Welcome to Week in Review! The diary series where issues affecting Americans of African descent, and others are highlighted as our great nation begins to heed the call of A More Perfect Union and move forward. Come, sit a spell and join the discussion.

This diary series isn't meant to balkanize, ghettoize, or separate. It is not a campaign or candidate diary. Instead, it is designed to highlight issues that a significant portion of the Democratic electorate faces daily, whether we live in the inner city or we're solidly middle class suburbanites or we're young urban professionals, or retirees on pensions and social security. America has a rich story, made up of all of us. This is just one small chapter of that story. Take a read. -- Terrypinder





Again, welcome to first issue of group week in review. We hope you enjoy. As this is our first issue, we would like all our readers to give us feedback on the new layout, type of content, amount of content (Is it too much, or too little?), etc. In future issues, we will be including some fun items like Recipes Of Week, Favorite [insert thing here] Polls, and an Acknowledgements section to pay honor to those who are helping to solve problems in their communities -- Sephius1






Black Kos is not an "electioneering diary." On the other hand this diary isn't written in a vacuum. So with the issue of race rising to the level it has, much of this focus is on Sen. Obama. One of the reasons Black Kos was started is the following conversations "Obama's speech called for a conversation that not everyone wants."

LATimes ≫ Talking about race: Um, you first!

How do we start a national dialogue on race?

Charlotte Griffin was at a restaurant one evening when a white woman complimented her on her children's behavior. The stranger may have meant to be kind. But Griffin wondered if she heard a note of condescension -- an assumption, perhaps, that black kids aren't usually so polite.

How do we navigate that minefield?

As a teenager, Stan North went to work on the assembly line at Ford. He made good money. But he noticed that he -- like all the other white guys -- always got the dirty jobs. Seething, he concluded that the boss wouldn't dare give a black man heavy lifting, for fear of being tagged a racist.

How do we acknowledge that anger?

In his recent address on race relations in America -- prompted by his minister's explosive sermons on that topic -- Sen. Barack Obama declared that whites must understand the black experience in America and blacks must appreciate the white perspective. Otherwise, he said, we face a grinding "racial stalemate."...... More ►

Unless your living in a vacuum you have to have heard of this man.

The Root ≫ Tyler Perry's Conservative Tent Revival

I accept that Tyler Perry is a pop culture phenomenon. His new film, Meet the Browns, took in more than $20 million its opening weekend and his TV sitcom, House of Payne, won three NAACP image awards. But I find myself wondering how thoughtful folks are supposed to respond to the retrograde spirituality and formulaic humor of his work.

Are Mr. Perry's creations an embarrassment to the race or gospel genius Are his cultural contributions ultimately useful for black people or merely cheap products from a salesman who aims to get rich? In terms of Black Christianity – recently a hot topic of national discussion -- where does Tyler Perry fit?

Without a doubt, Perry's work represents the most prominent expression of black evangelical spirituality in mainstream television and film. As a producer, writer and actor, he has generated an intensely loyal following from a segment of the market that has long been overlooked by Hollywood—black, urban, Christian women. He has crafted a product to meet their needs: an African American festival of laughing, singing and praising the Lord, centered on a stereotypical and unrestrained Southern grandmother (played by Perry in drag) who renders a comical but visceral black rage.

Ten years after his start doing gospel plays in black theatres, Mr. Perry has made $500 million and is the most prominent Black conservative evangelical on earth....... More ►

Sunday mornings have long been and continue to be the most segregated day in America.

WashingtonPost ≫ A Failure to See Shades of Gray in The Black Church.

On any given Sunday, the tourists are easy to spot by their casual dress -- they may be headed to the Statue of Liberty afterward -- and the fact that most of them are white. Some are eager to see the exquisite stained-glass windows at Mother, which was founded in Lower Manhattan in 1796. Or perhaps they are looking to see the famed church ladies in their elaborate hats. Today, Easter Sunday, their millinery is sure to be extra special. But mostly the tourists come to hear the gospel music. After the choirs have sung and just before settling into the morning's message, the minister asks anyone who does not plan to stay until he has finished to leave now, so as not to interrupt the sermon. The vast majority of the tourists quickly depart.
The ministers welcome these passersby with blessings from the Lord. But it is also clear why they have come: for the entertainment. The service is not so much a sacred ritual as a concert.

