There are no racial barriers for Black people in the corporate world

[Tropicana]

...or any other field.

Seems like there are a lot of delusional folks on this board who live in a Pollyanna world and really believe this. Mi noh know where onoo come from but repeatedly the lie has been spread that Black people can dress, wear their hair and conduct themselves however they like and the doors of opportunity will swing open.

Reminds me of when I used to live in the States and Jamaicans would chat this fawt. The African Americans on campus would despise them for it. Some of them had to eat their words when reality lick dem.

Mi sorry fe some a onoo when reality hit onoo or oono chldren. No mi tek dat back. Mi sorry fe onoo children but when reality lick some a onoo mi wi just and say TOLD YOU!!

When someone warns you....watch out there is a pit at the end of the road tek time walk carefully before you fall in it, the response should be thank you for warning me. To attack the person who warns you is insanity.

So wha' mek. Why are there so many people in denial on this board?

Blugiant, wha' you tink?

[RichD]

to me this post look like trolling and baiting. mi a go keep a close eye

[Tropicana]

Trolling and baiting...a reality mi a deal wid.

[RichD]

Trolling and baiting...a reality mi a deal wid.

well i watching. is FNC tatic mi si a gwaan

[blugiant]

Study: Racist Experiences Speed Up Aging Process in Black Men


There has long been speculation that the stressors of racism shorten the life span of African-Americans, and now researchers have medical evidence: A new study reveals that being the victim of racism and internalizing racist beliefs may speed up the aging process.

The study showed that Black men who had the most experiences with discrimination and had the strongest negative attitudes about their own racial group had shorter lengths of telomeres, the nucleotides at the end of a chromosome that protect genetic material from breaking down.

The shorter telomere is a sign of cellular aging. The telomeres are likened to the caps at the end of shoelaces that prevent the string from fraying. As cells get older, the telomeres become shorter, leaving less of a shield for the important parts of the DNA.

The finding, published last week in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, may go far in explaining why African- Americans have shorter life expectancies than whites.

The accumulated effect of years of driving while Black, shopping while Black, and encounters with racism and police — such as officers engaged in New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy who stopped more than 4-million men over the course of the last decade—85 percent of them Black and Latino — can have a deleterious effect on the health of Black men, the research shows.

“Despite the limitations of our study, we contribute to a growing body of research showing that social toxins disproportionately impacting African-American men are harmful to health,” lead investigator Dr. David H. Chae, assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, explained. “Our findings suggest that racism literally makes people old.”

The study involved 92 African-American men between the ages of 30 to 50, who were asked about discrimination they had faced in their lives—at work, in the search for housing, during customer service interactions at stores or restaurants, in interactions with police, and in other public domains. The men also took a test called the Black-White Implicit Association Test, which is used to measure attitudes and beliefs toward racial groups that people might be unaware of or unwilling to discuss.

The researchers concluded that participants who experienced the highest amounts of racism in conjunction with having the highest scores on the racist beliefs test had the shortest telomeres—equivalent to an additional 1.4 to 2.8 additional years of aging for those with the highest levels of racial discrimination.

However, there was no link between racial discrimination and telomere length among men who had pro-African-American attitudes.

“African-American men who have more positive views of their racial group may be buffered from the negative impact of racial discrimination,” Chae said. “In contrast, those who have internalized an anti-Black bias may be less able to cope with racist experiences, which may result in greater stress and shorter telomeres.”


About Nick Chiles

Nick Chiles is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author. He has written or co-written 12 books and won over a dozen major journalism awards during a journalism career that brought him to the Dallas Morning News, the Star-Ledger of New Jersey and New York Newsday, in addition to serving as Editor-in-Chief of Odyssey Couleur travel magazine.

[blugiant]

10 Hard Truths Black People Try to Avoid


The enslavement of African people and its deep-seated impact continue to stall the progression of Black people in America and throughout the African world. The monumental task of advancing our peoples’ interest beyond the affects of slavery and colonization requires that we accept a few hard truths to get ahead. In the words of the honorable Marcus Garvey, “If you (Black people) cannot do what other men have done, what other nations have done, what other races have done, then you will have to die!”


