A few years back, somebody pointed out the site “Hot Ghetto Mess” to me. Despite their claim that this was to encourage change, I was not impressed. I found that the videos and images shown there are not representative of even a majority of black people so, putting a tag line out there like “We got to do better” left me wondering who is the “we” she’s talking about. Every group of people has some “triflin’ folks” among them. However, minorities, unlike white people in this country, are judged by the exception rather than the rule. If “we got to do better”, we need to do a better job about not allowing people to stereotype us and to quit profiting from the disrespect of black folks.

Which brings me to the following…

“Hot Ghetto Mess” is coming to T.V.! Aren’t you excited?!

Hosted by Charlie Murphy, this series “guides viewers through shaking booties, thug life, baby-mama drama and pimped-out high schoolers, “Hot Ghetto Mess” will explore what these images really mean to all of us.

Cutting edge, original, relevant and irreverent, “Hot Ghetto Mess” is like the traffic accident you can’t look away from. Viewers will laugh. They’ll cry. They’ll think. They’ll learn, and hopefully they’ll recognize they’ve GOT to do better.” (From BET’s web site)

Great!

Well, it looks like some advertisers are already jumping ship. Home Depot and State Farm Insurance have pulled ads.

At any rate, the show launches July 25. Given much of BET’s other programming, I’m sure this will fit in quite nicely.

Popularity: 46% [?]

If I haven’t said it before, I’ll say it now — I have no sympathy for people who hurt kids. I don’t care what color you are, if you hurt kids, you’re scum in my book. What also pisses me off is to see how abuse happens at the hands of a live-in lover and the biological parent of the child(ren) knowingly allows this to happen.

In Georgia, a judge blasted a mother of after sentencing her live-in boyfriend to 2 consecutive life terms, plus 20 years, for the repeated molestation of her 8-year-old and the sodomy of her retarded 16-year-old. The mother, from all indications, knew that this man was dangerous because she let him move in with her after he attacked her sexually in 2003. Even worse, a previous boyfriend also molested her children.

Who knows what this means for the kids? Honestly, they need to be removed from that home because they are clearly in danger there.

Check out the video of the news story below.

Popularity: 15% [?]

First of all, that’s not my family to the right.

But, all kidding aside, why aren’t more black families adopting children?

My wife and I are looking into adopting a child next year. We have a son (who is our biologically) but, we also want to adopt a child. Where we live (Cincinnati, OH area), the adoption rate for black kids is so low that they are classified as “special needs” by children’s services agencies.

Even worse, in our area, we have some of the lowest adoption rates in the state. For example, the average adoption rate for African American kids statewide is 45%. In Hamilton County (Cincinnati area), it is 21%.

I would suspect that, in many other parts of the country, this is also the case.

I don’t really have a great point to make with this. I just wanted to spark a thought in your mind and ask that you consider adoption. There are a lot of black kids who need families so, I encourage you to get more information to see if you would want to take this step. Who knows, you might be just what a black child needs in his/her life.

Popularity: 12% [?]

I was checking out ThugLifeArmy.com and a sister by the name of Pearl Jr. has a commentary raising awareness on some current issues regarding disrespect of black women in the media. And, thankfully, she pulls no punches.

Making it plain, she airs out everyone from Angelina Jolie to D.L. Hughley to ESPN. But, this is no mere rant. What she is saying should cause us to pause and to really think about the images that are out there about our black women and whether or not we’re being too accepting of the disrespect.

Rather than just paraphrase, I’ll share some of it here:

This past week has been one filled with many arrogant insults to Black women:

Angelina Jolie playing a Black woman in the movie, “A Mighty Heart” and no one in the major media is discussing this complete disregard that Black women can be extraordinary and motivated by love just like any other woman can. A black woman can’t be the object of a White man’s desire, but according to the media, only a White woman can be the object of all men’s desires. RACIST!

The Obama Crush video is still being promoted nationwide. This young White woman is calling out the herd of White women to charge Barack-ster to get him to be with one of them. I guess the popular mindset is supposed to be that a Black woman just cannot be what a good, smart, talented, millionaire man wants; he’s got to want a sexy White thing just like any other Black man with resources. The woman in the video is a paid actress that probably isn’t even a real Obama supporter and didn’t even sing the horrible song.

