United States Government Apologizes For Slavery?

Anthony Springer Jr

After 400 years of slavery and decades of Jim Crow, the United States government is making moves to apologize to African Americans for past injustices.

Rep. Steve Cohen, a white law maker representing a majority black district introduced H.Res. 194 introduced the non binding measure, which will come up for a vote today.

Several states have apologized for slavery, but if Cohen's measure passes, it will be the first time the federal government has acknowledge slavery and Jim Crow and its effects on the black community.

"African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow -- long after both systems were formally abolished -- through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity," H.Res. 194 says.

According to a CNN report, the resolution does not address reparations for blacks, a hotly contested issue in recent years.

http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/news/id.7411/title.united-states-government-apologizes-for-slavery

Quakes

Today there was a minor shake up in Southern California. A reported 5.8 magnitude centered in Chino Hills. In Los Angeles, depending on where people were located, it either felt strong, or very weak. I was at work, preparing to go to lunch when the quake hit. People panicked, scattered under the desks to cover their heads and screamed as the lights on the ceiling swayed back and forth. Our building is set on rollers, so when a minor earthquake hits, things won't fall because it is more like a rolling motion instead of a violent shake. Anyways, when the quake was happening and once it was over all I could do was laugh. I am not afraid of earthquakes, like many people are.


When I was 9, the Northridge earthquake struck in January, a magnitude 6.7 on the Richter scale. Everything in our house fell, gas pipes broke, our chimney cracked...everything broke during that quake. I was so terrified, that I packed all my toys, some juice boxes, my flashlight and anything else I could think of in my backpack. I wore that backpack everywhere, because I was so afraid of things happening. I wanted to be prepared and ready in case there was another one. There were several aftershocks after it happened, and I was out the door each time.


However, my fear of earthquakes subsided when my parents separated that same year. I blamed the earthquake. I thought that it rattled my family and shook up our house so much that it made my mother want to leave my father. Little did I know they were already fighting way before the quake came. As a matter of fact, my father was sleeping on the couch and I slept in the bed with my mother the night the quake came. But when you're 9, I was actually 10 when they separated, the quake was in January, and my birthday is in April. When you're 10, things that happen in life don't make much sense yet. I was so mad at the earthquake, and mad at myself for being afraid of it. All it did was tear my family apart.


From then on, I stopped being afraid of earthquakes. I face them with laughter, and no fear. I don't understand how people can be afraid of things that are out of their control. I was afraid of loosing my dad, and my mom. I was more afraid of loosing my toys, but I was only 10. I was afraid of loosing my dogs, because if they split then I thought all of my things would split to. Of course, that is what happened, but I was more afraid of the unknown, then I was the earthquake at that point. My life took a turn, and to this day I have not been able to keep the same father-daughter relationship with my dad that I had as a child. I can never look at my mother the same again, for not wanting to try to make things work out between them.


So here we are, 14 years later and I am no longer afraid of earthquakes. I got over all of those fears I had about my parents so why not get over a little tremble. Because my life was far more shaken up than any earthquake could do to me. And I honestly mean that...

Love Lessons: Part 2 of 4 - The Crush

Have you ever had a major crush? I think everyone should have at least one crush in their lifetime. I don’t mean a crazy, psycho killer crush, like Alicia Silverstone in the movie The Crush. I mean like a cute, fun type of crush; the kind that when you hear their voice, your heart starts racing. Whenever you see them you all of sudden become a child who doesn’t know what to say and at times, when you’re in their presence, you can‘t breath. The person you have a crush on should be unattainable, and I don’t mean a celebrity. An actual person, someone who you know or have known a while, but you know a relationship couldn’t work out.

My first crush was 18 when we met and he lived with his three brothers and parents. His family lived downstairs and he lived upstairs with his older brothers. He lived in a completely different world than I did. We met because my two best friends, at the time, went to the same high school as his younger brother. One of my friends liked his brother, and somehow he and I started talking. We would spend hours on the phone. We gave each other advice on just about everything. We became very good friends.

He picked me up from school a few times, in his older brother’s Chevy Blazer, and we would just hang out at each other’s houses. When he bought his first car, a black 2000 Chevy Camaro, he came to my school to show me and drove me home in it. It was the sweetest relationship ever. We never kissed, or did anything sexual. But we definitely cared about each other. I think if we did kiss though, the universe would have exploded.

