Erykah Badu: The Healer

Remarks:

Not sure what this song is about, but I still love it.

Lyrics:

Humdi Lila Allah Jehova Yahweh Deos Ma’ad
Jah Rastafara Fire Dance Sex Music, Hip-Hop
it’s bigger than religion Hip-Hop
it’s bigger than my nigga Hip-Hop
it’s bigger than the government
This one is for Dilla, Hip-Hop

We ain’t dead said the children
don’t believe it we just made ourselves invisible
Underwater stovetop, blue flame, scientists come out with your scales up
get baptized in the ocean of the Hungry
My niggas turn in to gods
walls come tumbling…..

Humdi Lila Allah Jehova Yahweh Deos Ma’ad
Jah Rastafara Fire Dance Sex Music, Hip-Hop
it’s bigger than religion Hip-Hop
it’s bigger than my nigga Hip-Hop
it’s bigger than the government
This one is The Healer, Hip-Hop

told you we aint dead yet
we’ve been living through your internet
you don’t have to believe everything
you think we’ve been programmed, wake up
we miss you.
they call you Indigo, we call you Africa.
go get baptized in the ocean
say re-boot, re-flush, re-start
fresh page, new day, OG, New Key

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Solange: I Decided

Remarks:

This is easily my favourite video of this song. I am in love with the shorter backing singer.

Lyrics:

ohhhh
spoken:I cant hear myself
ooo
spoken:can you please turn me up a little bit more

I was a little different
I didn’t do what the fast girls do
study my rhythm
you can speed me up when you want to, oooh

They were to cool to run my race
You kept the pace with a smile on ya face
Go head baby(go head baby)
Then I knew he was you(then i knew he was you)

But first you took me around
Introduced me to your family and friends
And told them how that once we met that
We would never lose
Oh boy

I decided that you are the him for me
Oh boy
Because…..
I decided that you are the him for me
Oh my boy

How’s it feel to win it
Where ain’t no mountains that you can’t move
Your mind is like a prism
For god’s light to shine through

They were to cool to run my race (Yeah)
You kept the pace with a smile on ya face
Go head baby (go head baby)
Then I knew it was true (Then I knew it was you)

But first you took me around
Introduced me to your family and friends
And told them how that once we met that
We would never lose (never lose never lose)
Oh boy

I decided that you are the him for me
Oh boy
Because…….
I decided (I decided) that you are the him for me (u are the one for me baby)
Oh my boy (OHH Boy)

You were running me running me down (down)
Telling me telling me wait (wait)
Running me down and telling me you were never gonna let go
Is the way you got me (ohh thats the way u got me when u got me baby ohh now u got me baby)

You were running me running me down (running)
Telling me telling me wait (tellin me tellin me wait)
Running me down and telling you were never gonna let go
Is the way you got me

Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, Dont break my heart
Whoa..Let me take it from you (let me take it from you)
Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby (baby)
Cause were one and the closer I get
To you the more fearful I become
Whoa….That would break me in two Honey (that would break me in two honey)

Because…..
I decided that you are the him for me
Oh my boy

(Yes)You were running me running me down (running me running me down)
Telling me telling me wait
Running me down and telling you were never gonna let go yeah yeah that’s the way u you got me baby
that’ the way you got me baby

You were running me running me down
Telling me telling me wait
Running me down and telling you were never gonna let go
Is the way you got me

See also:

• Solange Knowles
• Solange: F*ck The Industry
• Solange: Sandcastle Disco

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Seeing Turkey

Note: I got these pictures off the Internet, but they are very much like what I saw.

I saw Turkey in October 2008 as part of a Mediterranean cruise that also went to Italy and Greece. Our ship went up the western coast of Turkey and stopped for a day each at three cities: Marmaris in the south, Izmir (Smyrna) in the middle and Istanbul (Constantinople)  in the north. From Izmir I took a bus to Ephesus.

Turkey is way richer and more orderly than I expected. From the looks of it, it was richer than Greece or Naples but not as rich as Rome. In America you get this idea of Muslim countries as being poor and disorderly.

Another thing that surprised me is that the Turkish men looked just like I imagined: thick black hair on top, thick black eyebrows, a long nose and a thick black moustache (pictured). Kind of like George Orwell. Not all of them, of course, but way more than I expected.

