So, Extreme Makeover gives you a house, free and clear. You take out a loan against the house, that folks worked HARD with their time, talent and money on the house.
You default on the loan and now the home is up for foreclosure.
How would YOU feel if you volunteered/gave of the above for this home?
Me? I’d be knocking on the door asking for explainations…..
Okay, I am still reeling from CNN’s Black In America series.
So, I was thinking, again, they portrayed that light is right and dark is not a walk in the park. They insinuated that we, as blacks, can/could only succeed if we go to white schools, marry white, live in mostly white neighborhoods and be friends with whites. I am all for diversity, but don’t portray some of our lives as one-sided.
I am a product of public schools. My elementary school was mostly black. My junior high school was 100% black (we’ll speak on that one in a second) and my high school was mostly black. My siblings and I were raised in a middle-class, working-class black neighborhood most of our lives (except when our parents were in doctoral programs). I attended a black college for undergrad and another for one of my graduate degrees. My parents are black college graduates (undergrad). My brother is a black college graduate. My sister didn’t attend an HBCU. WHY didn’t CNN portray “success” on any of those fronts? Everything they showed as “successful” was going to majority schools, living in mostly white neighborhoods, and marrying white. To each, his own, but don’t portray black life as one-sided. WE ARE SUCCESSFUL in our own rights. My best friend went to 100% black schools from Pre-K through undergrad. She is successful in her own right. Most of my other friends graduated from HBCUs and are successful, in their own right. We all grew up in black neighborhoods. We didn’t get our houses shot up. We didn’t end up with 3, 4, 5 kids out of wedlock. We didn’t sling drugs. Where were our stories, CNN?
Back to my 100% black junior high school. The school I attended was 100% black. We slaughtered EVERYONE in the city (white, black or other) in academics, sports, arts, etc. Other junior high schools HATED competing against us because they knew they were in for a defeat. Where was that story, CNN?
My five years as an undergrad in engineering where the school I attended, at that time, was #2 in conferring blacks with engineering degrees, with the #1 school edging us by 10 people and their school was three times the size of ours. The school were I earned my master’s degree in engineering graduated more blacks in engineering that any other school in the county and had the LARGEST career fair out of ANY school (white or black) in the southeast. Where was that story, CNN?
CNN, if you are going to tell a story……..tell the whole dang story, not some lop-sided view of how YOU think you see it. Soledad and I need to talk…..
Um, I am having SERIOUS problems with tonight’s episode on CNN. To me (tell me if I am reading too much into it), it’s basically saying that the only blacks who are successful and can make it in this world is to either live in a white neighborhood, be educated at majority schools or marry white. Is that just me? Did I read too much into the first 45 minutes?
Okay, so now, just as I was thinking, they portrayed that light is right and dark is not a walk in the park. We are our own worst enemy with that, but other ethnic groups view us just the same.
I remember the year after I got out of college, I worked at a car plant as an engineer. It was in a small town in the deep south. I had a woman ask me, hesitantly, was I mixed. I knew what she meant, but I thought that I’d play her. I asked her what did she mean by mixed. She asked were both of my parents black. I told her yes and why was she asking. She then says, “Well, your hair….it’s not like normal black people’s hair.” Enter cricket noise here. HUH? WHAT did she mean NORMAL black people’s hair. I then asked her what she meant by that. She said, “Well, you know….it’s not…..” I told her, “Go ahead, say it!”. She says, “Kinky or short”. I tersely told her that our hair goes from bone straight to coiled beyond combing and our complexion ranges from snow white to blue black. The next statement I said to her was, “If you ancestors weren’t creeping around slave quarters with mine, you wouldn’t be sitting here asking me questions like you just did. Don’t ever ask me anything like that again……normal black people’s hair. Girl, please!” Didn’t matter if I was or wasn’t mixed. If I have ONE black parent, society views me as BLACK. PERIOD……next…..
Now, this is something I’ve heard my ENTIRE LIFE (are you mixed, is your Dad white, do black people sunburn, being called an oreo, told I was acting white, etc.). Yeah, I’ve heard it all….from my own and from others.
