounds of various mass murderers.
Wende Elizabeth Marshall is brilliant. We know this, not only because of her work in the Department of Anthropology at the Carter G. Woodson Institute, University of Virginia, but because she thinks well of
.
You are doing a fabulous job! I am pretty much turned off by the mainstream news and
We thank Professor Marshall for giving the publication a greater reach than we could achieve on our own.
Gripes and Snipes
Two writers have been very unkind to us, placing words in our mouths and bad motives in our hearts so that we can hardly recognize ourselves. Nevertheless, we will do our best to accept the writers' criticisms with equanimity, and so forth, and so on.
Barry Ringold recommends that we find God, before it is too late. Ringold takes a long time getting there, as he itemizes our transgressions.
I believe your article on Denise Majette was informative but untrue. To believe that Cynthia McKinney should be elected by blacks because she is black and should be supported by all black Democrats leaves little to the imagination for the intelligent black voter.
First of all if you check McKinney's record over her term in office as compared to John Lewis' term, you can see that Congressman Lewis has brought in more federal grants and aid to his District than Mckinney. You need to question what has McKinney been doing in D.C., socializing and partying. Dekalb County, GA needs financial and service resources to accommodate its population growth. It does not need a representative whose only claim to fame is playing racial politics and hysteria even when it is not warranted. We saw that during the last election. She tried her best to paint a qualified, respected black person, Denise Majette, white in effort to sway black voters and hide from her ineffectiveness as a Congresswoman. This was a turn-off to many black voters in the District. Many did not vote during the election.
Also to assume that black politicians who receive a large amount of white Democratic votes are not black, or that they are Republican, is so immature and silly. Last time I looked I believe that Rev. Martin Luther King said we should be "judged not by the color of our skin but the content of our character." I believe that Judge Majette's character was judged by blacks and whites in Dekalb County and that is why she defeated Cynthia McKinney. We are beginning to enter the American dream of Martin Luther King. If we professed that we wanted it so much then, then we as blacks must use wiser judgment in selecting our leaders without regard to racial politics used by some to win elections, including black elected officials.
I know this may prove to be a challenge to someone who has used race to establish their stature in politics and benefit socially and financially, but not to the community they were elected to serve. The only thing they should strive and learn to do is live a Godly Christian life, without generating hate and division, then they will be rewarded righteously by God: the one who has gotten us this far. We do not need to imitate the ways of our oppressors. If we do, we will suffer their consequences.
God BlessYou!
We thank Mr. Ringold for his blessing. Ringold assigns great powers to the publishers of
Ron B got a load off his mind at our expense. We trust that he can spare it.
Your web site wins the prize for the most politically biased, left leaning and
slanderous web site designed to keep us Black people on the political plantation. (You have replaced BlackPressUSA.com on my list).Why are "Conservative Black people" such a threat to you? I thought liberals were for free speech and supported a diverse set of ideas and philosophies.
Yet you constantly slander Black people who think differently than you do. What is their crime? That they dare to believe there is an alternate route to Black Independence?
The writers of your content do not possess a single cell in their body that is more committed to the cause of Black Independence than I do.
In my view the true "sellouts" of Black people are not the Black Republicans (I am a conservative independent Black man.) It is the Black people like you who have conditioned Black people to believe that the "health and well being" of Black people is a function of the "health and well being" of the Democratic Party. The problem is both parties are dominated by the interests of the White masses. Both parties have a longer history of straight up racism toward Black people than they do of racial objectivity. Yet we are told by our so-called "Black Leaders" to become genetically modified and support Democrats.
Your web site is nothing more than a mouthpiece for this same group of people to keep us on the Democratic Political Plantation.
Instead of looking at the results of the recent election and coming up using your warped view that "America is now tilting to the Right and thus becoming more racist" as evidenced by the election losses of the Democrats, how about considering the flaws in your strategy of herding Blacks into a single party in which, when the Democrats lose, the Black race loses. Right now all you can do is stare in the windows on the outside looking in at the new political process, throwing rocks all the while.
You all have too much talent as evidenced by your cartoonist to be so extreme on the left. Please grow up. Please place the long-term interests of Black people ahead of your obvious partisanship.
We let Ron B run on and on because we believe he is sincere in his beliefs, although why he gets all worked up about people who just "stare in the windows" is beyond us. We assume BlackPressUSA.com got a similar letter, doubtless with quotation marks surrounding statements they never made, either.
"Conservative Black people" are not a danger to anybody, Ron B. As we explain in our analysis of the recent JCPES poll, in this issue, there are very, very few Blacks who are "conservative" in white American terms - including, it is clear to us, Ron B. It's the made-up classes of conservative Blacks that we try to exorcise, the constituency that really isn't there, but is used as a political weapon against African Americans who actually do live and breathe.
Black Republicans are also too few to cause alarm. We appreciate the fact that they are considerate enough identify themselves. Now, Trojan Horses are a different matter. Ron B isn't one of them either; he lets everybody know he's in the house.
We are also not sure what Ron B means by calling us "liberals." Perhaps Ron B will vouch for that if John Ashcroft comes knocking at our doors. ("They're OK, Mr. Attorney General. Just a bunch of liberals, staring out the window.")
Finally, if the publishers of BlackCommentator.com were truly such great herdsmen as Ron B gives us credit for, we'd all be going in a very different direction.
Slyly, Ron B lavishes praise on our cartoonist, Khalil Bendib. This was a cruel thing to do to Mr. Bendib, who now feels mistrusted by the rest of the staff. Ron B has wreaked his revenge.
Keep writing.
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