Marmaris looks like a Greek city: streets of white houses with red roofs down by the edge of the sea, down by the ships, mountains in the background, some of them green or blue, some of them bare and grey. Inland it reminded me of southern California with its mountains and lines of planted fruit trees. But then you would see a silver mosque or a red Turkish flag and know you were somewhere else.

Like in Greece, dogs run free and you hear the sound of scooters in the distance. But unlike Greece – or southern California – the men still hold hands with their women when they walk down the street. Nearly everyone dressed in a Western style. They had BP, Nokia, McDonald’s and iPhones.

Even down in Marmaris, Istanbul is seen as the Big City.

Izmir is about the size of Philadelphia or Melbourne, the biggest city after Istanbul  and Ankara, the capital. It is a port with ships and factories and highways and apartment buildings (pictured). It seems much richer than Naples. The infrastruture looks American.

I did not spend long there since I wanted to see Ephesus, the biggest city in these parts back in Roman times, back before the rise of Constantinople. It lies in a shallow grave an hour to the south by bus. I saw it and, on the top of a hill, the Virgin Mary’s house (pictured), but I will not go into that here since it requires a separate post.

Istanbul seems as big and modern as New York. You would think you were in Europe if it were not for the huge mosques and the loud call to prayer. I wanted to see the Hagia Sophia, the large, beautiful church from Byzantine times, but we missed the tour bus, so we went to the Grand Bazaar (pictured) instead – thousands of little shops under one roof. No set prices: the shopkeeper names a price that is five times too much and you must talk him down to something reasonable. My wife loved it.

– Abagond, 2009, 2016.

See also:

• Turkey
  • Ephesus
• A Guide to Turks
• Muslim
• Virgin Mary
• Byzantine empire
• cruise
• George Orwell
• Seeing Texas

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Gratuitous Obama picture #7

This picture shows Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett at Manny’s Coffee House in Chicago in November 2008, a week or so after his victory. Jarrett is one of his most trusted advisers and friends, someone who helped him to get his start in Chicago politics and who always tells it to him straight. Michelle Obama says she is like a  big sister.

I do not know what it is about this picture that gets to me. It has to do with the utter ordinariness of it – ordering lunch. It also has to do with Jarrett somehow. She made me feel like I was in the picture, if that at all makes any kind of sense.

See also:

• Gratuitous Obama Picture #6
• Gratuitous Obama picture #5
• Gratuitous Obama picture #4
• Gratuitous Obama picture #3
  
• Gratuitous Obama picture #2
• Gratuitous Obama picture #1

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The Secret Life of Bees

“The Secret Life of Bees” (2008)  is an American film based on the 2002 book of the same name by Sue Monk Kidd.  It stars Queen Latifah, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo.

It is about Lily Owens, a 14-year-old white girl played by Fanning. She runs away from her heartless father to live with a family of three black sisters who keep bees. It takes place in small-town South Carolina in the summer of 1964. She is unable to discover the truth about herself till she finds out the truth about her dead mother. She discovers the true meaning of love, etc.

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith produced it; Gina Prince-Bythewood directed it. She also did “Love & Basketball” (2000), another great film. “Bees” won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Motion Picture.

I watched it because I wanted to see Alicia Keys. My sister saw it and warned me not to get my hopes up: “Alicia was so-so, nothing great.” She liked the film and watched it again with me, but she was not sure if I would get into it: “It’s a chick flick.” I still liked it. Touching and enjoyable.

Alicia Keys was pretty good. Beautiful as ever.  And, even better, she had a boyfriend so I could imagine myself as him. But one drawback with Alicia Keys is that I never forgot that it was Alicia Keys. Unlike with Dakota Fanning and Queen Latifah.

Jennifer Hudson did not have a big part. She played the maid that Fanning’s father had. There is a great scene where she is going to register to vote, extremely upsetting, but after they run away and arrive at Queen Latifah’s house Hudson becomes part of the background.

Sophie Okonedo was good. I wished they would show more of her.

Fanning regarded Hudson as an overgrown child and Hudson herself acted as if Fanning was way older than she was. I am not sure if that is how it was back then between black servants and white children.

Given how she was with Hudson I thought Fanning would be high-handed with Queen Latifah and her sisters. She was not. And it was not just because she was dependent on their kindness: she seemed to respect their age and wisdom. Partly, I think, because they had money and education.