1. Color blindness is a disempowering narrative

To teach Black people to not see race in an intrinsically racist society is to disarm our people from properly identifying the threats organizing around them. One key threat that Black people face is global white supremacy and its race-based ideology and institutions.

Psychologist Stephanie Fryberg writes in “When the World Is Colorblind, American Indians Are Invisible: A Diversity Science Approach:”

“In a colorblind world, whites, who are unlikely to experience the negative effects of race, can actively ignore the continued significance of racism in American society, justify the current social order, and feel more comfortable with their relatively privileged standing in society.”

2. We believe we are stronger because we “turn the other cheek”

We are weak, not strong when we align ourselves with the most pacifist verses in the Bible. As one of the most religious groups of people in the world, there is little reason why we remain at the bottom economically and otherwise. The following biblical verse should replace the “turn the other cheek” mentality.

In Luke 22:36 Jesus is quoted: “’But now,” he said, “if you have a wallet or a pack, take it; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your robe to buy one.”

3. Education is not race or culture neutral

From kindergarten to the university level, the Western education system is designed to teach students of all races to value and propagate the interest and culture of Western European people. Professor of Black Studies Dr. Leonard Jeffries said in a 1991 speech at the Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival in Albany, New York, “I think we have to understand that although we like to think of education as race-neutral and politically neutral, education is a part of racism.”

In other words, the Western education system is a participating and supporting institution within the broader system of global white supremacy.

4. Black feminist ideology is based on fantasy

It is a fantasy because it does not deal with the reality of how Black women became second-class citizens in the world.

Contrary to popular belief, prior to the Arab and Western European enslavement of African people, most African women lived in matriarchal societies where women’s power and influence was institutionalized.

Faro Z tells Liberator Magazine,

“Did the Black woman first start being abused by white supremacy in the 60′s? The Harlem Renaissance? No. It was when the first African woman lost her husband to slavery. Then, they came back for her. Then, they came back for her children. Then, they came back for the rest of her family. Black women are abused in this European society because Black men are powerless in this European society.”

The oppression of Black women historically and contemporary is not based primarily on gender, but rather on race. Today, both white men and women benefit from the abuse and dehumanization of Black women and Black men across the globe.

[RichD]

About Nick Chiles

Nick Chiles is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author. He has written or co-written 12 books and won over a dozen major journalism awards during a journalism career that brought him to the Dallas Morning News, the Star-Ledger of New Jersey and New York Newsday, in addition to serving as Editor-in-Chief of Odyssey Couleur travel magazine.

[blugiant]

10 Hard Truths Black People Try to Avoid


5. We have accepted the status quo that Europeans have and always will control the world

Dr. Amos Wilson writes in his book, Afrikan-Centered Consciousness Versus The New World Order: Garveyism in the Age of Globalism:

“The assimilationist often accepts, consciously or unconsciously, the idea that the white man will continue to rule the world. He bases his ideology and political action on the concept that somehow our destiny is not to overthrow the white man, that our destiny is not to suppress and bring these people under control, but to heal them in some sort of way, to convert them, to even become part of them. Our destiny becomes not one that sees the very system and very ideology upon which these oppressors move as one of sickness and insanity and therefore in need of replacement by an Afrikan-centered and healthy ideology that comes out of our own self-knowing. This leadership wants us to accept this sickness as normality and to follow these pathological beings into self-destruction.”

6.We have fooled ourselves into adopting the worst traits of our oppressor and frown upon those who attempt to emulate the better parts.

Amos Wilson bravely stated in a lecture on “Economics and Nationhood:” ”If you thought like whites, you would want your own nations, to control your own neighborhoods, to control your own economy, to have your own military, to control the resources in your own ground.”

7. The senseless killings of Trayvon Martin, Hadiya Pendleton et al. will continue

Violence in the Black community exists for many reasons, however many psychiatrists agree that self-hatred is a factor.

