The Hand I Fan With

I am of the firm opinion that modern parents between the ages of 30-50 years old have totaly lost all perspective as it regards good parenting. I appreciate that they have a hard row to hoe b/c they have to grow confident not rude, polite but not broken children. It is a balancing act trying to keep some of what your mother's and grandmother's generations utilized and introducing some of the modern practices. Who Determines the Child's Diet For example I am of the view that to grow some belief in making choices that a child can decide within reason what they will have for dinner. But the child dictating their entire diet and nutritional intake is something else altogether. I have seen parents who give their child only what they like to eat for meals; not a vegetable in sight. Sometimes no protien source except maybe for cheese and milk. Respect For Authority and Adults? How do parents attempt to grow respect for elders and not the attitude that the adult is always right? I ...

Is that the same as the Christian quote : Let the dead bury the dead? I never really understood this biblical quote. How is the dead to bury themselves? Does it mean that the people who concern themselves with the cultural and health related practice of burying the dead, are themselves dead? Should the dead be tossed out to rut in the open? Would the tossing of the body constitute burial? So should it be left to decay where it died? Maybe it was just a quote for an instant not be used in any other context. Alright alright I am being too literal. But both quotes suggest a disconnect of present and past,right? That what is done is done and all concerned need to forget about it? Or is it that the advice is not to dwell on the past b/c one can't change it? The quote in the title I hear it often during Black History month. I also hear it when others mostly black people do not want to discuss slavery and its effect on our societies. I know a lot of people who hate discussing African hi...

Full Discussion on Statement The president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers, suggested at a scholarly meeting this month that one reason fewer women make it to the top in mathematics and science may be because of innate differences of ability from men. That proposition has landed him in hot water with scholars who are berating him for advancing a dangerous and untrue stereotype. But some researchers say that perhaps he has a point: that differences in performance between the sexes may be partly attributed to biological factors. Still other social scientists say that while the suggestion is fair, the proof just isn't there. BBC's Take Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers argued one group outperformed the other because of genetics, not just experience, the Boston Globe said. Considering that the the conference (was held) in Cambridge, Mass., sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research and titled "Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce...

My main thing is how can it be reduced, if not stopped? How people who care can raise kids who are less susceptible to the seduction and less forceful or violent approaches of predators? I remember Toni Morrison having this conversation with Oprah about making children understand their intrinsic value. Not the irrelevant pretty or cute but the deep down earnest recognition of their human value. That according to Morrison is the way to arm children with the strength to say "no!" and to speak up in their own defense. I also will add that a more honest and continuous discussion about sex and sexuality that is age appropriate would help tremendously. I believe however for African women in the Western world these are huge demands. According to an article I just read in Essence Magazine :"You also see it in how we feel about our bodies and how we teach our daughters to feel about theirs. A woman who has been sexually molested or abused feels intense fear shame and anger, ev...

As provocative as it may sound to some, it was a well argued view in some circles that marriage for most woman is glorified prostitution. For these people, often Western feminists, marriage from a cold and cynical view was most times a contract of women selling their bodies for financial return and economic stability. The woman gave sex and their reproductive functions in return for the house, etc etc. While this view held up really well up to a few decades ago for most women, does it still hold now? For some women around the world, marriage can still be described aptly as a contract with their financial benefactor, a husband. The husband provides for them financially. He is the only one who can own property so he provides the shelter. They women usually 'work' at or around the home and they may get money actual dollars to support this 'work'. But for modern day women in the Western world this can't apply? The women I know earn their own money, most times are an ...

The following eulogy was delivered by Ossie Davis at the funeral of Malcolm X on 27 February 1965 at the Faith Temple Church Of God Here—at this final hour, in this quiet place—Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes—extinguished now, and gone from us forever. For Harlem is where he worked and where he struggled and fought—his home of homes, where his heart was, and where his people are—and it is, therefore, most fitting that we meet once again—in Harlem—to share these last moments with him. For Harlem has ever been gracious to those who have loved her, have fought for her and have defended her honor even to the death. It is not in the memory of man that this beleaguered, unfortunate, but nonetheless proud community has found a braver, more gallant young champion than this Afro-American who lies before us—unconquered still. I say the word again, as he would want me to: Afro-American—Afro-American Malcolm, who was a master, was most meticulous in his use of words. ...

David Walker's Appeal Excerpts from the Appeal My dearly beloved Brethren and Fellow Citizens. Having travelled over a considerable portion of these United States, and having, in the course of my travels, taken the most accurate observations of things as they exist -- the result of my observations has warranted the full and unshaken conviction, that we, (coloured people of these United States,) are the most degraded, wretched, and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began; and I pray God that none like us ever may live again until time shall be no more. They tell us of the Israelites in Egypt, the Helots in Sparta, and of the Roman Slaves, which last were made up from almost every nation under heaven, whose sufferings under those ancient and heathen nations, were, in comparison with ours, under this enlightened and Christian nation, no more than a cypher -- or, in other words, those heathen nations of antiquity, had but little more among them than the name and form...

They sang it often : "Look Where He's Brought Me From!". Highly religious people, older black women 70+ years of age, 70 odd of them in all. They are the artists, unlikely as it sounds, they are! They have other things in common too. All descendants of slaves from mainly Pettway Plantation, they lived a thirdworld existence of adject poverty from generation to generation in the poorest county in the USA, in the state of Alabama. But about ten years ago things changed for the women and the community of Gee's Bend in a very unexpected way. The skill of quiltmaking handed down from generation to generation, mother to daughter is now the source of remarkedly improved standard of living. An art historian, "discovered" the discarded and undervalued art form among the women. The quilts had been made to keep desparately poor families warm. They were made from old scraps of cloth, from strips of discared clotes, old bags etc. One of the women for example made an...