He was most definitely my first and only crush. At the time, I didn’t even know it was a crush, but it was so obvious to every one else. The other night I went out with one of my friends and she reminded me of how bad I had it for him. This one time, we were driving in his neighborhood and I begged her mom to take me to his house so I could see him. I think it was on a Saturday morning, and he wasn’t even up yet. But he came to the door, and we talked for a minute. My friend couldn’t help but fall out laughing as she was reminding me of this incident, but apparently, I fell on the grass, in his front lawn, with a huge grin on my face and said how much I loved him. Of course I don’t remember this, it was 9 ½ years ago for crying out loud.

Our friendship took a turn when I started dating # 3 – The Abuser. My crush went to high school with the Abuser, and he was just shocked that I was dating him. That should have hinted something to me…well we were still friends, and I would visit him often. Especially towards the end of my relationship with The Abuser, I would go to his house when I didn’t want to deal with my boyfriend. He never threatened to beat him up or anything like that, because I didn’t tell him all the details of our relationship. I guess I was too embarrassed to tell him the type of relationship I was in.

However when I met, # 4 – The Soulmate, we didn’t talk much after that. I don’t think he got jealous, but he seemed happy for me. Last I heard was that he was moving in with his girlfriend and that was 3 years ago. I wonder how many people end up having a serious relationship with their crush. Although I really liked him, it was only a crush. I learned to be patient when talking to him, because I was so young and I really wanted to develop a relationship. The more we talked, the more we became friends and the chance of us ever having anything serious quickly escaped my mind. I think if we dated, our relationship would have ended very soon. I didn’t realize that even though we clicked as friends, there was no way we could have dated. He was too selfish, he was too flashy, he was way too materialistic for me. I think that people have crushes for a reason. We somehow are attracted to people who we would never date. That is my firm definition of having a crush on someone. There is always a physical attraction, because that is only natural, we are very visual creatures, but a crush should remain just a crush and nothing more. I mean seriously, what do you think all the women in the world would do if they could actually date Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt? Or for men, Halle Berry or Beyonce or whoever you fantasize about. Could you seriously see yourself with those people? I don’t think so.

Crushes are fun and less demanding than an actual relationship. Now for part 1

Love Lessons – 1 - 4

Love hits you like a ton of bricks. Love is one of the most powerful emotions; it can make people do crazy, stupid and even wonderful things in its name. I happen to be a number one fan for love; I have it tattooed on my wrist, wearing my heart on my sleeve in a literal sense. The word alone gives me butterflies. There is this rumor that people only get a few great loves in their lives. And if you noticed, people don’t normally marry their 18^th boyfriend or stay together with their 13^th wife. People usually fall in love with one of the first few. So what if you’ve fallen in love and lost that love. Now what? Is it too late? Is it really better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?

I believe in learning a lesson from each love interest, and I don’t think that there is such a thing as great loves. I feel like there are soul mates and you only get one. The true question for many single people is how do you know if you’ve already met your soul mate. I can’t answer that question, but I know that I met mine. And I have had a few other interests, people that I actually cared for at one time or another. Maybe it sounds wrong, but the more people you’ve dated the better prepared you are to deal with your true love. And it only takes a few to set your standards. I don’t think people can grow up without heartbreak…so here are some of my past heartbreaks.

Part 3 of 4 – The Abuser

**********************************************************************************

Disclaimer: Eventually I will stop including these and feeling the need to justify my own actions. However, I came to terms a long time ago with my life, and my past. Although I am very young I have gone through different things in life. I like to think of myself as being someone who knows love. Inside and out. Even though my love is still growing and will change as I mature, I still believe that I know love. From my past, present and even future love, I think there are always things that can be learned from it. From every relationship there are lessons, sometimes they are very obvious, but other times, you have to look back at the situation to find the lesson, and whether you know it or not, you in fact learned from that experience.

What type of lesson can be learned from an abusive relationship? I was 16, dating someone who was 19 and we dated for 2 years. When we met, I already knew his name. For some reason the universe was giving me a sign, but at the time, I thought the universe wants me to meet this guy. How else would I know his name before he told me? At the time I thought he could have been my soulmate. However, when you’re young, naïve and in search of love, anything is possible. Whenever I think about the type of relationship that we had, it makes me so angry. Not angry at him, because I have forgiven him, but at myself for being so stupid.

Have you ever been in a relationship where you argued all the time? We fought every single day, about everything. There was not a day that went by that I wasn’t apologizing for something that I didn’t even do. I have never cried so much in my life, than I did while we were together. He used to grab my wrists, to control me, and he would shake me so hard to stop crying. But I couldn’t help it. To this day I can’t stand when someone touches or grabs at my wrist. He would make me walk three feet behind him, with my head down the whole time, so I wouldn’t “look” at anyone else. I lost contact with all my friends from high school, and my own mother wouldn’t talk to me the whole time I was dating him. He was one of the most controlling people that I ever met. I can’t even talk about the worse times we had together. But he was not only physically abusive, but he was also mentally and verbally abusive.

