Is Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post Calling President Obama a Monkey in its Latest Editorial Cartoon?

So, after Rev. Al Sharpton made some off-the-cuff comments about Gen. Colin Powell at a recent speech at Middlebury College, he has rightly criticized the New York Post. He is demanding that the newspaper, which has come under fire in the past for racially-tinged cartoons, explain what it meant in its latest controversial offering. The cartoon suggests that the stimulus bill was so bad, monkeys may as well have written it. The incorporation of violence and, on a sinister level, race into politics is bound to be controversial. Rightly so.

Displayed prominently on today’s editorial pages, the cartoon depicts two police officers – one with his smoking gun drawn – standing over what appears to be a dead chimpanzee in a pool of blood. One officer says to the other: “Now they’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

Hmmm. Are they referring to the dead chimp as the president of the United States? That’s weird and I have to wonder what the intent of the cartoon is. Okay, the massive $787 billion stimulus bill was signed into law yesterday and the cops shot a crazy chimpanzee, but what do they have in common? Could it be President Obama being portrayed as a rabid chimpanzee? We all know that blacks are portrayed as monkeys repeatedly, so that is a sound conclusion to draw. With that in mind, Mr. Rupert Murdoch and his posse owe us an explanation and an apology. Funny, Matt Drudge has been a big critic of Barack Obama and his Administration and this cartoon is conveniently absent from the Drudge Report. It is also missing from Fox News Channel’s website, but I expected nothing different.

Filed under: African Americans, Blacks, Chimpanzee, Matt Drudge, Monkey, National Action Network, Portrayed as Chimp, President Barack H. Obama, Stimulus Bill, The Drudge Report

Helen Suzman, South African Anti-Apartheid Activist, Dies on New Year’s Day

South African anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman, who won international acclaim as one of the few white lawmakers to fight against the injustices of racist rule, has died on New Year’s. She was 91. Suzman was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and fought a long and lonely battle in the South African parliament against government repression of the country’s black majority and the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela Foundation chief executive Achmat Dangor said Suzman was a “great patriot and a fearless fighter against apartheid.” For 13 years, Suzman was the sole opposition lawmaker in South Africa’s parliament, raising her voice time after time against the introduction of racist legislation by the National Party government.

After her retirement from parliament in 1989, she served on a variety of top public institutions, including the Independent Electoral Commission that oversaw the country’s first multiracial elections in 1994. She was at Mandela’s side when he signed the new constitution in 1996 as South Africa’s first black president. A year later, Mandela awarded her a special gold medal in honor of her contributions.

“It is a courage born of the yearning for freedom; of hatred of oppression, injustice and inequity whether the victim be oneself or another; a fortitude that draws its strength from the conviction that no person can be free while others are unfree,” Mandela said at the time. Source: Huffington Post

The world has lost another icon who worked tirelessly for equal rights for all. Rest in peace, Ms. Suzman, you have done well.

Filed under: Apartheid, Blacks, Helen Suzman, Nelson Mandela, Racism, South Africa

Mormon Church Getting a Second Look from Blacks in America

The Columbia News Service’s columnist John Dorman has written an article entitled “A New Beginning: Blacks Giving the Mormon Church a Second Look.” I must admit, I found the article interesting, to say the least. According to the article, blacks are giving the Mormon church a second look, in part, due to the religious pillars of service and community outreach. One member, a 28-year old woman, who left her Baptist church in Brooklyn to become of member of the Harlem branch of the Mormon church said she found a commitment to diversity at the church. There is still a great deal of skepticism, from the fact that blacks were not allowed to serve in high positions in the church or intermarry prior to 1978, as to how the Mormon church can minister to blacks. Many still view this religion as a racist one.

There are roughly 13 million Mormons worldwide, and about half of those live in the United States, according to figures frequently cited by the church, which doesn’t record members’ racial or ethnic background. Interestingly, about three percent of the Mormon Church in America is black, and less than 0.5 percent of black Americans are Mormon, according to a survey in 2007 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Policy. That would translate to slightly less than 200,000 black Mormons in America —- a huge increase from the 5,000 to 10,000 estimated by many experts at the turn of the century.

The article states that the growth of Mormonism among blacks is commonly tied to two events:

In 1978, the church abolished a long-standing practice that kept black men from seeking priesthoods and black women from participating in temple ceremonies. In 2006Mormon president Gordon B. Hinckley publicly declared the faith open to all people. Aw geez, only two years ago? That doesn’t bode well for this religion, no matter what people say.

