(Akiit.com) E-mails touting the much-publicized CNN documentary Black In America have so completely ambushed my computer over the last few weeks that I was forced to upgrade my antivirus software. Black In America, hosted by award winning CNN anchor/ reporter Soledad O’Brien and scheduled for airing on July 23 and 24, purports to examine the complex issues, successes, struggles, pain, and pride that black men, women and their families experience- 40 years after the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

One e-mailer wrote, “I had the privilege of meeting with Soledad O’Brien and actually seeing this premier and what I saw brought tears to my eyes and anguish, frustration, and a sense of helplessness to my soul. I beg and plead with you to please watch this with your children, especially your sons.”

This, plus the persuasive pleas contained in the many other emails, ignited an overwhelming sense of black euphoria in me and a sacred obligation to support CNN (and its advertisers). That feeling was so strong that I immediately preprogrammed my TIVO for the scheduled dates.

One quote in the CNN promo material attributed to O’Brien caught my eye: “As we developed this series, it was critical to go beyond what viewers believe and already know to introduce them to the real people behind the headlines that we report every day on our assignments.” Very impressive.

One wonders, though, why this production has been selected for airing at this critical time in the presidential campaign. It has been in the making for months before the Obama candidacy was announced. Will the host of issues that confront Black America be less relevant or urgent on Nov. 5 than they are on July 23 and 24? I think not.

I began to ask myself is there anything substantially new to be learned about being black in America that hasn’t already been sliced, diced and dissected over the years by think tanks, civil rights organizations, activist groups, news organizations, historians and PBS? As I began to review that question for myself the elation of what Black In America could bring to my knowledge base at this precise moment in time began to diminish. In fact, a few negative connotations associated with the timing of the documentary began to appear.
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(Akiit.com) WASHINGTON (AP) — Sixty years after President Truman desegregated the military, senior black officers are still rare, particularly among the highest ranks.

Blacks make up about 17 percent of the total force, yet just 9 percent of all officers. That fraction falls to less than 6 percent for general officers with one to four stars, according to data obtained and analyzed by The Associated Press.

The rarity of blacks in the top ranks is apparent in one startling statistic: Only one of the 38 four-star generals or admirals serving as of May was black. And just 10 black men have ever gained four-star rank — five in the Army, four in the Air Force and one in the Navy, according to the Pentagon.

The dearth of blacks in high-ranking positions gives younger African-American soldiers few mentors of their own race. And as the overall percentage of blacks in the service falls, particularly in combat careers that lead to top posts, the situation seems unlikely to change.

Still, officials this week can point to some historic gains by blacks in the services as the Pentagon commemorates Truman’s signing of an executive order on July 26, 1948, mandating the end of segregation in the military.

Best known among the four-stars is retired Gen. Colin Powell, who later became the country’s first black secretary of state, under President Bush. Another is retired Gen. Johnnie E. Wilson, who in 1961, at age 17, spied an “Uncle Sam Wants You” poster and joined the Army.

The second of 12 children, Wilson grew up in a housing project outside Cleveland. Enlisting in the Army, he said, was the only way he’d get a college education.

As a young recruit, he found that the older, black noncommissioned officers were eager to guide him, and they urged him to try for Officer Candidate School. Over the next 38 years, he rose through the ranks to become a four-star general.

Why haven’t more done the same?

For one thing, Wilson said, “it’s hard to tell young people the sky’s the limit when they look up and don’t see anyone” who looks like them.

According to Pentagon data, as of May:

_ 5.6 percent of the 923 general officers or admirals were black.

_ Eight blacks were three-star lieutenant generals or vice admirals.

_ Seventeen were two-star major generals or rear admirals.

_ Twenty-six were one-star brigadier generals or rear admirals.

_ Three of the black one-stars were women.

The Army has led the way with black officers, with nearly double the percentage at times over the past three decades as the other services. Blacks represented 11 percent to 12 percent of all Army officers during that time, compared with 4 percent to 8 percent in the Navy, Air Force and Marines.

The reasons for the lack of blacks in the higher ranks are many and complex, ranging from simple career choices to Congress and family recommendations. Most often mentioned is that black recruits are showing less interest in pursuing combat jobs, which are more likely to propel them through the officer ranks.
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(Akiit.com) In America, propaganda and media mythology allow people to believe things that make absolutely no sense. If one person says something, the media delivers it and enough people repeat it, the thing being said starts to sound good to stupid people hearing it or saying it.