When Sue Monk Kidd, who is white, was asked why she wrote about black women, she said:

Because I grew up surrounded by black women. I feel they are like hidden royalty dwelling among us, and we need to rupture our old assumptions and develop the willingness to see them as they are.

Or maybe it is just a magical Negro story.

When Queen Latifah’s godson took Fanning into town alone in his pickup truck it did not seem believable: how could he be that brainless!

The story takes place in South Carolina but was shot in North Carolina. It is based on Kidd’s childhood in – Georgia. Not that I could ever tell the difference.

See also:

• magical Negro

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Santigold: L.E.S. Artistes

Remarks:

Santigold, known as Santogold till a jeweller of that name made her change it, used to write and produce for Res. I assumed she was British till I looked her up in the Wikipedia. “L.E.S.” is short for Lower East Side, a part of Manhattan. She wrote this song soon after arriving in New York.

The music video starts out well with the two girls in black berets and big sunglasses and Santigold’s deadpan delivery, sitting on a black horse, but the part where she is walking down the street is shockingly bad with its cheap effects.

Lyrics:

What I’m searching for
to tell it straight, I’m trying to build a wall
Walking by myself
down avenues that reek of time to kill
If you see me keep going
be a pass by waver
Build me up, bring me down
just leave me out you name dropper
Stop trying to catch my eye
I see you good you forced faker
Just make it easy
You’re my enemy you fast talker

Chorus:
I can say I hope it will be worth what I give up
If I could stand up mean for the things that I believe

What am I here for
I left my home to disappear is all
I’m here for myself
Not to know you
I don’t need no one else
Fit in so good the hope is that you cannot see me later
You don’t know me
I am an introvert an excavator
I’m duckin’ out for now
a face in dodgy elevators
Creep up and suddenly
I found myself
an innovator

Chorus.

Change, change, change,
I want to get up out of my skin
tell you what
if I can shake it
I’m ‘a make this
something worth dreaming of

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Barry Deutsch: History Marches On; Nativism Marches In Place

Sanabituranima pointed this cartoon out to me. It is just what goes through my head when people start talking about keeping Mexicans from coming into America:

In case you have trouble reading the cartoon, it says this:

1780: Papist immigrants are wrecking our economy with their fecundity! We must erect a wall of brass around the country for the exclusion of Catholics!

1850: Chinese immigrants refuse to assimilate… and if we let too many in, they’ll undermine our economy!

1920: Now, I’ve got nothing against Jews… but the Jews are coming in huge numbers! The economy can’t take it!

Now: I’ve got nothing against Mexicans, but they refuse to assimlate! They’re ruining our economy! We should erect a wall.

See also:

• The difference between a racist and a fucking racist

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John Legend: Slow Dance

Yea, sing it with me yall, oh yea yea

Can we wait just a minute
Slow it down for a minute now baby
Your talkin loud
Your wilding out
Don’t seem like my old lady
Lets go and play the song we used to play
Can we reignite the flame
Cause things just ain’t the same

We can talk about the baby
We can talk until we’re crazy
We can focus on it now
Or we can focus on it later
We can start another fight
We can argue and fuss all night
But I propose that we go to floor and we slow dance

Tonight I wanna dance
Can you do that with you man yea
Tonight I wanna groove
And let the music make you move
Move yea

Can we wait just a minute
Turn that TV off for a minute
Now politics and talkin shit aint really none of my buisness
Lets go and play the songs we used to play
On that old school radio
Let the music soothe your soul

Forget about the world
Im groovin with my girl
Froret about the news
Lets put on our dancin shoes
Lets not talk about the war
Do we know what they fightin for
I propose that we go to the floor and we slow dance

Tonight I wanna dance
Can you do that with you man yea
Tonight I wanna groove
And let the music make you move
Move yea yea
Move yea yea

I love it
I love it
I love it we’re slow dancin together
I love it
I love it
I love it we’re slow dancin together
I love it
I love it
I love it we’re slow dancin together
I love it
I love it I propose that we go to floor and we slow dance

Tonight I wanna dance
Can you do that with your man yea
Tonight I wanna groove
Let the music make you move

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John McWhorter: Racism In America Is Over

John McWhorter, in his Forbes.com article, “Racism In America Is Over” (December 30th 2008), says that the election of a black man as president proves that racism against blacks is no longer a big issue in America. I expect white people to say that sort of thing, yet McWhorter is black.

