Saluting one of the greatest human beings to ever walk this earth.

[peewee's lovechild]

That's like me saying that Bill O'Reilly is the "white leader".

He is.

Kill Whitey!!!

[Heat Miser]

So . . . the problem is the black leaders want to perpetuate racism?

Who is a black leader? we are talking about Al (pimp) Sharpton.
name a legit black leader!

Meanwhile the white leaders really want to solve racism but they're afraid of the black leaders?

forget about the white man he will always hate a ######. That will never die.

But if it doesn't offend the black people and if the rest of us know ###### is just a word like "Da bomb!" it will fade away as it will not be fresh or cool to say anymore.

But Black people keep "reminding" us everyday how the word ###### is so offensive and how it can do damage and cause a race war thus keeping it fresh and worthy to talk about day after day, year after year, and so on..

If Black folks would just not say anything about race for 10 years soon it will end since it takes two to tango.

plus everyone will see where the problem is and can be corrected or it may some day work it's way out to an end.

but to be honest I haven't seen the PLO and the Jews have a Thanksgiving dinner together and look how long they have been fighting.

Yeah, that's pretty much how things are run in this country.

Unless your Oprah she seems to be $ benefiting $ on being Black and smart.
how many Asians you see in LA trying to wash your windshield for money to buy a 40 Once?

Those Japs get jobs. as well as the Indian and Mexicans. It's the white trailer trash and the black crack addict that keep asking for money!

It's funny how white people always anoint Al Sharpton as the all-purpose "black leader" when it's convenient for them. That's like me saying that Bill O'Reilly is the "white leader".

Half this white country can't stand Bill O'Reilly but 99% black folks Love Al Sharpton, there is a huge difference in your comparison please use another analogy por fa vor! Remove Bill and replace him with GW Bush and you may have something.

[whottt]

Don't let em get on you too much TPark...




Not all Republicans are racists...not even the gun loving right wingers.

[Spawn]

Its 1 am, after a night of some tall boys at BWW, good football, and great friends. It got me thinking on the way home, of how great our country currently is, and one of the people that has alot to do with it, is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It's hard for me to put into words (due to me being dumber than a post) what he means to each and every person. What does he mean to me? Hes someone who changed not only our country, but I'd like to think alot of human kind. He changed the way kids growing up at that time, and grow up now think. He changed the way adults young and old at the time thought. He changed our country for the better so much that its unspeakable. Alot of my friends are of minority race due to where I went to school. I love my friends to death, and I'd like to think, alot of the reason we got a chance to meet and become friends from school, was due to him. Helping desegregate schools and day to day life. I couldn't think of my life without my school friends, and to think of a modern day of seperate drinking fountains and seperate bathrooms, and a person not being allowed into a resteraunt due to his skin color is unthinkable. I consider myself lucky for growing up in this era of racial tolerance as opposed to the 50s and 60s when it took such a special man like MLK to change it.

So, please, take a moment of the day, and give thanks to whoever, that MLK graced us with his fantastic life, and his fantastic teachings.


Have a great MLK day everyone.

No offense but you have described some sort of dream world. Racism is still a major problem today it is just people are much smarter in the way they conceal it.

Plus all of the talk about how integration was this great thing just boggles my mind. Growing up we were bombarded with this notion that integration was this great thing that was long overdue but in actuality integration ruined any kind of ground Black people had to stand on. Integration caused mass unemployment in the Black community, and killed the Black economy.

[slayermin]

Martin Luther King is one of my heroes. I could listen to him speak for hours.

Moving to Los Angeles exposed me to african-american culture, up close and personal. Though not everything has been positive, black folks here have been a huge part of my personal development, professionally and socially. And of all the ethnic groups here, it seems like they are the most racially mixed, which, imo, goes hand in hand with tolerance.

[Ed Helicopter Jones]

Or, maybe they're perfectly happy with the status quo. Or maybe even if things turn back, that's okay with them, too.

I believe this is probably true in a lot of cases.

I don't know where you get your information on what "black leaders" do, but it doesn't take a lot of digging to find out what people like Louis Farrakhan, Robert Johnson, Earl Graves, and Bill Cosby are saying.

What I see is that whenever people want to ignore or deny issues, they use Al Sharpton as a strawman for doing so.

