MEMPHIS (IFS) –
Professor Lewis depicts a national decline in our nation in piling up rocks
upon top of each other especially that of Dr. Martin Luther King, as his pile
of rocks were made in China,
and that he was chiseled in stone as an idol with his arms folded without
warmth and no inspiring “love” for generations to come.
Dr. Lewis further charges forward that the memorial managed
to misquote the great man: Not only did he not say, “ I was a drum major for
justice, peace and righteousness,” but Dr. Lewis’ put his actual words were a
hypothetical statement put in someone’s else’s mouth.
Well, the only thing I might say to that statement by Dr.
Lewis is, the only piles of rocks the average citizen will get is a headstone,
if lucky with a dash in the middle of the day your were born and the day you
died.That dash in the middle is all anyone
with remember of you.Your deeds, your
glory days, your loves, your hates, your dislikes, and even your reputation
will all come down to that dash in the middle of your piece of rock – that is,
if you are lucky to get one.
I am sure that Dr. King where ever he may be does not mine
that he rock was carved in China
or in Georgia.The only thing is for sure, is that he got
his pile of rocks to early.
A few
short weeks ago, l learned about cuts to fire services across the city, cuts
that would have a direct impact on communities in North Memphis and the
Downtown core. Since that time, l have been one of the major critics of these
cuts.
However,
long before I joined the Council, the plan to ''realign'' (as the cuts have
been called) Fire Services was already out of the gate. As l understand it, the
process to realign and cut Fire Services began at least a couple of years ago,
prior to my arrival on the City Council.
Nonetheless,
I have fought hard to try to stop the realignment from affecting our
neighborhoods or at least to slow the process down. I have visited several of
the affected fire stations. I have talked at length with firefighters at Station
28 (1510 Chelsea Avenue), Station 19 (2248 Chelsea Avenue), and Station 11
(1826 Union Avenue).
I called
for a special City Council meeting to discuss the realignment. I also scheduled
time for the Council to discuss restoring funding to the libraries that were
slated to close.
At that
meeting, the Council approved a plan to restore funding to the libraries, When
the discussion turned to Fire Services, the director of Fire Services assured
me and the rest of the Council that public safety would not be compromised by
these changes. As the plan had been in place for a couple of years, no changes
were made by the Council. However, I was still worried about this realignment
process.
My next
move was to try to restore funding for Fire Services in the budget. My hope was
that if I restored money in the budget for Fire Services, we could at least
save the ladder truck at Station 28 on Chelsea.
I talked
with the Mayor's Chief Financial Officer, Roland McElrath, to figure out how
much money we would need to fund that ladder truck. I then worked with
Councilwoman Fullilove, among other members of the Council, on a proposal to
restore $150,000 in funding to Fire Services so that Station 28 could keep its
ladder truck in service.
That
proposal that I drafted to restore $150,000 to Fire Services to maintain that
ladder truck was amended at a Council meeting and, ultimately, it was
unsuccessful.
Again, I
am against the Fire Services cuts that affect North Memphis and the Downtown
core. After pretty extensive investigation, I am not convinced these service
cuts are the right move for the city and I have worked hard to try to slow down
these cuts.
The
communities in these areas have a high number of historic homes that can create
a real fire hazard in the case of an emergency. These communities are dense,
with homes built closer together, which means that a fire can spread quickly
from home to home.
Our
communities also have a high number of elderly residents who rely on fire
services.For these reasons, l think we
need fully equipped fire stations and I will continue to do what I can.
When
Social Pressures Stand In the Way Of Black Success
By Alec
Solomita of The Weekly Standard Magazine
Ron
Christie book begins with a jolt.The
lawyer, political pundit, and former aide to President George W. Bush tells a
story of his younger self, an eager, star struck - and African – American –
junior legislative assistant -union legislative assistant working for a
Republican congressman from Florida, Craig T. James, who served on the House
Veterans Affairs Committee.At the
committee’s first hearing, the 22-year –old Christie was impressed to see
Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a woman whose work and status (if not
politics) he admired.Waters, he soon
learned, was as impressed by him, but not as favorably.
After the
hearing, she summoned Christie to her office:“I want to know why you’re working for a Republican.Are you confused?”
“No ma’am,
I’m not confused.I work with
Congressman James because I share his values.I am a Republican.”
“You are a
sellout to your race!White people work
for Republicans.Not African
Americans!You’re nothing but an Uncle
Tom!”
Christie
reports that he was stunned by the tirade.But it was not the last time he would find himself facing a liberal’s
fusillade of abuse.Indeed, he seems to
have made a career of refuting such small-minded, hostile accusations.He has gallantly endured the gently expressed
incredulity of Janet Langhart Cohen, who interviewed Christie about his book
and wondered aloud how a black man could possibly be a Republican.And he has repeatedly appeared on MSNBC’s
vituperative Ed Show, attempting civilly, to counter the self-righteous,
perpetually outraged harangues of the host and like-minded guests.
What
Christie is accused of, by blacks and liberal whites alike, is “acting
white.”That is, abandoning his
heritage, selling out.He shares this
distinction with other admirable cultural warriors, individuals as various as
Condoleezza Rice, Juan Williams, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Randall
Kennedy, Thomas Sowell, and Walter Williams.And make no mistake, they are various:Their nuanced views cover a wide spectrum.Their only commonality is an independence of
mind that incites the wrath of an enervated, bitter, and self-pitying black
leadership addicted to the glory days of the civil rights movement and, some of
them, to the Black panther party and its offshoots.
