Cure every cell - a sickle cell support group

(Akiit.com) There’s quite a lot of stigma toward the whole subject of sickle cell anemia. People can feel guilty because they carry a gene and they choose not to talk about it. So they need to talk about it to start breaking down the barriers and the stigma. People are a bit sensitive about screening but you now can be enrolled on a program and start to care for your baby with sickle cell anemia. Sickle cell anemia can no longer be overlooked upon as a largely black disorder. There has been the crossing of racial boundaries with sickle cell.

Sickle cell anemia has not been highlighted because it is a black disorder so it has not received any spotlight with interracial mixing. We are starting to see white babies born with sickle cell anemia. Although times have changed people still have a stigma about sickle cell anemia they think it is a “curse of the devil”. Many physicians and scientists both black and white have complained that restrictions against blacks with the sickle cell trait was a senseless stigma and unscientific suggestion that their genes were somehow inferior in addition of its use in barring blacks.
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(Akiit.com) Combating negative images is just a part of the undeclared war within the black community, fought on multiple fronts.

We are up against:

“House Negro” fence-sitters. In the antebellum period in the South, such people always saw things through the eyes of their master or boss. No matter how bad things are, these people always follow whomever is in charge. An example is the way Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice follows President Bush.

“Old heads” - decent, well-meaning people, usually shaped by the civil rights era of the ’60s and ’70s. They are locked in the past, still thinking the black community’s problems can be solved by a government program. They still think that marching and making white people feel bad will cause whites to do the right things.

Old heads also have a problem with free enterprise. They love money from the business sector but are averse to starting and promoting black business ventures. Old heads cannot understand that the path to freedom is truly lighted by money and capital.

I know many old heads whom I truly call friends. But their thinking is obsolete and has hindered the advancement of our community.

Those best known by the dreaded n-word - the most dangerous enemy.

I have never used this derogatory term, but there are many who fit into this group, such as sexist hip-hop performers and negative rap artists, as well as thugs and gangsters.

The famous comedian Chris Rock has said, “I love black people, but I hate n–.” These are my sentiments exactly. I love black people but am tired of being connected to n–, who refuse to respect the proud legacy of our ancestry.

Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Louis Farrakhan and the late C. DeLores Tucker among the many progressive leaders who have sounded the alarm about our unwillingness to confront the negative ones amongst us - and our need to do so.

We need to cut off the dead weight of n-word attitudes, beliefs and practices. It is past time to air our dirty laundry. The fence-sitters and old heads must join with bold new leaders who are willing to confront our own people about their self-imposed underachievement.

Recently there was a community meeting to address yet another dismal showing of black student achievement in Anne Arundel County. It was held by the entrenched old-head leadership, with the school superintendent, Kevin M. Maxwell, in attendance.

The old heads were concerned only about what they felt the school system was not doing. I spoke forcefully, saying that while we in the black community have been condemning the school system since integration, the same problems persist: low test scores, high dropout rates, and high numbers of suspensions and expulsions.
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SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (Akiit.com) — The Queen of Soul is looking for a few good subjects.

Auditions for singing and non-singing parts in a musical production based on music legend Aretha Franklin’s autobiography have been scheduled for May 1-3 in suburban Detroit.

The musical based on the 1999 best-seller “Aretha: From These Roots” is tentatively set to premiere in Franklin’s hometown of Detroit in March 2008.

The 65-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and winner of 17 Grammy awards will help choose the performers who will portray her at various ages, relatives, close friends, background singers and musical colleagues including Sam Cooke, Dinah Washington, Smokey Robinson and pianist Art Tatum.
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Board’s resolution includes those who built school’s first buildings

(Akiit.com) The University of Virginia’s governing board has adopted a resolution expressing regret for the school’s use of slaves, including those “anonymous laborers” who constructed its first buildings.

The resolution, unanimously passed by U.Va.’s board of visitors on April 13 — the 264th birthday of school founder Thomas Jefferson — expresses the school’s “particular regret” for its use of slaves from 1819 until 1865. The university opened in 1825.

School officials believe their board is the first to pass such a resolution.

“The board expresses its particular regret for the employment of enslaved persons in these years and . . . expresses as well its profound respect for the contributions of these women and men, by whose ingenuity and labor much of what is now admired at the university as a national and world treasure came to be,” the resolution reads in part.

The board was inspired by the Virginia General Assembly, which in February passed a resolution of profound regret for the state’s role in slavery, said Thomas Farrell, rector of U.Va’s board of visitors.

It also was following up on U.Va’s erection of a memorial stone at the Rotunda that recognized the role slaves played in constructing the signature building and the Lawn, he said.

The resolution also declares that the board is rec- ommitting itself to the “principles of equal opportunity and to the principle that human freedom and learning” are inextricably linked in Virginia and the United States.
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Housing advocates report finds discrimination in properties for rental

(Akiit.com) NEW ORLEANS - Blacks already feeling the pinch from a housing shortage in the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina are facing racial discrimination in their search for rental property, a survey by housing advocates found.

The survey sent black and white “testers” — paired by matching incomes, careers, family types and rental histories — to inquire about openings at 40 rental properties in metropolitan New Orleans.

The findings, released Tuesday by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, found blacks encountered “less favorable treatment” than their white counterparts in 57.5 percent of those tests.
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