MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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The black prayer

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From Lewis Blain:

Why Did You Make Me Black Lord …..
Lord . Why did you make me black?
Why did you make someone
the world would hold back?
Black is the color of dirty clothes,
of grimy hands and feet…
Black is the color of darkness,
of tired beaten streets…

Why did you give me thick lips,
a broad nose and kinky hair?
Why did you create someone
who receives the hated stare?

Black is the color of the bruised eye
when someone gets hurt…
Black is the color of darkness,
black is the color of dirt.

Why is my bone structure so thick,
my hips and cheeks so high?
Why are my eyes brown,
and not the color of the sky?

Why do people think I’m useless?
How come I feel so used?
Why do people see my skin
and think I should be abused?

Lord, I just don’t understand…
What is it about my skin?
Why is it some people want to hate me
and not know the person within?

Black is what people are ‘Labeled’
when others want to keep them away…
Black is the color of shadows cast…
Black is the end of the day.

Lord you know my own people mistreat me, and you know this just ain’t right…
They don’t like my hair, they don’t like my skin, as they say I’m too dark or too light!

Lord, don’t you think
it’s time to make a change?
Why don’t you redo creation
and make everyone the same?

God’s Reply:

Why did I make you black? Why did I make you black?

I made you in the color of coal
from which beautiful diamonds are formed…

I made you in the color of oil,
the black gold which keeps people warm.

Your color is the same as the rich dark soil that grows the food you need…
Your color is the same as the black stallion and panther, Oh what majestic creatures indeed!

All colors of the heavenly rainbow
can be found throughout every nation…
When all these colors are blended,
you become my greatest creation!

Your hair is the texture of lamb’s wool,
such a beautiful creature is he…
I am the shepherd who watches them,
I will ALWAYS watch over thee!

You are the color of the midnight sky,
I put star glitter in your eyes…
There’s a beautiful smile hidden behind your pain…
That’s why your cheeks are so high!

You are the color of dark clouds
from the hurricanes I create in September…
I made your lips so full and thick,
so when you kiss…they will remember!

Your stature is strong,
your bone structure thick to withstand the burden of time…
The reflection you see in the mirror,
that image that looks back, that is MINE!

So get off your knees,
look in the mirror and tell me what you see?
I didn’t make you in the image of darkness…
I made you in the image of ME!

April 14, 2008
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The machines

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This is a future that should not be lived and, with this incident, hopefully it’ll never come to pass.

I am talking about news that robots that the U.S. Army hopes to use to fight Iraqi insurgents acted like they had a mind of their own and that the army has decided to retire the damn things, setting the program back, at least 10 years and, maybe, as much as 20 years. I don’t know how else to formulate this but to say that we should not be in Iraq and I don’t blame the people there for fighting back. Without these machines, we have spread enough death and destruction on that nation the past five years. Talk about “smart weapons.” Here’s a commenter from last August when the army announced the robots have been deployed:

Posted by: Jon | Aug 2, 2007 2:20:13 PM

Wow, this is really a low point in the honor and integrity of our armed forces. The more we remove ourselves from the moral responsibility of taking human life, the more we will be willing to take it without regard to the consequences.

To me this is another reason why we can’t win this struggle against these extremists, they are all to willing to put everything on the line, while we look for ways to get out of the fight and engage from air conditioned command centers.

“If these robots kill an innocent civilian, who will be held responsible?”

Probably no one, they’ll write it off as some sort of malfunction and bad officers will finally free themselves from the responsibility of command.

Posted by: DF | Aug 2, 2007 2:22:47 PM

April 12, 2008
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Scalia and Free Speech

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I was wondering if you might indulge me and consider what Scalia is saying in this post:

Both Scalia and his teenage interlocutor seemed aware of some “Road to Damascus” conversion that Scalia had gone through on Free Speech.

“I have the capacity to admit I made a mistake,” Scalia started out in answering the young man’s question before choosing a different tack.

First, what is the mistake on Free Speech that Scalia is referring to?

Second, Scalia’s conversion on Free Speech seems to contain a trap that I cannot quite put my fingers on.

Is it just his “Originalist” (static) take on the Constitution? Or, are there other flaws in his thinking (as he articulated them here) on this issue?

The conceit, of course, is that Scalia is an “originalist.” Bush v. Gore would, at least, seem to indicate otherwise.

If you have RealPlayer, here’s a link to Scalia’s talk.

Update:

As I’d suspected, Scalia’s “originalist” sentiments here is a complete red-herring. People for the American Way cite chapter and verse ways that Scalia and his Toto, Clarence Thomas, would defile the Constitution and subvert Free Speech, if given the slightest chance.

In his March 14, 2005 Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) speech, clarified that he is not a “strict constructionist” but, rather, an “originalist,” joking that people bring that up as he had some fatal disease (Justice Scalia, when did you first realize you’re an originalist, or, as he mordantly put it: “When did you first start eating human flesh?”)

There is, of course, the embarassing episode of Scalia keeping the media out of an event where he was being honored with a Free Speech award.

