“I Flunked Sambo University…” My First (of hopefully many) Audio-book Narrations

Here we are, will it be a Happy New Year, 2019?!

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:

https://www.audible.com/pd/I-Flunked-Sambo-University-10-InvisibleSchools-by-Which-African-Americans-Learn-to-Look-down-on-Their-Own-Genetic-Heritage-Audiobook/B07CJNHZGK

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 may not get there with you…”

“And the hits just keep on coming…”

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead.
But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life–longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.
And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain.
And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you.
But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.
And so I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

10 Reasons Why “African American” (Black) Males Are Getting Shot By Police In America These Days

“When I say ‘Do Not Cross’, I MEAN it!”…

Have you ever noticed that the news rarely, reports of an “African-American” girl or female being “shot by police”? Why do you think this is? I offer now 10 or so reasons why the “African-American” males of the early twenty-first century are being shot by police and some of them will answer the question I posed above.

1. Child Support Laws authored and promoted by the then powerful late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who was thought to be a “brilliant” and even-handed Liberal at the time whose ideas about how “minorities” (in other words black women) pimped the system by having many children on the larger (white) populace’s dime. His Welfare Overhaul ideas, enacted circa 1990, led to the current Child Support Laws and explosion of Family Courts who suddenly had more than lame divorces to adjudicate and which led to:

2. The disintegration of the traditional modern black American family thereafter, which:

3. Criminalized, disgusted and disempowered black American men (if they could not affor to pay Child Support) at about the same time that significant numbers of Caribbean (Jamaican and Haitian especially) and African immigrants began to infiltrate those of us black Americans who actually were born and raised here within the fifty states.

4. These laws emboldened women of color (and all American women, by-the-way) to have children out of wedlock (further disenfranchising the men) by removing the previous stigma of illegitimacy. This is the exact opposite effect that the Moynihan/Hillary Clinton camps desired, in my opinion; they facilitated the disintegration of the traditional American family unit! Now, these boys are growing up without the traditional male father in the home who would train them to respect authority and the role of police in society, and as soon as they encounter a situation where they might be acting-out and are “busted” doing so by the cops, they do not have that lesson in their heads that says, ‘give respect to the officer’, and that leads to the worst outcome all too often.

5. The lack of Truant Officers or as some school districts liked to call them, “Attendance Teachers”. Somewhere in the middle nineties, around the time that political correctness, spawned by the Bill Clinton Presidency, was introduced, the Truant Officer became a budgetary casualty across the nation and nobody pushed back against the decision. “Its too mean to make a kid go to school!” some must have said. I tie that into:

6. The lack of sensible and moderate Corporal Punishment and encouraging children to “report” discipline by their parents to outside agency strangers whose only agenda is a paycheck as intruders in situations whose genesis they have no clue about. There are some things better left within a family to iron-out and discipline is one of them!

7. Today’s lowered educational standards and philosophies. Are students even required to begin the day’s lessons by standing, facing our flag and reciting The Pledge of Allegiance to the United States anymore? If not, then that is another huge miscalculation of training the little wild animal beings that are our kids!

8. Television news coverage of these incidents which lack even implied educational lessons by those who report them. Where are the produced Public Service Announcements (“PSAs”) of yester year that provided the moral reminders to us all not to (“litter” for-example) do certain things in the spirit of a better community for us all? That void only leads to:

9. The “copy-cat factor”. Too many bad behavior events in today’s world are the result of acts by too many with mental illness walking amongst the larger and generally sane population, who see and hear this junk and decide to duplicate it so that they too can be “famous”. How ridiculous! However, a whole attitude about rounding-up and putting mental cases in institutions must be revisited and the clock turned back to some of the practices of the pre-politically correct era.

10. And finally, I point to excess Caribbean migration and illegal immigration which began during the Ronald Reagan Presidency and the infamous “Boat People”. I guess intercepting them and turning them back for repatriation was all a sham. What’s more is apparently these individuals were allowed into our society without mandatory schooling about how we black Americans, the descendants of American slaves, had already fought for and won our civil rights during the days of the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ebonics be-damned, there is no need to re-segregate ourselves and have to riot and damage what we’ve collectively built since then – all over again.

10a. “No home training” to respect what an officer asks them to do when stopped while driving.