Christie’s
thesis has become familiar in recent decades, particularly after Bill Cosby’s
keynote speech at the NAACP’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of
Brown Vs. Board of Education, in which Cosby advised the black community to
look into its own soul:“We cannot blame
white people. . . We’ve got to take the neighborhood back.”Christie expands the argument.A strong and destructive internal attitude
impedes black accomplishment.And this
attitude is encapsulated, Christie says, in the high-school taunt “acting
white,” aimed by black students at peers who pay attention in class and do
their homework.
When “hard
work, diligent study, and eloquent communication skills” become cause for derision
and abuse, the result is a powerful deterrent to success.It is a phenomenon based on a misguided
notion of group loyalty.Its strength
resides in a fear of ostracism.
Acting
White takes a historical approach, sketching out the contours of not just the
term itself but the operating concept as well, the origins of which he discerns
in the antebellum South.He relies
heavily on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), where the
attitudes of whites toward blacks run a gamut of viciousness: from benign
superiority to amusement to sadism, fear and loathing – all serving the purpose
of unthinkable exploitation.Christie points
to whites’ fear of black literacy: “Blacks were legally denied the opportunity
to become literate in several southern states.Alabama, Georgia and Virginia joined other states in enacting statues
that prescribed fines, flogging, imprisonment and hanging for those who taught
African Americans how to read and write.”
How blacks
perceived literacy becomes the focus of Christie’s attention.The slave George Harris in Uncle Tom’s Cabin
says, “I know more about business than the master does, and I can read better
than he can; I can write a better hand.”But Harris’s stance was not, according to Christie, prevalent among
blacks in the slaveholding South:
Apparently, the motion that blacks would apply themselves
to become literate and educated . . . was a foreign concept to someone of Uncle
Tom’s mindset . . . This subservient . . .ideology about education – then and
now holds that African Americans seeking to emancipate their minds from the
chains of illiteracy act as do whites.
Although Acting
White suffers occasionally from awkward prose and unnecessary repetition,
Christie proves a competent guide through some complicated history.He shows, for example, that despite Booker T.
Washington’s promotion of “hard work and economic self-reliance for blacks,” he
blinked when it came to true equality, supporting industrial over academic
education for blacks and assuring whites that they need not fear social
assimilation.Interestingly, Washington
and his rival W.E.B DuBois traded similar charges of kowtowing to white
attitudes.“Acting White” seems to be an
equal opportunity slur.
Discord in
the early 20th century between DuBois and the leader of the nascent
Back to Africa movement, Marcus Garvey, makes earlier disagreements sound
mild.Distrustful of education and
opposed to assimilation, Garvey attacked the Harvard-educated DuBois at first
vigorously, and then viciously.DuBois,
Garvey wrote in 1923, “likes to dance with white people, and dine with them,
and sometimes sleeps with them, because from his way of seeing things all black
is ugly, and all that is white is beautiful.”Garvey’s accusations would seem quaint, perhaps, if they were not as
current as today’s headlines.Christie
quotes a 2007 item from CNN News; “The Rev. Jesse Jackson criticized then
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama; accusing the Illinois senator
of “acting like he’s white” according to a South Carolina newspaper.”And about a year later, Ralph Nader chimed
in, saying that Obama tries to “talk white.”
This
comprehensive history of the dangerous and self-defeating notion that pursuing
an education, speaking well, dressing well, and working in a profession equals
“selling out” is both sobering and encouraging.And the failure of many black leaders to relinquish the comforting myth
that all of their community’s woes can be laid at the feet of “institutional
racism” is causing young African Americans enormous harm.
SACRAMENTO, CA
(IFS)
D-Town Records has relocated its SDC
OmniMedia Group to Memphis, Tennessee
with its SDC Radio One Networks
predominately taking the lead rolls in production.
The D-Town Records Imprint division will continue to
repackage its catalog, and release its new products via digital distribution
with D-Town Digital.
D-Town Records relationship with Memphis
dates back to the middle 1960’s with Willie Mitchell’s production of the Prince
of Detroit’s Lee Rogers with hit recordings entitled “Love For A Love”, “The
Same Thing That Make You Laugh (Can Make You Cry)” and several other great
hits.
KDTN Radio One’s Blogtalk radio series and it’s music
affiliate station has been on limited production schedule since 2010 when
operations shifted to the Yolo County farm suburbs where broadband was just
limited and none existence.
D-Town has re-launched its’ sdcog.net website portal to
report on its subsidiaries activities and products.
MEMPHIS (IFS) As Savannah
Guthrie officially takes the reins of the co-anchor ship of the Today Show this
morning; I was one of those 303 friends of Ann Curry. I had received rumors of Ann’s leaving as far
back as six months ago from the many of the view ships of the show, twitter
feeds, and other things.
I had flashbacks of Ann hurling herself off of bridges,
bungee jumps, crazy morning stunts that gave me the creeps over the years, but
yet the powers that be had to let dear old Ann go after one year on the job.
Let’s face it, I’m not bleeding for Ann, just hurting that I
will not get a chance to see those hot sexy legs and shoes in the morning over
my hot cup of Joe that helps to pert me up and get me through the day. Am I a sexist pig? Hell yea!
And proud of it. On the other
hand, I am a little jealous that I did not get a $10 Million going away
settlement. On my last days on the job
back in 2001, it was a small $65,000 severance package and a good luck note.
So do not cry for Ann Curry, but my heart does go out for my
morning show. Since ABC’s Good Morning
America has pulled ahead of the Today Show, I believe I will be switching
alliance in the mornings and tuning in to watch and flipping channels to CBS
This Morning. But on these two show,
they show no legs, just lots of arms.
