When Author David Hunter found my ACX.com narrator profile and contacted me to read his book as an audio-book eighteen months ago, honestly, I thought it was another random scam attempt comin’ at me.
However, when I ginned-up my skeptical courage and contacted him via email, his enthusiasm for my chops (radio DJ talk for “voice”) was infectious! Suddenly I remembered the 1970s LIFE cereal commercial tag line, “Hey Mikey! He likes it!”
I invite you to join in our growing experience early in this clean year. Here I am, a (currently) former music radio personality, aka “Disc Jockey” with much left in my tank, trying to remain viable among changing media seas, in-concert with an Author who has written importantly, educationally and sociologically to help a specific ethnicity of mankind, exploring uncharted waters. You can listen to and purchase with a special discount promotion via itunes by right-clicking on this reference to open in a new tab or window:
Also available on Amazom and Audible.com (an Amazon company), complete with link under the cover art to hear a sample of my reading. I couldn’t believe how patient and positive Mr. Hunter was throughout the months-long process of recording/producing each chapter and attending credits, because that kind of adulation is what I got used to in radio and which is suddenly sorely absent in the current corporate landscape of my earlier fun broadcasting on-mic career, sadly.
As for the book itself, I could not have written such a persuasively enlightening masterpiece that is so possibly controversially precise, because I avoid or am weary of the whole “race thing” in America. That is for others to cause. My eyes glaze-over when I hear and see the so-called current “President” of the United States of America waffle on violent race rallies and cavort/encourage with the radical fringe of insecure and mentally challenged anachronisms who attach a hue to the word “supremacists”. It is so passe`.
In my world, and as I hope in yours and most of today’s earthly humans, as the mid-1980s classic song by Jimmy Cliff says, “We All Are One”.
So now…to lighten things back up, for those of you who don’t know about the “Mikey” I mentioned above, I cannot resist plopping-in the video of that classic TV commercial of my youth below.
Enjoy and please travel with a good audio-book,(hopefully this one) soon!
I thought this was “settled”! Then came a lull and apparently Uncle Sam allowed too many colored immigrants to become “citizens” without qualifying them as to the history of how American Blacks fought to overcome segregation and conduct ourselves correctly while raising our kin to do likewise. The police are not our enemies – this is not the 1960s! So to you newbiees, Cocoanuts from the Caribbean and you from wherever you are who is reading this post, I ask, “If you had a choice of skin colors, which one would YOU choose?”
I remember when this song came out and WWRL AM 1600 in New York City (Woodside, to be exact) played it. It was a cause célèbre because the late Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions had, once again, articulated an argument musically that was going on at the time. I don’t agree with all of the words the lyrics have to say, but the song, unfortunately, still resonates today.
Therefore, it amazes me that it is still a source of American political and social illness here in 2015!
Yet I know why: I am like Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions in that we are Black Americans; descendants of slaves on this continent who came up via the American south lands and whose parents ultimately and after the American Civil War into the beginning of the twentieth century, migrated northward on the east coast. Over time in the mid-to-late twentieth century, “the man” [angry white man establishment who still did not want to embrace us, who were never any threat to the slave master] allowed a whole influx of similar looking people from Caribbean and continental Africa into the continental USA, who have no clue as to the struggle or gains we made and that Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions sang their song unto.
“With just a little bit more education and love for our nation would make for a better world for you and for me.”