McWhorter is not saying that racism has gone away completely, that no white person will ever use the n-word again, say. America will continue to be imperfect. But a racism that allows a black man to become president can only be so bad – and, in practice, not bad enough to matter much. It certainly cannot be the main issue or even one of the main issues that affects black Americans. Those who truly want to help blacks should give their attention to other, more important things.

I agree that America has come a long way in the past 50 years and the election of  Obama is a big step on that road, but that does not mean racism no longer matters.

McWhorter’s argument turns on this passage about backward racist white people:

But with Obama’s election we saw that one thing these backward people cannot stop is a black family ending up in the White House. And really, what else were we worried about them affecting? Wasn’t it mostly their effect on elections? Surely we do not care how such people feel about black people, just in and of itself? I don’t, and I can do without a white person worrying for me about how bohunks feel about me. I doubt my feelings are unusual.

What McWhorter assumes: The feelings of white people only matter in so far as it affects their vote and therefore the government and its laws. Racism, the kind that matters, is only the kind that can be outlawed. And since that sort of racism was outlawed in the 1950s and 1960s and since the law is upheld and applied fairly by the courts and the police, racism is no longer a big issue.

A white person or a rich (or very young) black person might be able to believe all that. And it does sound nice on paper. But in practice America is not like that. Certainly not in my own experience in and near New York.

By law employers are no longer allowed to use race in making hiring decisions. But they do.

By law real estate agents are not allowed to show you houses according to your race. But they do.

You can outlaw racism all you want, but if the courts and the police who uphold the law are themselves racist – as they often are – then what? White people might think the courts and the police are pretty much fair, but many black people do not. Who is right?

Also, how many blacks who experience racism, the kind that is against the law, have the time and money to press a lawsuit?

McWhorter lives in America, but it is not the same America I live in.

See also:

• John McWhorter: “Racism In America Is Over” – the article itself
  
• Siditty: Blacks Gone Wild: John McWhorter Proclaims Racism In America Is Over – where I found out about the article. Thanks, Siditty!
• Racism is Over – a blog
• Will Smith: America is not a racist nation
• Of Limbaugh and Lowery
• Whites are still racist – more on that
• Apple-pie America – where McWhorter seems to live
• Amy Holmes

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2008

What we know about 2008 on the last day of the year:

In 2008 America elected its first black president, Barack Obama. In January few dared to hope he could win, but he said, “Yes We Can”. And we did. Or most of us did. He lost among whites but more than made up for it among blacks and other people of colour.

In the Democratic Party he narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton, whom many had hoped would be the first woman president. But next to Obama she looked mean-spirited. She did not ring true.

Obama ran against John McCain, the Republican. McCain said he had more experience than Obama, but then showed how little that mattered by picking Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, as his vice president, someone with even less experience than Obama. Many loved her, many laughed at her.

Obama will get an America that is in deep trouble: many of its top banks have failed, the stock market has lost a third of its value, wiping out trillions of dollars. Millions are being thrown out of work. Few are buying cars, so the car companies are now in trouble too. And so on. America looks like it is about to enter bad times, the worst since the 1930s. It is affecting not just America but the whole world. Toyota, for example, has had its worse year ever in over 70 years.

Everyone thought the war in Iraq would be the big issue of the election, but as bad as Bush has been, it seems he has been able to put Iraq on the road to peace. Obama will pull out the troops as quickly as he can and give his attention to Afghanistan instead.

After Obama won, Governor Blagojevich tried to sell his Senate seat. Yes, sell.

Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President Kennedy, said she might run for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat. Hillary will be the new secretary of state.

For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 Russia sent its army into another country: Georgia.

In the last days of the year, Israel started bombing Gaza, as if to soften it up for a land war. It tried that in 2006 and found itself at war with parts of Lebanon.

In November over 173 were killed in terror attacks on Mumbai (Bombay) in India.

The peace in Congo, what little there was, started to fall apart. Laurent Nkunda is fighting against government troops.

Zimbabwe continues to fall apart under Mugabe’s incapable leadership. Now cholera, of all things, is in the land.

The Olympics were held in Beijing. American swimmer Michael Phelps won eight gold medals.

Musharraf stepped down as president of Pakistan. At last.

The word ginormous made it into the dictionary. At last.

• Top song worldwide: “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis
• Highest-grossing film worldwide: “The Dark Knight”
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Jean-Marie Le Clezio
• Academy Award for Best Picture: not known yet.