The point is that you still have to dig.

My original Al Sharpton comment was largely tongue-in-cheek, but since we're going there...who is it that gets the press Shoog? Honestly. I'm not saying that black political leaders with credibility aren't out there crusading, what I'm saying is that the average person gets a full dose of the Al Sharptons and very little else. He and Jesse Jackson get summoned to give their opinion on every racial matter that hits the press. The average person who is not immersed in racial issues or directly affected isn't going to 'dig' for anything.

The only time most folks are exposed to race issues in this country is when we get our occassional media circus event. When the recent Don Imus thing happened you see Al Sharpton calling him out on TV for a few days, J. Jackson throws in his two cents and then things fade out. Two months later Imus is back on the air with a few less advertising dollars.

I didn't turn on the TV of flip through the paper and see any other leader giving their opinions on the matter, black or white. I don't see discussions on the state of black/white relations. I never hear or see anything about a black leader calling out blacks to be accountable find its way into mainsteam media.

Maybe the media is responsible for keeping us uninformed folks in the dark...so to speak. Maybe it's all just a huge conspiracy.

[Spawn]

Wasn't Dr. King a liberal and endorsed democratic socialism? Interesting...

Yes he did endorse democratic socialism and towards the end of his life became much more radical and his later views greatly contrast the image that Americans want to remember him by. "Beyond Vietnam" is a speech he did that kicked major ass in my opinion. Its as if they want to keep him in some 1963 time capsule.

[Spawn]

I believe this is probably true in a lot of cases.



The point is that you still have to dig.

My original Al Sharpton comment was largely tongue-in-cheek, but since we're going there...who is it that gets the press Shoog? Honestly. I'm not saying that black political leaders with credibility aren't out there crusading, what I'm saying is that the average person gets a full dose of the Al Sharptons and very little else. He and Jesse Jackson get summoned to give their opinion on every racial matter that hits the press. The average person who is not immersed in racial issues or directly affected isn't going to 'dig' for anything.

The only time most folks are exposed to race issues in this country is when we get our occassional media circus event. When the recent Don Imus thing happened you see Al Sharpton calling him out on TV for a few days, J. Jackson throws in his two cents and then things fade out. Two months later Imus is back on the air with a few less advertising dollars.

I didn't turn on the TV of flip through the paper and see any other leader giving their opinions on the matter, black or white. I don't see discussions on the state of black/white relations. I never hear or see anything about a black leader calling out blacks to be accountable find its way into mainsteam media.

Maybe the media is responsible for keeping us uninformed folks in the dark...so to speak. Maybe it's all just a huge conspiracy.

Sharpton and Jackson are not the "Black leaders." They are just media created characters that the MSM needs in order to put a face on Black America. They do not speak for the millions of Black people in this country and it is time that people realize this. This gets extremely annoying.

[Steve Perry]

^ True the wheel in the sky keeps on turning....

[whottt]

Yes he did endorse democratic socialism and towards the end of his life became much more radical and his later views greatly contrast the image that Americans want to remember him by. "Beyond Vietnam" is a speech he did that kicked major ass in my opinion. Its as if they want to keep him in some 1963 time capsule.

I think they are just celebrating the wrong he righted and the way in which he did it...

Not his entire ideology....his major one.

Dude won his major battle, and then he got assasinated, that's why he's celebrated. If he'd lost and lived he wouldn't be.

[whottt]

Funny thing is...if race wasn't a divisive factor...something else would be...there's always something else for people to divide over...hence human history.


Spawn, your battle is largely lost, every generation that passes, Black Americans change...so do White Americans..and Brown...geography and environment are greater than we are, if they weren't, we'd all be the same color. And eventually, barring a great disaster, and finding some place else to go, we will be........again. Whether we are separate...or not.

[Holt's Cat]

Wasn't Dr. King a liberal and endorsed democratic socialism? Interesting...

King seemed downright conservative in comparison to those who would pick up the Civil Rights banner after him.

Anyways, King did much to avert what could have been a much more violent reaction to the end of the Jim Crow South.

[peewee's lovechild]

We should have a Malcolm X Day.

People would get black faced and raise their fists in the air.

[Extra Stout]

No offense but you have described some sort of dream world. Racism is still a major problem today it is just people are much smarter in the way they conceal it.

