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Cynique

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Posts posted by Cynique

  1. I clicked on to the link you provided, Troy, and I was amazed! What I said about "The Coldest Winter Ever" was almost verbatim to what I said 8 years later. In both comments, however, I neglected to mention how turned off I was by the detailed descriptions of the expensive clothes and gear that the characters in this book wore. This seems to be a requisite in street and urban books; something the young black readers are really in to.

    We did have some great discussions on the board back then, didn't we? Those were the days when I had lots of folks to argue with. Now I have to content myself with bouncing off boitumelo's gripes. Kooooooola! ABMMMMMMM! Chris Hayden! Yukio! I miss you. Forget Carey; he and I fell out. Actually, I fell out with a lot of people; 'think they're tryin to tell me somethin? Ahh the tribulations of a contrarian/iconoclast...

    Speaking of the past, a little while back, there was a regular poster who went by the name "Urban Scribe" and who signed off here because she wanted to focus on an expose she was researching for a new book. She, herself, was an editor with a small press. Anyway, wonder of wonders, she and I hit it off. She requested a copy of one of my books and posted a fairly favorable review here and sent me a copy of a novel she had written. The book was an urban/street product entitled "And It Goes Like This". It was a novel very much in the vein of "The Coldest Winter Ever" and although it took some gettin into, I did eventually like the book, mostly because her writing skills helped her pull it off. I actually think that her book was a better representation of the genre than Sistah Souljah's. And maybe by the time I read her book I was more acclimated to the street lit that was becoming increasingly popular. So, although my age did contribute to my negative assessment of "Winter", I was also affected by what I considered its flaws. "And It Goes Like This" is still available on line and I recommend that fans of "the Coldest Winter Ever" check this book out to make the comparison.

  2. After absorbing all the comments on this thread, I'm convinced more than ever that writing a book calls for a lot of hard work, dedication and confidence. But it is also an endeavor where the odds against financial success are stacked against an author. It's amazing how seductive validation is, and apparently a published book fulfills a compulsion to make the world aware of one's existence by making one's self-expression available for public consumption and critical praise. In other words, writing a book is not only a creative project but also an ego trip. To believe in your book is to believe in yourself. Not a critcism because I, myself, have gone this route and there are, after all, worst roads to travel. If they could, everybody would write a book. Obviously some people are more driven than most, because I've also reached the conclusion that, to me, trying to establish a career writing books is more trouble than it's worth; unless you are enthralled with the notion of ars gratia artis. Just some musings.

    As for "The Coldest Winter Ever", for the life of me, I could never figure out why this book was so acclaimed. It was not particularly well-written, the characters were materialistic, superficial, shallow, unlikeable people, the story line improbable, and the author had the gall to inject self-serving chapters about herself into the uneven plot. My negative opinion probably had to do with the fact that I was past middle-age when I read this book which came out in 1999, and I had been spoiled by previously reading good books, as opposed to Sistah Souljah's demograph who were a younger breed, new to the reading experience because they could not relate to what was out there. Literary critics who did appreciate this book undoubtedly recognized that it was in the vanguard of a new genre which made it noteworhty. I also never took to the author because she was so militant and afro-centric but always wore straight bangs and a long coarse looking pony tail hair extension that looked like a horse's tail. Why not a natural "do" reflective of your esteemed culture??? Whatever.

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  3. I can certainly attest to the truth of your reference in regard to the worship of the Obamas having ascended to biblical proportions, Troy!

    Polemicist that I am, I had the audacity to remark on FaceBook that I thought the glitzy, shocking pink, sleeveless designer gown Micelle wore to deliver her mawkish speech at the DNC, was inappropriate for somebody who's trying to appear humble while blubbering about her "deprived childhood" as a member of Chicago's middle class and, boy, did I get the flack.

    I confess I usually do these things just to tease Obama's black groupies who are seriously invested in how sacrosanct the POTUS and his first lady are, but I really did think that wearing a tasteful conservative outfit would've been more in keeping with the austerity that the country's economic picture calls for, - as opposed to a dress sure to elicit rave reviews from the fawning, frivilous, fashionista industry. Silly me.