Update II:

The Washington Post had a rather superficial take on Scalia’s sitdown with the students but had a fuller story on Scalia, who’s not shy, being very visible at the moment.

April 11, 2008
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Can't win for winning?

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What are we to make of the Knicks and their chuckle-headed coach, Isiah Thomas?
I mean, did they just win three games in a row? I am sure you’re aware that this late in the NBA season most teams try to lose their games, not win them, so they can position themselves for a lottery pick in the draft.
The Knicks are doing it backward. At this hopeless point in the season, they’ve suddenly discovered a winning form. Talk about pathetically too little too late.
It started a couple of weeks ago when the Knicks played the Miami Heat (the Heat, which traded away Shaquille O’Neal and shut down Dwayne Wade–their best player–for the year, are not gonna win another game for the rest of the season).
Isaiah Thomas, the reviled Knicks coach, came in for much criticism because the Knicks won that game.
But the only way the Knicks could have tanked that game was to not show up at the Garden that night.
The Knicks have recovered nicely, losing their next five games. Every Knicks fan was thinking lottery city, baby. Only somebody forgot to tell Thomas. Before Friday night’s game, the Knicks reeled off three victories, including against Detroit, one of the league’s elite teams.
Here’s my proposition for Don Walsh: Fire Isiah. Now!
April 11, 2008
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History

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Douglas A. Blackmon reaches deep into history to re-examine some of our past: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.

This is how Random House, the publisher, described the book:

In this groundbreaking historical exposé, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history—an “Age of Neoslavery” that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II.

Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible “debts,” prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries, and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. Government officials leased falsely imprisoned blacks to small-town entrepreneurs, provincial farmers, and dozens of corporations—including U.S. Steel—looking for cheap and abundant labor. Armies of “free” black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery.

(Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center/Doubleday) John L. Spivak’s 1932 photo of a prisoner punished in Georgia.
The neoslavery system exploited legal loopholes and federal policies that discouraged prosecution of whites for continuing to hold black workers against their wills. As it poured millions of dollars into southern government treasuries, the new slavery also became a key instrument in the terrorization of African Americans seeking full participation in the U.S. political system.

(Library of Congress/Doubleday) Carl Weiss’s 1898 photo of a chain gang in Thomasville, Ga.

Based on a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Slavery by Another Name unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude. It also reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the modern companies that profited most from neoslavery, and the system’s final demise in the 1940s, partly due to fears of enemy propaganda about American racial abuse at the beginning of World War II.
Slavery by Another Name is a moving, sobering account of a little-known crime against African Americans, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.

Read an excerpt of Slavery by Another Name here. A wealth of material about book and author can be found at http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/

About the book’s author: DOUGLAS A. BLACKMON is the Atlanta Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal. He has written extensively on race, the economy, and American society. Reared in the Mississippi Delta, he lives in downtown Atlanta with his wife and children.

April 11, 2008
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3G iPhones to keep current prices

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Apple ‘s 3G iPhone to be priced from $399
By Richard Felton
Wednesday, April 09, 2008 17:21
Chicago (IL) – We just came across a few more interesting 3G iPhone details. Industry sources told TG Daily that the device in fact will launch at WWDC 2008, in two or possible three different configurations, and prices starting at $399. There are a few other tweaks, which, however, may be less than you would expect from a next-gen iPhone.

We aren’t quite sure about the reasons why we are suddenly getting a lot more information about Apple products than we used to in the past and whether these are intentional leaks or just leaks that Apple just has to deal with as it is growing into a much larger entity than it was a few years ago.

These thoughts put aside, prices of the 3G iPhone may be what most of potential buyers may be interested in. Our sources told us that there will be at least two models, one with 8 GB and one with 16 GB memory, priced at $399 and $499, respectively. This pricing structure is identical to current iPhones There is a chance that we could see a 32 GB version for $599, but we were not able to receive a confirmation for this claim.

The iPhone itself will come with a slightly thinner body, which sheds about 2.5 mm when compared to the original iPhone. The casing, we are told, will see revisions in its appearance, removing some of the “plasticky” feeling of some parts. There will not be any significant changes to the operating system as well as the graphical user interface, but we did hear that the accelerometer has been tuned a bit. Unfortunately, Apple decided to stick with a non-removable battery.

To get the details on the whole package we will have to wait for another 63 days. In 63 days, at 9:30 am PST, all questions will be answered. Oh, we almost forgot: Apple is also now working in tic-tock mode between iPhone and iPod Touch. iPod touch should always have a twice the capacity model for the same price as iPhone. Just like iPod touch 32 GB today has the price of 16 GB iPhone, future iPhones and iPods will be parallel: when the 64 GB iPod touch debuts, you can expect that the touch model will continue to have a price match in the form of a 32 GB 3G iPhone.

Lastly, we still have that “two Golden Gate bridges” thingy. It is actually a symbol for the separation between the iPhone/iPod and Mac, we were told. Apple’s goal is to be building a software development infrastructure for the handheld OS, so expect a ton of sessions and workshops that will help developers to create new applications.

April 10, 2008
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