Plus all of the talk about how integration was this great thing just boggles my mind. Growing up we were bombarded with this notion that integration was this great thing that was long overdue but in actuality integration ruined any kind of ground Black people had to stand on. Integration caused mass unemployment in the Black community, and killed the Black economy.

It was all in the execution. Integration of labor without integration of capital doomed the black economy.

[Ed Helicopter Jones]

Sharpton and Jackson are not the "Black leaders." They are just media created characters that the MSM needs in order to put a face on Black America. They do not speak for the millions of Black people in this country and it is time that people realize this.

That's basically my point. The media has spun them to be the voice for black Americans. I realize that they are not, but that's all the casual observer gets to see. I'd love to get more regular exposure to the 'true' leaders of black society but mainstream media largely ignores them.

The racial bias that still exists in this country is all the media's fault. I'm glad I figured that out. Phew!! That kept me up last night and I can't have that. Next issue, global warming............

[Bigzax]

never mistake a politician with a leader.

[ShoogarBear]

My original Al Sharpton comment was largely tongue-in-cheek, but since we're going there...who is it that gets the press Shoog? Honestly. I'm not saying that black political leaders with credibility aren't out there crusading, what I'm saying is that the average person gets a full dose of the Al Sharptons and very little else. He and Jesse Jackson get summoned to give their opinion on every racial matter that hits the press. The average person who is not immersed in racial issues or directly affected isn't going to 'dig' for anything.

The only time most folks are exposed to race issues in this country is when we get our occassional media circus event. When the recent Don Imus thing happened you see Al Sharpton calling him out on TV for a few days, J. Jackson throws in his two cents and then things fade out. Two months later Imus is back on the air with a few less advertising dollars.

I didn't turn on the TV of flip through the paper and see any other leader giving their opinions on the matter, black or white. I don't see discussions on the state of black/white relations. I never hear or see anything about a black leader calling out blacks to be accountable find its way into mainsteam media.

Maybe the media is responsible for keeping us uninformed folks in the dark...so to speak. Maybe it's all just a huge conspiracy.

I agree with the gist of what you're saying. But for the most part there is no popular groundswell of people who want the media to go find out what Sharpton and Jackson say about everything. It's like whenever there's a street incident, the TV camera gravitates towards the biggest buffoon out there for a quote because of the entertainment value.

You'd probably feel the same way if everytime the media wanted "the white guy's" opinion on something, they went to Karl Rove.

[whottt]

I agree with the gist of what you're saying. But for the most part there is no popular groundswell of people who want the media to go find out what Sharpton and Jackson say about everything. It's like whenever there's a street incident, the TV camera gravitates towards the biggest buffoon out there for a quote because of the entertainment value.

You'd probably feel the same way if everytime the media wanted "the white guy's" opinion on something, they went to Karl Rove.

Sharpton is the loudest....he's always got an opinion on everything...plus he presents himself as a black leader.


FWIW, I agree with a lot of your points except the one about Bill Cosby...


Bill Cosby gets more crap from prominent black leaders than the leader of the KKK does. I don't view him as a black leader for that reason...

[marini martini]

Sharpton is the loudest....he's always got an opinion on everything...

Like you don't????????????????

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Like you don't????????????????

whottt is a black leader?

[marini martini]

whottt is a black leader?

Thank you, thank you very much! I did not know that

[Findog]

I got no problem with MLK or what he stood for, but I hate the way the media spoonfeeds this to us, like we need to be reminded that Jim Crow and racism was a bad thing. If I'm watching the Mavs-Wizards in a noon-time game on MLK Day, I simply DO NOT CARE to hear what MLK meant to Avery Johnson. I DO CARE how he's going to adjust to the Wizards using their bigs to aggressively show on the high screen and roll.

[Holt's Cat]

It is 2008, after all.

[whottt]

Like you don't????????????????

It's a message board...if no one here had opinions it wouldn't be much of a message board.

If I had access to mass media I'd see the comparisons...but since I don't....


FWIW...I agree with you in a way, lots of similarities between my posting style and Sharpton's media persona...which should immediately indicate to you that Sharpton is full of .

[T Park]

Not all Republicans are racists

I don't think JC Watts was either.