Opinion

This is absolutely ridiculous. Black people need to get together and march against this type of behavior. Why were they beating this young man? He looks like he is White. Are they beating him because he is not Black? It's hateful and we should yell just as loud about this as we do when Whites attack Blacks! After watching this video you have to wonder why White people aren't marching. Perhaps incidents like this are motivating some of the tea party attendees.

These children need something like the Scared Straight program they once had at Rahway State Prison in NJ. Let them get bullied by some of those muscular inmates doing double life and see what they have to say then.

Read about bullies here

The South Carolina Republican acted ignorant and ghetto during President Obama's health care address says he will not apologize again for his outburst. I understand why our President is acting classy enough excepting his apology, however, since I'm just "joe public" I'm gonna call it like I see it. There are some old-school ignorant folks that refuse to give President Obama the respect given to ALL presidents. It seems that every time you mention race these days you get "accused" of playing the race card. Call it what you want, I'll call it racism. I don't believe Mr. Wilson would have disrespected a white man the way he did President Obama. I also believe he made a decision to disrespect the president and apologize later. They should have dragged his GHETTO butt out of the building.

Several articles claim that Mr. Wilson is a good guy and this is not normal for him. Guess what? This is the first African American President so he had no need to act like this in the past. You will never convince me or anyone with common sense that all of this hoopla over health care is not an undercover way to protest a black President. To all the nuts out there all I can say is get over it, there's a black man in charge.

Two of the articles below: "A Dangerous Kind of Hate" by Colbert I. King of the Washington Post and "Boy, Oh, Boy!" by New York Times op-ed columnist, Maureen Dowd, are quite revealing. Take a minute to click and read them.

A Dangerous Kind of Hate by Colbert I. King, Washington Post

On Aug. 16, pastor Steven L. Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Ariz., told his congregation that he prays for the death of President Obama. In a sermon titled "Why I Hate Barack Obama," Anderson preached: "I'm not going to pray for his good, I'm going to pray he dies and goes to hell." Read the full story here

Boy, Oh, Boy! by Maureen Dowd

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys - a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own mens club - Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy! Read it here

Wilson: No more apologies for outburst against president

(CNN) -- Rep. Joe Wilson said Sunday he will not apologize again for yelling out that President Obama lied during the president's speech to Congress last week.

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina, shouts "You lie!" during President Obama's speech Wednesday night.

"I am not going to apologize again," the South Carolina Republican said on "FOX News Sunday" when asked about pending disciplinary steps against him by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

Wilson said he already apologized to Obama and that the president accepted it. However, he insisted that Obama "was misstating the facts," and that Democratic leaders in the House were "playing politics" by continuing to focus on the issue.

The controversy has shifted the focus of the heated health care debate by calling attention to claims by Republicans that a health care overhaul sought by Obama and Democrats would provide free insurance coverage for illegal immigrants. Read the full story on CNN.com

Andrew M. Manis, author of Macon Black and White steering committee member of Macon’s Center for Racial understanding, wrote the following op-ed:

For much of the last forty years, ever since America “fixed” its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, “When are African Americans finally going to get over it?

Now I want to ask: “When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?

Recent reports that “Election Spurs Hundreds’ of Race Threats, Crimes” should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in “Bombingham,” Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than “talk the talk.”

Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.

We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps.

But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.

But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we’re back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we’ve proven what conservatives are always saying -that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that schoolchildren from Maine to California are talking about wanting to “assassinate Obama.”

Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, “How long?” How long before we white people realize we can’t make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us? How long until we white people can -once and for all- get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color? How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior? How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?

How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin? How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?

I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners? How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?

How long before we starting “living out the true meaning” of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that “red and yellow, black and white” all are precious in God’s sight?

Until this past November 4, I didn’t believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still don’t believe I’ll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem. But here’s my three-point plan:

First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built I’m going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.

Second, I’m going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.

Third, I’m going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can “in spirit and in truth” sing of our damnable color prejudice, “We HAVE overcome.”

Andrew Manis is author of Macon Black and White and serves on the steering committee of Macon’s Center for Racial understanding.

It take a Village to protect our President!!!

