CSD Knowledge Nugget: PowerNomics By Claud Anderson
Got the new Econ book for my daughter’s freshman semester…Can’t wait!!! (Are teachers supposed to be excited “the break” is ending?)
CSD
Goals
Sometimes, Do As I Say and Not As I Do, Can Save Your Eternal Life
If God only used perfect people to get his work done, he would never have any workers. If we set our eyes on some man and ministry, we will see things that will make us stumble, so keep your eyes on God. This is never to excuse our shortcomings, but it’s amazing that scripture exposes the weaknesses and sins of every “hero” in its pages.
Perhaps one of the reasons God exposes the weakness of men in the bible is because it points to their need for a Savior. We cannot read scripture and worship Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, etc.. Their weaknesses point to the one who will deliver them, and He is our deliverance as well today.
Romans 7:23 – but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.24Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?
The Intersection of Sex and Race in America
Are we ready to talk about the role sex played in the terrorist act in South Carolina as well? Like Elliot Rodger, terrorist in CA who said, “Today I drove through the area near my college and saw some things that were extremely rage-inducing. I passed by this restaurant and I saw this black guy chilling with 4 hot white girls. He didn’t even look good.” sexual inferiority plays a major role in racist ideology.
If you are an African-American male reading this, you have known from your early days of female attraction that “the white woman” was off-limits to you. Like me, if you were around them at school, church or perhaps in your neighborhood, you may have followed the “When in Rome, do as the Romans” dating philosophy. However, and probably as your parents held their breath in fear, you may have tried to date “outside your race”. When you did, I’m sure you were met not with open arms (not even with the church folks), but with warnings by the girl or even her parents with statements like, “You can’t come over as my parents don’t like black guys” or something similar.
Now perhaps you’re on the other side reading this. I willing to bet another dollar to the donut that either you’ve heard your parents say the above, you’ve said it to your kids, or you at least know your friends and/or family have laid this rule down.
This nation has always and continues to perpetuate the stereotype that black men are sexual predators. Many in the dominant-group has or will make it clear that their daughter “better not bring home a black man.” Why would you say that (especially if you call yourself a Christian)? Of course, if you study this nation’s history, you’d see that they have always pinned rape on not just African-Americans, but on the Chinese as well. They claimed that Chinese men on heroine were raping white women, so the drug was made illegal and so were they. Mexicans were said to be raping white woman on marijuana, again, the drug was made illegal and so were they (also note that their labor was no longer needed to build the infrastructure of the country). So once again, we don’t teach the country’s true history, the same tricks work decades after decades…and “hot white girls” are being raped on college campuses so much, they fight to keep the statistics from being reported because it wouldn’t exactly look too cool on the recruiting side (fact check that one…I dare you). Oh, and you can’t blame that one on black men because wez don’t goes to skool remember? So it’s not us doing it…
CSD
Cops Behaving Badly Video of the Day: Police Assault Teens At Texas Pool Party
“Brandon Brooks, who posted the unedited video clip titled Cops Crash Pool Party on Saturday, wrote that “this kind of force is uncalled for, especially on children and innocent bystanders.”
In an e-mail to USA TODAY College, Brooks said he felt “invisible” to the cops and that he recorded the incident to demand department accountability: “I knew that what the cops were doing was wrong and that the video could hopefully provide some evidence to someone.”
I’m going to let the person who recorded this incident do the talking on this one.
Okay, I have to at least note a few things:
– this one may be one to go over with your young teenagers. I’ve told my son who is now 6’0 200lbs, that the police will never view him as a boy, but as a man (again, Tamir Rice is an example), so he must know and conduct himself accordingly.
– Did you see all those “good officers” that we hear so much about stopping their guy?
– If you, as a parent, would have behaved this way with your child in the middle of the street, would people just “understand” or would child protective services be at your doorstep to remove your kids that night?
– What happened to the African-American male, who got emotional and wanted to help this young girl and had the officer’s gun pulled on him, when the police brought him back? I wonder what happened to have him bleeding?
– What would the NATIONAL conversation be if the girl would have been white, same size, with long blond hair?
– Good thing the cops keep us safe from these “thugs”, oh…I mean, these suburbanite kids at a pool party not wearing hoodies but swim suits. All this for a fight? As someone who went to a suburbanite school where there were fights at numerous sporting events, I never remember LEOs acting like this.
CSD
(Warning: Video has foul language…mostly used by the police officer at the kids)
Save It and Print It – American History 101 Infographic
Source: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/make-it-right/infographic-40-acres-and-a-mule-would-be-at-least-64-trillion-today
If You Ain’t Cheating, You Ain’t Winning or Does Cheating Show A Deeper Problem In an Athlete’s Life?
