The Courage of Rosa Parks
(A transcript of my weekly radio commentary)


To fully appreciate the contributions of Rosa Parks, one would have needed to have sat where I sat as a child – in the back of the bus. When my fellow Alabama native defiantly refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, Ala., those of us in Tuscaloosa and across the South understood that it was a direct attack on America’s version of apartheid.

For the record, Montgomery was not the first place that African-Americans boycotted buses in the South. A similar campaign had taken place in Baton Rouge, La. But it was the Montgomery Movement that caught the nation’s attention and thrust a little-known-preacher, Martin Luther King Jr., into the national spotlight.

Being forced to ride in the back of a bus is something you never forget. I couldn’t have been any older than 4, but I can still recall wanting to ride up front, near the driver, but my mother would not pause and almost drug me to the back of the bus. My innocent mind, even at that age, knew that making Blacks ride in the back was wrong.

Segregation affects its victims in one of two ways. Some acquiesce and accept the system. And others, in their own way, vow to fight back. Rosa Parks was a fighter and we would have never won that victory without her courage.

Black Conservative Thanks God for Slavery


Mediamatters. org has disclosed that Mychal Massie, a Black conservative, was interviewed on the Janet Parshall’s America radio show recently and said, “the Black people today that curse America are cursing God because it God had not permitted the Ashanti and Dahomey tribes of ancient Africa to trap other Africans and sell them to Muslims, who sold them to Europeans, we would not have what we have today.”

Here is their report:


On the October 18 edition of the syndicated radio show Janet Parshall's America, Project 21 national advisory council member and columnist for conservative website WorldNetDaily.com Mychal Massie declared to host Janet Parshall that African-American churches today "have succumbed to hatred" and "disobedience to God." Massie went on to proclaim that "the black people today that curse America are cursing God because if God had not permitted the Ashanti and Dahomey tribes of ancient Africa to trap other Africans and sell them to Muslims, who sold them to Europeans, we would not have what we have today." Parshall praised Massie for his "straight talk" -- the name of a program Massie hosts on the conservative website Rightalk.com -- and called him "brother."
Project 21, which bills itself as a "National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives," is a creation of the conservative think tank National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR). NCPPR's executive director, David Almasi, oversees Project 21's daily operations. Almasi, who previously worked for the Reed Irvine-created right-wing group Accuracy in Academia, employs spokesmen from a "variety of careers" throughout the country to promote Project 21's agenda through the media, academia, government, and business communities. Roll Call reported on October 19 that Jack Abramoff, a former NCPPR board member, used the organization to funnel $25,000 he received in lobbying fees from an Internet gaming company "to pay for foreign trips for Members of Congress and staff." Roll Call noted, as did The Washington Post, that this money was used to help fund a May 2000 golfing trip to St. Andrews, Scotland, that included former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX).
From the October 18 broadcast of Salem Radio Network's Janet Parshall's America:

MASSIE: There's a reason that the black family is in the state of destruction that it is today. At the close of the civil rights era -- and I submit that the civil rights battle has been won. It is over. Black people can do anything they want to do. There is no restrictions, apart from those that are self-imposed.

PARSHALL: Mm-hmm.

MASSIE: At the close of Jim Crow, at that closing of that civil rights era, of those battles, the black family -- 87 percent of black households were two-parent married families. Eighty-seven percent. Forty percent of the black households were business owners. Forty percent.

PARSHALL: Wow.

MASSIE: And, in 40 years, we have 90 percent black-on-black crime. Seventy -- a high 70 percent, near 80 percent, black illegitimacy. We have, in 40 short years, 10,000-plus children born in Philadelphia in 2001, 9,700 and change black abortions. We have three out of every five black pregnancies ending in abortion. Now, how did we go from a period of Duke Ellington to a period of Tupac Shakur?

PARSHALL: Mmm.

MASSIE: How did we go from Nat King Cole to a 50 Cent, or Mystikal, or a Snoop Dogg? How did we go from dignity and honor and an impetus -- an importance placed on education to a thuggery? Rap and what we see today, you can't even call that gangster rap.

PARSHALL: Mmm.

MASSIE: Because the gangsters -- and I'm not going to ask you to date yourself, but I'll date myself -- I remember the gangsters being those that were meticulously dressed, that wore the finest of shoes and set the fashion trends. These things today are street trash --

PARSHALL: Mmm.

