Yesterday, I posted an article on the abyssmal conditions that wounded troops are living under at the Walter Reed Army Hospital. In a follow up, it appears that the bad press is motivating officials to clean up the infamous “Building 18″ featured in the article. Also, because pictures are often more effective than words, I am posting a video about the hospital that shows just what conditions are like for the troops being treated there (thanks to crooksandliars.com for the video)

 

 Troops at Walter Reed: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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There was a time when Ford Motor Company enjoyed a great relationship with African Americans. Even to this day, black consumers are a vital part of Ford’s base and, given the the current dire financial situation the company finds itself in, these same black consumers may determine life or death for the company.

However, I wonder what black consumers would say about Ford’s apparent pattern of discrimination against its black auto dealers.

I live not too far from the city of Fairfield, Ohio. I bring this up because there was a successful Ford dealership there owned by former football player Mel Farr. When there was no longer a “Mel Farr Ford”, I assumed that he had retired. I was wrong.

Farr had a total of 11 dealerships. However, he and other black dealerships had trouble getting black customers financed through Ford Motor Credit, the primary lender for Ford dealers. Here’s where the story gets interesting:

Many dealers had complained about disparate treatment of their customer base by Ford Motor Credit Corp. This credit company was the primary financer for purchased autos. If you can’t get the majority of your customers approved by them you weren’t going to close many deals. The adverse treatment of Black customers would have a devastating impact on the sales of a Black owned dealership. We lost a lot of Black dealerships because of this and there have been many discrimination claims because of this choke hold by auto credit companies. Mel had a brilliant idea. He went to Wall Street and formed his own auto financing entity to sell his cars. The alternative was successful – too successful for Ford.

The relationship they had with Mel and his 11 auto dealerships soured to the point that Ford “pulled the rug from under him.” Today, the nation’s best known Black auto dealer is out of business. He is banned for life from owning a Ford dealership. In fact, and so cruelly, his two sons are banned for life also. That is how they treated their “star.” Think about the other Black dealers.

These issues go well beyond the Farr situation though:

Ford has consistently put new Black dealers out into the “boonies.” These rural and mostly White markets have less of a chance for success versus an urban market. The odds are stacked against the young Black entrepreneur from the beginning. The National Black Chamber of Commerce has formed a committee to look into this to determine how much of a racial pattern there is. We believe it is shocking and intentional.

We have also learned that Ford doesn’t fully share its financial information before closing a deal with a prospective Black franchisee which is counter to FTC (Federal Trade Commission) regulation. They also block new franchisees from having their attorneys and accountants review the purchase contracts prior to investing in the dealership with Ford.

Well, I don’t know about anyone else but, I sincerely doubt that my next car will be a Ford.

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Are you as sick as me of people who say because you are not for the war, you are against the troops? Are you sick of people whose idea of supporting the troops involves only repeating talking points and putting stupid magnetic ribbons on their cars?

The next time one of them rants to you about what it means to support the troops, ask them what they think about the following article. Ask them why we are allowing those being maimed by this war to have to live with subpar medical care and, in some cases, actually have to live in subhuman conditions.

So, maybe, between their sips of lattes and their rounds of golf, they might actually reflect on the people they claim to support.

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely — a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them — the majority soldiers, with some Marines — have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.

They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially — they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 — that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.

read the rest of the article here

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“Break The Grip Of Shame” from the album The Devil Made Me Do It

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Video games, just like other media, are not usually the places to find positive imagery for black folks. As a person who grew up on video games (and I still play them), I find my pool of options dwindling. I am now the father of a black boy and I have become much more sensitive to the imagery he sees. Often, black people are flat-out nonexistent or we, more often than not, show up as either athletes or criminals.

Richard O. Jones, in a piece for Black Voice News Online, has stirred up a minor controversy in his criticism of the role of race in video games. However, Jones takes it a step further. He doesn’t see the continual portrayal as just a cause for alarm but, also as a challenge to black gamers to not just play games but, become insiders and game developers (currently, on 4% of developers are Latino and less than 3% are Black).

While this is a concern for me, I also see a big opportunity out there for some industrious black game developer(s) out there.

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Oh, were the images of this party as tame as the one on the right, we would not be talking about this.

If you have read this blog, you will know that I have posted stories about racist college parties mocking black folks (see here and here). However, we are not the exclusive targets of these insults.