DL Hugely displaying the arrogance of ignorance for refusing to apologize to the Rutger’s Basketball team for calling them the ugliest women he has ever seen while being a guest on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. Even after a group of ministers in Texas picketed his concert, he still boldly said he didn’t care and stood by his comment, which insults all hardworking innocent Black women, meaning all Black women are a target to being hurt for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

A talk radio show jock on ESPN by the name of Colin Cowherd said that it was NOT acceptable for Tiger Woods to miss the birth of his baby, but Lebron James could miss the birth of his baby. He said due to Tiger’s wife being a Swedish model (immigrant nanny), she had to be worth shutting down the entire golf tournament, but Lebron should miss his baby’s birth for a myriad of reasons. I supposed the difference is Lebron’s baby momma is Black?

Needless to say, this is a hot one!

Popularity: 67% [?]

“He Say, She Say”

Popularity: 49% [?]

To call Hurricane Katrina a catastrophe was too mild. To call the levees breaking a disaster fails to capture the severity of the problem. To call what happened in the days to follow “neglect” fails to capture the depraved indifference of our government to the plight of the people. To call the nearly two years that many of these families have been stuck in limbo “willful ignorace” would be a lie as we, in this country, know that the promises were never kept to the families. And, today, as the death rate climbs in New Orleans, we face another moral dilemma that screams for our attention.

Yes, I said the death rate is climbing. You may ask, “how?”. You may wonder why, almost two years later, we would see a spike in the death rate there. While there is some debate, it is believed that the increase in deaths is tied to physical and psychological stresses from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The bodies are no longer being dragged from houses and buildings toppled by Hurricane Katrina, but nearly two years later many in the medical community think the storm is still killing.

Storm survivors are dying from the effects of both psychological and physical stress, from the dust and mold still in dwellings to financial problems to fear of crime, health experts and officials say.

“There is no doubt in my mind that Katrina is still killing our residents,” Orleans Parish coroner Dr. Frank Minyard said this week.

“People with pre-existing conditions that are made worse by the stress of living here after the storm. Old people who are just giving up. People who are killing themselves because they feel they can’t go on,” Minyard said.

Furthermore, there is a really telling number in all of this:

But New Orleans medical officials say that jump, from 11.3 per 1,000 deaths to 14.3 per 1,000, — a leap of more than 25 percent — was anything but slight. Moreover, the report doesn’t take into account evacuees who died while away from the city and were returned for burial.

Over the past several years, we have become a country that’s learned not to care about average people. We can blame the victim with an ease that would make any sociopath proud. This is still a huge moral dilemma for all of us so, what are we going to do? Better yet, when are we going to start holding people accountable for not getting the victims of Hurricane Katrina the money that’s already been collected on their behalf and get these families the financial and medical help they so desperately need?

Popularity: 24% [?]

This has long been one of my favorite sayings. It helps me keep things in perspective and realize that what I have is not all about how good I am at what I do or how bad someone else is at something. Often, what we (don’t) have is more a function of circumstances than our personal worth as a human being.

I look at my son and am thankful that, when he’s sick, we can take him to one of the best pediatric practices in the city. We’re not rich by any stretch of the imagination but, my I do have good medical coverage through my job. So, when I see parents having to take chances with their children’s health, I say “there, but for the grace of God, go I.”

Right now, 1 in 4 children in America are without health care. This number has risen under Bush. I can’t really blame the parents here. We are talking about the children of the working poor who have to choose between visits to the doctor or visits to the grocery store. So, what we have, when you look at kids who are totally uninsured, those who are uninsured part of the year and those who simply can’t get a ride to the doctor puts us at 23 million children not receiving proper health care.

We could fix it. If we were willing to commit $60 billion dollars, we could “add 9 million people to CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program), plus dental and mental health benefits and transportation.” In other words, if we spent 12% of the total Iraq war funding ($500 billion and counting) on our own children here, we could work to save the lives of U.S. kids.

For a government made up of such pro-life people, the don’t really give a damn about kids once they make it out of the womb.

Popularity: 22% [?]

This is not a knock-Obama rant, per se. But, I do get a little tired of politicians making broad generalizations about black people, or even segments of the black population, without offering real insight into a problem. I get particularly offended when the person doing is black and should know better.