Dr. Amos Wilson elaborates: “The problem of Black on Black violence is a problem of cultural mis-orientation, self-alienation and self-hatred. What we are seeing manifest as Black on Black violence is an emulation of the cultural ways of our oppressor. We have internalized his ways.”

Psychiatrist Dr. James Gilligan asserts in “Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic” that violence is caused by shame and humiliation.

To further exacerbate the state of affairs, Black people lack the institutional power to properly retaliate when violence by another race occurs in our community, and cannot significantly improve conditions for the masses of our people, such as low socioeconomic status, social deprivation, inadequate education, high unemployment, and the unjust criminal industrial complex.

8. No matter how hard we try to protect our immediate families from the impact of racism, if the collective interests of all Black people are not addressed, we’re all in danger.

Race-based organization works

9. Our success thrives on the platforms and institutions built and maintained by white males. Tomorrow, if America was re-segregated, we would be lost, destitute and at war with each other – more so than we are now.

10. To end on a positive note, despite the many perils of white supremacy, Black people would be significantly better off if we were organized around a central objective, the survival of our race. Europeans and Arabs are two of the most recent successful examples of people who organized along racial lines above national identity. The French and British have historically been at odds culturally and politically, however they quickly unite to fight against other non-white people.

http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/01/13/10-hard-truths-black-people-try-to-avoid/5/

[Tropicana]

Racism Takes a Toll on Kids' Mental Health, Research Shows

Review found strong links between discrimination and anxiety, low self-esteem in minority teens


SUNDAY, Sept. 22, 2013 (HealthDay News) -- Being a victim of racism may trigger poor mental health, depression and anxiety in children and teens, according to a new review.
The report, published in the October issue of the journal Social Science & Medicine, looked at 461 cases of links between racism and the health and well-being of youngsters.
"The review showed there are strong and consistent relationships between racial discrimination and a range of detrimental health outcomes such as low self-esteem, reduced resilience, increased behavior problems and lower levels of well-being," lead researcher Naomi Priest, of the University of Melbourne in Australia, said in a university news release.
Most of the racism experienced by children and teens involved discrimination by other people, rather than institutional or systemic racism, according to the findings.
The review also revealed an increased risk of poorer birth outcomes among children whose mothers experienced racism during pregnancy.
Most of the studies included in the review were conducted in the United States with participants aged 12 to 18. Of the racial/ethnic groups included in the studies, the three most common were blacks, Hispanics and Asians.
"We know that children who experience poor health and well-being are less likely to engage in education, employment and other activities that support them to lead healthy and productive lives, and to participate meaningfully in the community," Priest said.
So, she noted, the findings identify an important issue that needs to be addressed in order to improve child and teen health.

http://consumer.healthday.com/disabi...26-680261.html

[Tropicana]

It's the children and teams I feel sorry for when the parents are in such denial.

[Tropicana]

