Black America // Current

The Modern Racist Paradigm

The Modern Racist Paradigm: This is a well researched documentary that exposes the... more

peoplesmovement
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3 months ago
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11 comments

New Movie 'American Violet' Depicts Drug War Racism

Movie description>>"Based on true events during the 2000 election, AMERICAN VIOLET tells the astonishing story of Dee Roberts (critically hailed newcomer Nicole Beharie), a 24 year-old African American single mother of four young girls living in a small Texas town who is barely able to make ends meet.

While police drag Dee from work in handcuffs, dumping her in the squalor of the women’s county prison, the powerful local district attorney (Academy Award® nominee Michael O’Keefe) leads an extensive drug bust, sweeping her housing project with military precision. Dee soon discovers she has been charged as a drug dealer.

Even though Dee has no prior drug record and no drugs were found on her in the raid, she is offered a hellish choice: plead guilty and go home as a convicted felon or remain in prison, jeopardizing her custody and risking a long prison sentence.

She chooses to fight the district attorney and the unyielding criminal justice system, risking everything in a battle that forever changes her life and the Texas justice system. AMERICAN VIOLET also stars Academy Award® nominee Alfre Woodard, Emmy Award® winner Charles S. Dutton, Tim Blake Nelson, Will Patton and Xzibit.

NOTE: American Violet was initially inspired by an NPR story by Wade Goodwyn.

That was six years ago. Much of the film was informed by thousands of pages of information provided on a range of stories by the ACLU among others. A variety of media reports and legal documents, including sworn testimony, depositions and affidavits, all of which can be found on the public record also helped us find authentic patterns and voices for our storytelling. Finally, taped interviews with community members who had experienced circumstances similar to those outlined in our work proved useful.

However, American Violet is not a documentary. It is a narrative feature film that is, as it says, based on true events. Some scenes and characters have been fictionalized for dramatic effect and have no relationship to the historical record. Names have been changed to protect the innocent and also to protect this film."Movie description>>"Based on true events during the 2000 election, AMERICAN VIOLET... more

ninthstate
added this
7 months ago
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10 comments

Where are the black audiences?

"From "The Color Purple" at the Ordway to a revival of "A Raisin in the Sun" at the... more

St_Alia_10191
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7 months ago
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3 comments

What is Synchronicity?

Whatever its cause, the appeal of synchronicity runs deep. "People love mysterious things, and synchronicity is like magic happening to them," says Carolyn North, author of Synchronicity: The Anatomy of Coincidence (Regent Press). "It gives us a sense of hope, a sense that something bigger is happening out there than what we can see, which is especially important in times like this when there’s so many reasons for despair."

The more pragmatic a person, the greater a surprise a synchronistic incident is -- even mild ones of the sort that happen to most people sooner or later. For example, Bruce, a corporate lawyer, was stunned the day that, just as he was getting ready to dial his father, he picked up the phone and heard his father’s voice on the other end -- calling him. "I said, `Holy smokes!’ We were both dumbfounded!" he recalls. For a moment in time, synchronicity shattered their assumptions of cause-and-effect reality.

Some people, however, would shrug and call this intuition. How are the two different?

At first blush, synchronicity and intuition seem to be separate phenomena. Synchronicity happens "out there": against the odds, something in the Universe seems to swing into place to answer an inner need we have. Intuition happens "in here": it’s an inner knowing, an ability to tune into knowledge in a nonrational, nonlinear way. We know something but we don’t know how we know it.

Yet the boundaries get fuzzy very quickly. Jung’s definition of synchronicity clearly incorporates precognition and clairvoyance, which, by some people’s definition, are also types of intuition: they are certainly inner knowing. For example, here’s a mind-boggling synchronicity story that’s just as mind-boggling when viewed as an intuition story. Pam's father was chopping down a tree for firewood when it suddenly fell on him, crushing the left side of his face almost beyond recognition and shattering his back. Against all odds, he shoved the tree off of himself and walked a mile for help. Pam flew to Ithaca, New York, to be with him. It wasn't until weeks later, when she had returned to New York City, that she picked up the tablet she had been taking notes on in class at the time the accident had happened. She had been idly doodling in the margins -- and her drawings included a face with the left half shaded in black and a person's back with two Xs on the spine, marking the same vertebrae that her father had broken.

If we eliminate Jung’s two psi-related definitions and just focus on the coinciding of inner and outer events in a way that defies causal explanation, there can still be an overlapping, because the inner event can be an intuitive hit. In practice, synchronicity and intuition sometimes seem so intertwined that it’s hard to tell where one leaves off and the other begins.

Shelley was sitting at Notre Dame in Paris giving her sore feet a rest. The shoes she had worn from the States had turned out to be painful, and her limited budget didn't allow her to buy another pair. Suddenly she felt an inner prompting, and she got up, walked out of the church, and turned left. Following her promptings, she made several other turns to arrive at a square. There, on top of a trash can, sat a pair of brand new black boots with no signs of wear -- in exactly her size. "It was perfect," she said. "If they had been inside the trash can, I wouldn’t have pulled them out. If they had been worn before, I wouldn’t have put them on. And they were so stylish I never could have afforded them myself!"Whatever its cause, the appeal of synchronicity runs deep. "People love mysterious... more

jkw077
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8 months ago
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3 comments

Where Are The Black Leads On Network TV?

"“I don’t know what to say to these networks that don’t put on shows with black... more

St_Alia_10191
added this
8 months ago
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19 comments

Why So Serious About the Internet?