    This political race has really developed into an "us" against "them" proposition in the loyal empathetic black community which is in dire need of a savior to help soothe the resentments its members harbor against America. Fortunately for Obama, the Republican party makes it very easy to back the incumbent leader. And nothing like having white haired old white men Like Clint Eastwood and Bill Clinton to make or break a candidacy...

    As for the topless picture of Michelle, a "photo shopped" print can hardly be considered classic art, in my opinion, but I don't find the portrait offensive. It resonates with a certain dignity and it's an interesting concept. Didn't somebody once say, "all art is political".

  4. isn't there room in the black literary spectrum for all book genres? Why does one type have to usurp another? When one genre becomes "hot" does this extinguish interest in the others??

    In the white publishing community, trends come and go but best-selling authors still retain their popularity. "50 shades of Gray" has not diminished the James Patterson or Danielle Steele or John Grisham or Stephen King demographs, it has simply established its own target readership. Helloooo.

    Has black street lit made that big of a dent in Zane's erotic domain? Once an author has created their niche in the market, then putting out a good product is what will secure their fan base. No?

    The problem with the book marketplace is that it is glutted because it is the only arena where anybody can create and produce what they hope to sell. But obviously everybody who writes a book is not a good author. Bad books that sell if they get into the hands of profit mongers who don't care about the quality of what they promote, are a fluke. Duh.

    To me the bottom line is not about the writers, it's about the readers. Until black people become discriminating readers, mediocrity will rule the day when it comes to black books. Ooooh, well.

    Furthermore, white authors don't fare that much better than black authors when it comes to making big bucks in their profession. Writing can be a thankless pursuit. Just like every athlete doesn't make it to the pros, becoming rich famous in the literary world is a long shot. Unfortuately it takes more than big dreams and ample ambition to be successful. Name of the game.

    MIlton seems to have the best of both worlds. He's making money doing what he loves to do as a sideline while apparently earning a living wage elsewhere. Incidentally, certainly sounds like his books would make good movies.

    Slow day.

  5. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanual is out of town preparing for his speech at the Dem convention afterwhich he'll return to deal with the teacher strike than is looming on the horizon. All the while the killngs rage on with the police chief continuing to stonewall, insisting that the murder "rate" is down as he tries to defend dispatching a contingency of his men to be a part of the security force at the convention; - time and money better spent back here in Chicago!

    Meanwhile many Blacks are becoming case-hardened, resigning themselves to the gang acitivty that is the inevitable result of the breakdown in black families and the absence of fathers and male role models. Some are even saying under their breaths that the insanity will not stop until the shooters all kill each other off... Innocent loss of lives is just collateral damage in this street war fare. People killing people, with the guns that are their powerful allies.

    Adding to all of this is a total disregard for the sanctity of life with as many killings being the result of personal slights and romantic entanglements and robberies committed to support drug habits. Once again guns aid and abet these crimes.

    We live in a violent society, with the government leading the way, engaging in these wars on foreign soils that kill and maime innocent civilians along with the soldiers that are the pawns of politicians and generals. Greed and corruption are the partner of this situation.

    In the natural course of events, things tend to gradually change on their own and order will emerge from chaos. A bright new day may await in the distant future - if man survives himself. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are just symbols of the ineffectiveness that befalls ambitious men who mesmerize followers with empty promises... Even the winner will be a loser.

    What to do? Roll with punches and take things one day at a time. Cliches were never more apt.

    Musings of a "going-on-80 space traveler" in the year of 2012.

  6. It behooves us to be reminded that there are more black folks who are stressed out by their day-to-day struggles than there are those who have the luxury of tackling literary challenges. The former are people who are looking for a quick fix, preferring escape entertainment that will keep them in their comfort zone. Of course, there has always been a black literati, and there will always be one, but they are in the minority. Just like any other venue, there are the elite and the commonplace.

    Discriminating reading habits have to be established at an early age, and nowadays it's becoming more and more difficult to lure young people away from the social media that is at their finger tips. They'd rather create their own drama and star in their own plots or live vicariously through reality TV.