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In memoriam: Eartha Kitt

Eartha Kitt (1927-2008), American singer and actress from the 1950s and 1960s. She is best remembered for singing “Santa Baby” and playing Catwoman. She was one of the most famous black women in the world in her day. In 1952 the New York Times said, “Eartha Kitt not only looks incendiary, but she can make a song burst into flame.” Her sort of music fell out of fashion in the late 1950s with the rise of R&B and rock and roll.

See also:

• Eartha Kitt’s obituary in the New York Times.

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Kristof: Racism Without Racists

I ran across a New York Times piece by columnist Nicholas D. Kristof called “Racism Without Racists”. He supports, in a grey, watered-down way, what I have been saying about white people – even though he is white himself. Instead of making absolute statements based on personal experience, like I tend to do, he makes softer statements based on studies, which is probably more believable (even if less true).

A bit of what he said:

One set of experiments conducted since the 1970s involves subjects who believe that they are witnessing an emergency (like an epileptic seizure). When there is no other witness, a white bystander will call for help whether the victim is white or black, and there is very little discrimination.

But when there are other bystanders, so the individual responsibility to summon help may feel less obvious, whites will still summon help 75 percent of the time if the victim is white but only 38 percent of the time if the victim is black.

What I call colour-blind racism Kristof calls aversive racism. He says it affects about half of all whites. Another 10% are still the old Jim Crow sort of racists, the kind who flat-out do not like blacks. He says that studies show that sort of racism is dying out.

So where I say 95% of whites are racist, he says it is more like 60%.

Kristof said that studies done two months before the 2008 election showed that Obama would be hurt more by colour-blind racists than the old Jim Crow sort:

The racism is difficult to measure, but a careful survey completed last month by Stanford University, with The Associated Press and Yahoo, suggested that Mr. Obama’s support would be about six percentage points higher if he were white. That’s significant but surmountable.

Most of the lost votes aren’t those of dyed-in-the-wool racists. Such racists account for perhaps 10 percent of the electorate and, polling suggests, are mostly conservatives who would not vote for any Democratic presidential candidate.

Rather, most of the votes that Mr. Obama actually loses belong to well-meaning whites who believe in racial equality and have no objection to electing a black person as president — yet who discriminate unconsciously.

Read the whole thing: Racism Without Racists

See also:

• Racism Without Racists – the column itself
  
• What Kristof said supports part of what I said in these posts:
  • colour-blind racism
  • How white people think
• He would see this as too extreme:
  • All whites are racist
• Jim Crow
• The race factor and Obama (the Bradley Effect)

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Who famous black men date

Here are the black men who currently (December 18th 2008 ) have a top 50 song in America (according to the Billboard Hot 100 list). Next to each I put the pictures  and names of the latest women they have dated (according to whodatedwho.com). I list up to as many as five for each, the latest five:

Note: Whodatedwho.com moved their pictures, so while I fixed the links I brought the list up to date. The following is as of December 30th 2009 – a year after I wrote the post.

T.I.: Hoopz, Tiny, Paula DeAnda, LeToya Luckett.

Kanye West: Jennifer Metcalfe, Amber Rose, Amelie Berrabah, Brooke Crittenton, Alexis Eggleston.

Ne-Yo: Vivica Fox, Casha Darjean, Tennille Jimenez, Jesse White.

Akon: Susan Owori (not pictured), Gina Wild, Rozonda Chilli, Mina Zia Karkaragh.

Lil Wayne: Lauren London, Sarah Bellew, Trina, Nivea, Antonia Carter.

T-Pain: Amber

John Legend: Petra Nemcova, Christy Teigen, Tavo Otiti, Danielle Abreu, Wafah Dufour.

Jim Jones: ?

Jay-Z: Beyonce, Shenelle Scott, Rosario Dawson, Charlie Baltimore, Amil All Money Is.

Chris Brown: Natalie Mejia, Rihanna, Lil Mama, Keshia Chante, Teyanna Taylor.

Usher: Grace Miguel, Tameka Foster, Eishia Brightwell, Joy Bryant, Naomi Campbell.

I know, I know: Who cares who they date? That is their business, blah, blah, blah.  True, but it is still hard not to be curious. A huge part of the magazine industry is built on this stuff. I went to whodatedwho.com to find out about Jessica White, who I was writing a post on, but then got drawn in.