“I am told that racial slurs and denigrating remarks are sometimes heard among us,” he said. “I remind you that no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ.”

The Harlem church opened in 2005, about the same time as new Mormon facilities designed to attract more blacks and Latinos opened in Philadelphia, Detroit and San Antonio.

The article cites Chris Carter, a 22-year-old black in Florida, who is not affiliated with any congregation after leaving his Baptist church. He went to a Mormon service and said that he felt like more of an individual, despite the church’s reputation for homogeneity.

“My old church had this monolithic philosophy to it,” Carter said. “I just grew out of feeling like everyone was supposed to think the same, when I have always been my own individual.”

Church outreach efforts to blacks include a strong emphasis on missionary service and volunteer work in immediate neighborhoods. The church has a Family Home Evening once a week where families discuss Scripture and religious issues affecting their lives, often with the aid of books, videotapes and other audiovisual tools.

So, I guess it depends on what you are looking for in a church, but for me the Mormons ain’t it. You be the judge…..

Filed under: Blacks, Gordon B. Hinckley, Mormon church, religion

Judge Arrington, Who Asked Whites to Leave Courtroom to Lecture Blacks, Said he was Once a Thug

Judge Marvin Arrington is in the news once again. He said that parade of black men and women, criminals and mothers of criminals, he saw every day frustrated him. He had asked all the whites to leave his courtroom so that he could admonish the black defendants who were in his courtroom that particular day. While I believed that his heart was in the right place because I, too, share his frustrations with people of African descent who grace the justice system with their presence on a regular basis at the expense of completing ruining their lives. What he did to address it, some observers say, was classic Arrington. Others say it was arrogance. Personally, I think he was right, but it should have been done in front of everyone in the courtroom.

“Black people, please, turn your life around.”Isn’t that a statement that we have been hearing for a long time. Look at the crime statistics in Chicago, for example, most of the inner city crimes being committed are by young black men. Bill Cosby was literally ridiculed when he tried to criticize some African-American families for not raising their kids right, slammed black youth for wearing their clothes backward and berated them for failing to master the queen’s English. Their positions are so similar that the judge and the comedian agreed to combine forces for a presentation at Benjamin E. Mays High School in Atlanta recently.

Arrington should know exactly what he is talking about. On the street when he was young, he is one of them, starting out as a poor kid from Grady Homes.”I was an inner-city thug,” Arrington said. “Wouldn’t listen to anybody. Teachers turned me around.”Arrington said he grew up hustling and fighting his way through childhood. He hung out at the pool hall, shot dice on the corner like everybody else. “I could’ve easily went the other way,” he said. ” That’s how I know these kids can do better, but it’s up to us to help them.”

He said that were it not for the people in his life, coaches, teachers and sometimes complete strangers, he said, his life might have turned out differently. He might have gotten in trouble with the law, too. Arrington spent his energy on the football field and basketball and tennis courts. When he wasn’t playing sports, he worked, rising at 4:30 a.m. to throw the Atlanta Constitution, hopping cars after school at the old Split T drive-in. On Sundays, he was in Bible school at Lindsey Street Baptist Church. He always had people, he said, who regularly told him to straighten up, to take his schoolwork seriously, to be somebody. Arrington grew up to be somebody. He married and raised two children, became active in a prosperous law firm, wielded political clout and commanded respect from the Atlanta business community.

The judge is like a lot of African-Americans and maybe some whites who feel real pain at seeing some of our young black men throwing their lives away and settling for a life of crime. They are going to waste and ruining other lives in the process. Not everyone is cut out to be a judge, but everyone has a purpose in life and must seek that purpose. You cannot tell me that every black man who grew up in the inner cities are being destined for a life in the hood and a life of crime? No, people have to want more from life and strive to get it. It seems as though many of our young people are so trigger-happy and angry at the world. The government didn’t put a gun in your hands and tell you to shoot the first person you meet on the street to get money.

So, while this judge may be criticized for airing dirty laundry in public, I beg to differ. He had guts and like him, I feel that our young brothers can do a whole lot better than they are doing now. I am ashamed that on any given day in Chicago, for example, the perpetrators of gun violence in the inner cities are black males. Did poverty suddenly mean that you have to kill people and be so angry at the world? Since when has owning a gun been a measure of one’s manhood? There are way too many honest, hardworking, decent, law abiding black men out there for a few bad apples to spoil the whole barrel. Just my thoughts, you be the judge…..

Filed under: Bill Cosby, Blacks, Crime, Marvin Arrington