I also had an employee at a previous job think that I was Mexican (notice I did not say hispanic or latino or etc.). Now, she doesn’t know that I know this, but with her blond hair and blue eyes, her lilly white, Boston-raised, shallow upbringing…..poor thing. I guess I can’t blame her for her ignorance. NOT! This was in 2006 and SCHOOL IS OUT, dang it. If you want to know what ethnicity I am, ASK! Don’t assume! But then, again, what does this have to do with the job at hand?! Yeah…..another post for another day.
I am tired of folks asking me “black” questions as if EVERY black person has the same experiences and can speak for every black person in the world.
Notice to non-black people: PLEASE, don’t believe everything you see on the news represents our life as blacks! They give you what you wanna see and hear. You don’t want to hear that we grew up in black public schools, went to black colleges and are SUCCESSFUL in our own rights. You don’t want to hear that some of us grew up with BOTH of our parents and, if we didn’t, we had father and mother figures around us to support us. You don’t want to hear that we are tall and can’t black a LICK of basketball, but grew up playing tennis and volleyball, instead. You’d rather hear that we are booty shaking and killing, having kids out of wedlock, doing and selling drugs, playing ball on the streets “because it’s our only way out”, etc. Don’t believe the hype, folks. The revolution will not be televised.
So, I am off to bed and off of my soapbox………for now. Best believe I’ll be back on it in the next 48 hours, God willing.
So, I watched part of this show last night (I TIVO’d it so I can watch it, IN FULL, with hubby so we and our families can talk about this later). The part I saw (the first 30 minutes or so)…they weren’t saying anything NEW. I felt like I was watching a re-run of our life’s experiences. It could use some work, though. <- more on that in another post.
So, here is my PERSONAL take on being Black in America. I’ll start with the education part.
I was born in the midwest, and raised in a two-parent home in the deep south. BOTH of my parents are educators (they both hold doctorate degrees). I have an older sister and an older brother. My siblings and I were never told we had to go to college, but always knew it was something we wanted to do. I was, basically, raised in education. Like I said, my parents taught on the college level and both hold doctorates.
Education has been the foundation of my family for as long as I can remember. I never had blood relatives in the state where I was raised, but had a HOST of extended family that would praise you when you did well, chastise you when you didn’t and ALWAYS kept an eye on you. This extended family would give you contacts when you went out of town, KNEW what you liked to do and would keep you in tune with those things and ALWAYS kept an eye on you (notice a pattern here?? It does take a village).
Everything around me was education from the people I was raised around to the house I grew up in. Whenever I would ask my parents what something was, they were QUICK to tell me to, first, spell it then go look it up in the dictionary or the set of 1964 encyclopedias in the study. Notice I said study. We had a room with two small built-in bookcases that were full of books (mainly, textbooks and adult study books). The mailman would CRACK on us saying that we received more mail than the entire street, combined, due to all of the magazines that would come to the house. EVERY morning, my parents would read the newspaper (Mom would sit at the table and get a kick out of the comics, too!). I once questioned a book that my Dad was reading that TOTALLY was against anything we believed in. I asked him WHY he was reading it. He quickly told me, “You must understand how the other side thinks and read what they believe in. Otherwise, you can never defeat them.” Can you say LIGHT BULB moment. Whenever we would mispronounce a word, our mother was QUICK to correct us and make us say it slow so that we COULD pronounce it correctly (our Mom was also a speech pathologist). For the longest, I couldn’t say AINT because “that word is not in the dictionary” (yeah, I am telling my age now). See what I mean about the HOUSE being educational?
I could NEVER go home alone after school while in elementary school. I was ALWAYS either picked up by my father and taken home or I took the school bus to the campus where they worked and stayed there until one of them got off work. Best believe that I wasn’t sitting idle. I was either told to go to the library and read, run errands for them on campus (hey, isn’t that child labor and illegal?! LOL) or I sat in one of the empty classrooms and read. I, also, don’t remember having an idle summer. EVERY summer of my life was occupied with summer programs of some sort.