At a time when most people were having fun in high school, going to dances and parties with friends, I spent that time in one of the worse relationships in my life. I wasted so much energy during what was so supposed to be the best time of my life, on a relationship that drained me. I couldn’t focus in school because he wanted to stay up all night arguing with me. He bought us Nextel cell phones and Two Way pagers so he could always contact me. I didn’t even know the numbers on any of those. He would use the walkie talkie feature to talk to me to find out where I was at all times.

It wasn’t until my last year in high school that I started getting fed up. My mother bought me a car in my senior year, and let’s just says I became violent back with him. I’m an Aries, and we have a lot of fire in side of us. There was only so much that I could take. I started doing things with out him. Going to parties and dances with my friends, and since he was such a loser, he didn’t even have a car, I could leave and he wouldn’t be able to find me. He would stand me up all the time, later I learned that was his way of controlling me. If I would wait for him, then he knew that he had power over me. Once I had my car, I started standing him up and I became the one in control.

I learned so much from this relationship. When I finally broke up with him, he started stalking me. I not only had to change my number, but I had to move 20 miles away from everything I grew up around. I had to change all my email addresses and even four years after we broke up, he still contacted me.

I was so weak when I was with him, I was insecure. I have so much more confidence now. I have never cried over a guy since being with him and I will never cry because of a relationship or because of man. I promised myself that I can be a stronger person and that I wouldn’t have drama surround my life anymore. In my current relationship we have never argued, and its been 6 years. Even though I wish I didn’t have to go through all of the things I had to deal with, I am so glad that I did. That relationship taught me about the things that I will not take in a relationship. I was able to set standards for myself. And I went in to my next relationship open and honest. I let him know that I am all about myself and that I love myself more than I could love him, and that I had to take care of number one before I could take care of anyone else. I never took care of myself in my past relationships. I thought that if I made the other person happy, then everything would be fine.

And this is only part 3 of 4.

20 Questions

In every issue, Vibe Magazine has 20 Questions that they ask their readers and post them in the back of the magazine. Their questions are mostly rhetorical so some of mine will be as well. If you've been a faithful reader of my blog, hopefully you will understand my sarcasm. For some reason I say things that people take so literal, they stop talking to me. I am not the type of person to hurt someone's feelings, honestly I'm not. Most of my friends understand my sarcasm but its usually the people who don't know me who get offended. DO NOT GET OFFENDED BY ANYTHING I SAY! I'm not shouting, honestly. All I ever want people to do is laugh. And I want people to take what I write and understand me and feel what I feel about certain things and situations. People who get all pissed off by what I say are not only lacking a good sense of humor but also in personality. These are just my opinions people!

Now that I have written my disclaimer it is time for my 20 Questions:

1. Are married people really happy?
2. What really goes on behind closed doors?
3. Are you as excited as I am to see the new Batman movie?
4. If I drink liquor everyday, does that make me an alcoholic?
5. Why do people call, leave a voice message and then text all at the same time?
6. Why is it that when you are in an elevator with someone, you try so hard to avoid eye contact, and you even hold your breath for a second?
7. Does that mean you're claustrophobic?
8. Is it really someone else's fault that you can't get your shit together?
9. Do dreams really come true?
10. Why does time fly so fast...can't we just hold on to something for a moment?
11. Are people really jealous of me...I can't help it if I'm popular?
12. Why do people change, why can't they just stay the same?
13. Will I ever finish my book?
14. What has happened to all the Bob Woodwards and Carl Bernsteins?
15. Why does it seem like the environmentalists are out to get me?
16. What makes you feel alive?
17. Aren't you glad the news is no longer obsessed with Paris Hilton, Lilo and Britney Spears?
18. And, why do we consume our lives with mindless people anyway?
19. What are you willing to sacrifice to make your dreams come true?
20. Is everyone secretly suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder?

Top execs quit at Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times

From Newsday.com


The editor of the Chicago Tribune and the publisher of the Los Angeles Times announced their resignations yesterday as their newspapers and the economically strapped Tribune Co. chain faced staff and space cuts.


Ann Marie Lipinski, editor of the Chicago Tribune since 2001, said she would be leaving the paper effective Thursday. Last week, Lipinski said the paper would be the latest in a line of Tribune newspapers to make significant reductions in newsroom staff, as well as cutting pages.


Gerould W. Kern, corporate Tribune Publishing's vice president of editorial since 2003, was named to replace Lipinski.