    Yes, "reading is fundamental" but more than ever, it apparently has to be relevant. Seems like mass readership prefers books that resonate with familiarity and reinforce lifestyles they can identify with. Quality, innovative fiction that stimulates the mind will be sought out by curious people who have an imagination, but imagination is something that has to be cultivated. (And prison frequently ends up being what fertilizes this seed. ) Public schools are not doing their job, and parents have to compete with outside distractions when trying to motivate their kids to expand their minds instead of exercising their fingers. An ongoing dilemma that does not bode well for the future.

    And what does all of this have to do with the book publishing industry? This institution is like a factory that mints 2-sided coins for gamblers. You can go with your brand or with someone elses, keeping in mind that all that glitters is not gold.

  7. Well, boitumelo, one of your faiorite targets, Rev Jesse Jackson, showed up in Stillwater, Oklahoma, trying to help reverse the guilty verdict brought against Darrell Williams, a basketball player from Chicago, who is attending Oklahoma State University on a basketball scholarship. Rape charges were brought against this young man after being charged with forcibly putting his hands inside the panties of 2 white females at a campus party. Williams denies these accusations, saying it's a case of mistaken identity.

    Stillwater, Oklahma, is described as a town very, very, hard on black people whose numbers are small in the population there. Its law enforcement officers are described as "good ol boys" who favor cowboy hats.

    This is a typical, toxic situation that exists when black males frequent the company of white females in a place where this type of socializing is tradtionally frowned upon. Black athletes seem to be particularly prone to this hazard and they never seem to learn. Williams' mother lost an older son to a drive-by shooting in Chicago and she hoped removing her surviving son from the city's violent environment would improve his chances of making it out of the ghetto. Obviously, the ghetto ain't the only place where young black men are in jeopardy. Same ol, same ol...

    Jesse, however, has had some success is convincing the judge to delay sentencing due to new evidence that has purportedly emerged. The defendant is facing a sentence of 2 years. The student body is supposedly divided over the guilt of their school's popular basketball player who is just a few credits away from earning a degree in business and who, of course, has NBA aspirations.

    America, 2012.

  8. MIsplaced priorities remain an ongoing problem in this country. The space program is pretty much kaput, and this is unfortunate because it stifles's man's innate urge to seek new frontiers. But America thinks its more important to wage war and pour trillions of dollars into inner space, hoping to buy the loyalty of countries who hate our guts.

    Health care should be an entitlement to every citizen but Romney and company think keeping taxes on the rich low is what should take precedence. Tea Partyers and the NRA want to look backward, yearning for colonial times instead of dealing with the challenges of the new millineum. Disgusting.

    Whenever I get into arguments on FaceBook or on this site, adversaries often imply that I am bitter, hinting that something is amiss in my personal life. Bitter about my circumstances? Hell no! I'm more fortunate than most when it comes to family and finances and health. Totally skeptical about this f--ked up world? Hell yes! Frustrated by Obama but always driven back into his corner by these damned right-wing conservative Republicans? Yes! Tired of white racism? Yes. Fed up with Blacks being their own worst enemy? Yes!

    A cynic? Damned right. Never surprised with how unscrupulous and greedy people of all races are, so many of them embezzling public funds and exploiting taxpayers with their corrupt double-dealing. Jaded? yep. So tired of airhead celebrities and their self-absorbed superficiality, disinterested in TV reality shows and their idiotic participants, sick of religious hypocrites and fanatics.

    A truth seeker? Yes! The most daunting quest of all because the truth too often hurts.

    I'm done. Back to Gil Scott Heron. Sorry. 'Got carried away...

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  9. 95-year-old Phylis Diller has passed. She was a looney tune, and a pioneer in the field of female comediennes. R.I.P. ol girl.