In California, Santa Clara University students are (and rightfully so) getting heat for a “South of the Border” party they threw there. This party, mocking Mexicans, featuring partygoers dressed as “Latino janitors, gardeners, gangbangers and pregnant homegirls.”

This party was brought to light when photos from partygoers were posted on the school newspaper’s web site. The school newspaper also reported on and posted photos from an earlier, “Fresh off the Boat” party thrown by students, which mocked immigrants.

However, there is a great irony in all of this. Santa Clara is a Jesuit university whose motto is “compassion, conscience and competence.”

Well, I think the compassion is sorely lacking here.

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One thing that can be said about Obama is that he is not afraid to speak up for himself.

Last week, I posted a story about a black South Carolina state senator who said that an Obama win in the presidential primary would be catastrophic for the Democratic party because Obama is black. This past Saturday, Obama was in South Carolina and he confronted this criticism head-on.

I’m sure that, on Saturday, state senator Robert Ford must have felt three feet tall after Obama had the following to say in regards to voters electing a black president:

“At every turn in our history, there’s been somebody who said we can’t… Some people said we can’t do this, we can’t do that, so we shouldn’t even try. If I have your support, if I have your energy and involvement and commitment and ideas, then I’m here to tell you, ‘Yes we can.’”

So, while Obama doesn’t have the black vote on lock, I think that his standing up for himself will score him some points with black folks.

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“Who Me?” from the album Mr Hood

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Many of us know the history of COINTELPRO (the COunter INTELligence PROgram), in which the FBI sought to undermine groups it considered enemies or threats to the government. In some cases, they undermined civil rights and black empowerment organizations. In other cases, they infiltrated white racist groups and , att times, involved themselves in the illegal activities of these groups. It is also believed that, often, they actually agitated situations until they boiled over.

This is what came to mind for me when I read about the discovery that and FBI informant staged a Februay 2006 neo-Nazi rally in a predominately-black section of Orlando, Florida.

Some are wondering if the marched was actually staged by the FBI. The concern is that they knowingly put together the march, all the while knowing the potentially explosive situation such a gathering would create.

Sounds like the very definition of the prototypical “agent provocateur” referred to by so many black power organzations I read about growing up.

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I remember, in college, I had people both “Greek” and non-Greek asking my why I never wanted to join a fraternity. I often gave them one of two reasons. The first was that I could never understand calling somebody “brother” after them beating on me for several weeks. The second reason was that I would probably not have made it because I am vindictive and would have caught each of them alone and paid them back for the beatings I’d suffered.

During my time at Ohio State, I saw an Omega Psi Phi chapter basically shut down for 4 years (could not pledge) because, during one hazing incident, they broke a pledge’s sternum and left him tied to a tree overnight. I saw the Kappas (Kappa Alpha Psi) treat one pledge as an outsider after he “crossed” because, during the pledge period, they had broken his ankle. I presume they “crossed” him to avoid legal concerns. I even saw the “AKAs” (Alpha Kappa Alpha) get kicked off the yard for one year for hazing.

Needless to say, I find that, by being black, I have plenty of opportunities to get my a$$ kicked without volunteering and spending my hard-earned money to do so.

So, when I recently saw that two Kappas at FAMU are serving two-year jail sentences for the beating of a pledge that landed in the hospital, I can’t say I felt too sorry for them. The two were convicted under an anti-hazing law enacted in Florida in 2005, which makes hazing a felony when it results in serious bodily injury or death.

According to the victim, Marcus Jones, he and his line brothers were struck so hard with canes that, in some instances, the canes actually broke.

Now, what some will immediately say is, “why do these pledges allow this to happen?” Some will even hold the abusers blameless.

However, Lawrence C. Ross, Jr’s thoughts on this are more in line with my own. He questions why those that haze break both their own rules against hazing and the laws of the land in regards to their actions. He calls out those who engaged in this hazing and those attempting to hold them blameless, labeling them “fake brothers”:

But alas, the rest of us live in the real world. Hunter and the two Kappas who are now in jail for two years are finding out that being fake brothers can have consequences. Fake brothers cause real injuries that can send you to jail for real time. I don’t shed a tear for the Kappas in jail, except for the notion that as young educated black men, they had real opportunities to avoid their plight, but chose not to. And now they pay the piper. C’est la vie.

But I have a warning for Hunter and those black Greeks who think like him. The day of the fake black Greek is coming to an end. Create a fake pledge process and you’ll end up in a real jail. And despite how much you’d love to blame the brutalized pledge for your plight, the responsibility will be all your own.

Well put, indeed.

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