Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Amerikkka! Amerikkka! God Shed His Grace on Thee

It's been 7 days since nine African-American church worshippers were gunned down after having shared prayer with the alleged gunman, 21 year-old Dylann Roof.  As predicted, the media has fully disappointed.  First, they couldn't stop calling this alleged enemy of the state a "Kid."  Really?  Trayvon Benjamin Martin was never known as a kid, though he was a mere 17-years old when  renegade neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman took his life.  Zimmerman would later be freed by a jury of his peers, only to be arrested 7 more times for assault crimes.   I heard a TV expert dissecting Roof's background that would be appalling to most, and he couldn't help call him a kid.  The adjective denotes innocence.  Many whites in America want to find out what demon took this child's innocence that would cause him to do such dastardly things.  Black America wants justice for the crimes. 

The night before Roof's arrest I found myself in a Twitter debate with Nick Searcy who plays Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Art Mullen endearingly one of my favorite shows, FX's Justified.  Nick was quick to call out the liberal media, and me, for jumping to conclusions about who the shooter might be, and labeling him a criminal terrorist before his capture.  I debated him for hours about how unfair his liberal whining's were. 

I was so bold as to Tweet CNN's Jake Taper, and ask him how he would characterize the alleged shooter on his afternoon show.  Taper was gracious enough to respond, saying he wouldn't ever use the word thug, but somewhat tepidly agreed with me that it was an act of terrorism at best.  I was happy to see his newscast when he didn't mince words to describe the shooter, though he stopped short of calling him a terrorist. 

As many African-American's know for sure, there will be no justice in this America even for 9 innocent, church-going folk in Charleston, South Carolina.  Our community will carry on as we always have, and deal with the pain and hurt after so many hundreds of years of cruelty and inhuman suffering at the hands of American brothers and sisters.  There are no martyrs amongst us, we are rather a remarkable people of enduring faith in God and strength.  We will survive and be the last ones standing in the end.  God bless America, and the children who made her so great.  Good night Moon, Good night black people, Good night America.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

No Justice No Peace


When I woke this morning the world was whole, but now as I lay my head down to sleep under the blanket of freedom we are all supposed to be afforded in America I realize our nation is shattered in a million pieces.  Nine black people lay dead in an AME church in Charleston, South Carolina after a single, white, gunman entered the sanctuary and opened fire. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/06/17/charleston-south-carolina-shooting/28902017/


I have more questions than answers.  Why does this keep happening in our country, and how could someone commit such a heartless crime against humanity, in a church of all places.  What should our response be?  Can this gunman be forgiven his sins against our community?

I was just extolling the virtues of the human race since Adam ate that apple, and now it appears the sins of man just keep growing more and more insidious and malicious.  

As I scan my Twitter timeline, my emotions run high.  Black twitter is urging our community to stop praying, and take up arms NOW.  Conservatives are calling for calm.  Media is loath to call the alleged gunman a "terrorist" or "thug," monikers they effortlessly slapped on young, black protesters in Baltimore.  But what is the right direction for America at this time in our history, do we pray or do we protest.

As the mother of a precious, 6-year old black girl I say the right response must be prayer and protest.  I cannot in good conscious close my eyes and rest, when this is the world that awaits her outside the safety of our home.  I rage against elected officials who ride the money train into office on the dime of the National Rifle Association, and legislate to keep the NRA strong.  I rail against American's that ask for an in-depth investigation before we cast aspersions and judgments.  I bristle at my own belief that we are all redeemable and deserve forgiveness for sins against our fellow man.

The burning question is how will America wake up tomorrow, and what justice will she mete out for such an unspeakable event.     

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

A Path of Least Resistance

Taking the path that one's heart desires is what I must give myself permission to do.  What am I afraid of?  Why would I be afraid?  Don't I have the faith of a tiny mustard seed?  This is what I have always told myself.  But it is now that I intend to step out on faith and pursue my heart's desire to study law. 

I must quiet the noise that says it is not the best to do because legal jobs are scarce.  I must know that this desire that has been planted in my heart was placed there for a reason. 

Here I go, me and my 5-year old kindergarten, we are going to law school. 

Now back to the LSAT I return..........

Monday, April 2, 2012

Brains Trump Everything

By Taylor's Mommy

I saw some wretchedness at the KC Zoo this past weekend that rises to the level of child-abuse, in my opinion; a mother with her 6-year old daughter in tow wearing a full-head of weave. It was half-way down her tiny back, shiny, and super black. The sun was beaming, and the temperature was 80-degrees. It may even have been a lace front -weave, but the po' child had it in her face and was struggling with it while I watched. All I could do to remain cool was to pin up my own shoulder-length hair. If this is what you are putting ON their heads, what the devil are you putting IN their heads!

