REYNOLDSWORLDNEWS (Visit Website www.reynoldsworldnews.com)

Black Leaders silent as black rappers Create environ of death and abuse

2009-02-13T10:29:00.004-05:00

Black leaders silent as black rappers
Create environ of death and abuse

By Dr. Barbara Reynolds

Singer Chris Brown’s arrest for allegedly beating and biting his girlfriend, pop princess Rihanna the same night vulgar rapper Lil Wayne was being lauded with four Grammy awards is a reminder of how thuggish rap culture creates a climate for not only male-on male violence but abuse of black women as well.
On one level Brown was only doing what the environment created by hustlers like Lil Wayne and his white backers promote. When the dope-using, pornographic rappers aren’t bragging about how good they are at killing other blacks, they swagger around calling black women “..itches and sluts” and showing their agility at dogging and abusing them.
In fact, Snoop Dogg once showed up at the MTV video awards accompanied by partially clad girls being pulled along by dog leashes.
The white establishment is applauding this behavior by elevating the thug music that glorifies killing, maiming and abuse to great fortunes. After all, the thugs are only killing black men and abusing black women. What a great victory for white supremacists who no longer need the KKK. Blacks brandishing guns and a pimp mentality are destroying each other faster than white militants could ever dream of.
Mainstream Time magazine in their July 2008 issues headlined Lil Wayne as the Best Rapper Alive. The magazine took great pleasure in commending him for how well he could rhyme “day” with “say” and “way.” Those sophomoric rhymes are worthy of praise for five-year-olds but for a grown man? Give me a break.
What else does Lil Wayne advocate that makes mainstream America love him so much? His “lollipop” number was honored as Best Rap Song. It is all about having the so-called “fun and games” of oral sex, of young girls licking him like a lollipop before regular intercourse. Of course, the promoters would not honor any artist who also talks about how HIV/AIDS is epidemic among black youth and how now 72 percent of household are headed up by single black women, who means the boys and men are missing in action as soon as the babies come.
Another song which the Grammys saw worthy of honor was included in Wayne’s latest album, Tha Carter III. With all the media hype behind it, it sold over one million copies the first week. If there is any doubt what Wayne thinks about women, the lyrics make it plain: “I ain’t got no loves for broads, I grab them on they butts and all.” Then he goes on to sing about how wonderful it is for his girls (sluts) to have oral sex with his dog.
It is not hard for me to understand why white led-media and music institutions want to honor blacks who entertain them with low-life, illiterate rantings, while creating a climate of death and destruction for black people. But I can not understand why so much of the black establishment—the pastors, civil rights institutions and universities—accept this standard without protesting their outrage at the systematic destruction of our young.
The major themes of most rap songs are Guns, drugs, death and destruction. And with the help of white corporations they are reaping a rich harvest.
For example, homicide is the leading cause of death for black males between the ages of 18 and 24; 94 percent of blacks murdered are murdered by other blacks, usually men.
Our black women, whose images are being dragged through the mud not only in rap videos, but in movies, are increasingly being raped and beat. Black women are 35% more likely to be sexually and physically assaulted than white women. And one in 4 girls is in danger of being raped by age 18. Every 45 seconds a woman is physically assaulted, according to the National Victims Center.
Big bucks, of course, are fueling this genocidal assault. Women-hating rappers whine about how the man won’t fund them if they don’t go violent and after all they are only giving the public want they want. The argument is that titles like Get Rich or Die Trying will sell, but uplifting songs won’t. If that is so, why aren’t Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson broke?
No amount of money should make black rappers stoop so low as to scandalize black women, whose birth canals are their very entry into humanity. They insult our mothers, daughters and sisters. They are no different from the 19th century white slave masters who paraded half naked black women to the public square to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Unfortunately, the self-esteem of so many young black women, have fallen so low that they too see themselves as half nude butt-shaking objects, who can be sold for group sex, drugs or background filth for videos. They are faceless, pride-less, pitiful creatures who are agree they should be treated like dogs
In the case of Chris Brown, Wrigley is pulling his chewing gun ad and
RadioNOW, a black- owned Radio One network affiliate, is taking a stand by not playing his music. All that is good.
Yet, until the black establishment protests groups like Lil Wayne, who white corporations are paying to sing and dance the death jig, the beat down of black women will still be viewed by many as acceptable behavior for black men.

Don’t Make Michelle Over: We Like Her Like That

2008-06-27T18:51:00.003-04:00

By Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds
REYNOLDS News Service

Don’t Make Michelle Over:
We Like Her Like That

The next national pastime by pundits and well-placed politicians will be The Makeover of presumptive First Lady Michelle Obama.

