Displaying more dignity and grace than most anyone else could have mustered under the circumstances, Haiti’s Ambassador to the United States, Raymond Joseph, offered a precise explanation of history to address the odious comments Pat Robertson made yesterday while men, women and children lay trapped in agony.

I am absolutely sick of people defending hate filled oratory.
Trent Lott’s comments “weren’t said with malice”.
Rush Limbaugh’s “just trying to rile people up”.
Both words and deeds count.
Think about it.

Being an honest, yet enthusiastic American requires the ability to consistently integrate the pretty, mythic narratives that our nation holds dear with the always more complicated and often very ugly truth of our American story. Like my experience of George Washington’s birthday, some American Indians refer to the Thanksgiving I celebrate as a National Day of Mourning. And with good reason.
Far away from the fables we learned as schoolchildren, the truth is that Pilgrim “settlers” came onto a land that had already been “settled”: corn planted, fields cleared, seeds …

Congressman John Lewis and the white man who beat him bloody during a civil rights protest in 1961, came together to accept the Common Ground award Thursday night. “The Common Ground Awards are presented annually to honor outstanding accomplishments in conflict resolution, negotiation, community building, and peacebuilding. Recipients have made significant contributions toward bridging divides between people, finding solutions to seemingly intractable problems, and providing inspiration, and hope where often there was none.”
The reconciliation journeys of Rep. John Lewis and Elwin Wilson embody the best of these principles.

According to AP:
Elwin …

The best antidote to the fear induced, mass amnesia afflicting so many of our brothers and sisters on the far right is truth. So I’ve written a post over at AOL BlackSpin that reminds that Republican presidents have made direct appeals to our nation’s children for help with meeting White House goals. Sure there was push back from Democrats, most notably to the address President Bush gave in October 1991, on the eve of the 1992 presidential campaign. Still, I don’t recall and cannot find any evidence of lefty parents …

There is nothing more anti-American than to lie about our nation’s multi-colored history. To see our nation in all of her glory is to see our remarkable democracy as an awesome human undertaking. But Pat Buchanan, and so many others like him, will never be able to embrace the promise and the purpose that the Founding Fathers laid out because it now includes all people who seek freedom not just white men.

Since the presidential campaign of 2008 and the election of our nation’s first black president, Patrick J. Buchanan has …

Happy 4th of July 2009 everyone! It’s been a crazy offline time for me lately. But things are finally quieting down so I can get back to doing what I love most; talking, ranting, watching. These habits are also known as blogging.
So for today, have a look at the Declaration of Independence, hug a service man or woman, and join me in counting blessings.
I can’t support the use of dangerous fireworks at home. But if you must use fireworks, you should buy them from these ladies:

h/t Dlisted

Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.
And Michael Jackson, the artist, has provided me with more moments of sheer joy than any other entertainer in my lifetime.
I remember The Jackson 5 cartoon series.
I remember ‘Ben’ and ‘Got to be there’ and ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’
I remember when I loved (heart filling, far away, dreamy love) Michael Jackson. We were both little kids.
I remember screaming out loud in astonished delight as I watched Michael Jackson do the “Moonwalk” for the first time during the ‘Motown 25: …

On June 19, 1865, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas with news that the Civil War had ended and those who had been slaves were now free. There are a number of accounts as to why freedom took so long to arrive in Texas:
Later attempts to explain this two and a half year delay in the receipt of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of …

Far be it from me to oppose a good passionate grassroots movement. Maybe I’m dating myself here, but I still remember big, huge marches and demonstrations that energized the heart and focused our nation’s gaze on high ideas – at least for the day. I support the scattered message tea partiers who have every right to take to the streets, distort history, wave their offensive signs and spout misinformation about the “inevitable” consequences of the proposed Federal tax increases.

And believe it or not, I don’t think the anti-spending battle …

Did you know that April is Confederate History month? Neither did I until I went clicking around for new and interesting stories to talk about here. Not surprisingly, according to Wikipedia and the official Confederate History month website, Confederate History Month is celebrated mostly in Southern states.
Georgia’s Governor Sonny Perdue and Mississippi’s Governor Haley Barbour have both signed a proclamation designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month for 2009 and city mayors and county commissioners will follow and; The Georgia Senate also recently passed SB Bill 27 officially …

A white seventh grade Kansas middle school student finds himself punished because of his teacher’s inability to fully explain the horrors of Jim Crow and the deadly history of the domestic terrorist group known as the Ku Klux Klan.
An Andover family has contacted the Wichita Branch NAACP about a board game created by a Andover seventh-grader that centered on the Ku Klux Klan. Dante and Terica Davis, who are African-American and who filed the complaint, said they’re not against students learning about the KKK.
The offense, Terica Davis said, stems from …

I remember April 4, 1968, the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. I still hold distinct images of my mother and grandmother sobbing once they heard the news and I remember the black-and-white images broadcast during the special reports the following day.
I’d like to think that those of us too young to actually remember the assassination of Dr. King are lucky. In my deepest optimism, I hope that America’s younger generations will never experience the ravaging heart pain of an assassination, especially one prompted by racist motives. …

Pioneering historian John Hope Franklin dies at 94

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — John Hope Franklin, a towering scholar and pioneer of African-American studies who wrote the seminal text on the black experience in the U.S. and worked on the landmark Supreme Court case that outlawed public school segregation, died Wednesday. He was 94.
…He often regarded his country like an exasperated relative, frustrated by racism’s stubborn power, yet refusing to give up. “I want to be out there on the firing line, helping, directing or doing something to try to make this …

So, I’ve just accepted it. Holidays would barely be noticed these days if not for time off and the now expected store sales that go with them. Throwaway, over-sized, newspaper pages bark up the bargains to be found at after Thanksgiving sales, after Christmas sales, Independence Day sales, Presidents Day sales and now, in a true nod to equality, Black History Month sales!
But…erm…this latest effort highlighted by Gawker, was not exactly what I was expecting from a grocery store. Here it is:

Now I want to say right off the bat …

Here’s my beef. If you equate every perceived transgression in the world with the worst of the Nazis or the Klan then we can easily become desensitized to the horror of the acts actually committed by these organizations. As a dog lover, and proud Mama to two rescued, mixed breed, furry children, PETA sure as heck has ‘harshed’ my mellow when all I was trying to do was enjoy a little canine shenanigans. Here’s what happened:
The animal rights group, which every year stages a protest at the Westminster Kennel Club …