In 1976, after finally winning his first Grammy for “Best Album,” folk songster Paul Simon gave one of the most astounding acceptance speeches of all time. After thanking his fans, his producers, fellow musicians and singers, musical engineers… and even his parents, he then said:
“But most of all I want to thank Stevie Wonder for not making an album this year.”
You see, Simon thanked Stevie because for the previous two years running, Stevie Wonder had won successive Album of the Year Grammies, and indeed, after skipping ‘76, he won again in 1977.
This body shaming seems to be limited mainly to "Western" societies. In most of Africa, the "larger" women are considered the most "beautiful." Is that still "body shaming" but in the other direction?
Proposes Law to Finally End It and Pay Black People for Services Rendered
We can’t let [the failed coup d’état] go because it directly connects with our legacy of racism and hate in this country that stems from the genocide of the indigenous Americans and the enslavement of African Americans. The legacy of that is institutional racism and white nationalism; and if we don’t deal with it directly and explicitly in every institution, it will continue to persist and grow and permeate; and it will lead to a Donald Trump in the future. ~ Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY)
Newly elected Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) was in the Capitol building on January 6. He…
The First One was the 400-Year-Long War and Not Quite Total Extermination of Native Americans
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please. They do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing, already given, and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. …
Comes now the American Legion of Ohio. The Legion is reportedly investigating a Memorial Day incident wherein a keynote speaker’s microphone was silenced, but only for the section of his speech that described how newly freed black people created the now universally celebrated and commemorated national holiday.
Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Barnard Kemter, 77, had been called upon by the Legion to address the “meaning” of the holiday for Hudson, a northeastern Ohio town which has lost many of its sons and daughters in just about all of America’s ceaseless, worldwide wars, skirmishes, and “police actions.” …
A Brief Note From Political Science Class 101
Now is the time…to guarantee the South against the possible domination or the anger of the white race. We adhere to our opinion that nothing, or not much, except hostility, can be expected of two-thirds of the adult white men. They will go to their graves unchanged. Not one of them should ever again be trusted with political rights. And all of the elemental power of civilization should be combined and brought into play to counterwork the anger and plots of such foes.
— Wendell Phillips, “Warnings.” National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 9, 1870. (Written as the assault against Reconstruction by…
Eye-opening and very well written. Makes you think: There must be hundreds of such "days," "weeks," and "years" in "Black History" worth commemorating that have been lost to time. You do know, of course, that the reason black people have "Watch Meeting" at church on New Year's Eve is because it was on New Year's Eve in 1862 that black folks everywhere gathered in churches to "watch" for the news that Lincoln had finally signed the Emancipation Proclamation (Executive Order No. 95) on January 1, 1863. I coveredthat celebration here: 1863 "Watch Meeting" and the Happiest New Year.
Again, very well done.
From My ‘Good News’ File
Author’s Note: Hopefully, this will counteract at least some of the constant drumbeat of “bad” news that the “mainstream media” and “conservatives” generally just love to revel in and harp on about Chicago.
I don’t want nobody to give me nothin’. Open up the door, I’ll get it myself!
— James Brown
Doctors Brittani and Brandi Jackson are identical twin sisters who were born and raised in the appropriately named town of Twinsberg, Ohio. Both of these sistahs are medical doctors, one a General Practitioner and the other a Psychiatrist. They are first-generation doctors in their solidly working-class family.
Not…
I'm curious to know how you would compare Mills' racial contract theory to Michelle Alexander's ("The New Jim Crow") formulation of America's "racial bribe." As for me, they seem to go hand-in-hand, with America's ongoing racial bribe simply being a "modern" implementation of this 500-year-old racial contract.
We don't have to go all the way back to 1866 and Reconstruction to understand, know, what these people are capable ofdoing, even eagerly champing at the bit to execute a Nazi-style "final soulution" vis-a-vis black people. January 6, 2021 sent a loud and clear signal.
Herb Dyer, Jr.
Freelancer since the earth first began cooling. My beat, justice: racial, social, political, economic and cultural. I’m on FB, Twitter, Link, hdyerjr@gmail.com.
