The Marriage Between NASCAR and the Confederate Flag is Over

As a 60-something year-old woman, I used to say I never thought I'd see the day when we would actually elect a black man for President.  Then, lo and behold, young people in this country decided it was time for REAL CHANGE and galvanized to elect Barack Obama as our 44th Commander-in-Chief.

Another thing I never thought I'd live to see was the dissolution of the relationship between NASCAR and the confederate flag. That happened on this date June 10, 2020.
The move came after the only black driver on the NASCAR circuit, Bubba Wallace, came out two days earlier urging officials to ban the flag from all events. (I have to admit I didn't know he was black with a name like Bubba) But it's like that old E.F Hutton commercial, remember:  "When E.F. Hutton Speaks, people listen..."

NASCAR statement

"The presence of the confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry. Bringing people together around a love for racing and the community that it creates is what makes our fans and sport special. The display of the confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties.”

What I found interesting about this statement is that it called their events a "welcoming and inclusive environment for ALL fans..." and that the flag was a deterrent.  I don't know about you but I never thought of NASCAR as a welcoming environment for anyone other than lower class and rural whites.  I certainly could be wrong about that but at the one and ONLY race I ever went to I felt like I was in the midst of a KKK rally and everyone communicated  like they only went as far as the 6th grade. I've never understood why the flag was always associated with their sports racing events. 

But now NASCAR has jumped on the bandwagon of those companies who are attempting to march in step with the current climate of the country.   For more than two weeks (as of this writing), people have taken to the streets all over the country and around the world to demand justice for the police killing for George Floyd and against systemic racism.  Young, old, black, white, Asian and Latino are raising one shared voice, which hasn't been heard in more than 50 years.

This is a good move for NASCAR but I'm wondering what the fallout will be.  You see, the confederacy still has a stronghold in some places, primarily the South. And NASCAR is REALLY BIG in Darlington, SC, Ridgeville, VA (Martinsville Speedway), Charlotte, NC (Charlotte Motor Speedway) to name a few.  

Stay tuned for the next episode because as well all know there can be something called "reconciliation." After all, when you have a 70 plus year history with something, is it really that easy to just walk away?

The White Male Struggle with Black Authority

First of all let me clarify something, I am NOT a psychologist who has done any type of research on this subject.  I can only speak from experience, which I'm almost sad to say.

Until recently I never considered, to any real degree,the dynamics of white men working under the leadership of blacks.  Yes, President Barack Obama had a large staff of folks who were predominately white but I saw them as people who were just happy to be working for the President and had his genuine interests at heart.  I, on the other hand, have always worked for white males during my long career in radio and television news.  It's a given that your news manager will more than likely be a white male.

Last week I was promoted to a project leader position within the company I am currently at.  I was given a team, which includes one white male.  Once he realized he was on my team and not the team of my white male counterpart, our relationship became adversarial.  From day one, he made it clear through his mannerisms and arrogance that he didn't respect me.  When my white male counterpart passed out reading materials for the project, he made it a point to say "thank you" loudly enough for the entire room to hear him.  When I passed them out, his silence was deafening.  On another occasion, he asked ME to step out of the room so HE could have a conversation---a conversation he could've easily dealt with at my desk.  Then to add insult to injury, he sent me a note using incorrect grammar (slang), which I saw as INTENTIONAL and totally unnecessary.  I kindly told him, with a big beautiful smile on my face, that I had a journalism degree and he could feel free to use some of those $10 words he had stored in his vocabulary bank.  My guess is he doesn't have any but that's beside the point.

THE POINT IS:  Because white men come from a place of privilege, some of them have a tough time respecting the leadership roles of blacks in the workplace.  They are used to running the show or working for someone who looks and acts like them.  They don't see us as their equals so having to take orders from us is beneath them.  Some think the only reason we're in the positions we're in is because of affirmative action.  What some whites fail to realize is their skin color has provided them with significant benefits.  They don't understand or could care less about the fact that we have work twice as hard and go above and beyond to prove our qualifications while their "good ol' boy network" works well for them.  They don't have to worry that their credibility as a leader could be tarnished in any way by the implicit racial bias that people have.  They can also rest assured that any conflict they might have with a Supervisor of a different race won't impact them as much as it will on their leader.

To be perfectly honest, his behavior does bother me because he seems to feel emboldened by this new political era ushered in by Donald Trump.  But in the end I will have the final say when I do his evaluation and recommend if he should be considered for new projects.  He still has time to turn it around and I will definitely give him that opportunity.

But there is a saying about KARMA.......you know, right!

Supreme Court Says Americans Have Right to Kill

You can put a different spin on it and say "Supreme Court Says Americans have Gun Rights" but the bottom line is the door has been opened for hate mongers and lunatics to claim self-defense every time they get trigger happy.

In a 5-4 decision, the high court determined that Americans have the right to own guns for self-defense as well as hunting. So my question is, how is self-defense going to be determined in a court of law that is already full of holes and errors?