Please choose your choice of skin colors in the “comments” below – and I will tell you mine, which I told my parents, waay back in the 1960s when I was a little boy! They were surprised, lol
Recently, Starbucks unsuccessfully launched this “unity” campaign. They just slapped a slogan on their coffee cups without a lead-up promotion and there should have been a brown hand under this cup (at least, or several shades) – in my opinion – that is why it failed. Today’s media must be captained by fools who did not do their homework visa v ethnic relations in the United States over the past century-plus. It is why, even though I held-back, I am compelled to post this… Back in 2008, I met my first Slavic woman girlfriend, who convinced me that watching television was largely a waste of valuable time – especially the “news” and sports. I bought into her mentality and ended up spending much more quality time with her, much to my delight and relaxation – and she liked it also. Unfortunately, she had two young sons via two different men; widely separated in age to raise and that, along with her, cranky insecurities, and suffering from panic attacks (something I had never heard of at the time) which caused her to take many undesclosed -to-me pills, soon put the kibosh on our relationship (her decision) after nary a bit over one year. I digress only to say, she had a POINT about watching the ratings-game known as the “news”; truly I’d wasted too many hours watching millionaire athletes do their thing at the expense of me pursuing my goals and dreams. Her cautions have stayed with me! Unfortunately, the general populace of the USA did not receive the same memo, and it speaks directly to the overkill that today’s news directors now give to stories of a racially dividing bent, which capitalize (for ratings, IMO) on reigniting the recently-dowsed embers of racial hate in continental USA. Having daily hosts on the airwaves such as Bill O’Reilly, Al Sharpton, and of course the legendary, Rush Limbaugh does not help matters of cultural ethnic manners and build unity either. They only propagate hate instead of educate good news! Why do there have to be “Red” and “Blue” states on the Election Day maps – or even the Weather Channel maps? ‘Still fighting the Civil War, eh? Very tragic. As for today’s children, not raised by two parents, who imitate the “news”: Do not cover and promote young chicks wanting to “join Isis”! By doing so, you are helping Isis recruit! Don’t you News Directors understand and see this? Witness how terrestrial radio of today plays new, “cover” versions of past classic hits without the announcers back-selling the origins of the songs in-order to educate within the entertainment as people like the late Frankie Crocker, Vaughn Harper and those of us privileged to perform along side them did. Who wrote and performed it first? Under what circumstances? News and music media should return to making the “tease” incite these successive generations to want to learn their history of our collective past! Rap/Hip-Hop music also must clean its act up (if it can without losing the very identity it has embraced in recent decades since 1999) and de-emphasize weapon violence in their lyrics and performances. They reinforce negative male stereotypes that we once had quashed! The whole Third World is here in many cities of the USA now. They only look the same as we Black Americans of the civil rights days of the 1960s and 1970s skin-deep. These are different “Blacks” – they are “Afro-Caribbean-Americans” who look a wee bit like black Americans – but I can tell the difference without them saying a word. Islanders have more Neanderthal, simian cheek-boneed features and lips. They also do not have the same playbook nor history as we Black Americans who are descendants of American slavery and they look down/talk disparagingly about us! Imagine that!? I heard an African guy on his phone, sitting only a foot away from me at my bank do this very recently! They shunned our history and take advantage of the gains, pain and achievements we endured only to arrive in the wake of our victories to miscegenate among us and further confuse the European Caucasian base that the United States Of America was founded upon. The generation of “lookalike” black people who came to the USA beginning in the 1980s are so late to the party and were labeled as “African Americans” via the Clinton Presidency and the silly advent of “political correctness” that we Black American men, who did the heavy lifting of the movement which ultimately resulted in the success of “we Shall over come”, decades ago of, but nobody apparently passed the memo on to them, and these crop of coconuts, IMO. The feminists and queers also have ridden upon our coattails, as if the perceived discrimination is similar – not. It is also time to end this enabling of children who can run to a social services agency or the cops after they get a needed parental disciplined spanking! This action was unheard of during my generation or the many prior generations. We could not go running to some outside of the family “agency” and say, “Oh my Daddy spanked me! Please put them in jail!” Bullshit. Everything was kept in-house – and we should return the same power to the parents asap! A spanking or two growing is not “abuse”! We are all born as little animals that need training – some tough physically judicial parental love, that is – in our formative years. I use former NBA Hall Of Famer, Charles Barkley’s video on part of this topic because it is in-line with the fact that most of my generation’s parents migrated from “the south” (southern USA states where slavery emanated from). Finally, these discipleship ideas also apply the offspring American Caucasian clans in the USA, who have embraced the “thug” lifestyle. “Ya heard??”
Back to Starbucks, as I commented on a piece about the attempted campaign on LinkedIn.com, “I would have built advance promotion and publicity about this idea long before slapping “Race Together” on the coffee cups and in a different manor using more medias, for one thing…In the USA we are still the victim of the negative messages about race that our own news Directors, channels and parts of the music entertainment industry reinforce and advertise (for ratings, IMO) ad-nausea. This must change for us to catch-up to the rest of the world.” As my acquaintance from Belarus would say, “C’MON, People!” ~~ your comments, solutions and suggestions are welcomed, as alwaze here.
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