In the past week's conversation about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the scorching rhetoric that sometimes is delivered from the pulpit, much of the acrimony might have been avoided if white tourists were just as interested in praying alongside blacks as they were in listening to them sing....... More ►

Hope everyone who celebrates it had a happy Easter.

NYTimes ≫ Obama Talk Fuels Easter Sermons.

This Easter Sunday, the holiest day of the Christian calendar, many pastors will start their sermons about the Resurrection of Jesus and weave in a pointed message about racism and bigotry, and the need to rise above them.

Some pastors began to rethink their sermons on Tuesday, when Senator Barack Obama gave a speech about race, seeking to calm a furor that had erupted over explosive excerpts of sermons by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

The controversy drove the nation to the unpatrolled intersection of race and religion, and as many pastors prepared for their Easter message they said they felt compelled to talk about it. Their congregants were writing and e-mailing them: some wanted to share their emotional reactions to Mr. Obama’s speech; others asked how Mr. Wright, the minister, could utter such inflammatory things from the pulpit....... More ►

A lot of people outside of the Black community don't understand what an explosive issue this is inside the Black community.

The Root ≫ The Perilous Politics of Hair.

A strange and sad thing happened to me on my job search this year. I missed out on an opportunity not because of my skills, but because of my hair. I was looking for a little extra money for college this past February, so I applied for a job at my old place of employment, Ruby Tuesday. I had worked there last year as a server, and the restaurant in downtown DC was undergoing a facelift—along with the surrounding Chinatown neighborhood – so I thought it might be fun to return there.

When I sat down to have an interview with the general manager, he seemed enthusiastic to have me come back as he discussed all the changes that the restaurant was going through. One of those "changes" surprised, confused and angered me: In order to get hired there, I was told, I would have to remove my braids from my hair....... More ►

I wish I could remember the name of the author who wrote these words. "The worlds great divide isn't between East and West, or North and South. It's between the connected and unconnected world. It's between those who grow up connected with access to a woking economy and political system along with the hope that brings, and those who don't".

WashingtonPost ≫ One Man's Personal Mission To End Slavery in Mauritania.

Boubacar Messaoud remembered strolling from the flatlands of Mauritania toward the southern town of Rosso, a watermelon poised on his head. Beyond a riverbank, he could see a row of children in a yard. Messaoud, then 7, stopped to find out what was going on, with the pure curiosity of a child.

He found out that the children were being signed up for school. Messaoud, the son of slaves who toiled in the fields of landowners, recalled that he was still unaware of the privations separating him from others.

Among a knot of parents, Messaoud noticed the cousin of his family's owner and asked him to help him enroll, too. "I can't," the man replied. "What will your master say?"

Messaoud put down his watermelon and cried.

The ancient tradition of slavery endures in Mauritania, although it was officially abolished in the 1980s. There are roughly half a million slaves among the country's population of 3.3 million, and at least 80 percent do not have access to a formal education, Messaoud said. Many remain illiterate....... More ►

The IMF and the World Bank with their "helping" of poor countries, helped make me more of an economic progressive.

BBC ≫ Farmers in Haiti have become the accidental victims of US imports and international aid as food writer Stefan Gates explains.

Maye's mood turns sombre though as he takes me around the village rice fields. This valley used to produce nearly enough rice to feed the entire country, but back in the 1980s the International Monetary Fund and World Bank demanded that Haiti drop import tariffs in return for loans.

Haiti was soon flooded with cheap and heavily subsidised US food.

"We can't compete with imported rice," Maye says.

It is estimated that the US rice crop costs $1.8bn (£900m) to grow, but its farmers get subsidies of $1.3bn (£650m), and there was no way that Haiti could cope with competition like that.

