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What's The Greater Obstacle To Black Progress: No Black Agenda, or Too Many Blacks With An Agenda?

Anthony Samad
Anthony Samad
The Great (great) Frederick Douglass, once said, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress." Malcolm said, "We struggle in different ways" talking about the similarities between integrationist (access) and nationalist (identity) struggles for progress. . . . Certainly, the great leaders and change activists of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, and even in the Twenty-first century recognize the inherent relationship between struggle and progress. Yet, more than ever, the Black community, in the collective sense, has become increasingly conflicted about what the struggle is and what progress has been made.

Hip Hop Ain't Nothing But the Young People's Blues

Hip Hop
Around the turn of the century some 119 years ago, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, a Harvard-educated Black scholar, was shocked at the impoverished blues he found in a distressed Philadelphia community inhabited by Blacks: "Murder sat at their doorstep, police were their government, social and academic paucity prevailed, and philanthropy dropped in with periodic advice," wrote Dr. DuBois. If he was alive today, Dr. DuBois would be even more appalled by the sheer mass of distressed Black communities that still suffer from the exact impoverished blues he witnessed some 119 years ago.

Lessons from Teen Mothers: "Sex is fun until..."

Black Star Project
Teenage mothers are more likely to drop out of school, be financial dependant on family members, be government dependent, and suffer low-wage jobs. Additionally, their children do less well in school and are more likely to live in poverty.

As young women prepare for their junior and senior proms, they should be aware of these lessons based on conversations with several young mothers between the ages of 14 and 18:

Show Me The Money!

Beverly Mahone
Beverly Mahone
I was doing a search online recently and came across a rather interesting site. A company called NextMark (http://www.nextmark.com) had released some statistical information on African-American baby boomers. It included the number of black women in each state; the number of black women with children per state; the number of magazine buyers; book readers, etc.

But what really caught my eye was the number of African-American baby boomers making $75,000 or more and what states they were concentrated in.

The Black Anglo Saxon

Darryl James
Darryl James
For all the talk of defining ourselves as African Americans, there are those of us who define ourselves based on the culture we have adopted, which is mostly European.

While most of us pretend to be African American, many of us are really Black Anglo Saxons.

James Earl Jones, an icon of the Black Anglo Saxons once mused that there is no Black culture, because culture is shaped by language and our language is English, therefore, our culture can not be anything else.

To Be Black In America: An Unflinching Necessity

Black Commentator
The Black Commentator
We are well into the 21st century and it continues to be absolutely essential to be Black in America. Beyond mere color, being Black is first and foremost a conscious political, social, and economic commitment to the struggle for the collective betterment of the descendants of the Black slavery holocaust, in what has now become the United States of America, in conjunction with other people of color and humanity as a whole.

Ghettos of Our Minds

Darryl James
Darryl James
Across all socio-economic levels, we can find African Americans who refer to some portion of the Black community, or some Black behavior as "Ghetto," a word that was originally used to refer to any area filled with people from similar racial or ethnic background live, typically separated into inferior conditions. Historically, Ghetto was most used in reference to the areas where Jews were forced to live, particularly in Nazi Germany.

It is not only a shame that we have adopted a word that has always been negative, but is now no longer used in reference to anything original. Yet, the word "Ghetto" is now clearly and interminably, a Black thing, baby. And, that’s not a good thing at all.