"N" words and words in general. What's your take?

MornRail
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8 months ago
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1 comment

Diabetes rate doubles in U.S. in last 10 years - Diabetes- msnbc.com

ATLANTA - The nation's obesity epidemic is exacting a heavy toll: The rate of new... more

jkw077
added this
1 year ago
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1 comment

Black in Bellaire

HBO: Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel Robbie Tolan dreamed of following in the... more

covelogibbs
added this
9 months ago
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1 comment

King moved, as father was, on trip to Gandhi's memorial - CNN.com

In 1959, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. came to India to further understand Mahatma... more

jkw077
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9 months ago
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0 comments

Low self-esteem & materialism goes hand in hand

With a recession going full force, I thought this feature might help ease the pain.... more

pjacobs51
added this
10 months ago
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72 comments

The Great Change: Farmers slash planting due to drought - Environment- msnbc.com

SAN FRANCISCO - Some of the nation's largest farms plan to cut back on planting this... more

jkw077
added this
10 months ago
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0 comments

The Great Change: Study Gets Inside the World's "Brown Cloud" - TIME

A thick photochemical smog comprised of respirable suspended particulate matter and... more

jkw077
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10 months ago
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1 comment

Mushrooms the Biblical "Manna"?

Exodus 16:14-24 indicates that MANNA was definitely a MUSHROOM. It was a small round... more

jkw077
added this
1 year ago
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51 comments

Global warming threatens forests, study says - CNN.com

Forests in the Pacific Northwest are dying twice as fast as they were 17 years ago,... more

jkw077
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10 months ago
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1 comment

Avoidable Apocalypse

PMT is a series of short animated films presenting new ideas about global... more

PostmodernTimes
added this
2 years ago
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28 comments

interregnum (ii)

brief document of me painting... no psudo-political musings this time

enabrit
added this
11 months ago
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0 comments

interregnum

this is a short document of a painting i made of the pres-elect, matched with some... more

enabrit
added this
11 months ago
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0 comments

Cosby Talks "Huxtable Effect"

LOS ANGELES — When Bill Cosby entered the polling booth in his neighborhood last... more

GrandKnow2
added this
1 year ago
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9 comments

Media continuing "division" coverage? :: Irate Congressman Demands Resignation of AIG CEO

Ratings, unbiased political dialogue, journalism, or is there another underlying... more

jkw077
added this
1 year ago
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1 comment

Is Black America Ready For A Black President?

"The response to the call of "Yes, we can" was the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land. It's amazing when you figure that a whole lot of people who've never even had a black boss have proven ready for a person of color as president.

But as the euphoria of the night turns into a Vegas-style buffet of harsh realities, we have to ask: Though America seems ready for a black president, is Black America really ready for a black president?

Sounds a little strange, sure. Emotionally, obviously. But what about practically?

Obama ran as a post-racial candidate. During his campaign, he suggested replacing race-based affirmative action with measures weighted toward socioeconomic factors. He gave a Father's Day speech encouraging black dads to be more engaged. And for his trouble, he was reward with an offer of castration from Jesse Jackson.

Which, as an aside, makes me wonder if on election night Jackson was crying tears of joy, or if he was getting misty-eyed because he knew his day was done?

Obama isn't alone in inciting ire for extolling personal responsibility. Comedian Bill Cosby delivered his "Pound Cake" speech on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education and claimed that not all blacks were "holding up their end of the bargain." In return, he was accused of being a race traitor. As if self-reliance equaled self-hatred.

Sorry, but not waiting for somebody else to get it done is a value that brought people of color up from slavery, through a failed Reconstruction and Jim Crow, to the shared experience of this past Tuesday.

The fear for some is that Obama's election will start people thinking, "Hey, guess we can roll up the civil rights carpet." Hardly. Let's face it: There are gonna be bigots in America for the foreseeable future.

But the cry of the Old Schoolers that American is a racist nation begins to ring hollow. In the era of Obama -- along with Oprah and Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and business executives Dick Parsons and Ken Chenault and on and on -- are those who've made bank flogging the victim stick ready to quit talking about who needs to be cut where and start admitting that yes, we can?

There was a text message sent around before the election that read: "Rosa sat so Martin could march. Martin marched so Obama could run."

Well, Obama was ready, willing and able to run for all of us. Are all of us ready for him?""The response to the call of "Yes, we can" was the election of Barack Obama to the... more

DeliaTheArtist
added this
1 year ago
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0 comments

tagged w/ Black America

The Modern Racist Paradigm

New Movie 'American Violet' Depicts Drug War Racism

Where are the black audiences?

What is Synchronicity?

Where Are The Black Leads On Network TV?

Why So Serious About the Internet?

Diabetes rate doubles in U.S. in last 10 years - Diabetes- msnbc.com

Black in Bellaire

King moved, as father was, on trip to Gandhi's memorial - CNN.com

Low self-esteem & materialism goes hand in hand

The Great Change: Farmers slash planting due to drought - Environment- msnbc.com

The Great Change: Study Gets Inside the World's "Brown Cloud" - TIME

Mushrooms the Biblical "Manna"?

Global warming threatens forests, study says - CNN.com

Avoidable Apocalypse

interregnum (ii)

interregnum

Cosby Talks "Huxtable Effect"

Media continuing "division" coverage? :: Irate Congressman Demands Resignation of AIG CEO

Is Black America Ready For A Black President?

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