In Los Angeles, publisher David Hiller resigned, becoming the third publisher to come and go at the paper since Tribune bought it in 2000. During Hiller's time as publisher, two successive editors of the paper left and there was considerable debate over staffing cuts. Just this month, further cuts in staff and news pages - called the largest in the paper's history - were announced. Tribune officials said Hiller's successor would be named by summer's end.


Chicago-based Tribune was bought in December by a group led by real estate billionaire Sam Zell and it went from being a public to a private company. Tribune owns 23 television stations and several other newspapers, including Newsday.


Because of the struggle of newspapers to retain their advertising revenue and the general economic downturn, Tribune has sold some assets to generate income for paying down its debt. As part of that, Tribune has a pending agreement to sell Newsday to Cablevision for $650 million, a deal expected to close this summer.

Addicted

I am so addicted to you
Day after day I can't wait to come home to you
Sometimes, when I can't be near you
I go online just to look at pictures of you
I love the way you make me feel
The way you excite me
Even if you cause me pain, I am somehow addicted to it
I can't get enough
I wish I can multiply you, just so I can have more of you
My addiction runs so deep in my veins
That if I can't have more of you
I get nervous
I get so nervous because I think about what it would be like
If I couldn't have more of you
You strap me in like a mental patient in a straight jacket
You protect the most delicate parts of my body
You take care of what is important, my sole
Even though you don't say how much you love me
I know you do
Because I take care of you
And I will never let anything happen to you
I am so addicted to you that I would give anything to have more of you
If I could I would own as many duplicates of you that I could
I will never stop being addicted to you my shoes

Secret man dates

The down low for the younger generation

Karen Smith*, 23, recent college graduate thought she was in a perfect relationship. Jason Gold*, 25, a basketball player, handsome, and charming, she was a cheerleader the perfect high school romance in college. They started dating 2 ½ years ago, spending every moment together. The sex was incredible; the chemistry out of this world, but things took a turn when she found out some shocking news last January.

He is bi-sexual? “I heard rumors from our mutual friend/his roommate. He told me there were pictures to prove it,” Karen told me. She didn’t believe a word of it, but she confronted Jason anyways. He didn’t deny that he was bi-sexual but he also didn’t admit to it.

“I invested 2 years with him. I mean he was my boyfriend, and now I don’t know what to think. He can cheat on me with a woman or a man.”

But the thing is that, Jason didn’t consider it cheating if he slept with another man, because there was no emotional attachment.

Karen remained with Jason for a few months after, because she wanted to further investigate the reason why this man, who she loved and care for, could all of a sudden be interested in men. The more she questioned him about this secret of his, the more he began to give up information.

He told her that there is a whole secret world of men on the down low. He even pointed out ‘secret man date’ to her while they were out one night. “You see those two guys, they’re on a secret date.”

According to Jason, you can tell that two men are on a secret date based on the distance they stand away from each other, the uncomfortableness of their actions/movements, and the fact that they appear like heterosexual men, by staring at women.

The official definition of a secret man date, and I hope I get this right because Karen explained it to me. But apparently it is when two men, go out on a date, which could appear completely normal, like two guys just hanging out, but the difference is, their secret attraction to one another. There is sexual tension between them, think Brokeback Mountain for a moment, if you will. At the end of their “secret” date, they go home and fuck each other, and return to their regular lives, no doubt to a possible relationship with a woman, as if nothing happened at all.

Karen is one of my best friends, so I promised her I would expose this interesting phenomenon. Now I know that men on the down low is old, but I feel like there are more and more younger men, mostly African Americans that are participating in this unacceptable behavior. Don’t think that I have anything against homosexual men, because I party with them, and I love them, hell I live in West Hollywood. But I don’t appreciate the deception. I don’t believe that Jason intentionally deceived Karen, I just think he is very confused.

If you like men, fine, if you like women, fine, and if you want to pull a Tila Tequila, no problem, its your prerogative. But you need to be open with the person that you’re dating, and this is across the board, to heterosexual relationships too.

The fact that she thought this man was her boyfriend, and then to find out that he deceived her is unfair. The situation wouldn’t be better if he cheated with a woman, but its just shocking that men so young are doing this.

In search of a secret man date, Karen and I went out to do some research of our own. We wanted to see if we could spot these secret dates. How many straight men in relationships are doing this? Sleeping with women and men without their girlfriend’s knowing? Going on dates with men? Your boyfriend’s best friend could be his lover and you would have no clue.