From Wikipedia:
Andrew Michael Manis is a historian, author, and professor at Macon State College, in Macon, Georgia.

An ordained Baptist minister, Manis was educated at Samford University (B.A. in Religion and History) and at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he earned a Master of Divinity and a Ph.D. in American Church History in 1984. He also studied briefly at the University of Chicago Divinity School. From 1985 to 1988, he was the first Protestant scholar to teach in the Theology Department at Xavier University of (New Orleans) Louisiana, and prior to teaching at Macon State College, he taught at Averett University in Danville, Virginia.

Dr. Andrew Manis is an award-winning historian whose research focuses on the role of religion in American life, with particular attention placed on the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Manis recently received the Lillian Smith Book Award from the Southern Regional Council for his book, A Fire You Can't Put Out.[1] The book, a biography of civil rights leader Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, was also nominated for the Robert F. Kennedy Prize. Dr. Manis is a popular speaker, addressing churches and schools on the role of the church in crusading for social and political justice. Dr. Manis organized an on-campus event at which Rev. Shuttlesworth spoke, drawing record attendance. Dr. Manis has appeared on C-SPAN and the History Channel as well as Fox News.[2]

Dr. Manis has recently been selected as a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence. He will spend four months in 2009 teaching and researching at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.[3]

Other Publications:

-Macon Black and White: An Unutterable Separation in the American Century. Macon: Mercer University Press/Tubman African American Museum, 2004. -- Winner of the 2005 Georgia Author of the Year Award (History Division) -- National Semifinalist for the 2005 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award

-Southern Civil Religions in Conflict: Civil Rights and the Culture Wars. Mercer University Press, 2002. [Revised and expanded edition of my 1987 book; see below]

-Birmingham Revolutionaries: Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Contributor and Co-editor with Marjorie White. Mercer University Press, 2000.

-A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. University of Alabama Press, 1999. -- Winner of the 2000 Lillian Smith Book Award—Winner of the 2001 James F. Sulzby Prize, Alabama Historical Association, 2001, for best book on Alabama history published in 1999-2000—Winner of the 1998 James McMillan Prize, University of Alabama Press, for best manuscript submitted in 1998.

-Southern Civil Religions in Conflict: Black and White Baptists and Civil Rights, 1947-1957. University of Georgia Press, 1987.

I have a lot of respect for Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr and it is sad that this kind of foolishness still goes on in America. But, I have to admit, I'm getting a kick out of it.

Just think, of all people to mess with, the cops selected one of the nation's pre-eminent African America scholar. And, when people want a statement from him, he directs them to his boy, Dr. Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law Professor. Oh Lord, it doesn't get any better than this! The Po-Po is gonna have to be more careful these days and watch who they pick fights with. Black folks have come a long way and you never know who you're messing with. I hope this incident gets back to the boys in the hood - they can celebrate because Gates and Ogletree are the two best people to show that the "post-racial/Obama era" people keep referring to is a figment of someone's imagination.

When I initially heard about this incident I hoped that it was just the police protecting the neighborhood. If there were two men of any race kicking or appearing to force a door in at my home I would hope someone would call 911. Too bad people are no longer neighborly - back in the day my neighbors would have looked out the window and known who it was if they lived in the area.

But nowadays they would call 911.

The problem with this incident seems to be the fact that they arrested Dr. Gates even after they found out who he was and had a problem with him being "loud and tumultuous."

The man was home. He had a right to be as loud as he wanted to be after showing proof that he was not a robber on a cane. I suspect Dr. Gates used words the police couldn't even spell and it got them mad. Perhaps that's what the tumultuous means.

We can't jump to conclusions and think this was racist - although I doubt that a frail white man using a cane would have been treated this way. I believe it's something I often talk about with police - white, black or otherwise - they have a power problem and tend to abuse the power they were given. If someone does not give police the respect they think they deserve because they carry a gun, some police feel like they can arrest you for disrespect. Any, police often arrest people because they feel they were disrespected. In addition to being ignorant, that is abuse of power but it happens every day with these insecure police officers trying to find their manhood (or womanhood) in a badge.

