I have long contended that technology, including the Internet, will not bring an end to racism, but can expand and accelerate it. Some very old ideas will get a boost in new technology.
Example: Need to stop spam? There is an email application that will send your unwanted email to a "Black Mail" folder. That same program will send your "safe" email to a "White Mail" folder.
Now comes word of some bad things in Facebook's ad program. If you search for a friend on Facebook and the name you want is close to the word "Race," watch out. Facebook may place an ad on the right side of your search, an ad for "Ni**er Jokes." And I am not joking.
Chris Rock was kicking back on a couch at the 2009 Sundance film fest in Utah in January when an interviewer asked him how hard he works--
"I work hard, but... it pales in comparison to real work... You do an interview, I do an interview, but somebody's gotta clean up this room tonight. That guy's really working."
CNN is so proud of itself, now that it has aired two big reports called "Black in America," one last year and one this year. Well, I won't get into the details of the shows here. But ever since the powerful network last year aired Black problems in public with Part 1, I have been asking: CNN, where is "White in America"? I bet you CNN will never commit the same amount of its budget, publicity and prestige to a parallel report laying out the problems of whites.
[Soledad O'Brien, host of the CNN show]
White drug use, white collar crime, white aggression against nations of color around the world, domestic abuse and child abuse among whites, stealing of Black land by white courts and land developers across the South, school shootings by white youth, cocaine laws that favor whites-- and especially the growth of NRA gun club membership and gun sales since Obama became President. And don't forget the recent refusal of a club to let Black youth swim in its pool, and don't forget Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. getting arrested in his own home, and don't forget the-- let me stop.
The absence of a show called "White in America" for the past year illustrates this media law-- play down, ignore or excuse negative actions of whites, actions that would make headlines-- and CNN specials-- if done by Blacks.
In the meantime, see this video response by Jeremiah Camara--
You must go see the play "A Cool Drink A Water." Humor and hip-hop, drama and danger, hell and healing, the Spirit World, and not a little sex and love are all woven together in this Kinte cloth of a play. The audience was laughing, in tears, in shock, amazed and applauding throughout. No joke: I was on the edge of my seat. A worthy successor to "A Raisin In The Sun." How's that for a compliment? Don't sleep!!
Shocking news on the media front: Ebony and Jet magazines are in financial trouble. In the midst of the nation's financial crisis, advertising and circulation have fallen mightily. It is the worst downturn for their owner, Johnson Publishing Co., in its 67-year history.
Contractors have slapped liens on the Black-owned JPC, which has mortgaged its headquarters building in Chicago to the white company that does its printing, R.R.Donnelley. The nation's largest Black-owned media company is said to owe Donnelley $12.7 million.
There is so much to like and dislike about these two publications, but let's hope they can survive, change and thrive. JPC chief Linda Johnson Rice will have to call on much financial and community expertise-- and on the spirit of her father, John H. Johnson, who founded the company and also weathered many, many storms. He transitioned on 08.Aug.2005.
Ms. Rice, your father has not left-- he just went to sit over there with the other ancestors. He can help you through!
Excerpt-- "When Mr. Obama was elected in November, federal instant background checks, the best indicator of gun sales, jumped 42 percent over the previous November. Every month since then, the number of checks has been higher than the year before...
The National Rifle Association says its membership is up 30 percent since November."
The assassination angle-- Individuals like this minister may not pick up the gun or plant the bomb, but they are poisoning the atmosphere for others who may, or will, do so.
The media angle-- Compare the coverage that this man, Rev. Wiley Drake, gets to the coverage that Rev. Jeremiah Wright gets.
Though pretty on the outside, this Danish slave dungeon in West Afrika, built in 1784, hid deep and horrific secrets of white inhumanity. I have visited it, and I have heard the chains clank and the walls moan. In this 3-minute clip, a small group of Blacks from the U.S. also visits. The little girl at the end will touch you.
President Obama in Afrika at the Great Pyramid on Thu.04.Jun.2009. The structure was built around 2500 BC in what is now Egypt. At 481 feet high, it is about as tall as a 50-story building. It was the world's tallest human-made structure for more than 3,800 years. It reveals the most advanced use of construction, mathematics, geometry and astronomy in the world. More than 3,000 years later, a British scientific group wrote: "Now all of these measures, angles and levels are accurate, not as an ordinary surveyor or builder could make them, but to such a degree as requires the best modern instruments and all the refinements of geodetical science to discover any error at all."
A right-wing Fox News anchor is getting so much hate mail threatening harm to Barack Obama, that he goes on-air to warn about it--
And conservative writer Camille Paglia warns: "... when the tone darkens toward a rhetoric of purgation and annihilation, there is reason for alarm... Talk radio has been seething with such intensity since Barack Obama's first week in office... There is something dangerous afoot -- an alienation that can easily morph into extremism."
Technology is changing everything faster than you think. The future is not coming. It is already here. Are our leaders taking these ideas into consideration? Are you taking these ideas into consideration?
Hip-hop is a world phenomenon. Now it's gospel's turn. Just watch this Korean choir, singing in the Korean language, in their capital, Seoul. These folks have been sitting at the feet of Kirk Franklin. If you know his gospel hit "My Desire," you will see it-- and feel it-- here.