Agriculture - one of the few sources of employment in this desperately poor country - effectively collapsed. Rice production halved and imports increased 50-fold, making Haiti the USA's fourth-largest market for rice....... More ►

One sad fact of life is that chaos breeds authoritarian dictatorships. Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin, Mao, (Putin?). All came to power after flaud elections in a chaotic atmosphere produced a population willing to "trade freedom for safety". This is a warning to Iraq, but this is a story about Haiti.

NYTimes ≫ Haiti’s Poverty Stirs Nostalgia for Old Ghosts.

The imported granite was smashed. The giant cupola was toppled. The grave of François Duvalier, the longtime dictator, is a wreck, much like the country he left behind.

But Victor Planess, who works at the National Cemetery here, has a soft spot for Mr. Duvalier, the man known as Papa Doc. Standing graveside the other day, Mr. Planess reminisced about what he considered the good old days of Mr. Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude, who together ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1986.

“I’d rather have Papa Doc here than all those guys,” Mr. Planess said, gesturing toward the presidential palace down the street. “I would have had a better life if they were still around.”

Mr. Planess, 53, who complains that hunger has become so much a part of his life that his stomach does not even growl anymore, is not alone in his nostalgia for Haiti’s dictatorial past. Other Haitians speak longingly of the security that existed then as well as the lack of garbage in the streets, the lower food prices and the scholarships for overseas study....... More ►

Sometimes I wish this country had oil, we know what would happen then.....

BBC ≫ Zimbabwe ballot papers spark row.

Zimbabwe's main opposition party has accused the government of printing millions of surplus ballot papers for the presidential and legislative polls.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says leaked documents show nine million papers have been ordered for the country's 5.9 million voters....... More ►

NYTimes ≫ Peacekeeping in Darfur Hits More Obstacles

As Darfur smolders in the aftermath of a new government offensive, a long-sought peacekeeping force, expected to be the world’s largest, is in danger of failing even as it begins its mission because of bureaucratic delays, stonewalling by Sudan’s government and reluctance from troop-contributing countries to send peacekeeping forces into an active conflict.

The force, a joint mission of the African Union and the United Nations, officially took over from an overstretched and exhausted African Union force in Darfur on Jan. 1. It now has just over 9,000 of an expected 26,000 soldiers and police officers and will not fully deploy until the end of the year, United Nations officials said....... More ►

NYTimes ≫ Glimmers of Progress at a Failing School.

THIRD grade has always been a hard year for Rahmana Muhammad’s children, and therefore for her. All of a sudden, it seems to this mother of four, their textbooks have fewer pictures, their homework lasts for hours, and their test scores plummet.

So Ms. Muhammad, 39, was not sure what to expect last month when she arrived at the Newton Street School in Newark to pick up a report card for her youngest child, Dyshirah, 9, who is in third grade. After climbing the concrete stairs to Dyshirah’s classroom, Ms. Muhammad greeted the teacher, Kevin Kilgore, and hunkered down at a low table with the report card. Opening it, she found a C in reading, and a D in math.

Ms. Muhammad looked over at Dyshirah, a slight girl with a head full of braids, who was tracing sentences in a book with her finger. Mr. Kilgore, 22, assured Ms. Muhammad that Dyshirah had made a lot of progress, earning an average of 51 percent on her class math tests compared with 17 percent at the beginning of the marking period....... More ►

As reported by Crook and Liars -Fox News- Faux News -hound- dog Bill O’Reilly and The Factor has turned their attention away from attacking Daily Kos over and over again so that Bill O’Reilly could embark on a sick crusade against Huffinton Post over anonymous comments posted on Arianna’s blog. BillO had his team of producers harassing her at the Take Back America conference yesterday before she went on a panel. You know, coming after her, yelling, “why do you allow these to appear on the HuffPo?” Well, with billions of dollars at NewsCorp’s disposal, what’s Ruppert Murdoch’s excuse for these kind of posts to find their home on FOX, Bill? Look at this Post?

FOX News ≫ Comments

Comment by THayne843

March 19th, 2008 at 5:57 pm

Wow! Jan L. nailed it right on the head!

