Houston has a Ghetto Hand Book.

Ha.

Sounds like my kind of book.

A school district police officer has been suspended as the district investigates his distribution of a "Ghetto Handbook" and a three-month lapse before top district officials were informed about it.

The eight-page booklet was subtitled "Wucha dun did now?" and was handed out to about 15 Houston Independent School District police officers at a May roll call meeting, spokesman Terry Abbott said.

A supervisor immediately collected the booklets, Mr. Abbott said, but district officials said they didn't learn about the incident until someone made a complaint to the district's Equal Employment Opportunity Office in mid-August.

The booklet billed itself as a guide to Ebonics, teaching the reader to speak "as if you just came out of the hood." It included definitions such as "foty: a 40-ounce bottle of beer"; "aks: to ask a question"; and "hoodrat: scummy girl."

The booklet names six district officers "and the entire day shift patrol" as contributors. Mr. Abbott said a preliminary investigation has cleared those officers of involvement.

Nice!

Language-diversity training in action.

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Obama Runs Brooklyn.

They poured into the room, blacks and whites, a few Hispanics. Most of them were young, and all were there to get a look at this presidential candidate who has been in the U.S. Senate for only three years and, at 46, is the youngest one running. The rap against him is that he is too young, too dark, and too inexperienced to win. But he is still three years older than John F. Kennedy was upon his election in 1960. And like they did for Kennedy and his brother Robert, the crowds gather around Obama, who generates the kind of electricity political consultants pray for.

Those attending the Brooklyn event paid $25 a head; the student rate was $15. This kind of retail politics is not supposed to be terribly effective for raising the millions needed to run a big national campaign. Last quarter, however, Obama raised $31 million for the primary, $10 million more than Hillary Clinton, the New York senator who leads almost every poll. Obama's average donor gave $202. The maximum allowed is $2,300. Although it is supposed to be Clinton country, Brooklyn represents potentially ripe pickings for the candidate. With 2.5 million people, a third of them black, the borough would be the nation's fourth-largest city if it stood on its own.

He OUGHT to generate buzz. He IS running for president!

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Cornell West kicks it with Prince.

"I went to Paisley Park some years ago," says West. "You know, [Prince] has those xenophobia conferences every year. He brings in people from all around the world. He pays for it, actually. They're there for three days. There's dialogue during the day on all the various forms of xenophobia. I gave a lecture. And then that night, I remember seeing Norah Jones before she was big. Of course, Sheila [E.] was there. Maceo [Parker] was there. Chaka Khan was there . . . "

And there's more:

"50 Cent, Snoop, Game, Nelly," West says, as if he's writing their names on the board. "On one level, I love those brothers, because their artistic and aesthetic work is a part of who I am . . . . On the other hand, I challenge those brothers because I'm just against misogyny. I'm against homophobia. So somebody can be in my house and in my community and I still have to present a moral critique, because I'm just against those things. I just think they're wrong. "So the question is," West continues, "how do I deal with the love and embrace of them as artists and at the same time respectfully challenge them? So in that sense, I'm not really with the crowd that trashes hip-hop. I can't stand that.

Where in the F*CK is Birkhold?

Oh. There is more. N* GGAS, DYSON and Huckleberry Finn:

Dyson: We have to use the n-word, even if we agree ultimately in it being retired. There is not yet the point in our culture when we can afford to surrender that word. One of the reasons I deploy that term is because I wanna remind white folk and other bourgeoisie negroes who have looked upon me . . . as "that nigger," but refuse to say it to my face: "I know [what] you're saying about me, so I'm gonna put it on front street." We may be using the same term, but we're not using it the same way. We're not giving it the same meaning.

West's response: Take a text like Huckleberry Finn. The word "nigger" is used over 100 times. It's a work of art. The work wouldn't be the same without that word. You could make the same case for Tupac's art and the use of that word . .

Birkhold, birkhold, where for are thou Birkhold?

I know you have hot words.

To readers in general, whats wrong with a little so called Ebonics handbook?

I mean, it DOES make for better policing for popo to understand what we are saying?



Wait.

Wasn't it Baldwin who said that Black English grew out of Black
Folks need to speak to each other AROUND popo without the latter
understanding what the f*ck was being said?

Sh*t. Looks like the man is catching on:)

Baldwin, so eloquently states:

People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate. (And, if they cannot articulate it, they are submerged.) A Frenchman living in Paris speaks a subtly and crucially different language from that of the man living in Marseilles; neither sounds very much like a man living in Quebec; and they would all have great difficulty in apprehending what the man from Guadeloupe, or Martinique, is saying, to say nothing of the man from Senegal--although the "common" language of all these areas is French. But each has paid, and is paying, a different price for this "common" language, in which, as it turns out, they are not saying, and cannot be saying, the same things: They each have very different realities to articulate, or control.
~Baldwin

Oh.

And here is the Baldwin quote that I so horribly paraphrased above.

There was a moment, in time, and in this place, when my brother, or my mother, or my father, or my sister, had to convey to me, for example, the danger in which I was standing from the white man standing just behind me, and to convey this with a speed, and in a language, that the white man could not possibly understand, and that, indeed, he cannot understand, until today. He cannot afford to understand it. This understanding would reveal to him too much about himself, and smash that mirror before which he has been frozen for so long.

Negros ARE bi-dialectical.

I know for one I am. And you are too, OR you probably know someone who is.

Not a Negro BUT bi-dialectical! LOL.

I also know that my language is so intimidating to majority members
in positions of (relative) power that (my)education/the way that I speak, is a liability.

Oh.

To be a member of the majority!
Shoo'll must be fun.

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Would you give money to Obama?

Have you, and if so how much?

You voting? If so for who?

For the record, I haven't decided.

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