After Thursday's finalizing of the jury, the R. Kelly trial will be on hiatus until Tuesday's opening statements. Things probably should have gotten under way on Monday, but one of the jurors (the young woman studying criminal justice in college) has a final exam that day. I'm sure Kellz hopes she fails!!!

 Jeremiah Wright is my pastor as well as the Pastor for Senator Barack Obama, Common & Oparh (When its' convenient for her) at The Trinity United Church of Christ. Pastor Wright was attacked for very strong comments he has made about race in America.

I am a huge fan of Pastor Jeremiah Wright and I consider Pastor Wright to be one of the great Americans of our country. He is also the reason why I am, What I am today. Mom too!!!

There, I said it. Now crucify me.

 Just realize that by doing so, you will surely be on the wrong side of history. You will be on the same side as the founding fathers, who built a nation on the kind of racial bias that Pastor Jeremiah Wright and others are bold enough to honestly discuss in America. You will be on the same side as the generation before you, who swore that racism was a thing of the past and surely did not affect them. But when you look back at your grandparents' generation, you can see their racism clearly. The problem is that your grand children will say the same thing about you.

I have been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ for 28 years, and I admire his spirit. He is truly a man who walks the walk of Jesus, who would also not stand idly by and allow this blatant discrimination to exist. But like Jesus, Jeremiah Wright finds himself being held up for bloody attacks by the American public. As Dr. Martin Luther King showed us, America is good at persecuting its heroes, especially when it comes to race.

 The logical reaction to individuals such as myself and Pastor Jeremiah Wright, educated black men who speak honestly on race, is to say that we are extremists or perhaps even insane. I can't help but agree. Both I and Jeremiah Wright must be insane for having the audacity to point out the obvious. We are no different from anyone crazy enough to point out the holocaust during the Nazi era, or to speak honestly on liberty during the height of McCarthyism. The point that Pastor Wright makes is both correct and clear: America is a racist country. It has been in the past and continues to be to this day.

You think Jeremiah Wright is a lunatic? Let's look for objective analysis, shall we?

 The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recently issued a scathing report about racism in America. In the report, the committee cited the following:

- The m**** incarceration of black men in our prison systems. America has the largest prison population in history and half of those men are black. The problem is that black people are only 13% of the general population.

- Inadequate legal defense for these individuals, leading to a higher likelihood of incarceration.

- Longer prison sentences for the same crimes for black men and a disproportionate willingness of our government to kill these men when they are on trial for murder.

- Segregated school systems leading to far worse education for black children.

- The disenfranchisement of individuals with criminal records, denying them the right to vote, and significantly reducing their opportunities for employment for the length of their entire lives.

 You see, I am with Jeremiah Wright on this one. I applaud him for having the courage to speak the truth in support of people of color. Pastor Wright is a doctor, offering medicine to a country that is truly sick. We allow the Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys and Bill O'Reillys to continuously attack people of color, while millions of blind Americans listen to these uneducated monsters continue the most horrific traditions of our nation.

Well Jeremiah Wright and others like him are not going to sit by and let that happen. We've been taught to be honest and to fight back. I do it because it is what I am led to do. Jeremiah Wright does it because that is what Jesus would do. Either way, what we see is real and America needs to learn to deal with it. Silly terms like "reverse racism" are nothing more than ploys to alleviate our country of the guilt of what it has done to black families for the past 400 years. If you feel that someone is being racist for fighting against inequality, then this may imply that, deep down, you do not feel such individuals are worthy of the equality they seek.

 Many have critiqued Pastor Wright's ****ertation that AIDS was created by the US government to rid the world of black people. I have not seen evidence to support such an ****ertion. The problem is that Pastor Wright's theory is NOT out of the question. Were we not the same country that injected black men with syphilis just to see what would happen? Did the CIA not play a role in allowing drugs into the black community before and during the Reagan era? Did the government not engage in illegal covert activities to undermine black leadership via CointelPro, in which Hoover said that the objective was to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" movements within the black community?