Recently the ignorant conservatives interrupted my idyllic daydream of seeing this brilliant, elegantly clad African-American woman presiding over state dinners and influencing important policy matters, along with the Obama children hosting the annual Easter egg hunts on the White House lawn.
What interrupted my revelries was the crass Fox News calling Michelle Obama, “Obama’s baby Mama,” a derogatory term for an unwed mother. What gall!
The conservatives spin lies about Mrs. Obama but hide the truth about Cindy McCain, the wife of the presumptive Republican challenger, John McCain. She is an heiress whose wealth estimated at $100m – comes from her late father’s beer distribution company. During the senator’s first run for president in 2000 it was reported that Mrs. McCain had been addicted to painkillers and had stolen from her own charity’s medicine cabinets to feed her drug habit.
Then, the well-meaning handlers around her responding to polls that Cindy McCain is more likeable have set out to soften Michelle Obama’s image, make her appear less “angry,” and more approachable. Hopefully her recent appearance on The View where she tackled the pressing issues of why she wears panty hose and eats bacon smooched up her “likeability” enough so she won’t have to talk about that minutiae again.
My fear is that too much tampering with or too many fingerprints probing over her will smudge up a person who is loved exactly the way she is. Why try to turn a Sojourner Truth into a Stepford wife?
One way to fix the so-called Michelle problem is to fight lies with truth. Much is made out of a sound bite where in response to her husband’s historic campaign for president she said, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” This in the hands of conservative twists became proof that she was unpatriotic.
First, of all as Whoppi Goldberg so artfully pointed out on The View, the operative word is REALLY, referring to a degree of pride. For example to be happy is wonderful, to be REALLY happy is pure joy, a step above.
Yet, if any of us have always been proud of our country we need psychiatric evaluation. Have we always been proud of a country that once enslaved and lynched blacks all within the protection of law? Are we proud of the nation’s almost total destruction of native American populations, the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the present oil war being waged in Iraq on the false pretense of Weapons of Mass Destruction?
No matter how the right and the left try to poke, prod and fix Michelle Obama, I see much in her background to believe that she will make waves one way or another to help the world’s left behind, just as she did at her six-figure position as a vice president at a white-led hospital in Chicago.
As the New York Times reported, when it was proposed that a certain vaccine to prevent cervical cancer should be tested on black teenage girls, Mrs. Obama stopped it. The clinical trial rightly raised the specter of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, where white doctors let hundreds of black men go untreated to study the disease.
Those kinds of bold acts where in the backrooms Mrs.Obama put her reputation and job on the line to fight for the powerless are what makes her a credible force and is what the world needs now—unchecked and undiluted.
Many would be more comfortable with the role of the First Lady as all fluff and puff, more decorative and ornamental than substantive. Historically when a First Lady did take on an issue, except for First Lady Hillary Clinton, it was usually far from the line of political fire. For example, Barbara Bush, wife of President George Bush, championed the cause of literacy. President Lyndon Johnson's wife, Lady Bird, took on highway beautification.
Already there is a script being written for Mrs. Obama to continue in the mold of Jackie Kennedy who reigned over Camelot. Today, however, at a time when thousands of people are losing their homes through foreclosures, can’t afford gas to get to work, if they are still lucky enough to have a job, a Camelot-like lushness of life at the top does not seem appropriate.
Certainly, Mrs. Obama will chart her own course in history, but the mantle of Eleanor Roosevelt is worth considering. As First Lady, Mrs. Roosevelt broke many traditions. She was the first to give a press conference, the first to testify before Congress, the first to write a newspaper column, the first to become a political figure in her own right and was one of the most ardent champions of civil rights long before it was popular, a stance that resulted in the KKK putting a $25,000 bounty on her head. After leaving the White House, Roosevelt became chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Commission and was voted the most popular American in magazine polls in the 1950s.
That’s the kind of Michelle Obama the world awaits. Bold. Brave. Beautiful. That is who I believe she is and that is who I believe neither those who hate her or love her won’t change.

COLUMN:Are preachers becoming profits of bling bling?