In fact, some stupid people embrace the propaganda and get overly emotional and righteously indignant about things that they believe, but do not understand. These are people without a real perspective of their own, save what they think they see in their daily lives.

Sadly, many Americans are just stupid people. So stupid that they believe in things and do things that defy logic and reason.

In another Top Ten list, here are my Top Ten Groups of Stupid People.

1. Americans who hate people from the Middle East, instead of Bush, his friends and other Americans who support making war on oil-rich nations.

Bashing people who are of Middle Eastern descent, including hatred and actual violence will not bring the troops home and will not bring an end to a war that should have never occurred.

Honestly, many of the people who are being bombed and shot at are average citizens of sovereign nations and some of the attacks on American troops are no different than if another nation occupied America with military presence. They didn’t ask Bush to come and bring troops and the time for pulling out has long past. Let’s put the blame where it belongs—on the goofy administration concerned more with foreign affairs than domestic affairs. If you know of any reason for the troops being there other than oil, please state your case, because Bush doesn’t even bring bin Laden’s name up anymore.

2. Women who are still angry over Hillary Clinton losing the primary election.

Hillary lost the primary election because too many people recognized that she is a disingenuous, mercenary racist who would have done anything to win. It’s time to let go of a dream that was really a nightmare and embrace a dream that is tangible and possible.

3. Blacks who think Barack Obama is above being tainted by politics.

Certainly, Senator Obama has shown himself to be a man of more integrity than the average politician, but since we know that politics is a dirty game, we should not be surprised if he makes friends with some questionable people along the way to the White House. For example, Hillary Clinton just may be his VP running mate…

4. Americans who think that there is something good to come from having US Military presence in the Middle East.

Let’s be honest—most Americans have no idea of the real reason why American troops are stationed in the Middle East, so let’s stop pretending that there is some noble cause involved. There are too many unresolved issues in this nation to be spending billions overseas. Damn, can our children get smaller classrooms, updated textbooks, better teachers (which will come at a higher cost), Physical Education or Band back in the schools?

5. People driving SUVs, even though they have no kids or even spouses, nothing to haul and no friends to ride.

Gas is as high as giraffe booty, yet we still see too many people mashing down the freeway in a mini-tank disguised as a consumer vehicle. And some of these people have the nerve to complain about the cost of gas.
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(Akiit.com) There’s a new joy and excitement among many of the patrons of the Spiral Collective, a collection of businesses owned by black women in Detroit.

Their happiness centers on Michelle Obama, a woman they say puts a refreshing face on America’s image of African-American women.

“People who come in here are absolutely in love with Michelle Obama,” says Janet Webster Jones, who owns the Source Booksellers, one of the four businesses in one building at the corner of Cass and Willis in Midtown. The others are an art gallery, a natural hair care salon and an eclectic boutique.

“The ladies who come in here say they love how they love each other,” Jones, 71, says, referring to the affection between Michelle Obama and her husband, Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president of the United States.

That excitement was evident in the crowd of women who lined up to see Michelle Obama in downtown Pontiac earlier this month, some of whom arrived three hours before the doors of the Crofoot ballroom opened to them.

Jones and others say that Michelle Obama knocks down old stereotypes of black women: Sapphire, the angry black woman; Mammy, the caretaker and nurturer of her own children and everybody else’s, and Jezebel, the loose woman.

Jones’ daughter, Alyson Jones, 34, says the modern-day jezebels are booty-shaking hoochie mamas popularized in hip-hop videos.

“So Michelle comes along and she completely dispels all that,” Janet Jones says. “She represents someone who came from humble beginnings to achieve a high level of education. She has a strong self-identity as a female.

“You know she likes to wear dresses and high heels and she’s almost 6 feet tall. And she’s a loving wife and a great mother.”

“She normalizes black women,” says Alyson Jones, an elementary teacher at Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse, a charter school in Detroit. “She’s not the bitter black woman pundits have tried to make her out be.”

Negative images still hurt

The current New Yorker magazine cover shows a caricature of that angry, militant, black woman, featuring Michelle Obama with a huge afro, wearing military fatigues and brandishing an assault rifle. Barack Obama is dressed in traditional Muslim attire.

Magazine editors say the cover is satire typical of the magazine, meant solely to dramatize the politics of fear.

But Gail E. Wyatt, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, says it fuels fears. “The image is reminiscent of the look and posture of Angela Davis and the Black Panther era,” says Wyatt, who authored the book, “Stolen Women” (Wiley, John & Sons, $14.95).

“This is to incite images of the black woman as a militant, comrade and at war,” Wyatt says. The goal is to frighten people and to make this couple different and alien from mainstream America.”

