WEEK IN REVIEW

The Martin Luther King you don't see on TV Every year on April 4, as Americans commemorate Martin Luther King's death, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader."

The remarkable thing about these reviews of King's life is that several years - his last years - are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.

What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968).

An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn't take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever.

Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they're not shown today on TV. Why? It's because national news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years.

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human rights" - including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power.

"True compassion," King declared, "is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 –– a year to the day before he was murdered –– King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

( Full text and audio of the speech is here )

From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King questioned "our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America," and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions "of the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World, instead of supporting them.

In foreign policy, King also offered an economic critique, complaining about "capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries."

You haven't heard the "Beyond Vietnam" speech on network news retrospectives, but national media heard it loud and clear back in 1967 - and loudly denounced it. Time magazine called it "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." The Washington Post patronized that "King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

In 2007, in this nation of immense wealth, the White House and most in Congress continue to accept the perpetuation of poverty. They fund foreign wars with "alacrity and generosity," while being miserly in dispensing funds for education and healthcare and environmental cleanup.

And those priorities are largely unquestioned by the mainstream media. No surprise that they tell us so little about the last years of Martin Luther King's life.
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POLITICS
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The Miami Herald ran an article titled

Haitians have high profile, low clout. The Haitian-American Community has failed to come together to lobby for immigration reform. This is a recuring problems from my pespective on immigration. Immigration is viewed as a "Latino issues", and other groups that would stand to benefit from reform are silent and unorganized.

The contrast is stark. Cuban Americans have a powerful Washington lobby that has helped win and maintain favorable treatment for its migrants.

Why can't the Haitian diaspora do the same?

The Haitian community has more friends than ever in high places in Congress, and its diaspora is throwing its muscle around more. But on immigration -- a burning theme for many Haitians -- its voice is muted.

Class and political divisions, some of them carried over from Haiti, hinder its lobbying clout on issues like immigration, several experts say, and explain in part the lack of congressional outcry when the 101 Haitians washed up on Hallandale Beach last Wednesday were immediately detained.

South Florida is home to the largest Haitian community in the country, with an estimated 329,883 of the 694,123 Haitians nationwide. And their status as one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups is reflected in their political gains.

In related news Southern command chief and Rep Meek tell Haitians not to risk travel

Fresh from walking the once gang-plagued streets of this capital's most notorious and feared slum, Kendrick Meek warned Haitians to stay home and not attempt to take risky boat trips from Haiti.

''I want to discourage anyone that is even thinking about it from taking to the sea. Nine times of 10, they will be deported or even lose their life at sea,'' Meek told Haitians after ending a seven-hour trip along with Navy Adm. Jim Stavridis, who heads the U.S. Southern Command. ``I've seen the U.S. Coast Guard tapes of hundreds of Haitians dying at sea when boats tip over at night.''

Meek and Stavridis flew in and out of Haiti Monday, meeting with Haiti, U.N. and U.S. officials, but not before Meek -- a Miami Democrat who represents the largest voting bloc of Haitian immigrants -- also toured Cité Soleil on foot.

Barely a month ago, few would dare venture into the heart of the slum, where gangs freely roamed, bringing kidnapping victims by boat late at night.

My sources tell me that Meek has been getting grilled on creole radio stations, many feel he isn't doing enough for the Haitian community. He faced a primary challenge in 2006 over this issue so stayed tuned.
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When House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn addresses a joint session of the legislature in his home state of South Carolina on April 10, he will do so with a sense of pride — and a sense of history.

The fact that Clyburn will become the first African-American congressman in more than a century to address the General Assembly is not because the legislators failed to invite any of Clyburn’s black predecessors: Between 1897 and Clyburn’s first election in 1992, there were none.

The Capitol building in which Clyburn will speak is the same one where statutes passed in the late 19th century — known as “Jim Crow” laws — essentially deprived the state’s large black population of the franchise and other civil rights.

Not until the enactment of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, when Clyburn already was 25 years old, were African-Americans able to vote freely in South Carolina. Not until that law, as amended, was interpreted in the early 1990s as effectively requiring the creation of more districts that would elect minorities to Congress did South Carolina create the black-majority district, the 6th, that enabled Clyburn to win his seat in the House.

His rapport with colleagues and skill as an inside political player were quickly evident. Elected as co-president of the House freshman Class of 1992, he later earned a seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee, served as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and quietly but effectively moved up the House Democratic leadership ladder.

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CULTURE
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Uncle Ben will return as CEO?!?! I don't know how you feel about this but I keep laughing. I know I should take it more serious because of the history but...

A racially charged advertising character, who for decades has been relegated to a minor role in the marketing of the products that still carry his name, is taking center stage in a campaign that gives him a makeover — Madison Avenue style — by promoting him to chairman of the company.

The character is Uncle Ben, the symbol for more than 60 years of the Uncle Ben’s line of rices and side dishes now sold by the food giant Mars. The challenges confronting Mars in reviving a character as racially fraught as Uncle Ben were evidenced in the reactions of experts to a redesigned Web site (unclebens.com), which went live this week.

“This is an interesting idea, but for me it still has a very high cringe factor,” said Luke Visconti, partner at Diversity Inc. Media in Newark, which publishes a magazine and Web site devoted to diversity in the workplace.

“There’s a lot of baggage associated with the image,” Mr. Visconti said, which the makeover “is glossing over.”

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Black stars bring faith into the open as we get closer to 2008 and he here the term "Value Voters" (only applied to White people who go to conservative churches) we need to remind Democrats to remember there are lots of Progressive Christians. All Democrast should take a page from how Black Celebrities talk about religion. They need to not only do the "Black Church Rally before Election time" but also visit Hispanic and Progressive White Denominations (Episcopalians, UCC, ect)

Throughout the industry, where many white entertainers hide their light under a bushel, their African-American equivalents are more than happy to let it shine.
For instance, at this year's Oscars, Jennifer Hudson and Forest Whitaker were the only two winners to thank God in their acceptance speeches.

It's a cultural thing, says Reuben Cannon, who produced Bishop T.D. Jakes' "Woman Thou Art Loosed" and the Tyler Perry features for Lionsgate: "The open expression of faith and belief in God among African-Americans has always been there. It is simply embracing that which most African-Americans were raised with, which is the black church. We know we've come this far by faith, and our success will be in direct proportion to our faith."

While Hollywood sometimes fears that religion will drive away auds, the opposite often proves true with black entertainment. Many of the arena's biggest stars manage to be devout without coming across preachy or square.

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Food for thought. I will let yall make up your own mind on this one. For some black fraternities, body branding is a symbol of devotion

When Kenny Curtis got his first brand, he wanted to scream because of the pain, but he couldn’t because of the towel in his mouth.

Curtis, a 23-year-old senior at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha. He has the number 1 branded on his right arm and the symbol for Alpha Phi Alpha on his left.

The tradition of branding, which is a third degree burn on the skin that results in a scar, is a complex practice in black fraternities. To its supporters, branding is a visual aid that shows commitment to a Greek organization. To critics, it is a barbaric act.

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MONEY
This is a must read. The gentrification of rundown city neighborhoods conjures an image of well-off whites displacing poor minorities. What's actually going on is far more complex, and the winners and losers can be hard to predict. As minorities become wealthier many of the homes being bought in "urban renewal" projects are being purchased by middle class minorities. I found it hard to find a good part to quote but it's a very good read.
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