HOW COULD WE BE BLIND-SIDED?!!!!!

Bush hasn't done anything that we should not have expected him and his cronies to do.
He sat mum with this Trent Lott debacle; and just for the record I didn't think that a big deal should have been made out of the tripe that he espoused... His mumbled rhetoric is the average rhetoric; if not coming from the mouths of the majority of folks here... then surely in their minds.
It seems to me that some time, maybe in the 80's we started believing that everything was equal in this society and racism had been eradicated and we really did believe that we were a loved people - I mean hey, we had the Cosby Show!

Affirmative Action has been under attack since the minute it was enacted - this debacle should be for us a study in perserverence and almost military like; precise organization. I mean as soon as AA comes up they have all the soldiers in place... you have your gang leaders penning subtle racist bs, and they change a word or two and put it in all the papers and magazines (under different names of course!!!)... and just to show that they are not elitist as well as racist, they get some hick to call a talk show (wink wink)- someone like your grand wizards Bill O'reilly or Rush Limbaugh; and say something like, "Yeah, why Blacks gotta get everything, and when I went into the local dollar mart and filled out an application they gave "my" job to a black man without the same qualifications as me..." and then they have to make sure they are not seen for the racist that they truly are, they have some overly emotional woman acting black man on the show; let's see, how about Armstrong Williams, "Them people don't need no AA, and it's good what my President is doing to'em..." and just to make sure they don't seem sexist, they get sweet blonde haired blue eyed Darlene (how bout Ann Coulter) trying to act tough, and just spew some bs out between flashes of getting her *** kicked as a youngster... 'cause we know that that was black folk fault... and they don't even leave out the illiterate, and of course they find another black man, because ain't no white men illiterate you know, oh hell I'll just find the poster boy for illiteracy, Jesse Lee Peterson, "Naw boss, ya right, them black folk all dum, e-moral, and pa- pa- pa te- te-ic..." of course in print, Billy up from the college would have come and corrected this before we see it.

And we are appalled??? Why?

All clowning aside. Just so you can understand where I am coming from.
Do I believe that we need AA in education? No. In fact the vast majority of us have not had any kind of AA bestowed upon us, rather it be in education or the workplace.
I could even go along with Bush's plan, if in fact the top 10% of all highschools in each state are guaranteed admission to the colleges. Yeah, I know that some of you would say, yes that works if we are segregated... well news flash, basically we are.... and finally now they are talking of funding the schools in the areas where blacks are at like they fund the schools in white areas (and another news flash-- our tax money goes for that too); but isn't it ironic--- to get equal funding is what we, African-Americans have wanted and voicing for the last 20-30 years!!!) But then again, if you look in places where Bush has brought his fire-- things don't look so good, now do they... the schools in Cali, Tex., and Fla., are not doing so well.... because they are not doing what they said they were going to do.... but this is a good pipe dream....

As a matter of fact I take what they are doing as a testement to just how **** far we have come! Remember, just yesterday they made it illegal for us to know how to read or write...

If we can organize and stop all the infighting... think how far we could be.

If you need a people to look to, I say look to the Jews... and say once and for all, "Never Again."
Or study the Asians... and be a help up, to your own people...
How about look back at our foremothers and forefathers who survived under the lash.... through Jim Crow.... through rape, mutilation, and being killed so that we could still be here... I'm still here, are you?

Of course I was not blindsided!!!! But, yes I do think that a big segment of our population was.... It is like we have forgotten.

Why don't we use the system; demand what he said that he was going to do. Change the tax base so that all schools get equtable funds...

It may be cliche but it is truth..."If you don't know your past, you have no future" Our kids don't know the past; and too many of us, African-Americans, want to deny it, because we think that that is the only way we can live; yet each and everyday we are reminded of it.....

Kemistry, what I was trying to illustrate is that they are organized; we should organize.... we can if we cooperate....

We are not at that point yet, I guess.... Although our kids are killing each other and themselves (meaning us) with impunity, although the schools that our kids go to are underpriveledged, and overrepresented with unqualified people to teach (and persons I believe who are there to help them to continue to fail-but that is another thread); and our men and children are being locked down at rates I am afraid to utter-- and please don't give me that, they are doing crime nonsense... if you do a careful study of who is doing crime you will see that not only are they not doing the majority of crimes, but because of their skin (yes!)... comparable crimes by our paler brethren either go unpunished, or is altered in a way--- NOT TO DESTROY THEIR LIVES!!!! But we are not ready....... yet.......if..........ever?