If someone looks at me funny and then puts their hand in their pocket, does that give me the right to pull a gun out of my purse and shoot them because I felt my life might be threatened? What if someone tries to cut me off on the highway and I reach for my gun and shoot them? I can say I felt my life was being threatened because I could've been killed by their "road rage."

It's all in how you spin it---and the color of your skin.

Baby Boomers Don't Like to Face Ugly History

Today marks the anniversary of the worst race riots in our nation’s history. It was known as the Tulsa Riots of 1921.

The trouble began on May 31, 1921 when a young black man named Dick Rowland was accused of assaulting a white girl named Sarah Page in an elevator. Although police questioned her, there was never a written account produced of her statement. Whatever the conversation was between Page and the police, it is generally accepted that the police decided that what had happened between the two teenagers was something less than a serious assault. In any event, the police did not launch a man-hunt for her alleged assailant. They apparently knew who they were looking for, but they felt no great urgency.

Whether or not an actual assault had occurred, Rowland had reason to be afraid. In those days, just an accusation of an assault on a white woman might incite violence. He realized the seriousness of the situation, and Rowland fled to his mother's house in the Greenwood neighborhood.

The morning after the incident, Rowland was located, booked on suspicion of assault, and taken to an interrogation room on the top floor of the Tulsa County Courthouse for questioning.

AND THEN THE MEDIA GOT INVOLVED….need I say more….

By late morning, news of the event had apparently reached the Tulsa Tribune. The newspaper broke the story in that afternoon's edition with the headline: 'Nab Negro for Attacking Girl In an Elevator', describing the alleged incident with the details that could be assembled on such short notice. It was, however, another article in the same paper that is credited with providing the misinformation which sparked the chain of events that ensued later that evening.

When it was all over, the area known as “Black Wall Street” was completely destroyed and it’s believed that more than 300 blacks were killed---although the official number only reported 39 deaths.

As baby boomers, this is a part of history we do our best to shy away from because we know these people were mothers, fathers, other relatives and friends. Even if our family members weren’t directly involved in the Tulsa Race Riot, it’s safe to say the majority of baby boomers have parents and grandparents who were either the racist culprits or the victims somewhere in America. The question is how much of that attitude and racism is still a part of the baby boomers you know today?

African-American Baby Boomers & The American Nightmare

A new report just released by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts reveals that African-American baby-boomers are more likely to have slipped down the socioeconomic ladder than their white counterparts. According to the series of three studies, 45 percent of black children born to parents earning middle-class incomes in the 1960s, about $55,000, are in the bottom 20 percent of wage earners today. In comparison, only 16 percent of whites from the same socioeconomic background find themselves in the same position. The report also reflects the fact that whites were more likely than blacks to rise out of the poverty they were raised in.

Columbia University sociologist Ronald Mincy, who served as an adviser on the study, told the Washington Post that researchers do not have a definite explanation for the findings, but speculated that there were many contributing factors. Mincy cited gaps in education, racial isolation, and a disparity in wealth and assets between blacks and whites as potential causes.

So what else is new? I wrote about this very subject several months ago: Black Baby Boomers and the American Dream.

If my grandparents had just gotten that forty acres and a mule they were promised, articles like these wouldn’t need to be written. I’m still open to the offer but with inflation and all, make that 140 acres please.

Baby Boomers are NOT all Alike: Part I

I was born in 1957 so that means I’m a baby boomer. But what does being a baby boomer really mean? By all accounts, we are the children of the Post World War II era, which began in 1946.

In May, 1951, Sylvia F. Porter, a columnist for the New York Post, used the term "Boom" to refer to the phenomenon of increased births in post war America. She said "Take the 3,548,000 babies born in 1950. Bundle them into a batch, bounce them all over the bountiful land that is America. What do you get? Boom. The biggest, boomiest boom ever known in history." That boom she referred to continued until 1964.

Much attention is being paid to baby boomers these days as the first wave of us moves towards retirement and social security. Yes, we were the first generation to grow up with television; many of us lived through the civil rights era and the Vietnam War. But the “real” image of a baby boomer is now in question. We are not all white kids who grew up in the suburbs watching the Mickey Mouse Club. We have been referred to as the most diverse generation but the fact of the matter is some of us actually grew up in a separate and unequal society. According to a study conducted by two Duke University sociologists, diversity has not led to equality: Baby boomers are the first generation to come of age after the Civil Rights era, however, the study revealed differences of income according to race, ethnicity and country of birth so entrenched that, in effect, there are ethnic classes. Blacks in the boomer generation, for example, are no better off relative to whites than their parents and grandparents. Many older southern baby boomers can still tell you stories about the Jim Crow laws and the impact it had on their lives. And educational levels also are unequal across the baby boom generation, which is often described as the best-educated generation in history.

We have also been called the wealthiest generation but despite what some would have you believe, we are not all living in the land of milk and honey. Some of us may have plenty of disposable income but, according to the Duke Study, quite a few of us are struggling financially. Late boomers have the highest levels of poverty since the generation born before World War I. One in 10 late boomers lives in poverty at middle age. "What surprised us the most was how racial inequality persists among the boomers compared to other generations," co-author Angela M. O’Rand said. "The figures are quite dramatic regarding the continuing relative disadvantage of African Americans."