This is wrong on so many levels. In the iconic words of Marvin Gaye, “What is Going On?” The black community is suffering more than ever with the senseless death of Trayvon Martin as proof of what ails us. Obesity hampers us and our babies, diabetes is killing us quietly, and public education is an instrument devised AGAINST not FOR our children, and yet some of us are wasting hours and money required to weave a child’s head instead of spending that precious childhood time and resources to educate our babies. We should not devote the time it takes to put Indian-hair in our babies’ heads, when we should be imparting reading, writing, and arithmetic. A nappy-head filled with knowledge, is a head that can go anywhere and create ANYTHING.

I was appalled, and really saddened, the first time one of my daughter’s three-year old playmates showed up with long, fake hair extensions weighing down her thin, delicate “baby hair.” The extensions, with beads, were just tearing at her tender scalp. Her young mother is a hair braider that never misses the opportunity to inflict pain on her daughter weekly with an elaborate hairstyle. The baby never enjoys the relief of “natural” on her head. It has to hurt. But some might say she’s cute and that’s what matters. This same child’s father said no when I suggested joining my daughter at the Nelson Art Gallery summer program at no cost in order to engage in his multi-level marketing business. He said he would be too busy. The opportunity is FREE, and still out of reach of this black child. This is also the parent of an estranged teenage son. The dad remarked recently, to check on the welfare of his son he turns on the local news. If he’s not a victim of homicide or the perpetrator he’s a relieved parent.

ATTENTION BLACK COMMUNITY: It’s not Zimmerman, it’s us. Responsibility lies with us, at home. Our power cannot be subverted by the "bogey man" if we stand our ground. If colored folk on the flip-side of US Slavery had left the monumental responsibility of self-esteem, education, and the development of our community to this government, or outsiders, we would not have come as far as we have today.
The parents of old required excellence, nothing less. My parents were born and raised in segregated Mississippi, and their people required the best out of them despite what awaited them in the world. They were required to be appropriately dressed and pressed despite what was in their pockets. They were taught to address elders respectfully. They held their head high because their people told them they mattered. And they did.

If I were an alien from another planet, and observing black folk today, compared to having seen them in the distant past, I would believe the community had regressed instead of progressed. I would see little black girls in fake hair, young black men with sagging pants, and I would hear poor grammar and desecrated English flowing from teenagers’ mouths. Then I would know. I would know that the plan to keep these people down had worked. They would appear to have given up the fight of those freedom fighters of the past.

I would think that these people had never even read their OWN history. I would be saddened and moved to tears because James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner would have died in vain. I would believe that they’d never heard of Martin Luther King, Jr., female pilot Bessie Coleman, or Garrett Morgan. I would believe that someone had just made up that American History stuff about black folks inventing revolutionary things still used worldwide today. Naw, these could NOT be descendants of those men and women who valued education, and died for the privilege to read a book. Couldn’t be.

It is all very simple to me. We have to educate our babies, no matter what. We have to place brains over beauty. Like Oprah has said, “I was never pretty, but I had brains!” We have to reject the sub-standards put in place by school systems that pander to the lowest denominator. Instead, we must go above and beyond and be our children’s toughest educators. If the assignment is to read two books, our kids must read six. If the science project requires just the minimum to compete with classmates, our babies need to reach for MIT-caliber projects for kids. If normal homework takes 2 hours a night, our homework must require twice that. EXCELLENCE is the goal. Nothing less! Educating our kids is our responsibility, not to be left to chance. Just being mediocre is never enough. It was never enough for our fore parents and should never be acceptable today. Brains over beauty every day of the week.



Monday, May 23, 2011

Equal Opportunity Testing is in Order

Since when did needing temporary help to feed your children make you less worthy of protection under the law.  Well Missouri lawmakers have recently passed legislation requiring people that receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, to take random drug tests to stay on the “roll.” Republican lawmakers across the country are lobbying to enact similar laws.  I believe the Constitution says a little something about Americans being protected against unlawful search and seizure. http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_953196cf-8104-5758-8198-60e151debe90.html


Republicans continually insist they are the party of smaller government, but here again we have another crystal clear example of Republicans helping to create a cottage industry of privately-operated drug labs for welfare families.  The details of how the law will work is further proof that this is just a way to help republican business “friends” make money.


