#blaklife redux - FriendFeed

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#blaklife redux

Before reading the following the reason this room was created was to create a place for people to chat about issues that might be of interest to people of color hench the name of the room. It is not a page for the members of the irc channel I'm referring to in the text below. <br><br> Spawned in the memory of one of the internet's first time wasters (irc) #blaklife redux is an ode to a time when 30 or so Black people on the internet all found their way to the efnet and formed #blaklife. It grew and spawned other channels but none as great as the fabled & legendary #blaklife Shouts to: Adrian (Umich Campaign-Urbana), ProfessorX (RIP), bwana, KoolTed, alldat, Jethang, bubblz, Keisha, deffy, defiant5, dog1, Mr Scott, Bluesette, Latinboo, Negratina, Afflicted the list goes on and on... <br><br> Enjoy the room. Tim Moore

Karim posted a link

Republican National Convention: 2,380 delegates. 36 of them are black.

Friday at 8:12 pm - Link

tiffany liked this

"As the country rapidly diversifies, Republicans are presenting a convention that is almost entirely white." - Karim

Karim posted a link

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia) says when he called Obama "uppity," he didn't realize it had racial overtones.

Friday at 8:22 pm - Link

Ruth Ferguson liked this

If you click on his picture on latimes.com, then save it to your hard disk, you'll find they named the photo "idiot.jpg" :-D - Karim

Liar liar pants on fire. Westmoreland is from Georgia. Anyone from south of the Mason Dixon line knows what "uppity" means. I'm originally from Tennessee and I knew immediately what he meant. This is the same guy who couldn't repeat the 10 Commandments after he raised a stink about posting them in a public space. - Barry Wynn

*snort* omg ...they totally named it idiot.jpg. hi. larious. - tiffany

Darryl posted a link

McCain “Black Supporters” Were Bought And Paid For

Friday at 9:50 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

They only cost him a few dollars to buy some stock photos. - Darryl via Bookmarklet

Ruth Ferguson posted a link

The Black Snob: Michelle Obama: Denver Fashionista

August 28 at 1:04 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

chartreuse liked this

Ruth Ferguson posted a link

“Jesse Jackson: Not a liberal speech, a liberating speech”

August 28 at 9:41 pm - via Reshare - Link

chartreuse and Vox liked this

Ruth Ferguson posted a link

“ok now PRAISING Jesse Jackson for restraint from Chris Mathews was a bit much”

August 28 at 9:41 pm - via Reshare - Link

Ruth Ferguson posted a link

Bella Interview: Johnny Wright, Hairstylist | bella interview, Fekkai, hair | BellaSugar - Beauty, Hair, & Skin.

August 25 at 10:03 am - via Bookmarklet - Link

Ruth Ferguson posted a link

“Do you know the #1 song the day you were born?”

August 22 at 11:38 am - via Reshare - Link

EJ Flavors posted a link

Fishburne joining 'CSI' - CNN.com

August 19 at 4:06 am - via Reshare - Link

chartreuse and Vox liked this

Very curious to see how the show (and fans) adapt to him on the series. Should be very interesting. - EJ Flavors

I haven't decided yet if this means I'm going to give CSI a try. - Jason Toney

.LAGizmoto posted a link

America's Black Holocaust Museum Should Not Close.

August 6 at 9:05 am - via Reshare - Link

Shey liked this

Darryl posted a link

How To Tell People They Sound Racist

August 8 at 7:16 am - via Bookmarklet - Link

Shey, Vox, EJ Flavors and Tim Moore liked this

undefined - Darryl via Bookmarklet

Darryl posted a link

The Brown People Are Coming!

August 8 at 1:23 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

Tim Moore liked this

“The white population, I wouldn’t say is fading into the background, but it is becoming the older, less fertile part of the population,” says demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institute. - Darryl via Bookmarklet

tiffany posted a link

As Program Moves Poor to Suburbs, Tensions Follow - NYTimes.com

August 9 at 6:50 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

"The most recent Contra Costa County records available show that from 2003 to 2005, the number of Section 8 households in Antioch grew by 50 percent, to about 1,500 from 1,000. Many new residents are African-American; Antioch’s black population has grown to about 20 percent, from 3 percent in 1990." - tiffany via Bookmarklet

Vox posted a link

An Antichrist Obama in McCain Ad? - TIME

August 8 at 9:30 am - via Bookmarklet - Link

"It's not easy to make the infamous Willie Horton ad from the 1988 presidential campaign seem benign. But suggesting that Barack Obama is the Antichrist might just do it." - Vox via Bookmarklet

tiffany posted a link

Is Obama the End of Black Politics?