There's a saying: The more things change---the more they remain the same. So it should come as no surprise that many African-Americans don’t identify themselves as baby boomers. It's time to take the blinders off.

A Baby Boomer's View of the Jena 6

As a veteran journalist and baby boomer, I have followed, with much interest, the controversy surrounding the Jena 6 in Jena, Louisiana. This is one of those times when I wish I was still working in the newsroom---fighting for the right to cover stories of the injustices done to African-Americans---especially to African-American males.

I have seen very little coverage on this story and I know why. The “white shirts” who run newsrooms around the country don’t see the same significance as they do in a story berating OJ Simpson. It’s OK to kick a black man down BELOW the ground but don’t try to lift him up because he might try to steal a white woman.

I worked in an environment where an Assistant News Director expressed his fear of driving in a predominately black neighborhood and chastised me for his belief that I wanted him to show me favoritism because of my race. My question was----and still is---how do you get objective news reporting coverage from a manager like that?

What is getting ready to happen in Jena is historic. But let’s not forget, it’s happening in other places across America. Take the case of James Johnson in Wilson, NC who is scheduled to stand trial for the murder of an 18 year old white girl next week. There is NO EVIDENCE linking him to the crime but the District Attorney seems gung-ho on connecting him since he was apparently at the crime scene with another young man who has already confessed that he did it and he acted alone.

The Jena 6 movement is also very similar to the marches of the late 1950s and 1960s when people who believed in freedom marched and said “I ain’t gon’ let nobody turn me around..turn me around…turn me around…”

It is somewhat similar to Woodstock, when free thinkers said make love---not war.

I salute Davie Bowie who recently donated $10,000 to a legal defense fund for the six black teens charged in the alleged attack on the white classmate in Jena. It tells me that there are baby boomers who still have a conscience and awareness for what SHOULD be right with the world

Now I know this blog is going to piss some people off but I thank God I live in a country protected by the First amendment.

What a Week for News!

What a week for news and it’s only Wednesday! After weeks and weeks and weeks of Anna Nicole Smith news, the announcement of the baby daddy news took a back seat to the drama that unfolded over the “nappy headed ho’s” comment that Shock Jock Don Imus made in reference to the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Players. I wonder if their coach had been white if he would’ve made those same remarks. Tennessee Women’s Basketball coach traditionally has a majority of black females on her teams and this year was no exception. Why weren’t they singled out as “nappy headed ho’s” as well? What else is surprising for me is why I haven’t heard from any other Women’s Basketball coaches on the subject. Have they all been told to keep their distance on the subject? Why not rally around one of your own?

And then today came the announcement that ALL charges would be DROPPED against the three Duke University Lacrosse players who were accused last year of allegedly raping and kidnapping a stripper they hired for the party. I was working in television news when that story broke. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I didn’t quite believe it the way it had been presented. Why did the victim drive to a Kroger parking lot without notifying police immediately? Why did the victim lie about being enrolled as a college student at North Carolina central University? Why was the young lady who was with her so eager to get an agent?

Now I do believe those Duke players made some derogatory statements about her and about black people in general---but the extent of the assault didn’t register on my Richter scale.

I had the opportunity to speak to one of the attorneys involved in the case and I invite you to listen to his interview. He’s my Baby Boomer on the Move for this week! Check out my podcast on thetop right side.

Thank God Imus isn't a Baby Boomer!

As someone who grew up in Ohio, I remember listening to "Imus in the Morning" on a radio station in Cleveland. I recall that he was funny and he played good music. The Don Imus we are hearing about today is definitely not the shock jock I remember from "back in the day."

His age has started to show in his behavior. He is cantankerous, obnoxious and no longer funny. Isn't this what we say about old people? The 68 year old Talk Show Host should've known better. But maybe he figured if Rush Limbaugh can get away with some of the comments he makes, then why can't he. Imus' reference to the Rutgers girls basketball team as "nappy-headed ho's" isn't all that shocking to me because it's something I'd expect to hear from a white man who was born and raised during part of the Jim Crow era--before the Civil Rights Laws of 1964 were passed. It's a statement that doesn't surprise me coming from a white man who is a part of the good ol' boy network. His comments are a part of the way white men think of black women---dating back to slavery days.

What Imus said aloud is what is in the hearts of many "white shirts" in America who make decisions daily in Corporate America. I was one of those black women who was talked down to by white bosses who wanted to "keep me in my place." As I documented in my book, "Whatever! A Baby Boomer's Journey Into Middle Age," I had one manager tell me he thought I wanted him to show me favoritism because of my race. This was in response to a question I raised about not being included in the discussion of assignments for reporters because as an Assignment Editor it was my business to know who was doing what. My response to him in the heated exchange was, "No I want you to show me favoritism because I'm GOOD at my job!"

What Imus said is another wake up call about race relations in America---but sadly, many people never hear the alarm going off.