(Akiit.com) Did you see the look on Barack’s face at the press conference when Biden started joking about that judge messing up the oath?” My friend on the phone sounded downright euphoric in his amusement. “Brotherman wasn’t smilin.’ He kinda patted Joe on his back as if saying, ‘Joe, CHILL, man, we not playin’ it like that.’ I mean, the man [Obama] is just so badd [sic] it’s ridiculous.”

Yet another Obama conversation. The calls and emails come to me from family, friends, acquaintances, all wanting to talk about our new President. Every day. The excitement that cautiously began more than a year ago, ramped up six months ago and climaxed on Inauguration Day has morphed into giddy, unbridled exhilaration, as the world settles in to watch the Barack Obama show.

Black America is over the moon. That’s because, apart from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., our mightiest sense of collective, cultural pride has been generated by the achievements of names like Sammy Davis, Jr., Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Muhammad Ali, Aretha Franklin, Motown, Bill Cosby, Oprah, Tiger Woods–iconic entertainers and athletes whose remarkable legacies transcend the grip of America’s racism and prejudice.

Despite the quiet progress of blacks in academic and business sectors, O.J. Simpson’s 1995 acquittal and Denzel Washington and Halle Berry both winning Oscars in one night at the 2001 Academy Awards (he being only the second black man to win the Best Actor award after Sidney Poitier and she being the first black woman to win Best Actress) were the kinds of events blacks had to cling to as proof things were changing in America.

Until November 4, 2008.

In The Community, the word president in front of the moniker Barack Obama represents the ultimate checkmate. Prior to Obama, not even a younger generation of blacks, supposedly not bound by the scars of Jim Crow and freedom marches, dared to have such a dream.

And so all of us, young, old and in between now revel in the mother of all reality shows: the daily adventures of America’s first black President.
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(Akiit.com) It seems that everywhere I go, someone is talking about Notorious, the new movie about the life of the Notorious B.I.G, aka Biggie Smalls.

I hear the excitement, but I can’t feel it.

I guess for some, they loved the music and the man, so therefore, they want to support the film as a tribute.

But for others, I think a little pandering to violence is in the mix.

For them, they are more enamored with the story of a violent death of an artist who rhymed about a violent lifestyle.

What is it about the rap music game that seems to marry it to violence? And what is it about the death of young Black men that gets America so aroused, yet unconcerned?

In this nation, the death of young Black men is not seen as horrific or even unusual. It is seen as a regular occurrence and too many people are becoming numb to it.

Tupac Shakur was shot and killed in 1996. Christopher Wallace aka “Biggie Smalls” was shot and killed in 1997.

We all know that.

What we don’t all know is who committed either murder, or why.

If Elvis had not eaten and drank himself to death, but had been murdered instead, would his death still be a mystery?

I think not.

Then why are the deaths of two of rap music’s brightest stars mysteries?

Call me a conspiracy theorist, call me a race-based reactionary, but I believe that in this nation, Black lives are viewed as less valuable than white lives.

There is a bigger picture here. Young Black men are in crisis and their lives are valued at something less than the price of a CD.

How did we get to this point? We can blame racism, we can blame classism, and certainly, we can point a finger at institutionalized preferential treatment of whites over Blacks. However, the real ugly raw answer is that Blacks must also share the blame.

An entire generation has been abandoned by the middle and upper class Blacks who benefited from Affirmative Action, set-asides, corporate window dressing and educational benefits won in the sixties as a result of marches, sit-ins, etc., or from simply being Black in a time when that would get you so much community support that you could sell almost anything and get votes for almost any office.

Blacks ascended corporate ladders and made millions of dollars as professional athletes, musicians, singers, etc., and almost immediately “loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly…Hills that is.”

Yes, Blacks abandoned the community by the droves. White flight from urban areas nearly became a joke as Black families began “moving on up” like the Jeffersons and made every human effort to get away…from low-income Blacks.

Communities disintegrated as urban communities emptied of role models for success. Factory jobs became a thing of the past as factories largely moved to foreign countries where labor could be had for cheaper. Even Black mom and pop businesses left the hood as immigrants moved in, employing their own. Low-income Blacks who were left behind had to struggle to make it on fewer job opportunities and dwindling government assistance, and while some made it up and out, some continued to spiral downward.

As the economy worsened, Blacks once again became the Boogeymen, serving as scapegoats for all of the country’s ills. The following fallacies became fodder for political campaigns: “Whites would fare better in the working world if not for Affirmative Action.” “They would have more educational opportunities as well.” “Welfare would not be such a burden on the nation if not for those Welfare dependent Blacks.”

The real-life solution to the fallacious problems? An attack on government assistance in every way possible and a move away from goals of parity in the workplace.

The result: dwindling job opportunities and dwindling government assistance.

Some hood denizens ran on the newest fast track for success–the drug game. The drug game brought its own evils that were even more insidious than racism. It demanded a devaluation of human life and territorial violence.

