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From where I sit, observing the world the way I’ve been doing for the last 50+ years, I see one change in particular that is gradually taking place in America. “Political correctness” is receding, and black people are losing their relevancy. Because they no longer fear the stigma of being called racist, having neutralized this term by referring to it as a despicable practice known as “playing the playing the race card”, red state Americans no longer care if their true feelings about Blacks are exposed. Just check out Twitter and FaceBook. They’ve repressed their disdain long enough and if this offends Blacks, well they’ve only themselves to blame. "You people" had your chance to earm white favor and you blew it. Also emerging is an acknowlegment of “entitlement”, a birth right Whites weren’t even aware automatically came with their skin color. Just recently Joe Scarborough, a pseudo liberal on MSNBC, who was possibility embolded by Charles Barkley’s rant blaming black “scumbags” for taking Whites out of their comfort zone, decided to make an announcement. Heading up a panel of like-minded individuals, Scarborough decreed what has been emerging as the official white stance on the Michael Brown case. He declared Michael Brown to be a thug, a young man who did not represent the face of black America, stopping just short of saying that this 18-year-old shooting victim got what he deserved. Joe had me at the “face of black America” phrase. Who endowed a presumptuous patronizing Scarborough to decide what is the face of black America, especially since black America has many faces, and considering that none of them are white, they are all subjected to the insidious racism of people like Scarborough. The man of color occupying the office of the Presidency of the United States is a prime example of this, what with how his Republican opponents disrespect and insult him at every turn, their blatant contempt reeking with their aversion to black authority. Adding impetus to this trend are the fall of the revered Bill Cosby, and wife-beating black athletes, all fueling the white suspicion that black guys are “bad news”, just as millions of prejudiced Whites have suspected all along. All they needed were the sins of a few high profile Blacks to prove that there is little difference between them and the ones killing each other in the ghettos. (The exceptions, of course, are the "good negroes" trotted out on Fox News to scold their black brothers for misbehaving.) Even in the music industry where Blacks have long enjoyed great impact, their popularity is now fading, thanks to a surge of white entertainers capturing the ear of their own kind. As Troy recently noted after lamenting the lack of black authors on the national best seller lists, for the first time since it came out 58 years ago, no black musicians were among the Top 10 on Billboard Magazine’s Hot 100 chart. Forget Beyonce and Rihanna and Alicia Keyes. The new “IT” girls are Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and Katie Perry. Forget Nikki Minaj, white Iggy Azalea is the new Rap queen. Forget Jay-Z. Rap is no longer the exclusive domain of tongue-twisting black rogues. Crooning his soulful love ballads, white singer Sam Smith, has crowded out black vocalists who originated this genre. What's still holding its own is the type of act Whites have always preferred from Blacks: Pharell dancing around singing a little ditty about being "Happy". Just as when it comes to the literary scene, the only black book currently making waves is one giving females advice on when to "give up the cookie" by the buffoon of relationship experts, shuckin and jivin Steve Harvey. Fads come and go, some lasting long enough to become absorbed by the mainstream. Whatever. Blacks have had their day and now they're nothing special. Tokenism and glass ceilings are still what’s available for a chosen few but for the rest, the struggle continues. The Civil Rights movement has been resurrected because integration wasn’t the answer, and apparently diversity isn’t either since it has come to represent putting up with differences that each race perceives as being pesky or even negative. Racial co-existence seems to be the last hope of the “United States“, and minorities can forget about the equality promised by democracy. This is not to say that there aren’t well-meaning Whites who sympathize with the plight of black folks. But the reliable refuge of white entitlement grants them a privilege they can automatically envoke. They have a choice to simply opt out any time being liberal becomes too inconvenient.

I'm glad my words resonated with you guys and inspired your own relevant thoughts on the subject. What I had to say was something that had been on my mind for a while as I noticed how white people vent about race when they can hide behind the anonymity of social media forums and how they are giving our music do-overs . Finally I sat down in front of my computer, put my hands on my keyboard, and the thoughts just flowed. Troy, I revised a few things in the essay and inserted a short reference in regard to black authors on national best-seller lists.

