The One Book On Race That You Must Read This Year

Pulitzer prize winning journalist Eugene Robinson has written the one book that you simply must read this year.  It is called Disintegration.  He uses the premise that there is no longer one monolithic group called,

"Black America."  Black America is now comprised of four different groups of people.  The first is the mainstream; African Americans who have moved up to the middle class.  Secondly, there is the transcendent class.  The black political movers and shakers, the Oprahs and the Obamas, the monied classes make up this group.  The emergent classes; biracial people and immigrants from African and the Caribbean are the third group.  The last group is called, The Abandoned.  The abandoned are black people caught in intractable poverty.  He says that their plight is worsening and he calls for national attention to their issues.  Robinson often hits the nail on the head.  He also misses occasionally, like when he offers 

gentrification as a cure for urban poverty.  Discussion groups should break out all over America based around what is offered in this book.  

Christmas Time and Idolatry

There are a whole lot of people laying in the graveyard because of material things.  

Years ago, before the invention of the walkman or the ipod, a device called a “boom box” was in style.  It was basically, a stereo with a guitar strap.  The bigger or louder your boom box, the cooler you were thought to be. These combination, radio and cassette players were status symbols. They were also statements of power and street cred.  You see, young men got preyed upon and robbed for these items all the time.  It was the unspoken thought that you were tough; a man among men or a woman among women if you could walk around with this item unmolested.

One of my best friends was robbed at gunpoint for his boom box.  Looking back at it, the assailant could have killed my friend.  And for what, a cheap piece of plastic with some speakers in it that would have been out of style by the the next summer?  

A fear years later, gold chains came into vogue.  I remember going to nightclubs where groups of marauders paid an entrance fee to prey on party goers who decided to show off their jewelry at the event.  How many young people were murdered for a “dookie” rope chain? Today, no one wears them.  They have gone out of style.  How many died over something that in the end meant so little?

The list continues.  People in the hood have been murdered over sneakers, cell phones, ipods and other shiny trinkets.  The value of life has become so cheap that we will murder someone over a fashion accessory?  Why?  Idolatry.

Idolatry takes place when we worship things rather than the Creator.  Ironically, idolatry’s holiday is Christmas.  Christmas; the season when we fight to get in stores promising bargains on flat screen TVs.  Christmas; the season when we go into credit card slavery because we say that the people we love will not love us unless we produce more things in shiny wrapping paper with ribbons on it.  It sounds like science fiction.  All this is done in the name of Jesus Christ; a man who was born in a barn and buried in a borrowed tomb.  

Idolatry is slavery.  Break the chains.  Make a list of organizations that serve the poor.  Instead of buying gifts for your relatives and friends, make donations in their name.  Give them Christmas cards with the donation receipts inside.  Will this work?  What do you think?

Go See The Rock's New Flick Faster

Dwayne Johnson's new film, "Faster" begins like just about any action film.  The first ten three minutes bring you lots of gratuitous blood shed and gun play.  But somewhere down the road, it veers to the right.  Themes like redemption and forgiveness are drawn into the plot line.  No, "Faster" is not "Casablanca" by any stretch but none the less its an important film.  You see, it delivers an important message to an audience who is likely to accept the vehicle.  It shows that viewer that people can change and that non-violence and cowardice are not synonyms.  I loved the role of the preacher in this film.  Bravo, Johnson and cast.

Murder At Allen Temple Baptist Church

Thug life is not new to the hood.  If you doubt me, you have but to go to your book store and pick up a copy of Pimp: The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim.  Slim was a pimp and a hustler in the days of swing jazz.  The criminal subculture developed as the underside of the community after the abolition of slavery.

Years ago, people in the "life" did what they did to survive.  They didn't celebrate crime.  They didn't make songs about how much fun it was to be a thug.  They respected so-called square people.  They had reverence for the church.  That day is gone.  Last week a 46-year old man was blasted to pieces at the foot of a giant cross that sits outside of Allen Temple Baptist Church in East Oakland.

Some people say that it is a sign.  If we do not do more to make the people who live around our great cathedrals feel that the church belongs to them as well, there will be problems.  If don't leave the comfort of our churches to reach out to the people in the hood, we can expect that trouble will come to us.  Our inner city churches are surrounded by people who have never been inside.  May we be made to feel highly uncomfortable until our churches truly look like the communities where they exist.

Welcome To The Movement

Are you tired of attending funerals for people who met death before they were 25 years old?  Are you tired of seeing your loved one chained up and fed to the prison industrial complex?  Are you a revolutionary for peace?  Have you read my book, Straight Outta East Oakland?    Take a minute and holler at us.