Karen and I thought we found a date, these two men at a bar, seems pretty normal. They were watching the game, but they didn’t seem comfortable around each other. One of them seemed really nervous, he kept shaking his feet against the barstool. He seemed very jittery, and every time the two said something about the game, the way they looked at each other hinted that they were fucking. Another indication of their so called hetero-ness, (yes I’m making up words) was the fact that they checked out every single girl at the bar. Now I know that even homosexual men check out women that are just what they do. But these guys seemed to be flirting with women at the bar, to appear hetero.

Their body language gave them away, their legs slowly began to turn towards each other, even as they were flirting with other women around them. Usually, in my experience, when two people have their legs towards each other, it shows not only that they are lovers but also that they are comfortable around each other. In a crowded room of strangers if you are sitting next to someone you know most likely you will cross your legs in that person’s direction, and not towards the stranger on the other side. Watch and learn my readers, watch and learn.

The two stayed at the bar for quite some time, taking turns going to the bathroom, and then when the game was over they finished their beers and went home, to no doubt fuck each other’s brains out. Now these are just observations and conjectures, of course Karen and I don’t have any proof of what we witnessed to actually be true. But there is no denying what we saw and how we felt about it.

I don’t know if women or men have it harder when it comes to dating. Single women everywhere are already complaining that the best looking, great guys are gay. And now the best looking, great guys can also be bi-sexual and keeping secrets from you. I am blessed to be in a relationship, but now what about Karen. What is she supposed to do? After wasting time with this man, she has to start from square one in the dating world.

“I always get the short end of the stick,” she recently told me. Luckily, she is young, attractive and she only needs to gain her confidence back, after being rejected by this man who she loved. Its hard enough to deal with your man cheating on you with women, but now with other men. And hopefully the confused Jason will decide what he actually wants in life, and won’t screw up any more women’s lives.

Its is imperative that women are cautious when they are out there in the dating world, because you may think you and your friend just met a couple of great guys, but you have no idea who he’s taking home.

Circle of Life

My turtles laid eggs again, this is the second time in the last 8 months. The first time I was so freaked out, because I didn't expect it and I have never seen anything like that before. I've had them for almost 6 years now and from what I've read they can lay up to 22 eggs at a time. The craziest thing is that the eggs can come from either the female or the male. Last week I noticed one egg, and then there were 6 more.

I'm not upset that it happened, I just feel bad because all the eggs crack as soon as they lay them. They are supposed to lay their eggs in dirt or sand, and bury them, but since they are in a 20 gallon tank, there is no other place for them to lay the eggs. I created an area for them, not shown in the picture above, for them to drop the eggs in. There is sand and little tiny pebbles, but water still gets in the bowl so the eggs still crack.

By the time I remove them from the water, they're all cracked and the yolk, ugh, is floating around and my female turtle (Peachy) eats it. The reason why I know she is the female is because she is so feisty, she doesn't allow the male turtle to eat sometimes. She takes everything from him, and she is constantly snapping at him. Sorry, ladies. Not only that, but she is almost twice his size, and he is always mounting on top of her. LOL.

I had 5 turtles, but 3 died, and she was the one who killed them. She's an evil bitch, but she is a survivor and I love her. See the photos of the eggs below:

Hot Summer Nights - A poem

I wake up every night

Hot

Hot from the summer nights

Sweating, sweat dripping down my face

Like the condensation from bottled water as it heats up

3 am

4 am

Every night the same time

I have to stand in front of the freezer sometimes

It doesn’t matter if I sleep in the nude or not

I put the fan right in front of my face

Throw the sheets off

Rotate my pillows in search of the coolest one

Drink a glass of ice water

Anything to deal with the heat

During these hot summer nights there are so many

Words

Words are plaguing me from the moment I open my eyes

The words radiate the heat, like steam from boiled water

The bubbles are the words, rising to the surface of my body

As the sweat drips down, it’s the words leaking from

My mind

I’m creating stories, movies, screenplays any and everything

During these hot summer nights

Then I don’t want to go to sleep, until I finish the story

In my mind

Every single last word must go through my mind before

I can close my eyes again

I don’t want to forget anything in the morning

Not a single word

Every night during the hot summer

I wake up

With words leaking out

And I wonder where these words are during the day

I can’t think of anything after 12pm

I have to start writing in the morning or else I’m doomed until the next summer night heat wave that rolls through my body like a rolling earthquake

Independence Day

With today being the 4th of July and all, I got to watch my day time television shows. Today on the Tyra Banks show, yes I know it was a rerun, Tyra wanted to address the State of Black Women. She had a panel of black men and women, and her audience consisted of all black women. She wanted to address issues facing the black community, and more specifically the black women. A few things stuck out for me, one, Tyra talked about black women who wear hair weaves and dye their hair to be blonde. Tyra admitted that she was the last person who should talk about hair weaves and dyed hair because I mean, look at her, but some of the men on the panel felt like black women wanted to look white.

