Simona Halep all Sweaty and Busty!

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The Demise of the Black Middle Class?

The Destruction of the Black Middle Class
by Barbara Ehrenreich and Dedrick Muhammed

To judge from most of the commentary on the Gates-Crowley affair, you would think that a "black elite" has gotten dangerously out of hand. First Gates (Cambridge, Yale, Harvard) showed insufficient deference to Crowley, then Obama (Occidental, Harvard) piled on to accuse the police of having acted "stupidly." Was this "the end of white America" which the Atlantic had warned of in its January/February cover story? Or had the injuries of class -- working class in Crowley's case -- finally trumped the grievances of race?

Left out of the ensuing tangle of commentary on race and class has been the increasing impoverishment -- or, we should say, re-impoverishment -- of African Americans as a group. In fact, the most salient and lasting effect of the current recession may turn out to be the decimation of the black middle class. According to a study by Demos and the Institute for Assets and Social Policy, 33 percent of the black middle class was already in danger of falling out of the middle class at the start of the recession. Gates and Obama, along with Oprah and Cosby, will no doubt remain in place, but millions of the black equivalents of Officer Crowley -- from factory workers to bank tellers and white collar managers -- are sliding down toward destitution.

For African Americans -- and to a large extent, Latinos -- the recession is over. It occurred between 2000 and 2007, as black employment decreased by 2.4 percent and incomes declined by 2.9 percent. During the seven-year long black recession, one third of black children lived in poverty and black unemployment -- even among college graduates -- consistently ran at about twice the level of white unemployment. That was the black recession. What's happening now is a depression.

Read the Full Essay @ The Huffington Post

A Home Going for Elsie "Elena" Neal

Homegoing Service for Elsie "Elena" Neal

August 13, 1941 – August 2, 2009

Friday August 7, 2009

Wake: 12:00 noon Funeral Service: 12:30

Chatman Harris Funeral Home
5240-40 Reiserstown Road
Baltimore, MD 21215

Obituary

Elsie Eleanor Neal was born in Pitt County, North Carolina on August 13, 1941. The daughter of the late Eleanor and Willie RD Roberson, she was raised in Baltimore, Maryland. Elsie left Baltimore for New York City in 1958, where she eventually met Arthur Cleveland Neal Jr of Thomson, Georgia. The two were married on September 15th 1963 and the union produced one son, Mark Anthony Neal.

Elsie was employed as a school lunch worker and eventually went back to school to earn a Bachelor’s Degree from the College of New Rochelle (’87) and a Master’s Degree in Special Education from Fordham University (’93). At the time of her retirement in 1994, Elsie was a Special Education teacher in the New York City Public School system. She remained active in her community, regularly volunteering for the American Red Cross.

Elsie passed peacefully on the afternoon of August 2, 2009 at St Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, MD after a series of illnesses. She will be remembered for her frankness, her independent spirit, and her outgoing personality.

Elsie was preceded in death by her husband of 44 years, Arthur C. Neal, Jr. She is survived by son Dr. Mark Anthony Neal; one daughter-in-law, Gloria-Taylor Neal two grand-daughters Misha Gabrielle and Camille Monet; Ivanna Farrell; three brothers, Earl Robinson, Raymond Murray and Elder Daniel-Murray; three sisters, Twelvelyon Johnson, Pastor Evelyn J. Marshall (Leon) , Thelma Ross (Clarence); Linda Murray; an aunt, Francis Parker; two uncles Rev. James D. Robinson and Rev. Dr. J.R. Robinson; two god-children, Jennifer Revels and Janiqua Johnson; and a host of in-laws, nieces and nephews, cousins and loving friends.

Order of Service

Presiding—Pastor Wanda Bynum Duckett
Monroe Street United Methodist Church

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Family Processional

Opening Hymn

Scripture—Pastor Evelyn Jean Marshall
God’s Remnant Church of Christ (Stokes, NC)

Acknowledgements and Obituary
Franklin Louis Paul, Jr.

Prayer

Words of Comfort—Rev. Reginald Kennedy
Gospel Tabernacle Baptist

Selection—Echoes of Harmony

Poetry—Ms. Misha Neal, grand-daughter

Reflections by Friends and Family (2 mins)

Solo—Tyronda Marshall

Eulogy—Elder Daniel Murray
Philadelphia Church of Christ

Final Viewing

Recessional

The Legacy of Reverend "Ike"

Remembering the Legacy of America’s “Green Preacher,” Rev. Ike
By Jonathan L. Walton

Rev. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II was a controversial and complicated personality who cast his ecclesial wings upon the religious airwaves to become a pop-culture icon. More commonly known as “Rev. Ike,” he was a religious innovator and architect of one of the more prominent religious movements of the contemporary moment. At a time when few African Americans were on television, religious or otherwise, Rev. Ike used advanced technologies to take his message of God-ordained financial prosperity from a Harlem storefront to mainstream society. As a result, he helped to reconfigure the religious and racial boundaries that once defined the perceived center and margins of American spiritual life.