This is not to say that the Cops bear no responsibility for how these situations escalate, nor that teen Caucasian American males are not shot while acting-up. That segment of the population does not take to the streets to “protest” every time it happens. They more likely seek legal help (available to all of us) and work the system behind the scenes. However, in this post 9/11/2001 era of Policing in America, it is even more important not to have a close encounter with any law enforcement Officer.
**Pickhit: IMO there is a difference between “black Americans” (like me) and “African Americans”. Maybe a post for a later date?

Your thoughts or additional Reasons?

Baltimore Boys: Dad’s Advice, “Never Give ‘The Man’ An Excuse To Put His Hand On Your Shoulder…”

THAT is what my Pops told me when I was around ten years old – and it stuck in my mind. UNfortunately, in today’s post “9/11” world in the USA, it is much easier for  today’s “Da Man” to find reasons to mess with young “minority” men – or any of us.  In New York City, the police force seems more like an Army occupying within civilian spaces, ready to pounce.

I want to close my ears to this revisionist history, OMG!

ONE major aspect behind the cause of these recent Baltimore riots in the wake of another so-called Afro-Caribbean American male death in custody after an arrest, is the chickens coming home to roost upon the failed model of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others like Hillary and former President Bill Clinton, who empowered the Child Support State of disengaging and criminalizing thousands of American  men while they took away the stigma of illegitimate, out of wedlock child bearing while encouraging women to raise boys without the benefit of stable and enduring marriage and a father in the house.  You cannot legislate family togetherness via an uneven playing field that punishes one sex for what is the act of both sexes together!  Without a father to command respect at the dinner table, the lessons of the 1968 riots after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in cities like Newark, New Jersey and Detroit (which never recovered from them), Baltimore and other big towns across the United States were never passed-down to sons. Therefore, we see them repeating the mistakes of that past and tragically, sadly fucking-up their own “hood”.  It is obvious to me that those throwing rocks and disrespecting their police force spent too little time in class learning about our collective past in this country.  Someone should school them as to the untimeliness of their tantrum – the beginning of tourist season.  They cut their own summer job prospects visa v tourism to the Inner Harbor area and more. Dumb asses.  It is time to have less “Child Protective Servces” intrusion and more traditional family values and empowerment of two-parent families – if it isn’t too late thanks to the political correctness police and politicians. I can hear the white people who used to live there in Baltimore County saying, “Its a damn shame. See what happens when you let a city get run by the Niggras [or whatever they call Blacks nowadays]?….Damn shame….Uh, Uh, Uh….”

Why have we re-segregated ourselves? The aim of the 1960s American Civil Rights movement was integration ! On this Baltimore, Maryland map below, blacks are to the west, or left and multiculturalness is to the east, or right.

By-the-way, How come white people don’t riot if a white criminal youth is shot by a non-white cop? To me it soo passe` to do it.

**Pickhit: I am troubled by an account that says Freddie Gray asked for an INHALER while in police custody. As an occasional Asthma suffrer, I can relate personally. Law inforcement would rather believe you had an illegal substance than a real congenital affliction even if you cry-out for it that you had in your possession when shit went down!

All of these “protest” rallies agains police are tiresome and misguided IMO (in my opinion).  Maybe it is because I hae lived through the “real deal” of this struggle forty years ago and the outcome was that Black Americans finally “overcame” segregation in the USA.  Then, the Moynahans and Reagans, upon flawed stereotypical thinking, broke the family unit of those who could least afford to resopnd; no one passed-down the message that my and my parents generation built, even though the population elected a brown-skinned President.  It is very telling that this happens on Obama’s watch – he has done little to uplift the image of Black American (like me) and African-Caribbean males during his two terms, unfortunately.
Below is a video of a mother who deserves major props and I hope the “child protective services PC police” do not go after her for doing the right and necessary thing. A father/husband should have been on-camera as well.

Of course “Black Lives Matter”, it is 2015, not 1965 and everybody knows it. My advice is to revise, revisit and repeal those Moynihan “Family First” laws and begin to reunite all families in America again. Your thoughts?

End “Racism” In America? Easy. News Directors Do Not Cover Negativity; Promote Tough Father Parenting! Especially With The New Crop of Third World-Influxed “African”- Americans

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.