The Huffington Post has a really interesting video feature on unemployed college and university graduates. The American economy is still bleeding pretty badly, but I'm left to wonder what might happen if all the unemployed educated masses of Africa posted their own vids online. My goodness. Can you imagine? Gives me pause while considering quitting my job to write full-time.
I am saddened and stunned by the magnitude of the Haitian earthquake disaster. Port-au-Prince is in near shambles and some 300,000 of its residents are displaced. I'm not sure what role global warming plays in all of this, but I like to think the entire world is slowly ending and we are all bearing witness, standing dumbly by.
Ushahidi is doing great coverage, and I've been following some live tweets from the ground. Some are really horrifying. I try to stay away from raw video or news reports, still get shivers from the vids I saw of the Ninth Ward and the tsunami, bloated corpses floating in the water.
It's clear that hundreds and thousands of people are buried under piles of rubble. I give thanks for relief workers because it takes a special person to look devastation in the eye and soldier on--I'm simply not that strong.
Just learned that you can donate relief money to Haiti at the Whole Foods checkout counter. I'm not entirely sure what AmeriCares does, but I was so excited to give my $5 that I barely paused to ask whether or not the money will simply pad some administrator's pocket. Wyclef is also taking money through his Yele foundation. If you have some other great relief links, feel free to post.
There are several hoaxes floating around online, namely that JetBlue and American Airlines are flying nurses free to Haiti--which is NOT true, however AA is reportedly flying Red Cross relief workers free of charge to nearby DR. I don't know what social underbelly creates hoaxes around natural disasters. Humanity.
I must have watched five hours of 9/11 coverage on the History Channel yesterday, into the wee hours of the morning. When the towers fell, eight years ago, I was on leave from Stanford, in my Intro to African-American History class at Spelman College. I think class started at 9am because, on his way in, Professor Cobb announced that the World Trade Center was under attack and pushed a television up to the front of the room. We watched the second tower get hit and then he gave a lecture on the Arab-Israeli conflict, certain that these were acts of terrorism. Some of it I remembered from global studies in high school, but it was all somewhat foreign and surreal given the circumstances.
I was somewhat detached and in my head about the carnage of that day. I had spent the summer in Accra, doing plant research at the University of Ghana-Legon, training with an amateur dance troupe, and suffering from -- what I now know as -- a severe bout of malaria drug-induced depression.
My emotions were fairly blunted, and I don't really remember feeling all that sad. Probably why I watched so obsessively yesterday, and felt like I was seeing it all for the first time.
Having now lived in New York for five years, I finally made it in to St. Paul's Chapel, across the street from Ground Zero, last weekend. I looked at all the photos and memorials, watched a few video tributes, then sat down to say a prayer. It's hard to really fathom how many people died in the planes, in the towers, in the Marriott Hotel down below.
I have come to appreciate our uniquely myopic view of ourselves as the center of the world. Our faith in the subways and skyscrapers and cranes, whose failure or sabotage can fell thousands upon thousands of people. I salute those of us who keep the faith. I salute those who died, those who helped clean up, those of us who ensure the security of an unwieldy mass of people, and those of us who defend our civil liberties against political tyranny. I also salute those who foresaw, in our governmental restructuring after 9/11, the impending failure to respond to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. And finally, I salute the Hurricane Katrina victims, responders, and survivors.
If you could write a moment of silence in a blog, this would be it...
Wow. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested last Thursday. In Cambridge. For disorderly conduct. Grey-haired and bespectacled, the fifty-eight-year-old Gates, who now walks with a cane, flew into a "tumultuous" tirade at police responding to a neighbor's tip about a possible break-in (he had gotten locked outside of his home on Harvard campus).
His lawyer is Charles Ogletree. The pair play the race card for a living. This couldn't be a more perfect example of our life and times. Lately I've been thinking we still have no common understanding or language for discussing race, racism, blackness, whiteness, minority-ness, dominance and submission, signifier and signified.
You've gotta read the arrest report. I think I would fly into a "tumultuous" tirade too, although I highly doubt he did. There's no way a black man, and an educated one at that, would go off on a white cop with a pistol. Really don't understand how some folks think that's even in the realm of the possible. Goes to show how privilege breeds ignorance.
Wow. Busy weekend. We threw a surprise baby shower for my sis who is expecting her second baby boy in September. Now that we're all grown up, I quite enjoy being able to gist and laugh and be crazy with my family. After the shower was over, we chilled watching (still nonstop) MJ coverage on CNN.
CNN anchor Don Lemon (pictured above) was discussing the wall-to-wall coverage of MJ's untimely death, suggesting it may have helped raise the black consciousness of the American public. The interview was inset by images of the funeral and, scrolling at the bottom of the screen, a ticker tape announcing Soledad O'Brien's Black in America 2. Shortly before the end of the segment, Lemon plugged Anderson Cooper, who would be covering Obama's trip to Ghana, segueing to an African-American filmmaker who documented his ten days in Africa, dropping some "expert" knowledge about pilgrimages to the Motherland.
I am more than speechless at this shift in the media's consciousness. I think we need to ask ourselves: Is it a good thing? I suppose it's a better alternative than no or a few token blacks in the media. But I must admit that I was quite comfortable flying below the radar screen. Now every half wit, pseudo black intellectual is spouting off half-baked theories on class, race, and society, taking cues from the black powers that be.
I think we need to retire some of these pundits (Al Sharpton, for one) and raise a new crop with some real shit to say. This. is. getting. ridiculous.
CNN anchor Don Lemon (pictured above) was discussing the wall-to-wall coverage of MJ's untimely death, suggesting it may have helped raise the black consciousness of the American public. The interview was inset by images of the funeral and, scrolling at the bottom of the screen, a ticker tape announcing Soledad O'Brien's Black in America 2. Shortly before the end of the segment, Lemon plugged Anderson Cooper, who would be covering Obama's trip to Ghana, segueing to an African-American filmmaker who documented his ten days in Africa, dropping some "expert" knowledge about pilgrimages to the Motherland.
I am more than speechless at this shift in the media's consciousness. I think we need to ask ourselves: Is it a good thing? I suppose it's a better alternative than no or a few token blacks in the media. But I must admit that I was quite comfortable flying below the radar screen. Now every half wit, pseudo black intellectual is spouting off half-baked theories on class, race, and society, taking cues from the black powers that be.
I think we need to retire some of these pundits (Al Sharpton, for one) and raise a new crop with some real shit to say. This. is. getting. ridiculous.