By the time I made it junior high school, I became involved in school activities that allowed me to participate in summer camps (yearbook, drill team, choir, etc.). Again, NEVER an idle summer to sit and watch TV all day.
When I entered high school, I had cheerleader practice and camps every summer and a part-time job in the latter years. Again, never an idle summer.
In high school, it came down to college choices and schools began to write, I began to talk to others about their schools, Mom and Dad, big sister and big brother all gave me their opinions of their schools, etc. I knew I loved math and science. I have ALWAYS been VERY analytical. I am NOT a huge fan of writing (not my forte’). Engineering was the first thing that came to mind when choosing a college major due to my mathematical strengths. When I started looking at colleges, I knew I wasn’t ready for a BIG CITY nor was a ready for a huge school (10000+). I applied to both HBCUs and majority schools. I actually received a substantial scholarship to SMU. I started leaning toward going there because of the money I received, but my Mom and Dad knew (don’t they always know?!) that I should look at all of the schools equally, that I applied to. When it came to decision time, my Mom just FLAT out asked where did I want to go. I told her where, but that they didn’t offer any money. My Mom and Dad said if that is where I want to go, they’d find the money and I’d just better not go there and “mess up”.
That leads to ANOTHER education-related topic. Priorities. My parents’ priorities were to educate their three children. THAT is where their money went. Yes, they could have lived in a bigger house and driven nicer cars, but they socked away money for their childrens’ education. Now, in this day and time, how many parents can say that they live in a smaller place or drive a smaller car for the sacrifice of their children? That is debatable…..
My siblings and I are all college graduates with post-baccalaureate education. I am VERY proud of that and have no problem telling the world. I know my situation was different, but didn’t know HOW different it was until later in life (early 30s) because all I ever knew was education in our house. It was the norm. My parents never directly stated that we had to do good in school and go to college. It was understood, though.
I remember once I asked my Mom and Dad for money if I made X number of A’s. I was told, “I am not going to reward you for doing what you should be doing as a child living in this house”. Nuff said. Again, education was understood.
I am now married to an educator. His parents were also educators (oh, that was SO not intentional). We are both public school products and believe in the public school system. Yeah, here we go, again! LOL.
So, education for our house is a given, not an option.
Hubby and I went to see The Dark Knight this afternoon. We purchased tickets last week because WE KNEW how HOT this movie was going to be. The Batman, the Joker, their friends and foes did NOT disappoint!
This was the most violent of the Batman movies, but the special effects were fab! I can almost see this movie having an NC-17 rating. It is NOT meant for younger kids.
Again, the love story thing in action movies is killing a sista’, but the movie was LIKE that. When it ended the audience applauded the movie. Yeah, we were in a movie theater and you would have thought that we just saw a live play they way they were clapping.
Heath Ledger’s performance is DEFINITELY Oscar worthy! Wow! This role, again, was another notch in his acting belt. He WAS the joker. R.I.P.
Let me just tell you. If you haven’t already purchased your tickets, DO SO NOW!! Fandango stated that MOST of their showings are sold out until Monday.
The members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., are celebrating their Centennial international convention in Washington, DC, this week (CONGRATS, Ladies).
One of the events during their convention will be a Unity March where they are asking members from the NPHC (made up of the nine Black Greek fraternities and sororities) to march with them and link arms as a unified force and march to the Capitol. The march will send a “powerful message” to the outgoing administration and a declaration to the next U.S. president about important issues of their constituencies. (from http://www.civilrights.org/calendar/alpha-kappa-alpha.html).
Okay, please feel free to blast me now, but HOW is this going to send a message? This isn’t a personal attack on anyone or any orgainzation, but it is 2008 and am growing a little tired of the “Al and Jesse” mentality where we march on anything that happens now, with no follow-through. It seems like after the marches take place, that’s it. Nothing. All we can say is “we marched X-number strong”.
