Hi Black Planet Family. I am a very busy lady. I am a wife and mother (Aren't my babies cute???) I want everyone to understand that I am NOT a "holier than thou" person. I simply appreciate what God has brought me through so don't let the Gospel music scare you. I spent Easter Break In Minnesota enjoying family and the sites. (I think my feet still hurt from walking around the Mall of America.) Check out the photos I took. I want to thank God for giving my family traveling grace (with no tickets LOL; Cops were everywhere). I also want to thank my family & friends in Minnesota for their hospitality. In the summer I plan to vacation in the Wisconsin Dells at one of the waterparks. UPDATE on Nov. 17, 2009: Please keep me in prayer. I just got back from funeral services in Port Wentworth, GA for my bio Dad.
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A MUST READ FOR ALL AFRICAN-AMERICANS:
Subject: What are we willing to do!
This is a 2 minute read, but worth it...
I had never seen the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson cry in public. And he's
seldom upstaged. Until, Bill Cosby came to town.
Last month Jackson invited Cosby to the annual Rainbow/PUSH conference
for
a conversation about controversial remarks the entertainer offered May
17
at an NAACP dinner in Washington , D.C. That's when America 's Jell-O
Man
shook things up by arguing that African Americans were betraying the
legacy of civil rights victories.
"The lower economic people," he said, "are not holding up their end in
this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for
their kids.
$500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for "Hooked on Phonics!"
Thursday morning, Cosby showed no signs of repenting as he strode across
the stage at the Sheraton Hotel ballroom before a standing-room-only
crowd. Sporting a natty gold sports coat and dark glasses, he proceeded
to unload a laundry list of black America 's self-imposed ills. The
iconic actor and comedian kidded that he couldn't compete with the
oratory of the Reverend but he preached circles around Jackson in their nearly hour-long
conversation, delivering brutally frank one-liners and the toughest of love.
The enemy, he argues, is us: "There is a time, ladies and gentlemen, when we have to turn the mirror
around." Cosby acknowledged he wasn't critiquing all blacks-just "the 50
percent of African Americans in the lower economic neighborhood who drop
out of school," and the alarming proportions of black men in prison and
black teenage mothers. The mostly black crowd seconded him with choruses
of "Amens."
To critics who pose, it's unproductive to air our dirty laundry in
public, he responds, "Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day.
It's cursing on the way home, on the bus, train, in the candy store. They
are cursing and grabbing each other and going nowhere. And, the book
bag is very, very thin because there's nothing in it."
"Don't worry about the white man," he adds. "I could care less about
what white people think about me . . . let 'em talk. What are they saying
that is different from what their grandfathers said and did to us? What is
different is what we are doing to ourselves."
For those who say Cosby is just an elitist who's "got his" but doesn't
understand the plight of the black poor, he reminds us that, "We're
going to turn that mirror around. It's not just the poor-everybody's guilty."
Cosby and Jackson lamented that in the 50th year of Brown vs. Board of
Education, our failings betray our legacy. Jackson dabbed away tears as
he recalled the financial struggles at Fisk University, a historically
black college and Jackson 's Alma mater.
When Cosby was done, the 1,000 people in the room all jumped to their
feet in ovation. Long after Cosby had departed, I could not find a dissenter
in the crowd. But in the hotel corridor I encountered a vintage poster for
sale that said volumes. The poster, which advertised the Million Man
March, was "discounted" to $5 Remember the Million Man March?
In 1995 Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan exhorted "a million
sober, disciplined, committed, dedicated, inspired black men to meet in
Washington on a day of atonement." In 2004, perhaps all that' s left of
that call is a $5 poster. We have shed tears too many times, at too
many watershed moments before, while the hopes they inspired have fallen by
the wayside. Not this time.
Cosby's plea to parents: "Before you get to the point where you say 'I
can't do nothing with them'-do something with them."
LIKE:
Teach our children to speak English.
When the teacher calls, show up at the school.
When the idiot box starts spewing profane rap videos, turn it off.
Refrain from cursing around the kids.
Teach our boys that women should be cherished, not raped and demeaned.
Tell them that education is a prize we won with blood and tears,not a
dishonor.
Stop making excuses for the agents and abettors of black-on-black crime.
It costs us nothing to do these things. But if we don't, it will cost us
infinitely more tears.
We all send thousands of jokes through e-mail without a second thought,
but when it comes to sending messages regarding life choices, people
think twice about sharing. The crude, vulgar, and sometimes the obscene pass
freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of decency is too often
suppressed in school and the workplace.
I passed this on... will you?
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