Consider the following:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is delivering pointed critiques of the African American community as he campaigns for its votes, lamenting that many of his generation are “disenfranchising” themselves because they don’t vote, taking rappers to task for their language, and decrying “anti-intellectualism” in the black community, including black children telling peers who get good grades that they are “acting white.”

Now, Obama was raising these issues because of how the affect “us” but, I’m sorry — this stuff just comes off as more a desire to make empty, political stump speeches than to call attention to real problems and to help identify solutions.

Follow me as I address my concerns:

1. Black people not voting: I don’t think that Obama looked into a report released last fall that showed that black folks were more politically active than their white counterparts. The study stated that young black folks were “most likely to vote regularly, belong to groups involved with politics, donate money to candidates or parties, display buttons or signs, canvass and contact the broadcast media or print media” and that “(c)onsistent with previous research, African Americans are generally the most politically engaged racial/ethnic group.” Could we do more? Of course! But, instead of just chastising black folks for not voting enough, he should also excoriate his own part, now that they’re in power, to do more to protect the black vote.
2. Rappers and their use of bad language: This has been the dead horse that I’ve heard politicians beat for over the last 15 years. Stopping this would be like stopping drugs. You are trying to go after the person on the street when you should be going after the distributor. If Obama, or any other politician, were really concerned about this, they would pressure music labels to either tamp down on their artists or, at least, sign and promote more acts that are an alternative to this madness.
3. Anti-intellectualism: Actually, in this article, Princeton professor Melissa V. Harris-Lacewell nails it. She stated that the achievement gap is “not because black 7-year-olds are holding back other black 7-year-olds.” This issue goes far deeper than being labeled “white” by one’s peers. For example, we would have to look at issues of home, early childhood education, resources, etc. This stuff makes good sound bites but, it hardly addresses the real concern.

In the end, what we have is a rousing speech with little substances. Perhaps I expect too much but, I don’t appreciate statements like these. They send me the signal that 1) he doesn’t mind showing white folks that he can help put black folks “in their place”, if needed, and 2) that he isn’t prepared to offer anything of substance to his black supporters.

He’s going to have to come better than this to get my vote.

Popularity: 22% [?]

It’s sad when, because you are too proud, arrogant or incompetent, innocent people suffer for it.

It’s been some 20 months since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and many people still haven’t gotten their lives back and, as we know, the federal government still hasn’t lived up to its commitment to these people.

So, it really ticks me off to know that help for those affected by this tragedy has been and is still being squandered. Many of our foreign allies stepped up with offers to help and our government simply dropped the ball. Just how bad is it? Check this out:

Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.

In addition, valuable supplies and services — such as cellphone systems, medicine and cruise ships — were delayed or declined because the government could not handle them. In some cases, supplies were wasted.

The struggle to apply foreign aid in the aftermath of the hurricane, which has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $125 billion so far, is another reminder of the federal government’s difficulty leading the recovery. Reports of government waste and delays or denials of assistance have surfaced repeatedly since hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck in 2005.

You know, our government’s leadership can find ways around the rules to detain people in Guantanamo Bay, to spy on Americans and to politicize science but, suddenly, it can’t adjust the rules to actually help its own citizenry? This is either arrogance or incompetence of the highest magnitude. In either case, people are suffering for it.

Popularity: 41% [?]

An economic Hurricane Katrina could be hitting in black America very soon. As you might have heard, the subprime mortgage market appears to be bottoming out and a lot of black homeowners stand to get swept away.

If you remember, during the last election cycle President Bush made a big to-do about how black homeownership grew with him in office. However, what he did not say was how these loans were made. Way too many of these loans have black lenders in over their heads.

Let’s look at the statistics, as quoted by those in the know (bolding mine):

(John) Gapper (of the Financial Times) continues, “Some 52 percent of loans made to black people in 2005 were subprime and 80 percent of these subprime loans were exploding ARMs.” (Adjustable Rate Mortgage). Martin Eakes, a credit union CEO claims estimates that 2.2 million families could lose their homes to foreclosure. This catastrophe, claims Eakes, could become “the largest loss of African-American wealth in American history.“

So, my calling this an “economic Hurricane Katrina” is no exaggeration. We could be in for huge monetary collapse in black America, virtually wiping away much of the progress of the last 30 years.

I shudder to think what this is going to look like.

Popularity: 17% [?]