Dad’s, with all of the cheating that is going on in sports these days, how do you talk to your kids about this issue?
It’s hardly new. “Back in my day”, I wanted to throw a knuckler like Phil and Joe Niekro and a spitball like Gaylord Perry. Those were fun guys and Joe and Gaylord were cheaters, but hey, it was funny right? Did George Brett really mean to run Pine Tar that far up on the bat?
Come on! Lighten up!
Now this was before we really got serious on baseball cheaters like McGwire, Sosa, Bond (allegedly), A-Rod and the list goes on and on in that sport. But then there’s “Stickum” in football, anabolic steroids, growth hormone in almost every Olympic sport, blood doping in cycling, academic cheating from junior high through college for basketball and football players, car modification cheating in racing…maybe it is true, if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying!
So we really shouldn’t be tripping out about Tom Brady.
But this article in The Root breaks down that we do view and talk about cheaters differently, I highly recommend giving it a read.
Here are some of the highlights:
“If he were black, people would be calling him a criminal and saying that his behavior reflected some innate values. They would blame hip-hop, single mothers and the culture of poverty. If he were a black player, the conversation wouldn’t be about Goodell or the system but how the lack of a work ethic and morals led him to cut corners, to win “by any means necessary.” If he were black, the conversation would turn to affirmative action and how he was forced to cheat because he lacked the skills needed to excel at this elite level….Brady demonstrates yet again that whites are innocent … until proved innocent. Any evidence to the contrary proves that the system is flawed, that we have a miscarriage of justice.”
Dad’s when you’re having this discussion with your kids, do you unknowingly talk differently based on the color of the athlete?
It’s something to think about and it’s how we teach our children about so-called race, without ever talking about race in our homes. Then we proudly exclaim to the world, “I teach my kids that skin color doesn’t matter, everybody should be treated the same!”
So do you treat everyone the same in your actions and judgements on who’s a cheater and who isn’t? Perhaps this is a good discussion to have with ourselves first, and then our children as well.
CSD
Get Your Copy Now: Resurrecting Black Wall Street
Photo source: http://bea2fulchaos.blogspot.com/
Get the order in and add this to the family library!
Just in case you think the story is less true because it’s being told by African-Americans, you can read Tulsa’s very own report yourself done decades later (yes, it’s easy to find online if you want to make the effort).
Or I’ll give you a freebie, as you can listen to the short podcast HERE by two Caucasian women on a show called, you guessed it, Stuff You Missed In History Class.
Well, truth be told, I can’t miss something I was never taught.
My kids know all about it though, and that’s why we love home schooling!!!
“Resurrecting Black Wall Street” not only tells the story of what happened, but discusses the aftermath. We discuss the fight for reparations that was never answered by the Oklahoma legislature. The film also discusses ways that the black community can learn from those who had the vision to create a kingdom of cooperative economics unlike anything seen before or since that tragic period in 1921.
The film features several expert commentators, including Finance PhD Dr Boyce Watkins, Dominique Reese, Michael Imhotep of the African History Network, and many more. You MUST (emphasis theirs) share this story with your children and we must learn from this tragedy in order to build a better tomorrow.” – http://store.yourblackworld.net/products/resurrecting-black-wall-street-dvd-pre-order
Single Dad’s, Today Is Now
Tonight I was talking to a young man who’s about to be a father and wonders if his life is over. May I encourage all of you single dads that actually, your life has just begun. If you think you’ve never accomplished anything in school, at work, or wherever…now you can. If you didn’t have a father in your life, now you can show your child what it’s really like to have one. What can seem like something that has destroyed your life, can be what saves your life. If you’ve been living that “do-nothin” life in this country, they have a cell and/or grave waiting for you. But your child can give you something to set that alarm clock for in the morning. Someone to make you say, “Nah, I’m not going there or doing that…”. Someone that you can put your legacy and values on FOREVER. You will never do that at a job, never do that at a school, but you have an opportunity to do that in your child’s life…and that’s why God allowed YOU to be a father. Everybody else in your life may have said, and may still say, “That ___ isn’t ever going to do anything with their life.” But one day you’ll realize that other people’s opinions don’t pay your child support, hold your kid’s hand, teach them how to catch, or touch you in ways that will have you in tears like you’re the baby. You fellas get up in the morning knowing that you got something to live for, and die for, and be thankful not sorry, that your life will never be the same.