2008-01-21T18:05:00.000-05:00

By Dr. Barbara ReynoldsNNPA Religion Columnist
In the nation’s capital there is a sickening outbreak of the worst examples of greed, theft and ludicrous, wasteful spending flowing from the White House to the school houses. Although shame has taken a holiday, you won’t find the nation’s mega-church pastors pounding their pulpits in damnation over these unethical practices. Sermons about “the love of money being the root of all evil,’’ or the folly of chasing material gain or even how Christians should do for others before they do for themselves are just not hot topics anymore. Could it be that maybe some of the nation’s leading evangelists are so caught up in the self-aggrandizing wealth rat race themselves that dust is covering the Scriptures that call preachers to preach against greed and abusers of the poor and needy. Recently, U.S. Senate investigators are probing why some of the nation’s most visible evangelists like Joyce Meyer have reportedly paid $23,000 for a toilet with a marble top, and if Pastor Paula White used church funds for facelifts and to buy Bishop T.D. Jakes a Bentley. The jet-setting Pastors Creflo Dollar and Bishop Eddie Long are also under scrutiny, as well as Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland. I have a personal interest in all of this. I have made financial contributions to Joyce Meyer, Pastor White, Bishop Jakes (who is not under investigation) and Paula White. I watch their broadcasts and have worshipped with Dollar, Meyer and Hinn. So I am not throwing rocks at ministers I disdain. I am just troubled. Even if no laws have been broken by these allegations of outrageous spending, I worry about the precedents and the state of their get rich thinking that are infecting so many others. I wonder what in the world does Myer need with a marble commode and are my little funds part of what’s being flushed down the drain? While I accept my own sagging face, I wonder have my funds been used to spruce up Ms. White’s tight and happy countenance. What was on Paula White’s mind when she bought Jakes, a man that she calls her “spiritual father” a Bentley? Why not a scholarship for a hundred students in his name? And as churchgoers follow with awe and admiration the over-the-top celebrity ministers, there is a growing belief that “bling bling” materialism is more important than servanthood and salvation, both of which require sacrifice. What really bothers me more is that the greedy deeds of some preachers may be buying silence against abuse of the needy because the “pot can’t call the skillet black,” as my grandmother used to say.
Consider the recent parade of super-thieves in the District.
•In recent weeks, Harriette Walters and Diane Gustus, who worked at the District’s Office of Tax and Revenue, reportedly raided the city’s treasury to stock up on luxury items including fancy cars, homes, furs, precious jewelry, designer handbags and clothing. Ms. Walters alone spent more than $1.4 million at Neiman Marcus, according to the Washington Post. Their take of about $30 million is called the largest theft ever uncovered in the district. Law enforcement officials turned up a $160,000 Bentley in the garage of Ms. Walters’ brother and designer purses and shoes bearing the labels of Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Hermes at Walters’ home, law enforcement officials said. Authorities also found records tying Ms. Walters to the purchase of a $26,000 handbag.
•Student activity funds, where children raise money for events like attending chess matches, through bake and candy sales, are often plundered by adults who have used the money for everything from buying Palm Pilots and DVDs to boxes of lobster. Although this practice has become normalized and few are ever punished, recently a woman did plead guilty to stealing $30,000 from a chess club set up for emotionally disturbed elementary students. Can you imagine what signals are being sent to students from adult educators about the value of hard work and ethical behavior?
•Dr. Brenda Belton, who oversaw DC charter schools, is also an example of how educators leverage their power to bless themselves at the expense of the needy. Dr. Belton was convicted of the illegal use of more than $800,000 of school funds and a raid on her home showed the standard greedy collection of furs, 20 new purses and 60 large trash bags of new clothes. The stolen money could have paid for the hiring of 17 teachers or the purchase of 17,000 textbooks.
Now if you think preachers are fired up about this, think again. At Dr. Belton’s trial, ministers pleaded for leniency, citing her credentials as an educator. One minister from the Unity Center of Truth said, “It’s a waste of time putting Dr. Belton in jail. She would do more good if she were allowed to use her skills to help the children with their education.”
Unfortunately Dr. Belton’s skills have hurt more than they have helped students and is another sinister message being sent to the young in the district. These examples of million-dollar rip-offs might seem like small potatoes in the nation’s capital where President Bush spends millions daily fighting an oil war in Iraq and doling out lucrative no-bid contracts to his rich friends. The bigger crime is that day after day these sins go unchallenged by pre-achers and pastors who are supposed to be moral leaders.
While the poor and needy are being plundered from the right and the left, from blacks and whites, too many preachers have little to say, which is understandably difficult. If your lifestyle includes driving up to your gated community in a Bentley and sitting on your $26,000 throne, maybe people stuffing loot in a $26,000 purse is not a problem. ••••
Printer-Friendly Email Article
Comments
Sunday, January 6, 2008 Greed

This is so true and when will we learn that u dont have too pay anyone too pray far you when their is nothing wrong with the prayer that you can DO