This subject is not a sore one for me, I currently have a weave in, but I love my hair with and without the extensions. I don't feel like I try to look "white" but I do want to be beautiful. I'm not saying that long hair is beautiful either, I think beauty radiates from the inside out. Last year I chopped my hair off, and this year I decided to add extensions.


Unfortunately our society is bombarded with beautiful women, and they happen to be mostly white women. On the covers of all magazines its white women everywhere. One of my favorite magazines, Elle, has only had a black women, Beyonce, on their cover in the last four years. When Vogue put Jennifer Hudson on the cover, the letters in the following issue were disgusting. People wrote about how shocked they were to see such a overweight and dark skinned girl on the cover. The issue came out around the time of Dreamgirls, and many of the women and men who wrote in, didn't know who she was, nor did they care. All they saw was someone who didn't look white, ummmm like Beyonce. Don't get me wrong, I think Beyonce is gorgeous, very beautiful woman, but similar to what Tyra was saying, she usually has blonde hair and a long weave. She looks damn near white.

Even if that is her publicist and her label that make her look like that, what does that tell young black women. Having your own hair is not beautiful, you need to make it long and straight. Your natural color is not beautiful either, you need to have your hair as light a possible to be gorgeous. The closer you are to the paradigm, which happens to be white, the more you'll be accepted in society. Its sad but so very true.

Tyra went on to discuss body image. Many black women have curves, curves that are sometimes beyond our control. However, its the skinny women who are everywhere. In the magazines, on television and in movies. I don't know if its society that is to blame or if its the black community. Maybe a combination of both. Now I know there are a ton of men out there you think that a curvy woman is beautiful, and that they have "more cushion for the pushin" and whatnot, but a lot of those same men will go out and cheat on those curvy women. It doesn't matter to me what kind of women, men like, but don't say one thing and then cheat. The same men who claim to love curvy women, are the ones who will stare at a more petite woman later on.

Women need some consistency...so who is to blame. We know that society sees skinnier, thinner women as gorgeous, but we also know that society doesn't love us the way our men are supposed to. I'm all for people being healthy and exercising, because that is important, but women should be able to love their curves, with or without a man's love.

Finally, Tyra talked about black women being strong, single and childless. She said that she is 34, CEO of her company and she has never been married. She always view her mother, who was a single parent after her parents divorced, as a strong black woman. I took classes in school, one on The Black male and one on The Black child. The black woman takes care of her child, but not her man. According to what I learned in those classes and according to what some people who were on the panel said on the show.

Unfortunately from what I learned, the black woman ruins her child, more specifically a black man, by raising him fatherless. Now i know its not the woman's fault all the time, if her husband or boyfriend is an asshole, but do black women run their men away? Do black women demand too much from their men? So if the black woman runs away her man, and raises a black male, how do you think she will treat him when he gets older? He gets treated as if he were the husband, and she runs him off too. My studies in a nutshell, but I think you get the point. So now, her son will find another black woman, and treat her like dog too, based on his father and based on how that woman treats him, and the cycle continues. I have a single friend, who is a strong black woman, and she is having difficulty finding a "good" man, but what does that even mean?

One of the women on the panel, CEO of Act-1 the employment agency, a black woman, said that single women need to stop putting parameters on men. They need to stop searching for that "good" man and just look within themselves, and think about what they can do to help their own lives. So what can black women do? We have it harder than men and harder than white women. I don't want to take away from what we have accomplished, because black women have gone farther than their male counterparts, straight from the text, don't get mad a me. We need to take men with us, and help them, without nagging them. We can't push them away, we need to come closer together. A man is a man and a woman is a woman, we deal with things differently, but we can't treat our men like they are our children, whether they are white, asian, latino and/or black. Men need to be men, and if your man is a good one then he will treat you like a woman and give you what you deserve.

Now as for Ms. Tyra, she is an inspiration to me. I know a lot of people would call her a sell out, and they say that to any successful black person, Obama is a sell out, Condoleezza Rice is a sell out (well she kind of is) or Beyonce and Halle Berry are sell outs too, but think how far these people have come. And I can't get mad at any of them. I wish race and color didn't exist so people could just be themselves and do their own thing with out parameters set on them. Like she is this...for a black woman...or he is cute...for a dark-skinned guy... All of these things need to stop in our society, and they need to be addressed. We are so focused right now on saving the environment, but equality and humanity have gone out the window.

Have a happy "Independence" Day.

Fragile economy takes toll on jobs

U.S. employment contracts by 62,000 in June, but rate holds steady as 'discouraged' workers stop searching, economists say.