Reasons African-Americans May Want To Homeschool: To Keep Them Out Of The School To Prison Pipeline
Photo Source: suspensionstories.com
Proverbs 20:23 – Unequal weights are an abomination to the LORD, and false scales are not good.
I think this video sums things up in less time it would take me to type up a post.
However, I’ll just say that personally, I’ve witnessed this long before I ever knew about “The Pipeline”.
In my suburban high school, our basketball team got into a major parking lot brawl with another suburban high school. Cops were called, no one went to jail, and guys were bragging about the action the next day in school.
Fast forward a few years…my brother was attending a high school in the city. He got involved in a food fight in the cafeteria. School staff broke up the fight, called the police, and my parents got the call to pick him up from jail. The story didn’t end there, as he later had a court case (ironically held in our neighborhood middle school with a bunch of other school “court” cases), and had to have his recruiter vouch for him that he was a “good kid” and would soon be in the military, so don’t punish him.
Perhaps his biggest crime was not getting into a fight when he went to a school in the ‘burbs instead.
CSD
Chris Broussard Tells It Like It Is: That ‘An Educated Black Man’, Is The Scariest Thing In America!
I’m becoming a huge fan of Broussard…check out kingmovement.com, as the brother is really getting out there, representing for black fathers hard!
Best of all, he’s seeing that they have to be reached long before fatherhood, and that’s the message in the video below. I can’t imagine posting much from BET, but I’m glad for this one.
Check out this short excerpt HERE.
CSD
Father’s Day Weekend Story: You Can Get With This, Or You Can Get With That…
Today a colleague at work was asking my son about home-school and I loved his comment about me.
He said, “Well, I know you think your dad is tough, but lets just say that he has standards.”.
I loved that comment and went on to tell him about a standard my dad had that I didn’t know about, and I’ll call it, “You can get with this, or you can get with that…”.
In my neighborhood growing up, we only had a choice of two junior high schools in our area. One was public and could have just been called Prison Prep, and the other was a small Catholic school a few blocks away. My parents chose to send me and my siblings to the Catholic school at who knows what kind of cost to the family budget.
So likely in considerable debt to give us a better life, I had the nerve to jump in the car after a day I probably got picked on for my weight and glasses (yes anti-homeschoolers, not all socialization is good socialization), and told my dad I wanted to quit school. Calm, cool and collected, I remember my dad gently explaining to me that I could do that if I wanted. My mind began to hit the dream sequence of getting a job as a batboy for a major league team, until they are ready for me to play at 18, and I’ll live at home playing baseball everyday till then (can you tell my junior high days pre-date video games?).
But dad didn’t stop there, he also told me that I must be prepared to move out because nobody that didn’t go to school was going to live in his house.
Huh, wait…what?
Just like I knew that dad was serious when he told me if I ever went to jail, he would not come get me, I knew he was serious about this as well.
Dad knew that the street had nothing to offer me. So I guess why pass-go, and just hit the street at 12 or 13, because that’s where I’m going to be any way with no high school diploma. Did my dad think that a diploma was some kind of Willy-Wonka magic ticket? No, but he did know that if I finished school, that success will set a new sort-of subconscious standard in me, keep me off the street (meaning out of crime, not necessarily homeless for my hood-impaired readers), and maybe even set me up for a “good-job” one day.
Did I quit?
Well, to this day I love setting a particular goal and trying to meet what I set. I stayed away from the street (overall except for a couple of years at best and by God’s Grace, I survived) and I guess many would say I have a “good job”.
Dads are so unlike moms and that’s a great difference. There was no soft non-offensive answer, he didn’t care if I got mad and didn’t speak to him for a while, it was just time for me to decide if I wanted to make man-decisions while I was still a boy. He let me know that I better be ready to live with my choices.
That’s not being tough, that’s setting a standard and I think that no one sets the standards for the family as properly as, the father.
Happy Father’s Day Weekend!
CSD
This Video Summarizes Why I Started CornerstoneDad
I’ve never met this brother.
I’d like to though.
In 4-minutes, he broke down a struggle that I had known for many, many years.
What he said was not very profound, for it is a story that many of us know so too well.
But it is profound, because he put it together in a poetic way, unleashing the pain, sadness, desire and compassion that only a father on the outside can feel.
Prentice Powell, keep spreading your message man, because brothers like us see every Father’s Day in a unique way.
We also know that our metric of a good father is not defined by our son’s mother, our friends, or the judge in a courtroom, but by that person we see in the mirror. That’s what makes us fight.
CSD
Furious Fathering 