 It's not as if Pastor Wright, nor any other person of color, has good reason to trust the country that has made a market of exterminating black people. Sorry to break this to you, but those are just the facts. As I mentioned before, the United Nations agrees with us. Perhaps they are insane as well. By attacking people like us for speaking the truth, it is only perpetuating the global perception that The US is a self-righteous nation, quick to point out of the flaws of others, but unwilling to honestly ****ess its own areas for improvement.

On many other issues, Jeremiah Wright and I are in lockstep. America is a country that continues to allow racial inequality to fester and does nothing about it. We, for some ridiculous reason, have told our children that we can spend 400 years creating systemic inequality and then cure it overnight. Such a conclusion is not only nonsensical, but borders on the ridiculous.

 Our government refuses to apologize for the atrocities of slavery, yet we are quick to condemn the Nazis for what they did to the Jews. What America did to black people was far worse, as the horror lasted over several centuries.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Jeremiah Wright and others are 100% correct when it comes to racism in America: many Americans just don't get it and none of them want to understand how it works. But then again, that's exactly how they were trained to think, so I am honestly not surprised.

In a appearance before the Washington media, My pastor ,the Rev. Jeremiah Wright said that criticism surrounding his fiery sermons is an attack on the black church and rejected those who have labeled him unpatriotic.

"I served six years in the military," Barack Obama's longtime pastor said. "Does that make me patriotic? How many years did (Vice President Dick) Cheney serve?"

He said the black church tradition is not bombastic or controversial, but different and misunderstood by the "dominant culture" in the United States.

He said his Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has a long history of liberating the oppressed by feeding the hungry, supporting recovery for the addicted and helping senior citizens in need. He said congregants have fought in the military, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"My goddaughter's unit just arrived in Iraq this week while those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid military service while sending over 4,000 American boys and girls to die over a lie," he said.

Wright said he hopes the controversy will have a positive outcome and spark an honest dialogue about race in America. Wright says black church traditions are still "invisible" to many Americans, as they have been throughout the country's history.

He said he hopes "the most recent attack on the black church - it is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright - it's an attack on the black church," he said to applause, "just might mean that the reality of the African-American church will no longer be invisible."

"LIFE WITHOUT MUSIC IS NOT REALLY LIVING!"

The SoundNexx Experience is about taking your listening savvy to that nexx level, with the discovery, recognition and appreciation of great music and artists in various genres! And judging by this DJ's FREE mixes, there's no reason why you shouldn't have them in your iPod.

So do yourself a favor, and stop by http://soundnexx.blogspot.com/  and let em know who sent cha!!!!

Earlier this month, while doing my research, I happened upon a post by some random blogger out of the Ukraine named Slav Kandyba.

The blogger was going in hard on music mogul ...  Sean Combs for dissing Slav's cohort Chuck Phillips of the LA Times. His post was an open letter to Sean Combs that basically threatened his life. Bol has more on that here.

The hater that I am, I quickly scanned the post hoping for a good quote to highlight on my site. I never found a good quote unless you consider this good:

"You might be a smooth criminal, but when you pick on the media, you pick into the devil's nest and you will get stung."

 

In fact, after 3 paragraphs I dismissed the post as the ramblings of another incoherent hater.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, the post was part of a test Hip Hop blog created by the LA Times (yes, the LA TIMES). And the Chuck Phillips mentioned in the post was the same cat who wrote that error-riddled expose on Sean Combs and Tupac Shakur that was ultimately retracted by the LA Times.

I don't care if Chuck is a Pulitzer winning reporter, his reporting/research skills are suspect. In fact, there's only one reason why Chuck hasn't met the same fate as former Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke, who returned her Pulitzer after it was determined she fabricated the story that earned her the top prize. Did I mention that Janet is black?

Anyway, fearing another huge scandal, the headz at the LA Times abruptly pulled the post that threatened Puffy, and they made sure that the ..."adlinkMouseOut(event,this,2);" onclick="adlinkMouseClick(event,this,2);" onmouseover="adlinkMouseOver(event,this,2);" id="KonaLink2" oncontextmenu="return false;">Hip Hop blog itself would never see the light of day.

The bigger story here is how The Times thought that no one would find that content online before they pulled it? Haven't they ever heard of Google Alerts over there?

This blog comes from one of my favorite blogs sites, and the sole purpose of my entry is to show my love & repect to sandra rose.  http://sandrarose.com