By Maura Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

The nation shed 62,000 more jobs in June, bringing total losses for the year to 438,000 and rekindling concerns that the United States is in recession.

What's more, the Labor Department's unemployment report, released Thursday, showed job losses in April and May were significantly deeper than initially thought. That contraction, combined with higher gas prices, suggests weakness ahead in consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of economic activity.

"The economy has entered a slow-motion recession," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Democratic-leaning think tank. "It is not seeing the dramatic plunges in jobs that characterized prior recessions, but the collapse of the housing bubble is slowly sinking more and more sectors of the economy."

The economic stimulus payments the government issued to taxpayers in the last few months have helped ease the strain of higher energy prices, but that boost is about to fizzle out, said Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Associates in Holland, Pa.

"When people run out of rebate money for gasoline and food, they will be in trouble," Naroff said. "This tepid, limping economy will be with us for a while. We're not crashing and burning; it's just not an economy that's going anywhere."

The news could have been worse. The unemployment rate was unchanged after shooting up from 5% in April to 5.5% in May, the biggest one-month jump since 1986. And job losses were in line with expectations, contributing to a stock rally on Wall Street.

But some economists took little comfort in the flat unemployment rate. They noted that many workers have stopped looking for jobs altogether and are not being counted among the jobless because they have not actively sought new employment within the last four weeks.

"Many more adults are sitting on the sidelines, neither working nor looking for work," said Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland. "Factoring in discouraged workers raises the unemployment rate to about 7.2%."

In addition to the 8.5 million Americans counted as unemployed, an additional 5.4 million were working part time because they were unable to find full-time work, the government said. About 1.6 million others were "marginally attached" to the labor market -- that is, they had looked for work sometime in the last 12 months but had become discouraged, entered school or decided to stay home to care for family.

Not surprisingly, some of the steepest job losses were in the troubled housing sector, which has been walloped by falling home values and foreclosures against borrowers who can't make escalating payments on adjustable-rate loans.

Construction, depressed by the collapse of the housing market, lost an additional 43,000 jobs in June. Since its peak in September 2006, construction employment has fallen by 528,000. An additional 33,000 jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector.

But there were also signs of weakness in other areas, including retail trade and financial services. Government jobs were a bright spot, accounting for 29,000 new positions, and there was hiring in the healthcare and hospitality sectors. But those gains were outpaced by the losses in other parts of the economy.

Altogether, the private sector contracted by 91,000 jobs. Generally, the economy must create about 100,000 jobs a month to keep pace with the increasing population; this year, the economy has lost an average of 73,000 jobs a month.

The employment reports for April and May, meanwhile, were revised downward to show an additional 52,000 job losses.

"It's persistent bad news," said Diane Swonk, chief economist with Mesirow Financial in Chicago. "The economy is growing, but realistically it feels like a recession to most people."

Recessions are generally defined as periods when gross domestic product slips into negative territory for two or more consecutive quarters. But the National Bureau of Economic Research, the panel that makes the official designation of a recession, tends to use a more complex analysis that emphasizes job creation and industrial production.

The economic bureau usually waits until downturns are over before applying the "recession" label. But economists said the sense of a downturn is so strong that an official declaration has become almost irrelevant.

"Technically, we're probably not in a recession, but that doesn't matter," Naroff said. "It feels as if we are, and that's much more critical than any definition."

Soaring oil prices are not making the job picture any brighter, said Steven Davis, a labor economist at the University of Chicago. He said uncertainty about how high energy prices could climb may keep some firms from investing in new plants and new workers.

"Oil prices are high, but there is also a lot of uncertainty about whether they will go higher," Davis said. "The answer to that question has a big impact for businesses in terms of what kinds of capital equipment they will adopt. This uncertainty is also depressing economic activity and hiring."

In New York futures trading Thursday, oil closed at a record $145.29 a barrel, up $1.72, or 1.2%. Traders pointed to market nervousness about tension in the Mideast and fears that global fuel demand may test tight oil supplies.

Los Angeles Times to cut 250 jobs, including 150 from news staff

The newspaper cites falling ad revenue in economic slowdown.

By Michael A. Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday announced plans to cut 250 positions across the company, including 150 positions in editorial, in a new effort to bring expenses into line with declining revenue. In a further cost-cutting step, the newspaper will reduce the number of pages it publishes each week by 15%.

"You all know the paradox we find ourselves in," Times Editor Russ Stanton said in a memo to the staff. "Thanks to the Internet, we have more readers for our great journalism than at any time in our history. But also thanks to the Internet, our advertisers have more choices, and we have less money."