Death by Discrimination?
Joe R. Feagin
University of FloridaThe life expectancy for Americans who are born black is nearly seven years less than that for Americans born white. The evidence is increasing that much of this discrepancy results from the life-threatening effects of discrimination. Today the stress, physical illnesses, and other injuries associated with racism constitute a serious public health problem.
"The stress does make a difference," said a black engineer in a focus group in a southeastern city. "I think it probably takes five years off your life, to tell you the truth, if you let it get to you." The major and minor slights of racism can accumulate to a very negative health impact.
In the last two years I and my colleagues have conducted focus groups on discrimination's costs with African Americans in California, Michigan, and Florida. A common report from these African Americans is that bottling up stress and rage stemming from discrimination leads, from their considered perspective, to such health problems as stomach problems, chest pains, hypertension, and depression.
Most black Americans with whom we talked indicated that these symptoms of severe stress do not happen "on weekends or after five o'clock." There was a consensus that much life-damaging stress comes from hostile work environments. "You stuff that stuff inside, and it comes out in these kinds of ways," commented a nurse in one of the southeastern groups. "That's why black women have a lot of fibroids. Because all of that pain gets stuffed inside." She added, "That's why black men . . . die so early."
Severe and recurring headaches are one consequence of discrimination. "I would have this headache, and it would be for eight hours until I walked out the door and then it was like . . . a weight was lifted off," said a nurse in a midwestern group. "I was having severe headaches, and chest pains. . . . It would be times when I would almost be in the office hyperventilating," commented a social services coordinator in the Southeast. "You begin to doubt yourself."
Workplace stress contributes significantly to other serious problems. "I have never been a sickly type person, and I had never had any problems with my stomach, but I actually did have to go to the doctor, and . . . they ran a test and he diagnosed it as gastrointestinal problems," said a telephone technician about the stress from discrimination at work. "I would actually have serious attacks, where I would really get, really feverish, high fever, and I would just get real, real sick. They'd just flat out let you know that they just didn't like black folks."
Hypertension is another problem linked in part to racist incidents at work. "That's when I got high blood pressure," said a medical professional in the Midwest. She consulted a doctor, who told her to get another job. "I knew I had to have a job because I had children to take care of. But going through what I was going through wasn't really worth it because . . . it was constant intimidation, constant racism, but in a subtle way."
Recent research by Harvard University's Nancy Krieger and Stephen Sidney examined stress and blood pressure for nearly two thousand black Americans. Those who gave accounts of facing discrimination on three or more of seven situational questions tended to have higher blood pressure than those who reported facing discrimination in one or two situations.
Another major cost of racism is energy loss, which can be much more than an individual matter. "One of the things, though, that really has had an effect on my family personally was, me having [less] time to really spend with my son," reported a talented engineer. "As far as reading him stories, talking, working with him . . . . Some days I would come home and I would have such excruciating headaches and chest pains that I would just lay on the bed and put a cold compress on my head and just relax."
The drain on personal strength caused by racism takes a toll on African Americans and other people of color in their lives outside the workplace. "I have withdrawn from some of the things I was involved with at church that were very important to me, like dealing with the kids at church," commented a social services administrator. She added that "by the time I got home at the end of the day, I was just so tired, I didn't even feel like giving back to my community."
Successful men and women of color are important role models in communities but only if they have the energy to participate actively in churches and other community organizations.
Numerous focus group participants indicated that they told their families and friends about serious incidents of discrimination in employment. This spreads the knowledge and pain of discrimination through social networks and communities. In addition, this it also provides the collective basis for an extensive set of creative coping strategies that are developed individually and collectively and passed from one generation to the next over centuries $ which enable African Americans not only to survive recurring racism at the hands of whites, many of whom are oblivious to their own racist behavior, but also to succeed in society even in the face of this often daunting oppression.
White racism has a negative impact on many people of color. Our findings on African Americans parallel those in studies of Latinos in several cities. Significantly, a Latino professor at UF recently told me, "I have done everything good academicians do. I have published quantities of quality research, have become a great teacher, been a good citizen. And, still, white colleagues not even close to my record make thousands of dollars more than I do. Knowing that whatever I do will earn no significant rewards demoralizes me. My biweekly paycheck is the insult responsible for my high blood pressure."

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/joe.html

[blugiant]

10 Hard Truths Black People Try to Avoid


5. We have accepted the status quo that Europeans have and always will control the world

Dr. Amos Wilson writes in his book, Afrikan-Centered Consciousness Versus The New World Order: Garveyism in the Age of Globalism:

“The assimilationist often accepts, consciously or unconsciously, the idea that the white man will continue to rule the world. He bases his ideology and political action on the concept that somehow our destiny is not to overthrow the white man, that our destiny is not to suppress and bring these people under control, but to heal them in some sort of way, to convert them, to even become part of them. Our destiny becomes not one that sees the very system and very ideology upon which these oppressors move as one of sickness and insanity and therefore in need of replacement by an Afrikan-centered and healthy ideology that comes out of our own self-knowing. This leadership wants us to accept this sickness as normality and to follow these pathological beings into self-destruction.”

a latt delusional blakk peeps out deer dat tink dem more civilieszided wen dem defendinn oyinbo supremacee. still mii focus pon dosed dat ar cancious