    I always take note of senior citizens who defy stereotypes. Especially those who poked fun at themselves and told the rest of the world to stuff it. :P

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  10. Ironic that the prospect of martydom offers better protection to Obama than the horny secret agents assigned to him. And as Whitney tries to get comfortable in her new digs, she should be encouraged by the news that her ex- Bobby Brown has checked into re-hab for alcoholism, and her daughter Bobbi Christina is considering having a dentist fix the gap in her teeth to correct her resemblance to her illustrious father. :D

    And speaking of bad boys and glamourous divas, poor Rihanna tearfully reveals to the gossip-mongering Oprah that she still cares about Chris Brown and worries about her "first love" being punished for the problem that he needs help with. Rihanna should now tell all of her meddling critics to back off. Her love life is nobody's business but her own. If she wants to carry a torch, it's her arm getting scorched, not theirs. She should also tell young girls to look outside of the entertainment world for role models. If their mothers don't fill the bill, then consider emulating teachers. But focus on the older ones, not those young hotties who seduce the football teams and provide them with weed. ;)

  11. It's too bad that all of the millions of dollars being raised to buy TV spots for 2 presidential candidates can't be put to better use. Saturating the air waves with attacks on each other is so obviously a waste of money, and it's hard to generate any enthusiasm for either candidate who, in these bad economic times, is squandering money on promoting himself. If this is an example of the fiscal responsibility needed to run the country, then neither candidate is exercising good judgment.

    Instead of all of this hyperbole. Obama and Romney should just debate each other on public TV. Supporters shouldn't have to contribute money to hear a bunch of empty promises. It's a sad commentary to consider that all the the next POTUS will having going for him is that his media campaign was the one most successful at discrediting his opponent. And what do the voters have to look forward to?? Another lackluster term presided over by the lesser of 2 evils. It's all so stupid and discouraging! <_<

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  12. An ALTERNET article that gets specific about what we already know.

    "York City, the pot-bust capital of the Western world, is notorious for the racial skewing of its marijuana arrests. Over the last 15 years, more than 85 percent of the half-million-plus people charged with misdemeanor possession there have been black or Latino.

    But the racial ratios of reefer roundups are equally extreme—if not worse—in scores of other U.S. cities. In Atlanta, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, more than 80 percent of the people popped for pot possession are black. In Minneapolis and its Hennepin County suburbs, black people are 11 percent of the population and more than half of those busted for buds.

    “Just about every major metropolitan area in the country has similar disparity issues,” says Neill Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and former commander of the Maryland State Police’s drug bureau.

    “With minor variations, it’s the same everywhere,” says Jon Gettman, a visiting professor of criminal justice at Shenandoah University in Virginia. Gettman, says Allen St. Pierre of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, has been researching marijuana-arrest numbers more obsessively than anyone for the last 20 years, extracting them from data in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report.

    Nationally, Gettman says, in 2008 black people were 12 percent of the U.S. population, but 31.6 percent of those arrested for pot possession in cases where race was reported to the FBI. (2008 is the most recent year for which detailed figures are available.)

    In the six urban areas where Gettman found the highest rates of marijuana arrests, the handcuffs most often clamped black wrists. In Baltimore, Louisville, Omaha, Atlanta, and Syracuse and Buffalo in upstate New York, the arrest rate for black people exceeded 1 out of 65.

    In Atlanta, African Americans were 93 percent of those busted for pot in the last two years, according to figures obtained by TV station WSB. The city’s people are slightly more than half black.

    “Atlanta is really extreme,” says Harry Levine, a sociology professor at Queens College who has studied pot arrests extensively.

    Black people are 88 percent of those busted in Baltimore, which is 64 percent black. In Omaha, Syracuse, and Buffalo, African Americans are slightly more than 10 percent of the population, and about half the people arrested.

    In Washington, more than 90 percent of the people charged for cannabis last year were black, according to the Washington City Paper. The city is slightly more than half African American. In Philadelphia, about 43 percent black, the percentage has exceeded 80 percent over the last few years, according to the Philadelphia Weekly and Gettman’s figures. In Chicago, 78 percent of the people handcuffed for hay in 2009 and 2010 were black, the Chicago Reader reported last year. The city is about one-third black. Whites, also about one-third of Chicago’s population, were 5 percent of those arrested.

    Boston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, are all about a quarter black—but more than 60 percent of the people they arrest for herb are. In California’s 25 largest counties, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, black people are 7 percent of the population and 20 percent of those busted.

    The one exception appears to be the Kansas City area. Jackson County, Missouri, which includes most of the city and some of its suburbs, is about a quarter African American—but in 2009 and 2010, less than a quarter of the people busted for pot were black.

