Saturday, June 19, 2010

Top Online Reads & Sees From The Root

I know that I haven't written in several months, but I found these articles from The Root so interesting, I thought I'd share them with you. The Root describes itself as "a daily online magazine that provides thought-provoking commentary on today's news from a variety of black perspectives." Enjoy!

The New Middle Passage
By: Malika Saada Saar Posted: June 17, 2010
Think Abraham Lincoln freed all the slaves back in 1863? Think again. And then get angry. Very, very angry.

On this Juneteenth, I am thinking of those who are not yet free. Most of them are girls. Born in America.
Every year in this country, between 100,000 and 300,000 children--most of whom are astonishingly between the ages of 11 to 14 years old-- are sold for sex by pimp-captors, according to government statistics. ...

Photo courtesy of ThinkStock.com
What Will Happen to Juneteenth?
By: Erin Evans Posted: June 18, 2010
Gen Y seems less than enthused about the day that slaves in Texas found out they were free. How will Black Independence Day fare in 2050?

"So how do you celebrate Juneteenth?" I asked my Twitter friends a few weeks ago. After a dead-tweet silence, I retweeted myself for emphasis. Even then, just a handful of my 300 or so Twitter friends responded with a few half-baked answers. "Go to some crappy festival," one Californian said. "I celebrate by doing nothing," said a childhood friend from Texas. ...
The Miseducation of Texas Schoolkids
By: Afi-Odelia Scruggs Posted: May 26, 2010
There's a reason why Carter G. Woodson established a Negro History Week in 1928.

See, a bunch of guys needed something to do in 1865 and 1866, right after the Civil War. It wasn't like they could go back to their plantations; Northerners had seen to that. So these good ole boys amused themselves by dressing up in sheets and riding through the countryside pulling pranks. Just good, clean hijinks, until they discovered their antics terrorized former slaves. Then, things turned naughty and nasty. But in the beginning, the Klan was just a social club. ...

Single-Minded: Sending My Mom Love on Father's Day
By: Helena Andrews Posted: June 18, 2010
No one can be both a 'mother and a father' to their kids. I'm so glad that my mom knew this.

I don't get those single women who say they've had to be ''the mother and the father'' to their kids. Nobody can be two people. Not even Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde could pull it off, and they had mad science on their side. Thing is you're either someone's mother or father, the two roles are mutually exclusive for a reason. ...

Florida Christian-School Teacher Fired for Premarital Sex
By The Buzz Posted: June 14, 2010
Fresh from our "Wow file," a former fourth-grade teacher at Southland Christian School in St. Cloud, Florida, was fired for conceiving several weeks before getting married. Oh, the shame -- getting pregnant by your fiance a few weeks before the actual marriage. ...
The Myth of Black-on-Black Violence
By Natalie Hopkinson Posted: June 16, 2010
As we head into another long, hot summer, the media -- and black folks -- need to retire this loaded term.

This year's Black History Month was a particularly bloody one in Shelby County, S.C. Sergio Leary, Ja'cole Wilson, Karon Barrow and Leon Thurman Jr., all young people in their 20s, were all shot dead, according to local news reports.

The Shelby Star's analysis of the burst of violence, hit on all the usual crime reporting clichés: ''black,'' ''at-risk youth,'' ''subcultures that don't value'' life. And then, there's the clincher. ''Despite overall crime numbers falling in recent years, black-on-black [emphasis added] violence remains a prevalent issue,'' the newspaper reported. ...