(REAL TIMES MEDIA)—Technology supposedly says a lot about your station in life. I-Phones are for folks who like a lot of bells and whistles while Blackberrys are for the serious businessman. Macs are for cool urbane techies while PCs are for stodgy old office drones. New research shows that being a MySpace or a Facebook person says a lot about you, too. I’m a Facebook guy, and according to recent studies that makes me a snobby middle class White kid. Dr. Danah Boyd, a Microsoft researcher and social networks scholar, has put out a recent study showing that MySpace and Facebook are beginning to diverge by class and race. Myspace and Facebook are beginning to look a lot more like America and maybe that’s not such a good thing.
To put it simply, Black kids are, on average, more obese than their White or Latino peers. As they age, these kids usually don’t outgrow their obesity: they usually become overweight adults. A recent study found that nearly 80 percent of children who were obese between the ages of 10 and 15 were also obese once they reached 25. Overweight children and teens are at risk for developing high blood pressure and diabetes and are more likely to have a heart attack or stroke in adulthood than their thinner counterparts. Childhood obesity is a growing problem, one that must be put in check. This isn’t about aesthetics. It’s about health.
Barack Obama hired Anthony “Van” Jones as a special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Jones is an admitted “rowdy Black nationalist” and “communist” who was also a co-founder of the communist revolutionary organization STORM: Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. Quick question: how many Marxists, communists, domestic terrorists and raving racialists does the president get to associate with before reasonable people can assume that the president on some level shares their particular vision of America?
(NNPA)—There exists a word in the American English language that on its own incites such a reaction that it may as well be taboo. It isn’t a curse word or a derogatory term, but rather a simple four-letter concept that by and large encapsulates the crux of many of our problems as a nation. It often times divides us and hinders us from engaging in actual dialogue to address social and cultural issues. This word is none other than race—and it’s about time we start having a real, honest and thorough discussion surrounding it.
(NNPA)—This month, many students are returning to school for another academic year. They did so after two and a half months of summer vacation. Vacation? People who are employed take vacations from work (but that is another column for another week). Students study. Let’s stay right there. According to most educational indices, African-American students—especially Black males—under perform their classroom counterparts. Thus, as Black students return to technology-filled schools, educational stakeholders, including parents and school administrators, should go Black to basics. Prior to directing the Black Leadership Forum, Inc., I served as a vice president of the RainbowPUSH Coalition in Chicago.
(New York, N.Y.)—From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.—Luke 12:48 The above scripture was often quoted by Sen. Robert F. Kennedy to his children, to underscore that as a family of privilege, power and fortune, they had a higher obligation to do more to serve humanity than those of lesser means and influence. Indeed, few American families have been entrusted with more or had more demanded of them than the Kennedy family.
(NNPA)—Inasmuch as everyone is sharing stories about the thoughtfulness of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, I may as well add mine. While attending the national Democratic convention in Denver last August, I wrote a column about what he had to go through to attend the event. “It is remarkable that Kennedy appeared at the convention at all,” I wrote at the time. “After undergoing an operation for one of the most serious forms of brain cancer, he flew to Denver by chartered plane, checked into the University of Colorado Hospital on Sunday, the day before his scheduled speech. There, he had a painful encounter with kidney stones.
For the last four or five weeks I have been gathering information that relates to alleged programs that in theory are designed to ensure that Blacks and women will share in the multimillion contracts being awarded almost daily. It is apparent that some governmental bodies and private corporations don’t care what the laws state when it comes to affording Blacks and women their fair share. In the next three weeks this column will reveal that the old saying, “statistics don’t LIE, but statisticians do,” is more relevant than ever.
(NNPA)—Senator Edward M. Kennedy was a voice for the voiceless. He was passionate about health care, about children, about education. He understood poverty and often spoke of it. The fact that he touched so many lives was evidenced by the thousands that lined the streets of Boston simply to watch his casket drive by, or the lines that snaked toward his gravesite at Arlington Cemetery just a day after he was buried. It begs a cliché to say that he will be missed. More importantly, who in the Senate will give voice to the voiceless?
(REAL TIMES MEDIA)—I’m a Glenn Beck fan. I know that he’s become Fox News Channel’s most notorious gadfly, and that he accused Barack Obama of hating White people and regularly sheds tears on his television show, but that’s why I like him. America needs to hear voices like Glenn Beck, because if he weren’t on the air, he might do something really dangerous, like run for office, or actually create policy and that’s 100 times worse than anything he’s said on the air.