    F. Louis Caskey, a Kansas City lawyer affiliated with NORML, credits the county’s drug-court system, in which people arrested for drug possession can get the charges dismissed if they complete 12 to 18 months of rehab. “The attitude towards recreational amounts of drugs is different here now,” he says. “Our police officers have better things to do.”

    Why is this?

    There is little or no evidence that blacks and Latinos use marijuana at a higher rate than whites. The most recent surveys by the U.S. government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the most consistent studies of drug use, have showed that a slightly higher percentage of whites under 25 get high at least once a month or once a year, a slightly higher percentage of blacks over 25 do, and a significantly lower share of Latinos and Asians do.

    Marijuana arrests began to rise dramatically in the early 1990s, after a slight decrease during the crack epidemic of the late 1980s. They hit record highs in almost every year between 1994 and 2007, and have surpassed 800,000 every year since 2006.

    The “broken-window theory” of crime was a major impetus for this increase. This idea posits that small signs of urban disorder, such as buildings with broken windows, create an atmosphere that encourages crime. Put into practice by New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the mid-1990s, it meant “zero tolerance” for minor offenses like pot-smoking, drinking beer in the street and washing car windows for spare change. The main targets were young black and Latino men.

    Crime dropped sharply during Giuliani’s term, and the nation hailed him as New York’s savior. In reality, the zero-tolerance policy probably had less effect than the ebbing of the crack-trade wars, a 15 percent increase in the number of city cops, and the use of computers to pinpoint high-crime blocks. Criminologist Franklin Zimring told Salon.com in 2011 that police concentrating their efforts on high-crime areas was the main reason for the decrease, and the idea that Giuliani’s zero-tolerance policies had cleaned the city up was a myth.

    Still, the broken-window theory became very popular nationwide. Police forces in most major cities had expanded significantly during and after the crack epidemic, with the federal government funding much of the increase. As serious crime fell nationwide in the ’90s, the theory provided a rationale for using these added cops to go after petty offenses. It also provided both a professional ideology and a technically non-racial justification for heavy-handed policing in black and Latino neighborhoods (and of blacks and Latinos in white neighborhoods).

    In May, after the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a report stating that more than 85 percent of the people city police stopped were black or Latino, Mayor Michael Bloomberg dismissed his critics as “nostalgic for the days when the ACLU set crime policy in this city, but most New Yorkers don't want rampant crime to return.”

    Critics of pot arrests generally offer three explanations for the racial disparity: That pot-smoking is more public in low-income neighborhoods, that these neighborhoods are much more heavily policed, and that the arrests are colored by racism.

    People between the ages of 15 and 25 are the ones “most targeted” by police, says Allen St. Pierre of NORML. In the suburbs, he says, they’re more likely to smoke in someone’s home, on private property, where it’s much harder for police to see what’s going on, and where they need much more specific grounds to enter. In contrast, the urban poor live in more crowded situations, so youths who want to light up are more likely to do it outside, where there are “almost no constitutional protections.”

    “If you do not want to get arrested, do not use marijuana in a car,” he warns.

    In “Targeting Blacks for Marijuana,” a 2010 report done for the Drug Policy Alliance, Levine, Gettman and Loren Siegel argued for the second theory: The racial disparities come from intensive policing of minorities.

    “Police departments deploy most patrol and narcotics police to certain neighborhoods, usually designated ‘high crime,’” they wrote. “These are disproportionately low-income, and disproportionately African-American and Latino neighborhoods. It is in these neighborhoods where the police make most patrols, and where they stop and search the most vehicles and individuals.”

    Neill Franklin agrees. “If you watch police, they’re not rolling up on people because they’re openly smoking a blunt,” he says; they are more likely to stop groups of three or four youths or men hanging out.

    Another factor, he adds, is a police culture in which everyone of a certain ethnic group, subculture, age, or in a certain neighborhood is considered a suspect. In Baltimore, he says, “we don’t police Roland Park the same way we police West Baltimore,” referring to an affluent, mostly white neighborhood and a poor, mostly black one. A 35-year-old black man will get stopped well before a 35-year-old white man, he says, unless the white one looks like a junkie.