Black scholar's arrest raises racism claims
BOSTON - Police responding to a call about "two black males" breaking into a home near Harvard University ended up arresting the man who lives there — Henry Louis Gates Jr., the pre-eminent African-American studies scholar.

Gates had forced his way through the front door because it was jammed, his lawyer said. Colleagues call the arrest last Thursday afternoon a clear case of racial profiling.

Cambridge police say they responded to the well-maintained two-story home after a woman reported seeing "two black males with backpacks on the porch," with one "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry."

Other stories:
MSNBC - Black scholar's arrest raises racism claims

NY Times - Harvard Professor Jailed; Officer Is Accused of Bias

Chicago Tribune - Esteemed Harvard professor nabbed while trying to enter his own home

Los Angeles Times Blog - Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrested. Seriously, Cambridge?

To be honest, I didn’t expect much tonight when I went to see the advance preview of CNN’s Black in America 2 at the Carter Center in Atlanta. I never made it through Black in America Part 1 at one time - my blood pressure kept reaching dangerous levels.

It looks like CNN responded to the tough-love I know they received after part one. Tonight, I have to admit, CNN put their foot in it big time! Black in America 2 touched on marriage and families, excellence in schools, and training black leaders for corporate America. I truly believe it’s award winning material.

In Black in America 2 CNN's Soledad O'Brien criss-crosses the U.S., reporting on groundbreaking solutions that are transforming the black experience in America. She uncovers pioneers who are making a difference: people inspiring volunteerism, programs that are improving access to quality health care and education, and leaders working to address financial struggles and develop strong families.

I would not allow my grandchildren to watch part 1. I figure they will learn about the dark side of the African American community soon enough. Since they are lucky enough not to live in poverty, and have fathers and grandfathers in their life, the negativity was not something I wanted to promote.

On July 22 and 23 I will watch the show with my four older grandchildren. Their assignment is to write two paragraphs stating what the show meant to them and how they will strive for excellence. Contrary to what our President thinks about black people, not all black children are playing Xbox or worrying about their jump shot all the time (although the president has a pretty good jump shot I hear).

Perhaps President Obama can learn from CNN and find something positive to say about what is happening in the African American community. I read that while I was enjoying the positive stories that CNN was able to unearth about black America, tonight the President gave another tough-love speech to tuxedo and gown-wearing black professionals gathered in the ballroom of the New York Hilton to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the NAACP. He was quoted as mentioning Lil Wayne - I wonder how many people in that audience knew anything about Mr. Wayne.

Thanks CNN for finding some of the positive and inspiring stories – and there are many. As one of the panelist after the screening said, “Black America wins much more than they lose or we wouldn’t be here.” If someone could let the President know that most of us are trying and succeeding, like his mother did, to raise our children to aspire to be doctors, lawyers, and even president of the United States of America. He's not the only African American living a constructive life. As a matter of fact, it was the hard work of the black community that helped to get him in office.

President Obama is just back from Africa and still finds it necessary to criticize the African American community rather than lift up the many accomplishments. I’m beginning to believe he is suffering from a little self-hatred. It may be time for a little tough-love for Mr. President. I know I'm sick of the negativity.

I hope someone convinces President Obama to take a minute from grinning, holding press conferences, and scolding black America to watch Black in America 2, he may learn something.

To read about some of the stories on Black in America 2 visit CNN.com.

A Barack Obama victory in less than three weeks will mean many things at home and abroad. It will mean a new team on foreign and domestic policy and new political leadership for both the Democratic Party and the country. And it will mean, finally, the end of any excuse to listen to the self-involved, selfish and stupid rantings of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Earlier this year, Jackson made a complete fool of himself with his jealous tirade against Obama, spoken into an open mike and ultimately heard by millions. It doesn't bear repeating, and I would not be writing about it today were it not for the sad but not surprising fact that Jackson is now selling himself as a member of Obama's "family" -- or vice versa -- and pontificating in an ignorant and divisive way about the changes an Obama administration will bring.

If you didn't know better, you might think Jackson wants Obama to lose. And I wouldn't be surprised if he does. A President Obama makes Jackson politically irrelevant. Read the full column on Rasmussenreports.com