Sometimes, I feel as if, during this day and time, we are marching to be marching. In the 60s, we marched and it meant something and we followed through on issues to make sure they were handled and dealt with. Now, we have the “Jesse and Al” mentality and that we can march on everything and expect an outcome with no work. Yeap, I said it. Marching every time something goes wrong in the community isn’t going to solve ONE THING if people, of ALL RACES, don’t put forth the effort to make sure that the issues they are marching for are followed through. Follow-through must be done in order for change to happen.
Marches have , historically, been a symbol to show that something isn’t right (socially, morally, spiritually, etc.). BUT (I know you don’t start a sentence with BUT), the issues that people are marching for must be presented to the marching participants ahead of time (I haven’t seen the issues for this particular march listed in paragraph one, but please make me aware of them so that I can be corrected).
I guess I am saying all this to say that if people are going to march, identify what you are marching for and FOLLOW THROUGH on the issues you are marching on with those persons of power/influence who can make a change or make things happen. Get as much participation as you can by making the participants aware of the issues and have a next steps/action plan in place so that all can choose to participate and understand WHY they are marching.
Hubby and I were given an Emerilware Electric Fryer as one of our wedding gifts. In the past, I’ve found that electric fryers have been VERY messy and cumbersome to clean. On top of that, I broke the last one by accidentally dropping it on the floor. Needless to say, it’s grease history. It cracked and broke like an egg dropped on concrete.
This particular fryer? I love this dang fryer!! It has an oil filtration system that allows you to filter the oil (once it cools) and not get all of the crumbs and grit that get left in the grease, remove the stainless steel liner/pot where the original oil was heated and clean that baby with ease! In the past, I’ve had to pour the cooled oil into a jar, using cheesecloth or some other “straining device”. Every time, oil would spill, I’d still get grit in the oil, etc. This is VERY easy to clean and VERY easy to set up/heat. It also comes with a LOUD timer (in case I start yapping on the phone or get distracted with other cooking). On top of all of that, EVERY piece (except for the heating element) claims it’s dishwasher safe. I hand-washed ours (just in case).
We tried one of the recipes that came with the fryer (Chili Lime Fried Chicken). I think it came out great! You could really taste the lime and the chicken wasn’t DRY. Hubby thinks that any fried chicken not seasoned like Popeyes or with creole seasoning is just “okay” (sigh). Maybe because I am a tequila-lime chicken lovin’ fool, I thought that the wings were fab!
So, I wasn’t here when the trash people ran last week, but I am SURE that they were like, “WHAT JUST HAPPENED HERE?!”. LOL…
Next set of items, boxes with books and hobby stuff (sewing, knitting and scrapbooking supplies). I COULD set up one of the bedrooms upstairs for this, but since there is a bedroom in the basement, I will use that room for my personal “hobby lobby”.
Okay, I have a secret to tell you all. Promise you won’t go off? Okay…here it is…..I have a stash ya’lll. NO, NO, NO……..get your minds out of the gutters and off of the plants! LOL…. YARN and FABRIC stashes! I NEED to produce the garments and items that I originally purchased the yarn and fabric for. Once I get the room organized (deadline: end of July…..LOOK, I work all week and only have the weekends to do for me!), I’ll start on some fall stuff (hey, it will take me that long to finish them).
Here is some GOOD news from Operation Purge. Hubby and I LOVE how our kitchen is set up now! The kitchen is small where we are renting and hey, I have a lot of kitchen stuff that I use (noticed, I said I and not we….we are eventually going to get hubby on the cooking for two bandwagon). We’ve donated all of the items that we no longer needed to the Salvation Army. YAY! Kitchen is fully functional and getting DAILY usage!
So, once I go through these boxes, I’ll have to report to you all what I found, what was kept, what was donated and what was FLAT OUT thrown out!
Anyone who KNOWS me KNOWS what I am thinking right now.
That dang Venus. So, she AND her sister, Serena, were in the finals of Wimbledon. First Tiger smacks the US Open with a non-existent knee and now the Williams sisters are in the finals of the Wimbledon……and Venus WON!
What’s next? HA HA HA HA (sitting back in my computer chair with my feet kicked up, feeling like sipping on a glass of GOOD cabernet….and you know why!!)….
I thought I told ya’ that we won’t stop?!
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