The cost of testing can be upwards of $75, done randomly throughout the year, as many times as the system pulls that particular recipients’ name from a database.  This means a company can charge the government $75 for a yet undetermined number of times in a year.  The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that for every found to be using, it will cost the state $20,000 or more. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125387528


The first year the program is projected to cost Missouri taxpayers more than $1 million, and more every year thereafter.  Since laws rarely if ever expire, you do the math over fifty years.  When will voters see this party’s slight of hand and stop voting them into office.  


This law assumes the worst of people needing help in one of the darkest economic seasons of my life.  It criminalizes people receiving a meager subsidy from a government that easily wastes money subsidizing the oil industry to the tune of $4 BIILLION.  The US government has given Wal-Mart over $1 billion in welfare to transform them into the “entrepreneurial success” they claim to be.  Give me a billion dollars and I will show the government how much a female, minority, single mother can succeed!  http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/24/news/fortune500/walmart_subsidies/


For those who say the law is about helping addicted people on welfare, I say liar liar pants on fire.  If a welfare recipient is found to be using drugs, they are referred to a rehab facility that they will have to pay for.  Then they will lose the benefits if a third party cannot be found to accept funds on their behalf.  The notion that someone on public assistance can pay for rehab is insane.  And will the “third party” be tested?  Moreover, addiction is a disease that should be recognized as such, and since America seems to have lost the war on drugs I say treatment at the state’s expense is in order.


Lawmakers say this law will further help welfare recipients become ready for work.  If true, then why fixate on drug testing, and not literacy. What better way to get people from welfare to work than to ensure they can read and write.   A 1996 study in the American Journal of Public Health looked at the assumption that people on public assistance are drug addicted.  In short, the study found people on welfare drink and use drugs at around the same rates as the national average. http://www.ndsn.org/DEC96/WELFARE.html


Politicians from the great state of Arizona had the audacity to say such a law will help them save $1.7 million a year after kicking families off welfare.


Laws such as this one are just a smoke screen for the building of another layer of bureaucracy created to mire our government in true mismanagement, and produce more businesses.  Don’t misconstrue its false attempt to help people in our community that need the most help in these trying times.  Children are the largest beneficiaries of programs such as Women Infants and Children and food stamps.  To kick their parents off of welfare will leave our children to suffer.  Because of this law, one more child will go to bed hungry tonight because Republicans have been mean-spirited enough to attack their families instead of lifting them up.   


To be truly fair, all corporate executives that represent companies that get welfare from the government should be required to get drug tested randomly.  Welfare is “free money” no matter who is getting it.  Test one, test them all.




Friday, April 15, 2011

Righteous Indignation at the Lack of Indignation

As the parent of a precocious two-year-old, public school education has never meant so much to me as it does now.  I was blessed to have had parents with the means, and the wherewithal, to send me to a private, all-girl, college Prep school called Notre Dame de Sion.  When you say it put some French on it!  Now my little one is participating in public education.  But at this rate she won't be for long because I cannot afford to fail her by sending her through public school.

This week the Hickman Mills School Board voted to cut the Parents As Teacher Program (PAT) budget by 50 percent http://www.kctv5.com/education/27528532/detail.html.  PAT works with parents to teach them how to teach their children from birth to kindergarten. http://www.parentsasteachers.org/about/what-we-do  They aren't building weapons of mass destruction, they are educating OUR children who might otherwise not have access to one-on-one tutoring.  They work with special-needs students.  They are educators with years of experience and the certifications to back it up.  These are the teachers that all students and parents want teaching them.  Yet when lawmakers look at ways to curb spending, such programs are the first to suffer. 

This is devastating because jobs will be lost, and children between the ages of 1 and 5 will lose out on valuable pre-school learning that is essential for future educational success.  We as a society know that if we set our children up early they will be successful later in school.  But why do lawmakers keep failing our children?

More importantly, all of OUR children must be educated.  Not just those whose parents can pay for school or relocate away from blacks and browns to send their kids to public schools so homogonous, and white washed as to be just like private schools.  We are all connected on this planet, yet we act as if we are separate.  If one of our children are suffering in ignorance then we all suffer.  Case in point, when children are failing in school they often are distracting and act out which takes away from the others who want to learn.  Our kids pay the price.  Then without the foundation for career success, kids who drop out of school often times end up on welfare or in prison, where they ARE society's responsibility. 

PAT is truly a gift for me and my family because my two-year old now possesses a 150-word vocabulary, and it's ever expanding.  Its due to the twice-monthly visits at our home with her parent-educator, Karen, who teaches me how to teach.  It's the books we receive monthly, and the baby- sing-and-sign classes that have clearly given my little one a leg up on her age mates.  Gymboree two times a month has taught her countless physical developmental skills.  Because of PAT she is prepared for school NOW.  When I talk about the priceless gifts imparted by PAT I cry.  Tears roll from my eyes because this child is but six generations from slavery.  I boo hoo because of the opportunities that will be afforded her because of her knowledge.  Joy fills my heart and tears tumble from my eyes in a dichotomy of emotions that overtake me at times.  I have a purpose.

