Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era

After Hearing Dr. Baker on NPR, I decided to purchase his book Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era.  I am in the process of reading it now. Here is a question for you:  Are black intellectuals doing enough?  Should they be working on the ground as well as in the academia? 

The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t and Why-by Jabari Asim

In 2003, Randall Kennedy’s book Nigger started an intense conversation about the use and implications of that epithet. The N-Word moves far beyond Kennedy’s short, provocative book by tracing the symbiotic growth of the n-word and racism in America over the past 400 years. Charting this parallel track reveals how the slur has reflected—and enhanced—bigotry. Asim pinpoints Thomas Jefferson as the source of our enduring image of the “nigger.” In a seminal but now obscure essay, Jefferson marshaled a welter of pseudo-science to define the stereotype of a shiftless child-man with huge appetites and stunted self control. Asim then reveals how nineteenth-century “science” colluded with popular culture to amplify this slander. What began as false generalizations became institutionalized in every corner of our society: the arts and sciences, sports, the law, and the streets.

 Here is a recent interview that Asim did on WUSA channel 9 news. Video

To Sir, with Love- Edward Ricardo Braithwaite

 

 Many have never heard of this man. I must admit up until today I knew nothing about him, or that the movie which stared Sidney Poitier.  Please read his bio.  He was on the Joe Madison show this morning and he is local; right here in Washington, DC!!  He is truly amazing.  He gave a speech on blacks and education which had me raise up from my seat.  He is a brilliant intellectual who does not get the recognition he deserves.  His memior is called To Sir, with Love

Bury that Sucka!: A Scandalous Love Affair with the N-word

Bury That Sucka! explores and examines what makes the African American community the epitome of an incredible paradox. On the one hand, there is this unbelievable love affair with the word nigger-at the same time, when used by a non-black, the word suddenly becomes an insult. A self-inflicting, mental genocide is the road that the community appears to be traveling down…prompting an appeal to the black community to bury the N-word.

Holy Lockdown: Does the Church Limit Black Progress? by Jeremiah Camara

 

Holy Lockdown addresses the paradox that exists within the Black community. One that reflects the abundance of Black churches coupled with the abundance of Black problems. There are approximately 85,000 predominately Black churches in this country, meaning, we could have 1,700 Black churches in every state!

Holy Lockdown takes a critical and long overdue look at the psychological impact the church and sermonic rhetoric has made on the Black collective, and it explores the possibility of the church as being a contributing factor to many social problems facing Blacks.

State of Denial: Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward’s third book on President Bush is a sweeping narrative — from the first days George W. Bush thought seriously about running for president through the recruitment of his national security team, the war in Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the struggle for political survival in the second term. After more than three decades of reporting on national security decision making — including his two #1 national bestsellers on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush at War (2002) and Plan of Attack (2004) — Woodward provides the fullest account, and explanation, of the road Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the White House staff have walked.

War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War onthe American Dream and How to Fight Back

 

Now, with War on the Middle Class, Dobbs takes an impassioned and rousing stance on the all-out class war that is turning the American dream into a nightmare.

In a sweeping analysis, Dobbs looks at every aspect of the decline of the middle class—from a lack of political representation to America’s corrupt health-care system—to demonstrate how the gap between America’s newest haves and have-nots is no longer merely financial, but instead includes the erosion of education, employment, government, and community. Dobbs proposes a series of measures to resolve each issue and incite people, whose future is being mortgaged to benefit a powerful few, to preserve their rights and dreams.

Man Up: Nobody is Coming to Save Us: Steve Perry

 

Man Up! is a hard hitting, hip, introspective look into what the Black community must do to save itself. Finally, a voice speaks to the complex relationship between personal and community responsibility. Steve Perry effectively calls to task organizations such as the NAACP and the Black church as well as talking heads like Michael Eric Dyson and Cornell West for their role in the retardation of the Black community. Ultimately Man Up! is about the simple solutions offered in each chapter.

Enough: Juan Williams

I have always been a fan of Juan Williams.  I don’t always agree with him, but He adds thought to the debate of how to fix the problems in black america.

NPR : Juan Williams on African-American Victimhood

When Bill Cosby addressed a 50th-anniversary celebration of Brown v. Board of Education, he created a major controversy with seemingly inoffensive counsel (“begin with getting a high school education, not having children until one is twenty-one and married, working hard at any job, and being good parents”). Building from Cosby’s speech, NPR/Fox journalist Williams offers his ballast to Cosby’s position. Williams starts with the question, “Why are so many black Americans, people born inside the gates of American opportunity, still living as if they were locked out from all America has to offer?” His answers include the debacle of big-city politics under self-serving black politicians; reparations as “a divisive dead-end idea”; the parlous state of city schools “under the alliance between the civil rights leaders and the teachers’ unions”; and the transformation of rap from “its willingness to confront establishment and stereotypes” to “America’s late-night masturbatory fantasy.” A sense of the erosion of “the high moral standing of civil rights” underlies Cosby’s anguish and Williams’s anger. Politically interested readers of a mildly conservative bent will find this book sheer dynamite. (Aug.)
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Secrets Uncovered, J. Edgar Hoover Passing For White?

This story is absolutely startling and at the same time amazing.  J Edgar Hoover, the man who despised Dr. King and was not a supporter of the Civil Right’s Movement, is mixed.  Yes ladies and gentleman, J. Edgar Hoover is a NEGRO. 

This man hated his African ancestry so much that he passed for white.  Millie L. McGhee, is black women who is an educator in California.  She remembers as a child that her older relatives told her that they were decedents of the Hoover family, and as an adult she decided to do more research.  She found a genealogist her assisted her and their findings were mind blowing.  This man who appeared to be against anything that advanced the African American was indeed black himself. 

 

It’s all in her book: “Secrets Uncovered, J. Edgar Hoover Passing For White?”  I know this book has been out for a while but its worth talking about.

“Secrets Uncovered, J. Edgar Hoover Passing For White?”