The thing that struck me is how light-skinned most of these women are. Well, how most of them are considerably lighter than the men dating them.  I was not born yesterday, I know rich and successful black men often marry white women and all that, but even so I did not expect to see the light-skinned/white-skinned woman thing on such a scale.

I thought maybe it was just an accident of who I was looking up, so I chose just those who have a current hit song. That way I would have no control over who made the list, making it a fairer sampling.

The lightness of the women seemed strange to me because it does not match anything in my experience. Most black men I know married medium to dark-skinned women. On occasion there will be someone who seems to chase just light-skinned women or even marry a white woman, but they are hardly the rule.

It would be bad statistics to draw any conclusions from this list and, besides, everyone knows that Jay-Z and the rest do not live in our world.

But still I wonder why it is like that. Why?

The people at Essence or Black Men magazine would see nothing strange in this: black men prefer light-skinned women. It seems to be an article of faith with some black women. Others, like Steve Sailer and the intellectual skinheads at majorityrights.com, would say it is because black men secretly want white women because they are so much better looking than black women.

This list would seem support ideas like that since these men are rich and famous enough that they can have pretty much any kind of woman they want. Except that it would be dangerous to draw conclusions based on such a small and strange sample.

See also:

• whodatedwho.com
• colourism
• Black Men magazine
• Jessica White
• more on some of the women:
  • Hoopz
  • Lauren London
  • Naomi Campbell
  • Rosario Dawson
• intellectual skinheads:
  • majorityrights.com, who I talk about in this post: Maria Shriver’s jaw
  • Steve Sailer

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Is Obama black?

Barack Obama is black. He is not biracial, much less white.

Some say that in American society you are whatever you say you are. Like Tiger Woods calling himself Cablinasian. If only. But even from that point of view, Obama is still black: he has always called himself either “black” or “African American”, never biracial, never mixed.

Yes, he was brought up by the white side of his family, mostly by his grandparents who grew up in Kansas. Yes, he barely knew his black father from Kenya or any other black people while growing up. That is why Steve Sailer says he is a white man trying to act black – a wigger.

But what makes you black in America is not your upbringing but how you look.

So even during that supposedly wholesome white Kansan upbringing that he had, he had white coaches who passed him over for less able white players. He had few if any girlfriends because only black girls would date him and there were few of them at his private school in Hawaii.

When whites do not accept you because of how you look but blacks do, then you are black. Not just black but “black enough” in all the ways that truly matter.

So Obama is not just black but he is also black enough.

When neither whites nor blacks accept you – you are too black for the whites and too white for the blacks – then you become biracial. That was not Obama’s experience, so he is not biracial – except in the strict sense of the word, a sense that is useless when talking about black Americans since most are part white. Some are even mostly white by blood.

Some seem to think that having a white parent and a black parent is something new, something the 1960s brought in. Hardly. The mixing of the races may have been looked down on (and still is in many quarters), but it has been going on in America a long, long time, almost from the very beginning of the country. There are plenty of light-skinned blacks to prove it. And DNA tests on white Americans show that a tenth of them are mixed with black too.

But then why this urge to see Obama as biracial?

Is it because we are entering a new and better day when the colour line is going away, when the One Drop Rule is becoming something only found in history books? I wish.

Partly it is because biracial people, understandably, want to claim him as one of their own, but mainly it is because many white people do not want to admit we will now have a black president. It is easier for them to see him as biracial or mixed or half-white.

Anything but black.

Calling Obama biracial would not be progress: it would allow whites to hold on to their racist views about blacks. Thank God Michelle Obama will be the first lady.

See also:

• The Black Snob’s take on this
• Barack Obama
  • Obama in Hawaii
  • Obama at Occidental College
• The Wigger Fallacy
  • wigger
• biracial
• One Drop Rule
• The blackness of Tiger Woods
• Michelle Obama
• Steve Sailer

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In memoriam: Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan

Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan (1987-2007), an American soldier. Colin Powell said it well:

Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that [Obama] is a Muslim and might have an association with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel particularly strong about this because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay, was of a mother at Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone, and it gave his awards – Purple Heart, Bronze Star – showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death, he was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the head stone, it didn’t have a Christian cross. It didn’t have a Star of David. It has a crescent and star of the Islamic faith.

And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was fourteen years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could serve his country and he gave his life.

– Colin Powell

See also:

• 9/11
• Iraq
• Islam
• black patriotism

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