Column: Church Fights

2007-11-11T20:14:00.000-05:00

If Jesus Christ would show up in some of our churches, would He shed tears and walk out the door?
Once upon a time, church sanctuaries were treated as hallowed ground and the ordained clergy representing God and the people of God were viewed as the best examples of godly living.
Today, a demonic spirit of sexual perversion, prosperity blindness and power-tripping is creating a sense of shame and cynicism among rank and file Christians that is actually driving some from the pews.
For example weeks after Atlanta police and witnesses report how Bishop Thomas Weeks savagely chocked, kicked in the stomach and stomped his televangelist wife, Juanita Bynum in a hotel parking lot, the bishop is still in his pulpit at Global Destiny church.
As sad as this situation is, it provides a golden opportunity for preachers to deal with domestic violence in their own congregations. In America, every three minutes a woman is beaten, every five minutes a woman is raped and every ten minutes a child is molested.
These facts should provide much-needed real-life substance for preachers to rock the house with sermons against female-abuse, wife-beating and rape. But if pastors are beating their wives, having sex and babies out of wedlock in their own churches how can an atmosphere of respect for the Biblical mandates against adultery and violence against women be preached. Instead offending pastors and preachers hide behind sermons casting influential women as Jezebels and texts calling on women to be submissive—even if their spouses are skirt-chasing lunatics and fools.
The bishop acting like the wife-bashing Ike Turner or Mike Tyson is being widely discussed in beauty shops. In fact, the new name for domestic violence is “doing the Bishop Weeks,” as if it is a boxing match like Muhammad Ali’s Thriller in Manila.
Weeks, of course, is not the only spiritual leader scandalizing his office through violence. Click on the Internet’s You Tube and witness the brawl outside the St. James AME church in St. Paul, Minn. In this episode, church leaders angered over “the lack of people skills and mismanagement of church funds” locked the Rev. Hubert Armstrong from church properties. A confrontation ensued where a middle-aged female trustee smacked Armstrong and the portly pastor punched her with a solid right jab.
Other instances on You Tube show children fighting in the sanctuaries as dispassionate adults look on and a priest angrily throwing holy water on a woman. These sordid scenes give the impression that bar-room or playground behavior is acceptable for churches.
It’s not only the violence on the part of certain spiritual leaders but also sexually explicit gutter-type language that is creeping into sermons at the excuse of “keeping it real,” and examples of immoral conduct by pastors that are also causing grave concern.
Recently in a large Pentecostal church in Washington DC, a visiting preacher shocked many when he unashamedly used the offensive, vulgar “p” word during his sermon when describing a relationship with his wife. In Baltimore, a huge bill-board touting empowerment shows off a young AME preacher and his wife. But the talk on the East Coast and on Internet sites is about his impregnating yet another woman at his church.
Not only do these instances of preachers acting badly offend principles of holiness and respect for Bible-based living, they create bad examples for other preachers who can point to those offenders as their role-models, who are not taken to task for their outrageous behavior.
In addition, a can of worms has been opened by well-respected pastors Dennis and Christine Wiley of Covenant Baptist Church in Anacostia, MD deciding to perform same-sex union ceremonies and preaching that “homosexuality is not a sin,” despite the many scriptural references to the contrary.
One parishioner, Martha Battle, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying, that she didn’t mind Covenant's outreach to gays at first, because "everybody needs to be saved." But now, "straight people are leaving and gay people are coming in," said Battle, who left the church with her 13-year-old grandson after the Wileys began performing same-sex union ceremonies. "They're taking over. I'm sick to my stomach over this mess. It's not right. Why should we have to leave and let them come in and take over the church?”
The Bible I read declares both adultery and homosexuality as sins. But now, since some preachers are saying homosexuality is not a sin some parishioners are concluding that neither are adultery and “shacking,” and are using this re-writing of Scripture as the basis for returning to their old sinful lifestyles.
In a nutshell, certain offensives conduct shows that some pastors need prayer, deliverance and spiritual counseling even more so than their parishioners. All pastors, of course, are not in error, but those that are may one day see that not only are parishioners leaving the church, but God, himself.
Dr. Reynolds is an adjunct professor at the Howard University School of Divinity, Howard, author of several books, including “Out of Hell & Living Well: Healing From the Inside Out,” and is the religion editor for the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

Diary: Greedy Preachers?

2007-11-11T17:07:00.000-05:00

I am thinking about reacting to an article about how Cleflo Dollar, Paula White and others are accussed of living high on the hog, with lavish cars, home, etc. Yet, I contribute to their ministries. Am I making them rich personally or am I contributing to their ministries which I feel bless people. My, my, what must I do?

Diary of a Glad Black Woman/nov.1/07

2007-11-01T00:43:00.000-04:00

This is the first day that I tried to do a blog. They say it is easy. It is not. It made me use some words that I think are shameful. Anyway, while I am at it I watched the debates in Philadelphia. I think the Democrats were stupid for piling on Hillary. They don't seem to understand they are running against Republicans and destroying the strongest candidate will only help them implode. I am too worn out from this ordeal of setting up this blog to say more but I have just begun.