August 8 at 5:52 am - Link

"On a surface level, those who backed Clinton did so largely out of a combination of familiarity and fatalism. If you were a longtime black leader or activist at the end of 2007, you probably believed, based on your own life experience, that no black man was going to win the nomination, let alone the presidency." - tiffany

"The reverend was angry because Obama, in a Father’s Day speech on Chicago’s South Side, chastised black fathers for shirking their responsibilities. To Jackson, this must have sounded a lot like a presidential candidate polishing his bona fides with white Americans at the expense of black ones" - tiffany

tiffany posted a link

Bill T. Jones Summons the Force That Was Fela to the Stage - NYTimes.com

August 6 at 7:16 am - via Bookmarklet - Link

"“The Fela Kuti project dropped from the sky,” Mr. Jones, 56, said. “I didn’t know I was looking for such a thing, but it’s rooted in the big questions of my life, questions like creativity, transgression, rebellion, sensuality, history, race, power. And there’s something about the man that calls out for a very poetic treatment. His life is so mythic in its scale.”" - tiffany via Bookmarklet

I think I may have to take a weekend and see this show in NYC - tiffany

Vox posted a link

The tragic story of LaVena Johnson

July 30 at 2:43 am - via Reshare - Link

""In July 2005, 19-year-old Johnson became the first female soldier from Missouri to die in Iraq. She was found with a broken nose, black eye and loose teeth, acid burns on her genitals, presumably to eliminate DNA evidence of rape, a trail of blood leading away from her tent and a bullet hole in her head. Unbelievably, that's not the most horrifying part of the story. Here's what is: Army investigators ruled her death a suicide."" - Vox

Vox posted a link

America's Chitlin' Era | Views | TheRoot.com

July 29 at 9:50 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

.LAGizmoto and Darryl liked this

"When the heels are down, when the dress is no longer in fashion, when the school books are scuffed and out-of-date, send them down to the colored people. (My mother, who grew up in Mississippi, can speak to these facts personally.) When the folks who had it first have taken all the good parts, it's time for us to move in. When the hams and loins and chops are gone and the only thing that remains are the slimy, waste-transferring guts. And so with our nation." - Vox via Bookmarklet

Vox posted a link

House Formally Apologizes For Slavery And Jim Crow

July 29 at 9:19 pm - via Reshare - Link

Karim liked this

Nice that they got that out of the way right before we elected the first black President. - Karim

tiffany posted a link

Apology Shines Light on Racial Schism in Medicine

July 29 at 3:12 am - Link

tiffany posted a link

How Scores of Black Men Were Tortured Into Giving False Confessions by Chicago Police

July 23 at 8:28 pm - Link

Karim liked this

tiffany posted a link

Black and single: Is marriage really for white people?

July 23 at 6:48 pm - Link

-1 for the title, can't bring myself to read it, wish I could hide it. One of the more absurd, racist statements I've read in a while. - Kamilah Gill

The title comes from a 2 year old column from the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/...). It's not entirely without merit as a question. Not in a "should only white people get married" sense, but in a "is marriage something white people do?" sense. statistics seem to bear that out. - tiffany

Show 8 more comments

I don't see how statistics can really support that statement, whatever it really is supposed to mean. What about every other race of people besides American whites and blacks? I feel like there is a lot of tunnel vision when it comes to race and it wears me out. Why can't we start to move beyond seeing blacks and whites as "opposite" races? I've heard someone somewhere slip up and refer to us as opposites. Does anyone else see how nonsensical this is? - Kamilah Gill

okay, let's compare us to asians and latinos then. the point is that black people not only aren't marrying like we used to, but aren't marrying in numbers anywhere close to white people (or latinos and asians). - tiffany

The headline is clearly oversimplifying in an inflammatory way -- of course black people get married! -- but the statistics do seem to support the contention that black people marry less frequently. (~ 25% of whites nonmarried, vs. 33% asian, 40% hispanic, >40% black). (see http://www.census.gov/populati...) The video was mostly useless except to point out that this wasn't true in 1910 (64% of black men were married). - Karim

Now, you can look at this neutrally and try to figure out why this is the case -- which the video really didn't do, except to point out that slavery broke up a lot of black families. Or you can look at it and say it's not a problem, rate of marriage is declining and black people are just ahead of the curve. :-) Or, you can call it a pathology and try to fix it, because white bourgeois society says everyone should get married and so any deviation from white standards of behavior is abnormal :-) - Karim

