Whether you realize it or not, your schooling brands you — fairly or not — with its historic reputation in the perception of the mainstream, middling, public mind.
Continue reading → School Branding: From Football U. to Ivy League
I recently heard on the radio 45% of American Black males do not graduate from high school. Why does their education end before their 18th birthday? Is there something culturally askew where education has no value? Are they born not to succeed in life? Is there a genetic code that denies them fruitful opportunity for living? The answer to those questions is a resounding: No!
Continue reading → The Myth of Racial Harmony: Dumb and Dangerous
Publisher Judith Regan is playing defense against the outrage and the hatred spewing at her for the monetization of her interview and book with O.J. Simpson. Many expert commentators have taken on the O.J. resurrection, but only yesterday did Regan creep forward to explain what O.J. never did: “Why?”
Continue reading → Confessing the Hypothetical to Sell Real Murder
A friend of mine is a criminal defense attorney. His job is tough and dirty. He deals with Racism on both sides of the justice scales. Lives hang in the balance on his shoulders. Some of his clients are guilty. His job is to defend them anyway. Some of his clients are set up by police, or enemies, or mistaken identity. His job is to defend them anyway.
Continue reading → Judging a Book by its Cover: Dress White and Play Nice
HIV and AIDS are infections that still plague the face of the earth even though there are drug treatment therapies that can buy time for those infected.
Without medical intervention and treatment the average incubation period for HIV is 9-10 years and death after a full-blown AIDS diagnosis is still only 9.2 months.
People and their deaths are not best understood on timelines and statistical averages. The value in the human component of living is in remembering those who have suffered and fallen before you.
To live is to remember.
I remember in the mid-to-late 1980’s how this unnamed “Gay disease” we now know as HIV/AIDS was eating people alive. It was a frightening time because no one really knew in a shared, universal societal understanding, how HIV was being transmitted or how AIDS was being contracted.
There were rumors in the mainstream community you could get AIDS — no one really understood the HIV component until years later — by sitting on a toilet seat or by someone sneezing on you or by just shaking hands with an infected person.
Continue reading → To Live is to Remember: A Brief History of AIDS
As we celebrate freedom and independence today in America, let’s not forget that freedom was won in blood and earned in sweat and a cornerstone of our freedom is the safety in sowing narrow views that may not be a part of the mainstream liking.
When a president makes a partisan, political, speech on the Fourth of July in front of American troops who are not allowed to disagree with him, we begin to see a puppet show pretending to be leadership where a bobbing-head politician pontificates in front of a solemn and mute military audience beaten down by dust and bones.
One of the hardest things for a minority culture to understand is the same history cannot be made twice. History only makes pioneers and always punishes imitators. There is an attempt to warp back to 1988 at Gallaudet, the premier university for the Deaf in Washington, D.C., as some of the 2,000 students enrolled there try to re-enact the historical — and successful — 1988 “Deaf President Now” campaign by erasing the appointment of a new president, Jane K. Fernandes, because she is “Not Deaf Enough” to lead Gallaudet. The students re-created a tent city from 1988 as they camp out to protest her appointment until she steps down. Fernandes cannot and must not be bullied down.
Continue reading → Not Deaf Enough at Gallaudet: Finally Is Not Enough
The world is award-winning crazy and the delicious fact is none of those awards matter!
The awards ceremonies grow exponentially each year. Soon we’ll all be winning awards for just waking up in the morning. In fact, you just won an award right now: The All-Time Great Blog Reader Award!
On March 15, 2005 on a farm in Venango, Nebraska, 14-year-old Brandenn Bremmer — Gifted and promising — held a .22 caliber varmint rifle to his head and pulled the trigger. He didn’t die immediately. When his parents found him he was still breathing. Brandenn’s body was airlifted to Denver, Colorado where his organs were harvested over the next two days.
Do you have a tattoo? If yes, why did you decide to get your first tattoo and how many do you have now? Are they all in color or are most of them black and grey? Are you desecrating your body with tattoos or are you celebrating it instead?
If you don’t have a tattoo why have you decided against forever marking your skin?
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