And you said something very profound..."Once they stop educating you...."
I think you are right, but why can't we educate ourselves? It is actually happening all over the country. We already had great schools like Piney Hills (please excuse spelling), and I forget the name of the school a sister started in Florida that is in the top 5 in the nation (but i'll get back to ya); not to mention the quality education that many of the HBCU's ..... did you ever notice that the majority of Af-Americans who really make it come out of these kinds of systems.... just one example, in Louisiana, the big university is LSU.... it gets the most money and the most accolades, yet, it is Southern Universities math department that they utilize (ask Shaq, he had to go )..... and it is the Law Department that is superior--- again used with the LSU system; and the Engineering Department that seems to be eons ahead....
So we can educate ourselves, have more control over our own destinies.... and teach the truth of history... all history and throw out the propaganda.... "Washington never chopped down a cherry tree... he was almost impeached (1 vote), Lincoln did lie, and he didn't read by no candlelight in a log cabin, Martin Luther King was the voice of Civil Rights Movement, as wellas, human flesh and blood, and during this great movement all Blacks were not together, and many lost their families in it to (not to just the violence, I'm talking ostracism)...
While we sit back and say they have to do it... we are not getting it done ourselves.

Happy MLK day...

BLACKS, LOTT AND LATINOS
By Fernando Oaxaca
lamextex@ix.netcom.com
Los Angeles December 14, 2002

The Black Brotherhood (plus Maxine) of the usual anti-Republican, anti-Bush suspects, Jesse Jackson, Maxine Waters, Al Sharpton, the NAACP's Julian Bond and Kweisi Mfume, and assorted others from the Congressional Black Caucus, for almost a week, have engaged in a frenzy of mostly hypocritical attacks on Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi. Lott probably earned some of their emotional rant, not through his excessive racism but through his humonguous political gaffe as he seemed to praise 100 year-old Strom Thurmond's antique segregationist past at Strom's birthday party some days ago.

In a competing flush of counter-rhetoric, the more prominent conservative radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity or magazine writers like Jonah Goldberg, David Horowitz or William Cristol were quick to point out the hypocrisy of the attacks on Lott even as they too condemned him, mostly for stupidity rather than racism. The media had a disgustingly extended field day.

On the "right", many brought up the deafening silence of Lott's African-American critics when very white Democrat darling and near-iconic "dean" of the Senate, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, made his multiple "white ******" remarks on a national Sunday TV show some months ago. Memories of Jesse Jackson's "Hymietown" black-ignored comment at the 1984 Democratic Convention were gleefully revived. The apparent approval of or selective inattention to Harry Belafonte's recent and incredible characterization of Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condolezza Rice as "house slaves" (in the George W. Bush's "slave owner's" White House?) by Trent Lott's black detractors was pointed out by those critiquing the seemingly unanimous black piling on, on poor Mr. Lott.

Nobody appeared to ask them: "Why now?" about these "newly discovered" segregationist tendencies in the majority leader. And no non-black pundit dared accuse black critics of making "racist" remarks. Belafonte and Congresswoman Diane Watson, who berated affirmative-action foe, Ward Connerly, for marrying a "white woman".....joined those getting a free ride.

Supposing, silly as it seems, that Mr. Lott did indeed choose the Thurmond birthday party to bring forth a new Republican initiative of reintroducing separate latrines and lunch counters into American society. Shouldn't these pious and incredibly concerned black leaders have been equally worried when their Party chose as their Vice Presidential candidate, twice, the senatorially mentored and trained son of one of the most prominent Democrat segregationists and civil rights foes, deceased and long ago in office, Senator Al Gore, Senior? After all, last week they had to go back to 1948, Trent Lott's college days, to "prove" Lott's segregationist beginnings when he fought introducing black membership into his fraternity. (Like women into the Augusta Golf Club?)

And how about our first "black" President (per black writer, Toni Morrison), William Jefferson Clinton? How could the black anti-Lott leadership figures (and their African-American constituency) have given a man mentored by William Fullbright, another prominent segregation enthusiast and anti-civil rights dead Senator of the past; how could they, without fear of revival of dormant Fulbright-inculcated tendencies, have given the former Arkansas Governor 9 out of 10 of their votes for President, twice!?

