I Ain't No Slave

The Reverend Jessie Jackson comments that Cleavland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert spoke about Lebron James as if he was a "run away slave" was on point. I just wish he had included New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who criticized James in a column titled "Miami Hoops Cartel" a clear play on words ascribing Bosh, Wade and James to the Miami's notorious drug cartels. Dowd writes that Gilbert was "played' by James.

What both Dowd and Gilbert rant's fail to take in account, is that in the not too distant pass Pro Sport Owners brought and sold players like they were running a plantation. Players had no control over their careers, where they would play or how much money they would demand for their services.

The NBA in the seventies and eighties had a history of plucking young unsophisticated and uneducated athletes out of the America's Ghettos and exploiting them for millions of dollars and depositing them back as uneducated and broke as they found them.

The facts are as follows: James an 18 year-old high school educated kid from a single household signed a series of contracts for a term of seven years. He made a little money off the contracts but Gilbert made hundreds of millions. His building was sold out every night. He made millions off of jerseys, cups, t-shirts and whatever else he could plaster James face on. James turned his also-ran franchise into one of the most valuable in sports. At the end of the contract which James fulfilled, James took his services to the market place and entered into a new business arrangement with a new partner. That sounds like capitalism to me.

Now Gilbert using slave master tones calls James a "coward and quitter". And Dowd calls James and his two teammates gangsters, as if they committed a sin by maximizing their on court and off court opportunities by choosing to play together.

I would much rather see James, Bosh and Wade rising through the smoke in Miami's arena as future billionaires, than the images so prevalent in the seventies and eighties of ex-players washing cars, in drug rehab or jail. As Curt Flood who sacrificed his career decades ago for James to do exactly what he did, said so eloquently " I ain't no slave"

Rev Al and Tavis

Rev Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley got into an heated exchange about President Barack Obama and Black America. I started to write about it but then someone sent me Paul Mooney comments on the President and no one can say it better.

Doing What I Do 1

A Voice For Henry

Give Me A Break!

I have refused to watch the political pundits try to convince
the American public that President Barack Obama has to retreat from
his campaign promises, because of the victory of a Republican bimbo who won the election in a New England State, that was never as liberal as its purported. Remember the violent retribution against busing in Boston in the seventies?

Then I saw Senate Leader Harry Reid, who is fighting for his political life, insinuate that Health Care was now on the back burner because of Tuesday's election.
It was the statement of a gutless leader of a gutless Democratic Senate.

So, let me get this right: Now that the Democrats are down to 59 seats in the Senate, suddenly Health Care Reform is doomed?

I admit that I am a country lawyer who does not understand a lot of
this complicated national politics, but if you can't push through your agenda
by controlling 59 votes, then you don't deserve the power that the voters gave you a year ago.

Mr. President, you have said that you did not come to Washington to do
little things. And, to your credit, you have taken on major issues. I cannot
believe that you did not know there were going to be losses along the
way. As an African-American who is keenly aware of, and is proud of your
history, you understand that struggle has never been easy.

So, don't follow Rahm Emmanuel's advice to move to the
center. Bill Clinton did and he had a successful presidency that
achieved a lot of little things.

America needs more from you.

In your upcoming State Of The Union Speech, take the opportunity to
remind America why you ran and why it is important we keep pushing to
do BIG things.

Mr. President, I can certainly understand your noble desire to reach across the aisle, but brother these folks have drug you into an alley fight.

Now, as a country lawyer, I completely understand alley fights. If someone steps on your toe, you cut him. If he cuts you, you shoot him. And if he shoots you, you send one of his in the morgue. Funny, I thought that was the "Chicago way," too.

So Did Harry Reid Lie?

So what did Harry Reid say that was wrong? Barack is a light skinned Negro, who "speaks well" in front of white folks and goes black in front of his people. The White folks – particularly liberals- are mad because Reid exposed the unflattering ways in which they discuss blacks among themselves. The Black folks are mad –particularly the "light skinned Negroes" because they offer their skin tone as a means to appease White folks. It is America’s race game that has been played for centuries.

And there is not a black professional in the country who does not understand that speaking the "King James" English in front of White folks is a necessary requirement to get ahead. No White ethnic group in America is forced to abandon the uniqueness of their particular dialect. New Englanders speak their vernacular with pride. White Southerners have become Presidents talking in their regions tongue.

But Black folks hate themselves so much that, even among themselves, they will denigrate a fellow Black for speaking in our ancestral language. Early in my career, I was continually called-out by fellow Blacks because I refused to abandon my thick Black North Louisiana dialect. After a speaking engagement, I was actually told by confused Negro that I had embarrassed him. Never mind that I graduated from Tulane Law School and had been a well-known writer for years.

I knew by the age of five that my light skin and sandy red hair meant that I was going to be treated better than my dark skinned brothers and sisters within my own family. Early in life, every African-American comes to view skin color as either an advantage or a detriment. I am embarrassed that at the birth of my daughter I felt a sense of relief that she too was light skinned because I viewed her light complexion as something that would make her life easier. That is the psychological damage that America has cursed us with.

Light skinned Blacks respond either one of two ways: They become angry and militant i.e. Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. They tend to marry dark skinned spouses, for example, Barack Obama, and they live their lives with a raging anger because their light hue is a constant reminder of the rape of our relatives who came before us.

Other light skinned blacks –the majority – accept the advantage and play to the White majority's security with them, i.e. Tiger Woods. They will even take on the characteristics of their Oppressors and discriminate against their fellow dark skin brothers and sisters – the paper bag test. Never mind that under pressure White America will put all of us down in the galley on the ship of Apartheid. Just ask Tiger.

But the most telling racial comments, if true, came from the first "Black" President Bill Clinton. Clinton supposedly said to Ted Kennedy, "just a few years earlier Barack would be serving us coffee." This last alleged statement, if true, shows Clinton is emerging as a serial racist. But the truth is, Clinton's behavior is typical of White male liberals.

They love to party with us, dance to our music and make love to our women. But when it comes to sharing power, they go Dixie on us.

I remember watching an interview with Carroll O'Connor on Charlie Rose's talk show several years ago. Rose asked him to explain Archie Bunkers' popularity in the black community. O'Connor said blacks often stopped him on the street, hugged and thanked him for telling the truth about how White America spoke about us in their living rooms.

Rose asked O Connor if he thought his character had made a difference in race relations. He said unfortunately he did not. Well, this week Harry Reid and Bill Clinton reminded us that Archie Bunker is still alive. Only he does not live on Houser Street in Queens, NY. He walks the halls of power in Washington.