    That, he says, is both unconstitutional and bad policing. Police who are “serious about their craft,” he explains, know how to profile criminals, to watch for the body language, the behavioral signs, that indicate when someone’s carrying a gun or looking to break into cars. “I can tell within 30 to 45 seconds if someone’s armed,” he adds. Searching large numbers of people instead of patiently observing to see who the real bad guys are, he says, is lazy.

    Are massive pot arrests the result of a numbers game, in which police commanders can use statistics to prove that their officers are being productive, or of the “broken-window theory”? Franklin says it's “a bit of both."

    Two Cities

    New York’s pot-bust policy illustrates that point. Born out of Rudolph Giuliani’s application of the broken-window theory, it has continued under Bloomberg’s mania for metrics. Now, it goes along with two other police efforts: a phenomenal increase in the number of people stopped and frisked, and “Operation Clean Halls,” in which cops arrest people for trespassing if they don’t provide a satisfactory explanation of why they’re in an apartment building. The two police precincts where cops stop the most people—the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brownsville and East New York, low-income, overwhelmingly black and Latino areas with a high crime rate—also produce the most pot arrests.

    Many, if not most, of the city’s pot busts come from those stops, say lawyers who represent marijuana defendants, and those busts are often based on bogus charges. In New York State, possession of less than 25 grams gets a $100 fine—but smoking or possession “in public view” is a misdemeanor. In many arrests, the only time the marijuana was “in public view” was after the cop found it or the defendant agreed to empty his pockets.

    “They’re not saying they’re recovering it from the pocket, they’re saying it’s from the hand,” says Scott Levy, a public defender in the Bronx. Those arrests are not counted in the stop-and-frisk numbers, he explains, because police don’t consider them stops on suspicion. They claim the defendant was “observed committing a crime.”

    St. Louis shows an opposite pattern. In the city, the number of pot busts has fallen below 100 in the last two years. In the predominantly white St. Louis County suburbs, they zoomed to more than 5,000 last year.

    “I could count on two hands the number [of possession cases] I’ve had from the city,” says Joseph Welch, the lawyer who heads Greater St. Louis NORML— and most of them came when police found weed on someone arrested on another charge. He believes this is because police in the city, which is about half black, have more serious crimes to deal with than pot possession, while in the suburbs, they are more likely to go after petty offenses. Smaller cities and towns can also keep the fines they collect if they prosecute cases in municipal courts instead of turning them over to the states.

    Still, the racial disparities hold. In the city of St. Louis, more than 90 percent of the people busted for pot were black. In its suburbs, more than half were.

    Race

    A third theory for the disparities is racism. This is next to impossible to quantify without knowing the private conversations and thoughts of police and prosecutors.

    Still, with the exception of hippies in the late ’60s and early ’70s, the prime villains of antidrug crusades have almost always been nonwhite, from Chinese opium smokers in the 1870s to Mexican and black potheads in the 1930s to black and Colombian crack dealers in the 1980s. “Everyone knows—but does not say—that the enemy in the War on Drugs can be identified by race,” Michelle Alexander wrote in her 2010 book The New Jim Crow.

    In the book, Alexander argued that although drug-prohibition laws are not explicitly racist, the way they are enforced compounds whatever racism exists at each step in the process. “How exactly does a formally colorblind criminal justice system achieve such racially discriminatory results?” she asked. “The first step is to grant law enforcement officials extraordinary discretion regarding who to stop, search, arrest, and charge for drug offenses, thus ensuring that conscious and unconscious racial beliefs and stereotypes will be given free reign. Unbridled discretion inevitably creates huge racial disparities.”

    A common tactic that leads to marijuana arrests, says Harry Levine, is “trolling for young black and Latino men”—staking out dealers in certain neighborhoods, and then stopping and searching their customers. But as black and Latino officers are doing this too, he contends, the cause is “not so much racism” as “who the prey is. They’re fishing in certain waters and hunting certain kinds of fish.”

    The main racial effect, he says, comes from the consequences of a marijuana arrest. Arrest records are now easily available from online databases, and those are used by “every major big-box employer.” Even in areas where marijuana possession is decriminalized, summonses “are not minor. They are not like traffic tickets. They are handled by the criminal courts.” If someone is convicted of possession, they now have a record as a drug criminal, and that might prevent them from getting a student loan, living in public housing, or working in certain jobs. The result, he says, is a “de facto Jim Crow system.”

