Today’s photo of the day shows the legendary Duke Ellington, who was born 109 years ago today!

Today’s video of the day shows Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s speech at the National Press Conference. Thoughts?

You see I loved hard once, but the love wasn’t returned
I found out the man I’d die for, he wasn’t even concerned
And time it turned,
He tried to burn me like a perm
Though my eyes saw the deception, my heart wouldn’t let me learn
From um, some, dumb woman, was I,
And everytime he’d lie, he would cry and inside I’d die.
My heart must have died a thousand deaths
Compared myself to Toni Braxton thought I’d never catch my breath
Nothing left, he stole the heart beating from my chest
I tried to call the cops, that type of thief you can’t arrest
Pain suppressed, will lead to cardiac arrest
Diamonds deserve diamonds, but he convinced me I was worth less
When my peoples would protest,
I told them mind their business, cause my s*** was complex
More than just the sex
I was blessed, but couldn’t feel it like when I was caressed
I’d spend nights clutching my breasts overwhelmed by God’s test
I was God’s best contemplating death with a Gillette
But no man is ever worth the paradise MANIFEST

Marc Lamont Hill

Melissa,

As you know, the three officers involved in the murder of Sean Bell were acquitted of all charges on Friday.

When I first heard the news, I was so angry that I was unable to think of anything but retaliation. Where should we riot? What can we destroy? Who can we hurt? Like many people, I craved the sense of power, however ephemeral, that is produced by making our enemies hurt the way they’ve hurt us. Even now, as I make an unequivocal call for peace, a huge part of me wants to see somebody pay for this egregious miscarriage of justice.

The problem, however, is that reactionary violence doesn’t help. All the rioting and looting in the world will not return Sean Bell to his wife, child, parents, and friends. Destroying police cars will do nothing to stop the next detectives from seeing unarmed black bodies as a threat that warrants lethal force. Inflicting bodily harm on the three officer-assassins will not prevent the next judge from ignoring the evidence and ruling in favor of an arrogant, white supremacist, proto-fascist police state.

Although I understand what we shouldn’t do, I am at a loss about what we should do. This brings me to my questions for you, Melissa: How do heal from this latest tragedy? How do we achieve justice for Sean Bell and his family? How do we prevent the next senseless murder from happening? How do we fight back?

Melissa Harris-Lacewell

Marc

I am with you my friend.  Did this ever happen to you in childhood? You are upset about something small and your father says to you, “hush up or I will give you something to cry about.”

That is how I felt this week. I was in the corner licking my wounds about Barack’s loss in PA and the ridiculous media coverage about the working-class, white, male vote that followed when suddenly the Bell verdict really gave me something to cry about. My anger and pain did not make me want to riot; it made me want to withdraw. I called my friend who teaches at a University in Toronto and asked about life north of the border.

How much more must black communities endure? How many more times must we be told by our political system that our votes don’t count or told by our criminal justice system that our lives are irrelevant? The murder of an innocent, unarmed father by representatives of the State is an act so low and disgusting that any decent nation would punish it swiftly and surely. Now we are reminded that we live in a nation that is often indecent and unjust.

Marc, I am not sure what we do. We follow the example of Sean Bell’s family who have shown dignity, resolve, hope and love at every moment of this tragedy.  We write to every elected official under whose jurisdiction we fall: mayors, state representatives, congressional representatives, senators and our Presidential candidates. We write them and tell them to publicly condemn this ruling and the violence that preceded it.  We hold informational sessions in our neighborhoods and demand that our police and their leadership show up and answer the community’s questions.  We seek out people running for office at the local and national level and demand to know what they think about the Bell verdict and then hold them accountable on election day.

We march, we write, we cry, we rage, and then we have to love. We have to love our own black selves because it looks like no one else is going to do it.  We have to love ourselves because each of it Sean Bell.

Noble prize winning author Toni Morrison gives us this great lesson in her exquisite novel, Beloved,  through the character of Baby Suggs, holy. When faced with the brutality of life in America she tells her people to love themselves.

“She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glory-bound pure…She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it…’Here,’ she said, ‘in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it.

They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick ‘em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ’cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you!

And, no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver – love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than the eyes or feet. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.”

Marc, we got to love ourselves.

Melissa

Making sense of hip-hop’s most recent crime wave.

On Rappers and Rap Sheets
By James Braxton Peterson

The recent spate of rap stars making criminal justice news will come as a surprise to no one, especially those of you who equate hip-hop culture with prison culture. Nor will it surprise those of us who have accepted the fact that, in the black public sphere, record sales (or any sales for that matter) are often bolstered by an association with criminality.

Clearly all of hip-hop culture is not about criminality.  Most rappers do not have rap sheets.  If you consider Akon to be a hip-hop artist, think of the irony inherent in the sensationalism surrounding the recent expose of his criminal career.  The fact that he has exaggerated his prison status in order to sell his artistic persona (and millions of records) only begins to hint at the promotional potential of prison sentences in popular culture.

That said, it might be worth revisiting this recent string of cases to understand the issues and what they mean for both the African American community and the Hip-Hop Generation(s).

The rap vocalist known as Nate Dogg recently plead guilty to battery and trespassing in a domestic dispute that actually was not domestic (the sentence: 3 years probation, domestic violence rehab/treatment, and loss of his 2^nd Amendment rights).

According to the record, Nate Dogg (nee Nathaniel Hale) forcibly entered his ex-girlfriend’s home in Newport Beach, VA. and punched her new boyfriend in the face. This of course occurred before his debilitating stroke (a celestial sentence of sorts) in 2007, but the ironies abound.  After all, one of Nate Dogg’s most famous hooks is a boast about having “hoes in different area codes.” Nate Dogg’s rap persona embraces a hypersexualized sense of black masculinity that requires promiscuity and emotionless interaction with women.

The fact that his girlfriend moved to an area code about as far from area code 213 as is possible without leaving the country, and moved on to another paramour is interesting enough. That it incited enough jealousy in him to assault her new boyfriend is a reversal of just about everything Nate Dogg has articulated in the lyrics of his most infectious hooks.

For the rest of the story, click here.