(Akiit.com) George Cook owner of the web site Let’s Talk Honestly at www.letstalkhonestly.com is proud to announce the launch of the Reverend Jessy Sharpten Show Starring, written, & directed by George L. Cook III . A web tv show about a racist, sexist, and homophobic black minister as he talks about the touchy issues of race, politics, & sexuality in America.

Mr. Cook created the show to look at racial issues in America after watching several cable news show and coming to the conclusion that many of the talking heads on television had little to no idea about how many black people actually thought or how they lived. Mr. Cook took what he heard and began writing what would become the Reverend Jessy Sharpten Show.
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(Akiit.com) Virginia, Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina and other states are making serial apologies these days, expressing remorse for past participation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. As I have said before, while these actions are a good first step, they do not go far enough. The doctrine of White supremacy did not end with slavery.

Federal- and state-sanctioned racism continued in the form of Jim Crow Laws and flawed public policies until the mid-1960s. Therefore, any credible apology must, as the Alabama measure did, extend to the “aftereffects” of slavery and acknowledge that “the vestiges of slavery are ever before African-American citizens.”

Virtually everyone agrees that education provides the best escape from poverty. Inasmuch as Whites strongly oppose reparations - at least, for African-Americans - other corrective actions must be taken into consideration.

Surprisingly, an approach used to include Native Americans in higher education might provide a model.

The University of Maine and other state universities provide Native Americans with free tuition, mandatory fees and room and board. In order to qualify for the scholarship, applicants’ names must appear on the current tribal census of the Passamaquoddy Nation, the Penobscot Nation, the Houlton Band of Maliseet or the Aroostook Brand of Micmac. If direct descendants of one of those groups live in Maine for a year, they, too, are eligible for the tuition waiver.
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Sons should be respectful, but able to make sound decisions

Being a “mama’s boy” is not a good thing. We don’t really want our sons growing up to be mama’s boys. But after sitting through a loud hip-hop performance by a 15-year-old at Rainbow/PUSH’s women’s luncheon Monday, and then hearing from the relatives of two young people who are at the center of recent violent tragedies, I think the message bears repeating.

As mothers, we want our sons to love and respect us, but we also want them to be capable of making good decisions. And when they don’t make good decisions, we want them to accept the consequences so that they can learn from their mistakes.

Frankly, I was taken aback that anyone would think it was appropriate to have a rapper provide the entertainment at an occasion billed: “Women: Standards of Dignity, Decency and Equality.” As far as I could determine, the young artist didn’t utter any of the raunchy lyrics that have come under attack since Don Imus’ on-air meltdown after he insulted the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.

Still, given the topic, I couldn’t appreciate being entertained by a young man screaming: “I’m a mama’s boy. I kick it like that.”

When you deconstruct the excuses families make when their children get caught up in criminal activity, it’s clear to me that in too many cases, partly because of the absence of fathers in the home, we are dealing with a lot of out-of-control mama’s boys.
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(Akiit.com) Are you truly living the life you want to live? Are you as healthy and vibrant as you would like to be? Do you wake up every morning refreshed, energized and ready for whatever may come your way? Too many of us today are not able to answer yes to even one of those questions because of the condition of our health. We say we want change and we say we want to feel better, be better, do better but rarely does it result in the latter.

What happens in those cases is that we allow procrastination to creep in and take us further and further away from our goals. We may reason that, my life is so full already that I just cannot find the time to try to live healthier by adding anything new in the mix. We say to ourselves, Maybe when things settle down. I will go to the doctor’s - next month, or when my income tax refund comes, I will start that new healthy eating plan because that’s when I can afford to make that money sacrifice. We prioritize paying our bills such as house note, car note, life insurance, and car insurance in order to be provided with a level of security. What about paying for our own “health assurance”?
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(Akiit.com) I am a rising junior at Spelman College. I am writing to encourage and solicit participation in what is becoming a national campaign to combat the negative, one-dimensional, stereotypical and misogynistic manner in which Black Entertainment Television portrays black men and women.

Let me first explain how and why this campaign was started. A professor at Spelman, Tarshia Stanley, is truly the reason and the foundation. My experiences with Dr. Stanley literally changed my life because her class, “Images of Women in the Media,” showed me a very progressive and critical way of interpreting and analyzing the media and several other agents of socialization.

Dr. Stanley birthed an interest in me regarding images of women in the media, particularly problematic images, during my first semester at Spelman. In seven minutes, a film demonstrated more than I could have learned in years — it featured various clips from cable television (but mostly from BET) of black women and men in very compromising and even disgusting ways.
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