...but they are a good indicator of how massively validating many blacks find the election of Barack Obama to be in their own lives.

I hate this simpleminded polls to tell you the truth.

Stray Roots Message Board,Thus far unmoderated! Dameocrat Blog

I spilled tears on top of more tears.  That was all I could muster.  Unbelievable emotions.  Words just cannot do it justice.

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity"

If people identify racially, perhaps whites know that having a president the same color as them has infrequently led to much improvement in their lives.  Accordingly, perhaps whites feel that just because a president is black will not necessarily lead to improvements in the lives of blacks.

At the same time, most blacks I know are filled with pride at President Obama.  While that pride signifies something changed and real, perhaps it might prove to be a little transitory in the next few years.

The Burdens of Martyrdom
By MICHAEL ERIC DYSON

You cannot hear the name Martin Luther King Jr. and not think of death. For as famous as he may have been in life, it is death that ultimately defined him. To be sure, King was courageous in the face of death. But the unrelenting threat of bombs exploding and snipers shooting took its toll. King suffered desperate stretches of depression that sometimes alarmed his closest aides and friends. He fought valiantly to maintain sanity and focus in the midst of the surrounding turmoil. One of his top aides wanted him to consult a psychiatrist because of his steep descent into the doldrums. The sleeping pills he got from a physician friend stopped working. His vacations rarely allowed him to escape his troubles and pressures. And the somber tones of his voice evoked the nightmares that stalked him...

Here is the rest of this interesting article  by Mark Erik Dyson

http://globalgrind.com/source/nakedwithsockson.blogspot.com/251559/the-burdens-of-martyrdomwhy-mlk-w as-depressed/

Stray Roots Message Board,Thus far unmoderated! Dameocrat Blog

Humanity and the Importance of Jazz.

God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create--and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music.

Modern jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of racial identity as a problem for a multiracial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.

Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down.

And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these.

© arthur shaw

brief, but historic. arc of the universe, indeed...as obama lists miles and trane as some of his favorite players...or as albert ayler said: Music is the Healing Force of the Universe.

the revolution will not be televised...

"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam.I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."

These words by Dr.Martin Luther King in 1967 are as poignant today as back then. The names change but the nightmare remains the same. Today's Iraq and Afghanistan replace yesterday's Vietnam. Today's increased level of poverty and imprisonment of a hugely disproportionate number of African Americans in the prison system, the slaughter of millions more of the world's poor and Dr. King's subsequent murder at the hands of his own government bear witness to exactly which initiative was taken.

President-Elect Barack Obama, in his speeches, expresses his desire to inculcate the ideals of Dr. King in to his decision making and his attitude to his fellow human beings. He "chokes up" repeating the words of this Man of Peace, but he'll "hold it together" on Inauguration day. He'll make America, in Dr. King's words "a land no longer torn asunder with racial hatred and ethnic strife, a land that measured itself by how it treats the least of these, a land in which strength is defined not simply by the capacity to wage war but by the determination to forge peace - a land in which all of God's children might come together in a spirit of brotherhood."

He stands silent as his country aids in the genocide of the Palestinians. He will forge peace by sending 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan to intensify the massacre that has left nearly 6,500 of his civilian brothers and sisters dead. He stands silent on the more than a million of his brothers and sisters who have been murdered in Iraq. He threatens War against Iran, Syria and already destroyed Lebanon. He remains silent on the murder of his brother Oscar Grant III by police officer Johannes Mehserle in California. He perpetuates what Dr. King called "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift".

"Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness--justice" Martin Luther King, 1967.

The President-Elect refuses to bring George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger and the rest of the War criminals to justice as he looks forward from the mountain top and points the way to spiritual death.

Would Dr. King, if he actually held public office, have voted for invading Iraq, invading Afghanistan, sending arms and money to Israel and remained silent as his poverty stricken brothers and sisters were slaughtered?

The words of Martin Luther King have been hijacked by those would would use his message to further their narcissistic goals. His peaceful supplication has been betrayed by lies and a sickening adulation of meaningless oratory. His greatest statements of love and humanity have been relegated to sound bites for mass consumption by a deceived public who have put their faith in a man who represents all that Dr. King was fighting peacefully against.