I was listening to a This American Life podcast yesterday about Going Big and one of the stories was about Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone and the wonderful things he is doing to change the lives of many impoverished children. To get right down to the basics, what he learned is that parents in lower income neighborhoods aren’t reading to their children.  Kids from middle and upper class white and black suburban neighborhoods are starting school with an arsenal of 20,000 words and kids from impoverished areas only have 5,000 (the numbers are not exact, this is just an example of the disparity).

So in the spirit of solidarity with Mr. Canada I am starting a new feature as a part of my social network, which is simple, easy and probably will be a lot of fun; I will introduce one new word a day on my twitter page.

Below is our beloved Ed Bradley discussing Mr. Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone. Enjoy

Watch CBS Videos Online

As always, be well

CF

I think this is a wonderful option for African American Women who find themselves single and childless in their mid-30s and 40s. If you are financially and emotionally ready to give a black child a home do it; because they are the ones left to fend for themselves in foster care the most. But one thing did disturb me about the article and that is the fact that some women are choosing children based on their shading. Darker children are being passed up for Lighter or Mixed kids. If that is part of some dumbass woman’s criteria, then she is not emotionally ready to raise a child in my opinion; it’s just another form of Black on Black Racism.

Wendy Duren thought she did everything right.

Wendy Duren says she doesn’t get as much sleep but loves her adopted daughter, Madison.

She broke off relationships with men who didn’t want to settle down. She refused to get pregnant out of wedlock. She prayed for a child.

Duren’s yearning for motherhood was so palpable that her former fiancé once offered to father a child with her. But he warned her that he wasn’t ready for marriage.

“I get bored in relationships after a couple of years,” he told her, she recalls.

Those events could have caused some women to give up their dreams of motherhood. But Duren, a pharmaceutical saleswoman, didn’t need a man to be a mom. At 37 years old, she decided to adopt.

“It’s the best decision I could have made in my life,” Duren says, two years later. She’s now the mother of Madison, a 1-year-old daughter she raises in Canton, Michigan.

“People say I have never seen you so happy,” she says, “but it’s also the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

What kind of crap is this:

Yet there are some single African-American women who are not emotionally ready to adopt an African-American child who is too dark, some adoption agency officials say.

Fair-skinned or biracial children stand a better chance of being adopted by single black women than darker-skinned children, some adoption officials say.

“They’ll say, ‘I want a baby to look like a Snickers bar, not dark chocolate,’ ” Caldwell, founder of Lifetime Adoption, says about some prospective parents.

“I had a family who turned a baby down because it was too dark,” she says. “They said the baby wouldn’t look good in family photographs.”

As always, be well
CF

…is an ASS!

and an official member of the Dumbass Brigade.

As always, be well

CF

More Members of the Dumbass Brigade

Below is a basic definition of The Only Ones:

The Only Ones—black professional and social elites who travel in worlds where they’re often the only black person in the room. The Only Ones typically break into fields or companies that admit few blacks, move into neighborhoods where few blacks live, and send their kids to mostly white schools. They are not running from their own—they’re chasing after the best they can get. They aren’t assimilationist; they’re ascensionist.

Summering on Martha’s Vineyard…were the elite meet

Many blacks from Oak Bluffs are elated that the Only One–in–Chief may be joining them. “People are going to lose their minds!” Tonya Lewis Lee says. At the same time, there’s also a bit of wariness among the wealthiest ones, an uncertainty whether Obama will affirm them. “Obama is more a man of the people,” says a Vineyarder who’s part of black high society. “He doesn’t seem to identify with affluent black people. His wife definitely doesn’t; she is basically a ghetto girl. That’s what she says—I’m just being sociological. She grew up in the same place Jennifer Hudson did. She hasn’t reached out to the social community of Washington, and people are waiting to see what they’ll do about that.”

Being the FIRST FAMILY OF THE UNITED STATES isn’t ELITE enough for snobby assed Upper Middle Class Black Folks. They are beside themselves because the Obamas aren’t kissing their asses to be apart of their inner circle in Washington and beyond.  WTF are these people thinking; they should be falling all over themselves trying to get into Obama’s circle. HE IS THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD ASSHOLES. Why should the First Lady of the United States be expected to chase after the wife of some Doctor, Lawyer, or Indian chief on Martha’s Vineyard for an invitation to a party or lunch or anything for that matter.

On November 8, 2008, THE OBAMAS BECOME “THE ELITE.” So my brothers and sisters (who seem to think those of us who are less fortunate want them to apologize for being successful…NOT) take the stick out of your ass and give the Obamas the same respect you would give any of the other 43 presidents who have served this country.

You dumbasses should be chasing Desiree Rogers the Whitehouse social secretary to get your name on their list and you should be sending gift baskets and toys and anything else you can think of (you’re smart asses, be creative) begging to have Sasha and Malia participate in Jack & Jill of America and your other elitist organizations; instead you feel the Obamas should come to you…it’s not enough to have degrees from Harvard and Princeton or to be the President of the United States, you still are expected to kiss someone’s ass in this country to fit in with your own kind. How sad…that’s snobbery to the ninth degree.

As always, be well

CF

There is a wonderful documentary coming out this summer called “Happily Ever After” that discusses black marriage. The film was created by the people over at Black and Married With Kids.com.

Anything that will strengthen our families is awesome. The one thing that bothers me is the perception that the black family is so broken and fractured when actually it isn’t.

As always, be well

CF