Is it possible that Southern Democrat Senators are better at "cleansing" their psyche of any thoughts at all about the clearly immoral idea of segregation when compared to Southern Republican Senators? Is "Fritz" Hollings "cleaner" than Strom Thurmond?

Guess what, amigos; I don't care! I am tired of the issue, of lame talk-show debates, of the whining, of the back and forth closeted racism and of the holier-than-thou posturing on both sides.

Frankly, for the benefit of the initiatives and challenges being dealt with so admirably by our President, George W. Bush, Trent Lott should resign his leadership post in the Senate. He has been tainted indelibly by the past few days; unfairly or not, media and Democrats will now exploit this mess for years. His fellow Republican Senators, with a little advice from the leader of the Party, President Bush, should now pick a new, strong leader. Unlike Lott, we need a Majority Leader who can take care of Senate support to the war and national security, deal competently with the domestic economy, keep the ever more irrelevant Tom Daschle in his little box, moving Bush judicial and other appointees through the consent system and showing some legislative imagination in reforming Social Security, immigration policy, health care, etc.

You may have noticed that thus far in this article, the word "Latino" has not appeared. The reason is simple. The Lott "problem" is mostly in the cynical, politically driven minds of black "leaders" and their white enablers with presidential ambitions like Al Gore and John Kerry. The irrepressible Ms. Waters revealed her real agenda when she attacked poor old Tom Daschle for having the temerity to treat the Lott blunder as just that, rather than some arcane and evil racist plot surfacing through remarks at a birthday party. Maxine then used the opportunity to threaten lesser black support in future elections if Tom did not join the pack of Lott bashers......he complied! Would-be presidential candidate Sharpton also blew his cover (New York Sun, 12/13/02) when he took on Mr. Gore's former black guru, Donna Brazile (who vowed not "to let the white boys win" in 2000), as they recessed temporarily from Lott-bashing while they clashed on black plans for the 2004 primary!

And so it went. What we are really seeing is further reaction to the Bush-led Democrat trouncing of November 5. Blacks, just like their liberal associates, see a nation moving away from the big/generous government and intrusive/liberal policies that they enjoyed for eight years of Clinton-Gore. Without clear evidence, it is also possible that we are seeing, in a strange kind of way, an anti-Bush effort designed to help derail a Presidency that is not "Southern" and thus prone to interpreting "minority" as solely black. They see and fear, rather, a "western" President, not beholden or captive to the black vote, a genial conservative (in its best sense), and, horror of horrors, a President equally sympathetic to people they see as competitors in their zero-sum-game view of "minorities" in America, the expanding Latino presence in all walks of life.

Another possibility is that this assault on Republicanism, cloaked cleverly in race-based allegations, could be an unconscious demonstration of black fears that the exploding Latino presence in sheer population, political influence and the marketplace, places them increasingly in a sharing configuration rather than in a dominant mode in "minority" America. Of course, it could also just be an attempt by blacks to revive the pro-"minority" momentum of the '60's which is seen today as anachronistic to much of the more merit-based society of 2002, a society in which Latinos are culturally comfortable.

In any case, Latinos have nothing to fear from Trent Lott, with or without his leadership post. President Bush will be re-elected in 2004 and we will continue to enjoy his understanding and positive view of who and what we Latinos are, what we are capable of doing and how we address achieving the American dream. And there is a new enlightenment in the country, in D.C. and in state capitals, about Latinos. The growing number of Latino elected officials from both parties and at all levels, the Bush Latino appointees, Mr. Bush himself and the First Lady, a more aware media at national and local level......and most important of all, the movement of bright, young, educated Latinos into all parts of American society.......all serve to give our community an overall optimism and assured belief that our great nation will always allow those of our heritage to grow and prosper.

Nasty political imbroglios like the Lott incident are irrelevant to our future as a community. Further, it is highly likely that the vast majority of our African-American friends and neighbors do not share the paranoia or cynicism of the Mfumes and Sharptons of the world. The media has had their journalistic orgasm of the month. It is time for all of us to again to get behind the President in winning the war, bringing our Armed Forces men and women home, and working together on our problems at home. Time is fleeting!

And yet we fight for ourselves and all... this is just a replay of the history that we make... focus on ourselves and our well-being and we will be okay...