It also became fodder for the tales from the hood over beats popularized among young whites in the late eighties. Platinum status was regularly reached in Rap music when white youth began to embrace the “ghetto lifestyle” that has become a staple in the music. The stories of the ghetto lifestyle were plentiful, because by the 1980’s, the times they were a’ changin’.

Two generations ago, parents slaved at two blue collar jobs or went to night school to improve their earning ability and saved, saved saved…for their children.

The subsequent generation enjoyed better opportunities and increased earning power, and saved, saved, saved…for bigger cars and houses for themselves.

Today’s youth have virtually been tossed in an ocean of sharks with bloody meat drawers and no life preservers. The only hope most of them see outside of the drug game is in professional athletics, or music.

In the music, they bring the raw, ugly reality to rhyme. We may not like it, but these stories are largely based on reality. The problem is drawing the line. But who can make that decision?

The failure of successful Blacks to reach back in society has merged with the void of training and development by successful Blacks in the music industry to create the situation in which Tupac and Biggie could rise and metamorphose from shooting stars to stars who were shot.
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(Akiit.com) As a new year’s resolution, many people decide to lose weight. Many of them get off to a great start, but usually find that they end up becoming their own biggest obstacle. This is because they struggle with the tendency to overeat. It is estimated that 75% of “emotional eating” leads to overeating. Emotional eaters eat to fight negative feelings like stress, boredom, loneliness, anxiety, and/or sadness. How does one determine if they are emotional eaters?

Here are 9 sure signs you are:

SIGN #1 - If many times you eat without realizing you are even putting food into your mouth.

SIGN #2 - If you feel stressed about an important project or issue, you dig into a pint of your favorite ice cream instead of perhaps a hot relaxing bath.

SIGN #3 - If you have negative feelings like anger, guilt, stress or shame after eating.

SIGN #4 - If after eating a “healthy meal” you feel like you deserve dessert.
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(Akiit.com) The day of an African American President of the United States is no longer coming. That day is here.

Witnessing Barack Obama take the oath of office, in the freezing cold with a million other people, is surely one of the seven highlights of my life (along with the witnessing the birth of my four children, my second marriage and being present at the Million Man March in 1995).

The chests and breasts of black people were bursting out with all “Americans” who shared in this celebration. I was close enough to witness the look on his face but far enough away to feel stymied in the pomp and circumstance of a transition of power process foreign to everyday people, particularly black people.

To be honest, this was the first Inauguration Day most first time attendees, black-white-brown-red-yellow, people that have been rarely included, ever wanted to attend. Washington’s “power elite,” namely corporate America and its lobbyists, has to find another way to play - at least for one day as the American people reclaimed its country and common man (woman) played centered stage.

On January 20th, race took a backstage in a way that it rarely does. But for the fact that Barack is black, a fact that in all its history making glory was impossible to ignore, people of all ideologies came together to celebrate this day. I even took pictures with some “Rednecks For Obama,” something I would’ve swore, just a year ago, I would have never done. But if rednecks can put aside race and suppress a twisted ideology for the common good of the nation, so can I.

That was the power of Barack Hussein Obama taking the oath of office. It was a great day for America, and an even greater day for the people whose legacy is tied to those who once labored in this nation as slaves. They certainly celebrated this day as they gave more than any of us could ever suggest, their blood, sweat, tears, their lives and their deaths—and their freedom.
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(Akiit.com) Amid crisp breezes and bright sunshine, Barack Obama took the presidential oath last Tuesday, to the thunderous applause of his supporters, the cautious hopes of the loyal opposition and the well wishes of all Americans.

Three days earlier, four men were stabbed, one critically, at a Brooklyn party celebrating “Notorious,” the new movie about rapper Notorious B.I.G. He released the album “Ready to Die” before being killed in Los Angeles in 1997. Rapper Jamal “Gravy” Woolard - who portrays B.I.G. - was charged with misdemeanor assault and harassment against his wife last September, the New York Post reports. “She wouldn’t stop pushing me, so I snuffed her,” he allegedly said.

Question: Will Obama’s erudition and elegance finally eclipse the corrosive, often deadly scourge of hip-hop culture and the ghetto mentality that gnaw away like termites beneath black America’s floorboards?

Until at least 2013, the whole world will watch a debonair black man whose studiousness and diligence transported him from a broken home to the world’s most famous house. He will share it with Michelle Obama, his wife of 16 years. Just like her husband, the first lady avoided the 50-percent black high-school dropout rate, graduated from an Ivy League university and earned a Harvard law degree. The Obamas’ two daughters know their father and enjoy him in their daily lives.

The Obamas are not alone among black Americans. Alas, rappers who too often celebrate violence, degrade women and perpetrate offstage carnage overshadow such decent citizens.

Too many black men serially impregnate women who are not their wives, spawning a 67.8 percent black out-of-wedlock birth rate.
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