He also noted that the poor economy had struck particularly hard at the California housing market, traditionally a robust source of advertising revenue for The Times.

The cuts reflect conditions across the newspaper industry, which is confronting sharply deteriorating print advertising revenues. Although online ad revenues are rising, they have not made up for the losses. Amid the current nationwide economic slowdown, the prospects are for continued revenue shrinkage through the end of this year.

Times Publisher David Hiller said the goal of the cuts was to "get to where we need to be for the long term. We want to get ahead of the economy that's been rolling down on us and get to a size that will be sustainable."

Hiller said the size of the reductions was predicated on the expectation that the economy would "bottom out and reach equilibrium" early next year. The editorial staff cuts will be among 250 positions cut across all departments of The Times, including circulation, marketing and advertising, Hiller said. Companywide employment will be about 3,000 after the reductions, he said.

The editorial staff cuts, which amount to roughly 17%, will be spread between the print newsroom and The Times' Web operations and are to be completed by Labor Day. The two operations employ about 876 people, meaning that the editorial staff will remain above 700. The paper would continue to have one of the largest corps of editors and reporters in the country. Details on the reductions, including severance terms, will be forthcoming.

Hiller said he expected that the severance terms would match those of earlier staff buyouts at The Times, including payment equivalent to two weeks' salary for every year of service, up to a maximum of 52 weeks, to be paid into the employee's retirement account. One issue still under study, Hiller said, is whether the reductions trigger the California Worker Adjustment and Retaining Notification Act, or WARN, which requires 60 days' notice of impending layoffs under certain circumstances.

As part of the reduction process, Stanton said, The Times will be combining its print and Web staffs into a single operation with a unified budget.

"These moves will be difficult and painful," Stanton said in his memo. "But it is absolutely crucial that as we move through this process, we must maintain our ambition and our determination to produce the highest-quality journalism in print and online, every day."

The cuts are the latest, and among the most severe, in a series of reductions that have pared The Times' editorial staff down from its 2001 level of nearly 1,200. The most recent reductions, announced in February, involved the elimination of more than 100 jobs in all Times departments, including more than 40 in the newsroom.

The reductions have come amid considerable management turmoil: In 2006, then-Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson and Editor Dean Baquet publicly refused to make cuts requested by management at Tribune Co., owner of The Times. Both eventually left the newspaper. Tribune was then a publicly traded company, but it has since been taken private in a buyout led by Chicago entrepreneur Sam Zell.

Johnson was succeeded by Hiller. Baquet was replaced by James O'Shea, then the managing editor of the Chicago Tribune; O'Shea departed in January, also after objecting to planned cuts in the newsroom budget. Stanton, a 10-year veteran of The Times, was named editor three weeks later.

Announcements of hundreds of reductions were issued only last week by dailies in Boston, San Jose, Detroit and elsewhere. Among Tribune newspapers, the Baltimore Sun said it would cut about 100 positions by early August and the Hartford Courant announced plans to cut about 50 newsroom positions. The New York Times and the Washington Post both instituted layoffs or buyouts to reduce their staffs this year.

Besides the changes in the newspaper industry, Tribune carries the burden of about $1 billion in annual payments on its debt, much of which it took on to finance the $8.2-billion buyout.

Since the buyout, which became effective at the end of December, Zell has moved to reduce the debt through asset sales. A $650-million sale of the suburban New York daily Newsday is pending, and the sale of the Chicago Cubs along with the baseball team's iconic Wrigley Field ballpark and related properties is expected to bring in $1 billion or more when it is completed, probably this year.

Zell said last month that the Newsday sale and new credit arrangements would ensure that the company would meet its interest and principal obligations this year and would remain in compliance with its loan agreements.

"Even with the reductions, this is one amazing place with great people and great customers," Hiller said, "and we're going to keep doing amazing work for them."

School Yearbook Gives Black Students Fake "Ghetto" Names

From Hiphopdx.com

According to the Los Angeles Times, several African American students at Charter Oak High School in Los Angeles were purposely given fake “ghetto” names in the school’s yearbook.

The students were given fake names such as "Tay Tay Shaniqua," "Crisphy Nanos," and "Laquan White."

Charter Oak High School’s principal, Kathleen Wiard, claims that the names were only supposed to be temporary fillers.

"It appears that during the process of creating the yearbook, filler names were put in and not corrected at the proofreading part," Wiard told the Los Angeles Times.

A few of the students whose names were replaced are members of the Black Student Union, where the population of African American students is less than five percent.

Wiard has not yet commented on possible disciplinary action, but plans on having the names corrected.

Reported by Danielle Harling.