Reparations? I’m waiting for my thank you! You blacks would be naked and eating bugs if it weren’t for white people. Name ONE successful society started by blacks. Any sign of civilization in Africa was started by Europeans. Any city in America with predominately black leaders is a cesspool. Look at New Orleans, Philadelphia, D.C., Detroit...


Comment by David Tucker

March 19th, 2008 at 5:47 pm

I am sooo tired of hearing how the black man has been mistreated since he was shipped over here to help build America! All I hear is them groveling over being victims.

They are the ones making themselves the victims with their attitude that whites owe them something for bringing their ancestors to the best country that has ever existed. All my life I have only witnessed the blacks with their hands out to the government expecting it to give them everything they want and shouting racist if they don’t get it! No wonder most whites have the opinion that blacks are worthless, lazy sloths who know only how to make more babies and steal everything not nailed down. Barak Lenin Obama, the big eared Muslim, is only fostering this “wo is me” attitude with his obvious prejudices. I, for one, like my white race over that of any other, so does that make me a racist? I don’t thing so. The black man will not break free from his self-imposed shackles until he picks himself up, dusts himself off and begins to provide for himself just like every other race has done who came to this country. Before the blacks can do this, however, they have to rid themselves of the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Farakan, and the good reverend Wright....... More ►

Oh yeah don't forget the best part on FOX’s blog rules:
please note that all comments are moderated and therefore may not appear immediately after submission. IOKIYAR. (sigh)



julimac passed this story on to me, it's part of NPR storycorps recorded American history series. It's one of the most terrible stories I have ever heard.

NPR ≫ Seeing Red over Injustice

One night, Noone was painting her fingernails when her great-grandmother said, "You know, there was a time we couldn't wear no fingernail polish."

To explain, Powell told a story from when she was a girl. Around 1910, Powell lived on a plantation in Lowndes County, Ala., where "she would wash and iron for this white woman."

"One day the lady had thrown away some of her old perfume and nail polish that had dried up. So [Powell] took it home and added some ingredients to the nail polish that made it pliable," Noone says. "Well, when Sunday came, she got all dressed up and painted her nails and put on that perfume and went to church.

"On Monday, she went to the general store, and when she was ready to check out, the white owner asked her, 'What are you doing with your nails painted up like a white woman?' He proceeded to pick up a pair of pliers and he pulled out my grandmama's nails out of its bed one by one."...... More ►

NYTimes ≫ Florida Legislature Apologizes for State’s History of Slavery

The Florida Legislature formally apologized Wednesday for the state’s “shameful” history of slavery, joining five other states that have expressed public regret for what Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, recently called America’s “original sin.”

The two-page resolution passed overwhelmingly in the Senate and then the House, bringing at least one lawmaker to tears. Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican, called it a “significant step” toward reconciliation....... More ►

NYTimes ≫ Early Dazzle, Then Tough Path for a Governor.

Gov. Deval Patrick has lately addressed doting crowds around the country as a surrogate for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, his friend and fellow gifted orator. Last month, Mr. Obama even acknowledged borrowing language from Mr. Patrick’s stump speeches, casting a flattering light on a novice politician barely known outside Massachusetts.

But there is no such glow at home for Mr. Patrick, the first Democrat to lead his state in 16 years and the nation’s second elected black governor....... More ►

Obama and My Family...... More ►
┗ by ProdigalBanker (Robinswing)


Why the Media attack on the Black Church must stop...... More ►
┗ by thats not funny (dopper0189)


A typical black immigrant (an African American perspective)...... More ►
┗ by notablyzen (dopper0189)



Friday Night at the Movies: Blacks in Film ...... More ►
┗ by land of enchantment (dopper0189)


Series by StormBear (dopper0189)
┗ Black History: Sailing to the New World...... More ►
┗ Black History: The Slave Coast...... More ►
┗ Black History: Slave Factories, The Middle Passage and Seasoning Camps...... More ►



Continuing the dialog on race begun by Barack Obama last week (with poll)...... More ►
┗ by mkfarkus (dopper0189)