MASSIE: -- that have drug the family down, and the church, and Janet, I will go on record and I will not win any popularity awards, but it is the fault of the black church and the black community because the preachers have succumbed to hatred; they have succumbed to a disobedience to God. There is a parallel that I think needs to be pointed out. Had Joseph not been kidnapped and sold into slavery, he would not have been in a position to help his family in their time of need.

PARSHALL: Hmmm. Wow.

MASSIE: The black people today who curse America are cursing God because if God had not permitted the Ashanti and Dahomey tribes of ancient Africa to trap other Africans and sell them to the Muslims, who sold them to the Europeans, we would not have what we have today.

PARSHALL: Mychal, thank you very much. There is a reason why you host a program called Straight Talk, because you just gave it to us. God bless you, brother, appreciate you very much. We'll take a break, folks, and come right back.

Miller Case Worst than Originally Thought


Earlier, I wrote that New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s case uncovered one of Washington’s worst kept secrets – the tendency of reporters to protect high-ranking government sources. Her subsequent report in the New York Times shows that I understated the problem.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting ( http://www.fair.org/) has posted an analysis of Miller’s transgressions under the headline, “Miller’s Tale – Can the Reporter – or the New York Times – be trusted.”

FAIR observes, “Miller was plainly deceptive in her dealings with newsroom colleagues. The Times reported that once it became known at least six Washington journalists had talked to White House officials about Wilson’s CIA identity, Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman asked Miller if she was one of those journalists. Miller denied it.

“Miller also claimed to have ‘made a strong recommendation’ to her editor about doing a story about Wilson’s CIA role, but was told no. The Times’ Washington bureau chief at the time, Jill Abramson, said 'Ms. Miller never made any such recommendation.’ The article does not follow up on this remarkable contradiction, but it seems likely that if any of Miller’s editors had received such a suggestion, they would have come forward to back up her story.”

Miller’s least defensible behavior involves her willingness to not only lie about the identity of Lewis “Scooter Libby," Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, but to agree to deliberately mislead her readers.

FAIR reports, “During the course of one of her interviews with Libby, Miller revealed that she agreed to change his identification from ‘senior administration official’ to ‘former Hill staffer.’ Miller reported that she ‘agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill.’ He did not explain why he made this request, but Miller ‘assumed Mr. Libby did not want the White House to be seen as attacking Mr. Wilson.’ This passage is extremely incriminating; not only does she acknowledge that she was willing to cooperate with a source to mislead readers, but she admits that the purpose of this deception was to conceal the White House’s attack on a critic…”

A Speech by George E. Curry
Editor-in-Chief
National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA)
and BlackPressUSA.com
at
The Millions More Movement
October 15, 2005
The National Mall
Washington, D.C.



A.J. Liebling, the famous press critic, said: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” The National Newspaper Publishers Association is a federation of 200 Black-owned newspapers, with a combined circulation of 15 million. Our chairman, John B. Smith Sr., asked me to tell you how proud he is that NNPA newspapers have written extensively about the Millions More Movement prior to today and wanted me to let you know that our papers will to continue to cover this important movement long after the last piece of trash has been picked up here today. The plight of the Black Press mirrors the plight of the Black community.

Hurricane Katrina exposed a deep racial divide in this country. More than two-thirds of African-Americans said that if the victims left behind had been White, the federal response would have been quicker. By an even larger margin, more than three-fourths of Whites said race played no part in the delayed response. Unfortunately, many Whites – not all – live in what Dr. Joseph Lowery calls the 51st state – the state of denial.

Not only must we worry about this 51st state, we should be concerned about the 4th Estate – the news media. While NNPA-member newspapers were publishing stories about Black churches and ordinary citizens doing extraordinary things to help their brothers and sisters, the White-owned media was obsessed with stories about the limited number of victims looting while ignoring the massive looting that was taking place at the gas pump.

You saw two almost identical photos, one of Blacks in chest-high water and one of Whites. The African-Americans were described in the cutlines as “looters.” Whites, on the other hand, were said to be “finding” food in abandoned grocery stores.

Do not underestimate the power of language and pictures.

It becomes easier to dismiss the plight of the needy when labels can be hung on them. Some journalists were quick to refer to those left behind as “refugees.” One cannot be a refugee in his or her own land. No, they do not live in the Third World just because they have lost their worldly goods.