[Tropicana]

Racism in America: A Nation in Denial

No single issue or subject is more volatile then a discussion of racism in America. I experienced this last month in the backlash to the backlash of clown’s act at a Missouri fair firsthand on Facebook.The quote above, “If you keep whining about racism it will never go away,” was made along with several comments by people who felt the rodeo clown Tuffy Gessling had every right to wear a mask of President Obama’s face, act “clownish,” and then ask the audience if they would like to see President Obama run over by a bull. Because Mr Gessling was fired after this incident and banned from performing, this has stoked the ire of many who don’t like President Obama for a variety of reasons and feel he should be fair game when it comes to ridicule, the more disparaging the better.
In no uncertain language my call on Facebook that this clown’s act was racist became a lightning rod for those who feel racism is a long-ago page turned in our country’s history. Left, Right, and Center, most agree that a rational and sincere discussion about racism in America is almost impossible, and for those who do not believe there really isn’t racism, unnecessary. Even when faced with issues and events on a daily basis from the killing of Trayvon Martin to voter suppression aimed at minorities, many whites (and some minorities) reject the notion that racism plays any part in what happens today. And they are also unwilling or unable to look back at our history and see that racism today is still an extension of what happened yesterday.
For myself, a “child” of the ’60s who grew up in a time where the swirling winds of civil rights marches by African Americans for voting rights was still occurring a full 100 years after the Civil War, the idea that racism did not have modern-day implications was sublime. Did the people with whom I traded discourse about Tuffy Gessling on Facebook not know (or chose to ignore) the American story that included slavery, Jim Crow laws, and lynchings that affected generations of black men, women, and children?
From a book I was reading at the time (Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, by Brenda Wineapple), another irony came to mind. Tuffy Gessling performed his clown act in the state of Missouri, a state whose very inception was born on the backs of African Americans whose human rights were bartered away. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a congressional agreement that regulated the extension of slavery in the United States for the next 30 years. Under the agreement the territory of Missouri was admitted as a slave state, the territory of Maine was admitted as a free state, and the boundaries of slavery were limited to the same latitude as the southern boundary of Missouri: 36° 30′ north latitude.
Fewer then 200 years later, despite this nation’s progress in racial equality, portions of states are still used as bargaining chips in gerrymandering districts to help negate minority voting.
Denial of racism in America today by both whites and some black Americans still holds this country back from both realizing its potential as a nation and healing from the wounds of recent history. White commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck use race innuendo to mobilize a basically undereducated white audience to reject President Obama and his policies with unsupported birther hyperbole, and black Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and former congressmember Allen West have compared affirmative action to slavery, a false equivalency that borders on denying the Holocaust of WWII.
It leaves the minds of the sensible and compassionate swaying with disbelief and disillusionment when talk of a post-racial America occurred after the first black president was elected in 2008.
We are left with the fact that we cannot kid ourselves anymore about race relations in America. There will always be some measure of anti-black, anti-white, anti-Hispanic feeling in our country. Some might say whining about it will keep it from going away while others will find more solid ground from historic precedent that only through vigilance and finding one’s voice will we be able to advance the cause of equality for all people.
I do not posses X-ray vision (as some supporters of Tuffy Gessling seem to think they have) in looking into a heart of a clown and deciding if he was trying to incite some of our worse instincts or just trying to be funny.
But for the children who witnessed his act and for all Americans to degrade a race of people, even if unintentional, is no laughing matter.

http://www.independent.com/news/2013/sep/04/racism-america-nation-denial/

[Tropicana]

a latt delusional blakk peeps out deer dat tink dem more civilieszided wen dem defendinn oyinbo supremacee. still mii focus pon dosed dat ar cancious

Do you think that this type of denial is more common in the African American or Caribbean community, specifically Jamaican. A study in Canada showed a higher level of consciousness among Black people from Jamaica but one gets a different picture when visiting this board and it has always been that way. Wonder why? Thoughts?

[Tropicana]

well i watching. is FNC tatic mi si a gwaan

FNC? Translation please?