“This whole thing about Michelle Obama being a mad black woman is utterly ridiculous,” says Mandisa Smith, 54, a jewelry designer and fine arts appraiser.

“But as far as I’m concerned, black women have a right to be mad,” Smith says. Black women, she says, are often paid less than any other demographic group, regardless of credentials. Black women typically have the worst health statistics.

Research bears out those concerns.

African-American women earn 15% less than white women and 10% less than African-American men, according to Faye Wattleton, president of the Center for the Advancement of Women. In a recent column on the organization’s Web site she noted that AIDS is the leading cause of death among black women between the ages of 25 and 44, yet one in five African-American women doesn’t have medical insurance.

Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control provide other examples of disparities. Black women on average die five years sooner than white women; black women have higher rates of diabetes and high blood pressure than white women, and while less likely than white women to get breast and cervical cancer, they are more likely to die from them.

Karen Fort Hood, Michigan Court of Appeals judge, calls Michelle Obama a role model for all women, not just African-American women.

“She’s brilliant, she’s beautiful, she’s classy and she’s a warm caring individual,” Fort Hood, 54, says. “Not only is it great for black women to see a sister who could be the First Lady, it’s good for all women because she has the qualities we can all admire.”
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(Akiit.com) There she is — no, not Miss America, but the Angela-Davis-Afro-wearing, machine-gun-toting, angry, unpatriotic Michelle Obama, greeting her husband with a fist bump instead of a kiss on the cheek.

It was supposed to be satire, but the caricature of Barack Obama and his wife that appeared on the cover of the New Yorker last week rightly caused a major flap. And among black professional women like me and many of my sisters in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, who happened to be gathered last week in Washington for our 100th anniversary celebration, the mischaracterization of Michelle hit the rawest of nerves.

Welcome to our world.

We’ve watched with a mixture of pride and trepidation as the wife of the first serious African American presidential contender has weathered recent campaign travails — being called unpatriotic for a single offhand remark, dubbed a black radical because of something she wrote more than 20 years ago and plastered with the crowning stereotype: “angry black woman.” And then being forced to undergo a politically mandated “makeover” to soften her image and make her more palatable to mainstream America.

Sad to say, but what Obama has undergone, though it’s on a national stage and on a much more prominent scale, is nothing new to professional African American women. We endure this type of labeling all the time. We’re endlessly familiar with the problem Michelle Obama is confronting — being looked at, as black women, through a different lens from our white counterparts, who are portrayed as kinder, gentler souls who somehow deserve to be loved and valued more than we do. So many of us are hoping that Michelle — as an elegant and elusive combination of successful career woman, supportive wife and loving mother — can change that.

“Ain’t I a woman?” Sojourner Truth famously asked 157 years ago. Her ringing question, demanding why black women weren’t accorded the same privileges as their white counterparts, still sums up the African American woman’s dilemma today: How are we viewed as women, and where do we fit into American life?

“Thanks to the hip-hop industry,” one prominent black female journalist recently said to me, all black women are “deemed ’sexually promiscuous video vixens’ not worthy of consideration. If other black women speak up, we’re considered angry black women who complain. This society can’t even see a woman like Michelle Obama. All it sees is a black woman and attaches stereotypes.”

Black women have been mischaracterized and stereotyped since the days of slavery and minstrel shows. In more recent times, they’ve been portrayed onscreen and in popular culture as either sexually available bed wenches in such shows as the 2000 docudrama “Sally Hemings: An American Scandal,” ignorant and foolish servants such as Prissy from “Gone With the Wind” or ever-smiling housekeepers, workhorses who never complain and never tire, like the popular figure of Aunt Jemima.

Even in the 21st century, black women are still bombarded with media and Internet images that portray us as loud, aggressive, violent and often grossly obese and unattractive. Think of the movies “Norbit” or “Big Momma’s House,” or of the only two black female characters in “Enchanted,” an overweight, aggressive traffic cop and an angry divorcée amid all the white princesses.

On the other hand, when was the last time you saw a smart, accomplished black professional woman portrayed on mainstream television or in the movies? If Claire Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” comes to mind, remember that she left the scene 16 years ago.

The reality is that in just a generation, many black women — who were mostly domestics, schoolteachers or nurses in the post-slavery Jim Crow era — have become astronauts, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, engineers and PhDs. You name it, and black women have achieved it. The most popular woman on daytime television is Oprah Winfrey. Condoleezza Rice is secretary of state.
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