I do think kids should be raised in two-parent families -- not that I have statistics to back that up handy, but it seems like a good idea to have a mom and a dad around. But I'm not sure it's valid to conflate *that* statistic with marriage rate per se. - Karim

Thanks, Karim. I was inflamed by the headline. So I guess the point of comparing things by race is to try to figure out what tends to be different about black people as a group that makes many of us not get married. From my own anecdotal evidence, I think there's some discrimination against black women when it comes to marriage, from both black and non-black men. I can't say why black men might not be marrying as much as they used to or compared to non-black men. I think black men and women are influenced differently somehow. - Kamilah Gill

well it's not just white bourgeois society. marriage in some form is pretty universal across cultures, though it may differ in how it's done. and i say that as someone who doesn't think marriage as we practice it here is worth the headache. that said, if 64% of us were married 35-40 years ago, what happened for those numbers to drop so? - tiffany

There also might be some black women who hurt their own chances of getting married by not looking beyond black men for marriage, when that might be possible. From my own experience living in the Midwest, if a black woman limits herself to black men, there is a very high probability she'll never get married. The pool of candidates seems small here, and there are many black men dating and marrying non-black women. - Kamilah Gill

or perhaps, like Tiffany, many black people, both male and female, are taking the attitude that marriage isn't worth the hassle... but I really wonder why. - Kamilah Gill

marriage is "universal" in the sense that, in all cultures, there's a certain percentage of it, but I guess what I'm asking is who gets to decide what percentage is "normal?" I mean, if this country was majority black, CNN might run some kind of in-depth study of The White Problem ;-) and ask why they felt the need to marry at a *higher* rate than "normal," putting it down to insecurity and clannishness. ;-) - Karim

Thank you Karim :) I like how you think. Now we're talking. - Kamilah Gill

Shey posted a link

Poll: Blacks, whites don’t see eye-to-eye on race relations « - Blogs from CNN.com

July 23 at 7:45 am - via Reshare - Link

no surprises here, even without the data - Barry Wynn

tiffany posted a link

CNN's Black In America Part I: the Black Woman and Family

July 23 at 7:33 am - Link

"Horrifically, only 70% of all American students graduate from high school in four years. For Black high school students, it’s 50% so the main question is how to close the achievement gap." ... DAMN... so we really do have a nation of ignoramuses? - tiffany

Actually, the article ends up as an interesting analysis of the lack of women in this Black In America piece about women and family. - tiffany

Cecily Walker posted a link

Fear of a Non-Black Planet | Views | TheRoot.com

July 21 at 7:30 pm - via Reshare - Link

I feel a bit ashamed that some black people have turned around and reacted to this the same way that many whites would have reacted to the first black person to graduate with honors (or any other way) from one of "their" schools years ago. We should embrace this. I'm hoping that the need for specifically "black" schools will fade over time. What other ethnic/racial group in America even has special schools for itself? - Kamilah Gill

"What other ethnic/racial group in America even has special schools for itself?" Native Americans have tribal colleges. And the federal government recognizes "Hispanic-Serving Institutions" as a special category of schools, similar to HBCUs. Religious groups also have their own colleges and universities. - tiffany

Now I don't agree with the folks throwing hate Packwood's way. But I think some HBCUs offer a more supportive learning environment for black students than predominantly white institutions. For that reason alone, they're institutions are worth preserving IMO (er...some of them anyway). - tiffany

I think as long as that's still necessary. Not including religious schools, just racial/ethnic schools. Glad you see what's wrong with being upset with the student. These schools will probably maintain most of their "purity" (with these few exceptions) as long as people see them as "black" schools, which will probably persist as long as society insists on racial labels. - Kamilah Gill

Cecily Walker posted a link

IABYT » International Association of Black Yoga Teachers

July 21 at 7:30 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

"The International Association of Black Yoga Teachers (IABYT) is an organization dedicated to increasing the presence of yoga in the inner city. Our mandate is to utilize the art and science of yoga to better serve the African Diaspora and other communities around the world." - Cecily Walker via Bookmarklet

tiffany posted a message

“Black. Female. Accomplished. Attacked.”

July 21 at 8:17 am - Link

http://www.washingtonpost.com/.... Female. Accomplished. Attacked. - tiffany

From thejenntafur at twitter - tiffany

Karim posted a link

yay, my first block! ;-)

July 18 at 7:17 am - Link

Shey liked this

lol - Shey

tiffany posted a link

A genetic reason for the high HIV infection among black folks?