When I interviewed him a few years ago, however, he seemed less than sanguine about his legacy. In most circles, the very mention of his name evokes either a dismissive chuckle or a demonstrative condemnation. Adjectives like charlatan, huckster, or crook are quite common in describing the former prayer-cloth peddler. And in comedic culture he will forever be linked to Richard Pryor’s character “Daddy Rich” in Car Wash or Reverend Sam, the Elmer Gantry-like televangelist from Norman Lear’s classic sitcom Good Times.

This is even true among contemporary evangelists who now drink from the theological and ministerial wells that Rev. Ike helped to drill. Frederick Price, Creflo Dollar and Bishop T.D. Jakes are quick to distance themselves from Rev. Ike’s name, even as they unapologetically embrace his self-indulgent theology and lifestyle. In fact, most of today’s African American televangelists are much more willing to credit their success to prominent white evangelists such as Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin or Kenneth Copeland.

Read the Full Essay @ Religion Dispatches

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Jonathan L. Walton is assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He teaches courses in African American Religion; Religion, Media & Culture and Religion & Political Discourse. His new book is: Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Religious Broadcasting (New York University Press).

Enough Already? More Commentary on "Gates-gate"

Beer and Sympathy
by Gary Younge

As I write, the beers are in the presidential fridge. After their drink, Gates will go back to Harvard, Crowley will return to the force, Obama will stay in the White House. Nothing about law or race, not even the national conversation, will have changed. And Troy Davis will remain on death row. For now the only beer he can expect will be with his last meal. And he will be drinking alone.

Read the Full Essay @ The Nation

Gary Younge, the Alfred Knobler Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the New York correspondent for the Guardian and the author of No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the Deep South (Mississippi) and Stranger in a Strange Land: Travels in the Disunited States (New Press).

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Obama Flunks His "Teachable Moment"
by Mark Anthony Neal

The Gates arrest gave the president ample opportunity to stimulate a broad national discussion about police and community relations and the role of race and ethnicity when these relations become contentious. Such a conversation would have been a politically risky endeavor, no doubt. But discussion would have been far more valuable than a brewski photo-op, which is how the Gates case will likely be remembered.

Read the Full Essay @ theGRIO

New Book: The Mississippi Delta Hip-Hop Story

Let the World Listen Right:
The Mississippi Delta Hip-Hop Story
by Ali Colleen Neff
Foreword by William R. Ferris

A study of grass roots musical creation happening in the cradle of the blues.

In the Mississippi Delta, creativity, community, and a rich expressive culture persist despite widespread poverty. Over five years of extensive work in the region, author Ali Colleen Neff collected a wealth of materials that demonstrate a vibrant musical scene.

Let the World Listen Right draws from classic studies of the blues as well as extensive ethnographic work to document the "changing same" of Delta music making. From the neighborhood juke joints of the contemporary Delta to the international hip-hop stage, this study traces the musical networks that join the region's African American communities to both traditional forms and new global styles.

The book features the words and describes performances of contemporary artists, including blues musicians, gospel singers, radio and club DJs, barroom toast-tellers, preachers, poets, and a spectrum of Delta hip-hop artists. Contemporary Delta hip-hop artists Jerome "TopNotch the Villain" Williams, Kimyata "Yata" Dear, and DA F.A.M. have contributed freestyle poetry, extensive interview materials, and their own commentaries. The book focuses particularly on the biography of TopNotch, whose hip-hop poetics emerge from a lifetime of schoolyard dozens and training in the gospel church.

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Formerly a music writer for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the SF Weekly, and the East Bay Express, among others, Ali Colleen Neff is currently an instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

E. Lynn Harris Goes Home

The gay black writer invented his life the way he invented characters and changed the face of black literature.

E. Lynn Harris: 1955-2009
by Teresa Wiltz

To read an E. Lynn Harris novel was to eavesdrop on the lives of the young, black and fabulous. The, young, black, conflicted and fabulous, that is: Harris made a name for himself chronicling the lives of the beautiful and the buff, men living on the down low, having lots of hot, tormented sex while wearing designer duds and generally living the glamorous life.

He’d be the first to tell you that he was no literary stylist, no turner of sweet phrases, but he knew how to tell tales, tales that people wanted to read. There’s a reason Harris, who died Friday of an apparent heart attack, was a 10-time New York Times best-seller; his writing struck a deep, resonant chord. He may have been a gay black man writing about other gay black men, but he also wrote about black women, straight black women, with sensitivity and often with glowing admiration. Sisters returned the favor, lining up in droves to buy his books, becoming his biggest fans.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root.com