The first black American to win an Olympic gold was John Baxter Taylor, Jr., who ran in the 1908 Games in London. A member of the 4x400 U.S. Men’s Relay team (the rest of whose members were white), Taylor had been a dominating runner at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. Taylor studied veterinary medicine at UPenn, and arrived at the Olympics only weeks after graduation. Interestingly, the 1908 Olympics marked the first contest that grouped competitors by country of origin, not sponsoring athletic club, which made Taylor technically the first African American to medal for the United States. Remarkably, both of Taylor’s parents had been born into slavery, working their way into Philadelphia’s black middle class after arriving in the city in the late 1800s. Taylor died from typhoid pneumonia just a few months after his arrival back to Philadelphia, at age 26, a tragic end for a promising athlete and scholar.
History lesson…
I predict that by the year 2000 the most innovative significant developments in the field (Africana Studies) will be found on whatever black colleges still exist. By that date it is possible that more than half of the current number will have either discontinued the struggle completely or will have lost their identities in mergers with predominately white institutions or have been transformed by a gradual takeover by white students, white faculties, and white administrators. Such a development will, of course, be catastrophic for American blacks unless by that time, which is extremely doubtful, white racism as we know it now will have disappeared.
MONDAY: The think tank releases an anti-immigration study that everyone on the right instantly trashes.
TUESDAY: One co-author admits he didn’t read the whole immigration bill. Plus now they’ve annoyed Marco Rubio.
WEDNESDAY: The other co-author, Jason Richwine happens to have…
Ryan Gosling won’t eat his cereal
Come on, man, just eat your cereal already.
Eat the damn cereal.
(Source: jensensations)
Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I’ve never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I’m a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what’s to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble—that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.
In some ways it was easier for my generation. Racism was blatant and obvious. The “Whites Only” signs let us know clearly, what we were up against. Not much has changed, but the system of lies and tricknology is much more sophisticated. Today young people have to be highly informed and acutely analytical, or they will be swept up into a whirlpool of lies and deception.
I am black. I have therefore committed a crime. I am black. I know what is the problem with my black body, It exists. I therefore “am” a crime. “As a sentencing factor, race ranks with prior conviction for rape, armed robbery and even murder. The race factor here isn’t merely statistically significant, it is, as you might think, downright determinative” (Gates 1992,333) The black accused needs only to be “seen” to be guilty of a prior offense. His color is the evidence. He is guilty of Blackness.
The Black child learns what to do when he is approached for shoplifting., when he is approached for assaulting another, when he threatens the welfare of white children, when he is stopped by police. This moment of being stopped by the police, this (it seems) inevitable moment, stands waiting out there like FATE. For the black adult, this when is transformed to DONT. DONT jog for he may be mistaken for a criminal in flight. DONT drive an expensive automobile for he may be appearing to have stolen it.
Lewis R. Gordon from Bad Faith and Anti Black Racism (via howtobeterrell)
I thought I told ya
(via howtobeterrell)
bless this
(via youngbadmanbrown)