Instead of taking the post away from here I used the Share button beneath it tweeted it out. The share button is the best way to keep the content and people who would possibly read it on my site coming back to where the original post was created and helps to build the brand. You both are right. There are so many points made that we have to analyze each one to get to the core of the problem. I even wrote a curse filled blog post yesterday because of my frustration. Cynique, at least I now have a name to cite on my site when I use any of your content. Troy, your work is of the utmost importance and clearly the primary thing I would use in discussing how our choice of words in discussing what happens to Black people is not really a systemic issue as much as it is personal choice. My wife and I were talking yesterday and she made the most poignant statement in regard to "SYSTEMIC" problems for Blacks in America. Her statement was, "If racism and slavery created the systemic issues that opress Blacks in this country why weren't Blacks wiped out during slavery, sharecropping and Jim Crow? Blacks should be like the Native Americans, broken and in small pockets. Instead we came together and broke through all of the racism and struggle to form our own communities and economies and we eventually created the Civil Rights movement. If the systemic forces in place didn't break us then, how can we blame it now?" I added to that statement something I've always stated. Blacks don't have the privilege of anonymity. We are the group, the group is us. We are not distinguished one from the other. Which lends itself to everything Cynique said above. Bill Cosby's problems are a reflection on us all. One kid gangbanging is every college kid banging. Because of this our perception will always be negative or associated with negativity. Giving that much power to the systemic issues is a waste of time and fixes nothing. The perception of who we are should be dictated by us and our acceptance of it. The problem is we don't control any media and we (this is a general we) don't care. It's not racism that creates our problems, it's the lack of support and interest in us that creates our problems. Tavis and his Covenant was the closest thing that came to the idea of empowering Black America. The Minister's current Blueprint is another attempt but will fail because no one will give the minister 25 cents. Our kids get gunned down not because of racism, but because we lack the financial ability to make things happen in the political and judicial system. We have no financial reputation and there are hardly any black faces owning the businesses where most of these incidents happen. It becomes a lot harder to kill black boys when there are black faces watching from those windows and Black people supporting and serving the neighborhood. I compare Black people to those people who allowed Kitty Genovese to be stabbed to death. We can see everything happening and instead of coming together to go out and stop ourselves from being murdered, we expect someone else to do something and we close the blinds. We come back to the windows and see that we are being attacked again and we wait for someone else to stop it so we again close our blinds. When we end up dead on the street nothing ever happens and nothing is resolved. It's disheartening. Our need to continuously blame it on the system is our downfall. I'm with my wife, if the system didn't destroy us during slavery, sharecropping and Jim Crow, how is it doing such an effective job now?

You can run this essay under my pen name, the one used on "The Only One" my new novella that will soon be available. Connie Divers Bradley. CDB

I am quite sure that many of us have heard this before. The challenges facing minority authors, black authors in particularly seem overwhelming. Like many black people, I grew up watching many of those early science fiction movies and television programs. The Day The Earth Stood Still, They Came From Outer Space, Lost In Space and my all time favorite…Star Trek (The Original Series) were my favorites. I never bothered with diversity questions until I entered high school during the early 1970s. Like many teens during those integration years, I became deeply affected by the lack of diversity in subsequent science fiction movies and television programs. I loved the original 1977 Star Wars movie. I saw it 22 times over a two-year period. Something grabbed me and has not let go to this day. I believe that I am not alone when I say that Star Wars, despite the bad physics, impacted an entire generation and beyond. Yet, that obvious question came up. Where were the black people in Star Wars? I mean, let's face it, if your entire galaxy is populated, then there has to be more black people than Lando Calrissian. Even when Stargate changed from an African/Egyptian origin to a European/Ancients origin, I could still watch the show. I found out that complaining about the lack of diversity in books, television and movies does little, if any good. So, like many other writers of color, I wrote my own science fiction novel. Researching, writing and publishing a novel, though, is the “easy” part. Getting your novel out to the readership is a whole different ball game. To make a long story short, I am using a variety of methods including Facebook, a personal website, blogs and other resources to get my work out. I knew, from day one, that it was not going to be easy. I, like many authors of color, knew of the serious challenges that we face. I stumbled onto this website a few hours earlier and liked the discussion forum. I feel encouraged as I read the experiences of fellow writers, as well reading the great business tips on self-publishing and selling. Peace. Facebook Page Twitter Page Web Site E-Book Video (4.40 minutes)