I also shed tears when I work with her three-year-old playmate who cannot decipher numbers or words at all. She is in a daycare where they are "teaching" her.   I cry because her parents don't know how to access the assessments and tools that will give her a 150-word vocabulary. I despair because her parents were educated in public schools, and they do not know how to be outraged because of her delays.  I cry because there is a school system waiting for this child that is comfortable with cutting much needed funds for her, and her schoolmates.  I cry because lawmakers trade our children for the blood money of big corporate interests.  I cry because the likes of many businesses like H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt Tax Preparers market to uneducated and impoverished consumers helping earn them $4 billion in a four-month tax season. http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/gary-rivlin-tax-prep-refund-anticipation-loan  I cry for this country.

Education cuts have caused many an Englishman to rise up and strike a blow to the rich and wealthy Royal Family  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/09/world/main7134510.shtml .  The French know how to pick a fight with their president when their children are being short-changed, yet Americans do nothing as our future is slowly being imprisoned by but a few rich and powerful like the Koch Brothers whose goal is to keep the working man a captive-consumer http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/13/koch-industries-price-gouging/ . Where is our American fight? Where is our American outrage? Where is our indignation!

We must ask ourselves who does it serve if an individual possesses a quality-education that empowers them to take care of themselves and their families. 

Friday, March 11, 2011

To Twitter or Facebook, That Is The Question

I have a confession to make---I really don't like Facebook or the chatter that goes on in that vortex, and I don't really get the appeal.  Millions of people on Facebook, a movie, and I'm sure a book will be forthcoming, but what is the BFD.  Yes, I'm on Facebook, but never ever check my account anymore.  I figure if someone said something days ago, it CAN'T be relevant anymore. I think all conversations should be limited to Twitter's 140 characters, or less.  In person, on the phone, at the office, in the classroom, all communication.  I shouldn't have to use more than 140 characters to get my 2-year old to behave properly, or sit on the potty. 


Unfortunately, I cannot convince my dearest besties of the point of Twitter .  They just don't get it.  They fail to see the blast that one can have just reading the limited rantings of their favorite NFL player, or the musings of a mother clear across the globe about how potty training is practically killing her spirit one day at time.


Maybe it's Twitter's simplicity that confuses people.  Twitter's world begins with the @ sign and once you get an account, which is your name or any silly name you create, then you just start talking, using just 140 characters or less.  You say things and others see your comments and they hit you back, or better yet follow back.  Once they are followers of you then they see everything you say.  Goal: get as many followers as possible so cleverness and a message are key!  What about this is so hard that my best friend "just can't get into it."  My other bestie just flat out refuses to leave the garden and cafe of Facebook and join the real world of Twitter. 


Twitter has gotten a bad reputation for being all about randomness, when in fact it's specific, personal and much more intimate than Facebook.  The immediacy is one reason for this.  I can instantly reach out to celebs, and get an instant response.  On many of occasions Chad Ochocinco has invited 100 of his closest friends to dinner in one hour, and had I been in Los Angeles, or Miami at those moments well let's just say I would be eating good.  This is only possible with Twitter.


One night I found myself sitting at home on a lonely Saturday when HBO was premiering "The Hangover."  With a simple swipe of my iPhone I soon realized that thousands were at home just like me watching.  Celebs and just regular folk.  Everybody was commenting about almost every scene, and I nearly busted a gut laughing.  I ended up having a blast watching one of the funniest movies with a few thousand friends.  I soon started following Mike Tyson, though he has yet to tweet back.


Twitter's celebrity factor was the original reason I opened an account.  Ochocinco is his name, and he's still my favorite tweeter because nothing about his life is off limits.  He wakes up and tweets, he eats and tweets, he tweets to his friends that eventually become my friends.  And on occasion he's even tweeted me.  The day he followed me was the pinnacle.  I will forever be his biggest fan for that one. 


Beyond the celebrity factor Twitter has brought me into contact with very dear, ordinary people doing interesting things all over the world.  I found myself tweeting with a lad from England and we talked about the old neighborhood I used to live in there.  No barriers between me and a young, white, male Brit just 140 characters.  I  love it.  I remember at the beginning of the personal computing and Internet revolution that it was said that this medium will remove all barriers of race and gender, and in many ways it has.  Twitter is proof.