    By Steven Wishnia

    talk_box_living.jpg

  13. Well, this seems liike a good time to note that knives don't stab people, people stab people. And there's nothing more dangerous than a sista who a brotha has pissed off. Right up there on this dangerous list is a white cop whose authority has been challenged by a black perp. Maybe anger is god's way of thinning out the population.

    Meanwhile back in "Chiraq", the latest victim of gunfire is a school girl who was shot in the leg while sitting on her front porch steps doing her homework. 'Hope the lesson she learned was to complete your assignments inside the house, not of outside it. And another toddler fell out of an apartment building while her Daddy went to the store to get some fast food and left her alone. 'Could've at least let the window down.

    Between them, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have raised over a half billion dollars in campaign funds, enough to alleviate a mutitude of important problems while sparing us the pollution of their campaign rhetoric.STFU And the government should've invested a couple hundred dollars in PowerBall tickets. Winning the 325 million Jackpot could.ve been used to help returning veterans.

  14. In the circles I roll in, black women had a higher opinion of Condeleeza than black men, Troy. Condi was smart and articulate and worked her way up to a high position but, insecure "brothers" preferred to ridicule her and portray her as being enamoured of the president. She didn't do a lot of sucking up which is why people like Dick Cheney resented her. "Inside sources" say that "Dubya" depended on her for advice and respected her opinions, and in this capacity, she did wield a degree of power. To me, General Colin Powell was masquerading as a politician. He always seemed to be smirking at the Republicans and winking at the Democrats. He had that teflon facade and black folks don't seemed to have blamed him for the weapons of mass destruction fiasco. Now he's a very popular motivational speaker at black events.

    Moderate Republicans can make the cut with the black award-bestowers, but if they didn't give Michael Steele his props as the first black Chairman of the Repubican National Committee, I doubt if they'll acknowledge Herman Cain's becoming the CEO of a pizza company. All of the awards handed out by traditionally liberal black organizations do seem to be focused more on celebrity than accomplishment - a testament to their vapidity.

    boitumelo's view represents the mixed emotions black people experience. Black ministers of today take a lot of heat because they seem so greedy and ineffective but everybody agrees that our race needs spiritual renewal. Black Republicans seem to be more reflective of personal success than black Democrats who appeal to the rank-and-file black folks, but neither party has been able to make a big difference in the plight of America's black population. Barack Obama is a symbol of this impotency.

    • Like 1
  15. Well, boitumelo, in your repetitioius rants, you generalize too much about black preachers. All of them are not corrupt child molesters, and most black celebrities, although not activists, do contribute money to civil rights causes and charities, if for no other reason than to provide them with tax write-offs. In fact, to polish their images and boost their careers a lot of them establish foundations in their names to create the impression that they are "giving back". Certain activists are, themselves, professionals who earn their living by raising funds for popular causes, a good perentage of these funds going to pay their high salaries. It's all a big sham.

    Republicans are just "persona non grata" presences in high profile black organizations, because too many of them are preceived as Uncle Toms. Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell have escaped this stigma, but Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain just exude that shuffling quality of sucking up to white people, their attitudes implying that I got mine, now all of you sorry-assed niggas need to find a way to get yours. Real humanitaries and philanthropists don't require trophies and plaques. Their rewards are derived from the satisfaction of helping those in need.

  16. Yes, Troy, it does sound justified, but the family of the deceased is, of course, telling a different story, claiming the cop didn't identify himself as being a policeman. In a confrontation between the popos and a black man, there are always 2 different versions of what happened because of the adversarial dynamic that exists between them. I would like to know if the cop was white or black. What I do know is that in so many of these shootings involving young children, too often these babies are places where they shouldn't be at a time of night when they ought to be inside their homes instead out with someone who is not watching them carefully. Seems like every month an unattended young child is falling out an apartment window.

    Meanwhile, even the notorious Reverend Jeremiah Wright is speaking out on all of the violence, saying that the system is not going to fix things, and that black folks will have to look inward to save themselves from themselves. Incidentially, in the hood, the city is now being referred to as "Chiraq".

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