I am proud to be a journalist but I am not proud of how my profession has performed its duties. The White-owned news media has lost much of its credibility because it has adopted the language of the Far Right. Many people are confused about affirmative action because the media talks about race-based or gender-based preferences. Affirmative action is not race- or gender based. Historically Black Colleges and Universities don’t admit students based on their race. My alma mater – Knoxville College – is an HBCU but it doesn’t admit students because they are Black. Spelman, an all-female college in Atlanta, doesn’t accept students based on their gender. The students must be qualified. And so it is with affirmative action.

Given these assaults on the poor, affirmative action and programs designed to help lift people out of poverty, the need for an independent Black Press is greater than ever. As we have seen, we can’t rely on anyone else to tell our story. Our Black media, like other institutions in our community, are under attack. We’ve already lost Motown, we lost Johnson Hair products in Chicago, BET sold out to Viacom, Time, Inc. has purchased Essence and BlackVoices.com.

And it’s going to get worse.

Over the next 50 years, the U.S. population is going to grow by 50 percent – 90 percent of that growth will be among people of color. Only 7 percent of that growth will be among Whites. That means – and let’s be very clear about this – the only way for media giants to grow will be by buying Black-owned companies.

This is the time to make our Black media stronger so that we can continue to tell our stories. The motto of the first Black newspaper in 1827 – Freedom’s Journal – is just as relevant today as it was 178 years ago: “We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.”

Thank you.

The Sordid Side of Unnamed Sources

Much has been made of Judith Miller’s decision to go to jail rather than reveal her sources. As a journalist with 35 years of experience, including stints as a Washington Correspondent and the New York Bureau Chief for the Chicago Tribune, I applaud any journalist’s difficult decision to go to jail rather than violate an agreement to protect a confidential news source.

Miller, invoking a reporter’s responsibility to protect confidential sources, served almost three months in a Virginia corrections center rather than testify before a grand jury about whether a government official leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to The New York Times. Earlier, Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper had faced a potential imprisonment but testified when his confidential source released him of the obligation to protect his source’s identity.

Both cases shed light on how Washington works – or doesn’t work.

It was eventually learned that Cooper had been protecting the identify of Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political strategist, and Miller had been protecting I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Chaney. And that’s the problem. Neither was protecting a low-level government whistle-blower. They were protecting powerful people at the highest rungs of government, the very people who do not need to be protected.

By entering unholy pacts with White House propagandists, journalists willingly allow themselves to be manipulated. In effect, they permit federal officials to spin them in all directions without readers or viewers knowing the true source of information – and how that information is tainted.

There is another variation of this merry-go-round. Whether the president is a Democrat or Republican, high-level officials – often Cabinet members or major White House players – give briefings with the understanding that they will not be identified by name. The reporters buy the line that they are being given information that they would not have access to if the source was forced to disclose his or her identity. In reality, they allow administration propagandists to throw rocks and hide behind the clock of anonymity.

Counting on Bill Bennett

Former Secretary of Education William Bennett created a stir with his “hypothetical” assertion that if the U.S. really wanted to lower the crime rate, it could abort all Black babies. His attendant disclaimers about how immoral that would be notwithstanding, one could argue that had any group been aborted – including those that make stupid statements – presumably, the crime rate would decrease. But make no mistake about it: Bennett didn’t by chance select African-Americans. He was playing into an old stereotype that Blacks are more prone to violence than Whites.

Let’s examine what the numbers really say. According to the FBI, Whites are arrested for crime at more than twice the rate of Blacks, 6.7 million to 2.6 million in 2003. In other words, Whites represented 70.6 percent of those arrested in 2003 (60.5 percent of violent crimes). By contrast, Blacks represented 27 percent of all arrests and 37.2 percent of people arrested for committing a violent crime.

But the deeper an African-American goes into the U.S. criminal justice system, the greater the racial disparity. For example, according to the National Criminal Justice Commission, African-Americans are 12 percent of the population, 13 percent of all monthly drug users yet represent 74 percent of all those sentenced to prison for drug possession. The issue is one of selective prosecutions.

If Bennett was interested in, say, getting rid of mass murderers, he might have proposed -- ”hypothetically,” of course – that all White males be aborted. Then, we would not have had Charles Manson, the Boston Strangler (Albert De Salvo), Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy, the Son of Sam (David Berkowitz), the Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski), the University of Texas Sniper (Charles Whitman), Jeffrey Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy. Unlike Bennett’s pronouncement, we know the crime rate would drop were this to have happened.