DISQUS

i was at the youth ball, but came in and out via the press entrance was there a huge crush outside? I know the MTV area was filled to capacity and many could not get in...but i enjoyed it anyway. didn't know there were issues outside, since you couldn't get anywhere near outside from the area i came in. i can't believe 10,000 tickets were sold though, there's no way they could have fit that many.

While we're on this topic, as trivial as it is...has anyone ever seen Jamie Foxx's daughter's mother??

Chiweltel only dates white women. Idris is - or was- married to a black woman. But interracial dating in the U.K. is big on both sides, black woman with white man and black man with white woman.

I enjoyed "Traitor" a lot as well, surprised considering the subject matter that it got made. Not surprised that it didn't do so well...but I'm glad others have discovered it.
As for the Bond debate, Idris is undeniable if it ever happens. In the meantime, I'm fine with Daniel Craig's fine self.

Elizabeth Taylor played Cleopatra. Angelina Jolie played Marianne Pearl. Should I go on down the long list of white actresses and actors who have played ethnic roles?

Even on JJP, Beyonce gets no love. I don't get it. Why are people so upset with her? I like her and I enjoy her music and she's the one chick my entire family all ages and genders likes, including my 60-something mother. She was good in "Cadillac Records" which proves she's working on her craft. I would not be mad to see her at the inauguration since she's a great performer and will do the honor justice.

As though those mainstream reporters were somehow more deserving to be on the plane than an Ebony correspondent. Awww, PEBO, I knew you was looking out on the low!:-)

race is real...but food is realer...

susan rice or condi rice??? really...?

"then I for ONE of a long line of the "Our Kind of People" would surely appreciate it if you would stop bad mouthing me and mine"

no surprise there...

you did a great job in your rant of describing exactly the elitism and snobbiness that are often attached to your kind of people....

Whew, found my way over here from Techcrunch and thank God. The web is a hotbed for serious racists and yet folks wonder "why" "we" might need a "black" browser. I think the comments over there are the reason why. We need a break from people who want black folks to just join "the mainstream" and shove off all desire of having any kind of black interests or culture. "Black" clubs, hair salons, radio stations et al, exist because people felt their needs weren't being met by the larger society.

While I work on the web, I'm far from a techhead. The only reason I give a damn about a browser is to get on the Internet. Maybe I'm not using the full potential of browsers, but RSS feeds and the like were simply too time-consuming. As someone who works in black media, I need to keep up with the news in "our" community more than in any other and the news ticker on this broswer is amazingly helpful in that. The bookmarks, especially links to black colleges, etc., can just supplement the ones I have in other browsers. What is the big damn deal?

True diversity in workplaces and especially in the media is a joke. I just visited a company that gets accolades for diversity and I was one of three black people I saw there. So please - until there is true diversity of color, thought and opinion in what we consider the "mainstream," there will be offerings of all kinds to the black marketplace. Even porn is segregated. If black people felt their needs were being met by the mainstream we'd have no need for anything specific to our community.

I'm black and proud and I think it's disgusting that we are one of the only ethnic groups asked to shed our ethnicity and culture for acceptance. Every other group from Jewish Americans to Asian Americans to Italian Americans is encouraged to embrace their culture and uniqueness. Why can't we do the same??

Maaaan, I can relate to this subject so well. I'm a medium-brown (light to the dark skinned, dark to the high-yellas) woman who worked at a major black media company. A cultural anthropologist could have had had a ground-breaking study there. I used to joke that the rank and file staff was treated like filed niggas, and that the management was like the house niggas...except it wasn't a joke. Education and complexion definitely played a role in the company, as did family background and social class, or the social class you were percieved to be. Despite the product this company put off, it was amazingly the largest group of educated black people from all kinds of backgrounds that I've probably ever been around. You had sorority girls and ex-Jack and Jills mingling with reformed hustlers, quirky artsy types, city kids who'd done to exclusive East Coast prep schools and those from regular middle class and working class backgrounds all together. Yes, there were differences made by educational background,family wealth, class, color and more. It was fascinating as much as it was sickening. And yes, some of the so-called "elite" black people at this company, who were making money off the exploitation of the ghetto class they despised, were absolutely disdainful of same, particularly if they were working for the company. I have seen this type of division in my own family where complexion and hair type runs the gamut as does educational background and lifestyle. Yet if you meet my mother today, who is high-yella, despite the fact that she has been working class most of her life and has worked in the hood for almost 30 years, you would swear she was one of the "the people like us." That's more due to the old-fashioned notion of upbringing and hometraining than any class snobbishness, though. As someone with this background who now lives in a predominantly black neighborhood, I can say this - I have always felt torn between the two worlds. My education and ability to express myself intelligently has given me entree into a slice of the upper crust world, but my working class background means only to a point. But to ghetto folks, even some in my family I'm "bourgie." And mind you, I can count my family back four generations. Class consciousness has definitely impacted my life in many, many ways. It's crazy, but it's real. I see a lot of those upper crust black folks, even in my business which is a creative industry, getting top positions in black companies becuase of their percieved corporate appeal. And yes, some are high acheivers and have been trained to be so, so you can't knock their work ethic or educational/class background if it helped them get somewhere. As someone who is in daily proximity to "hood" black folks, I will say it's not poverty that is responsible for some of the behavior and dysfunction. It's ignorance, which in the Catch-22 we know so well, is often created by poverty.
As far as Barack and Michelle, I credit both of them for vaulting up the class board and working with the talented tenth types like Valerie Jarrett. They leapfrogged over the usual channels with education, ambition and parents who wanted them to do more than they themselves could. I can appreciate that. I am sure that in the privacy of their own thoughts, PEBO and Michelle are acutely aware of how far they've come. I just hope that they appreciate and recognize that some of the black folks that the talented tenth is so disdainful of are the ones that were loyal to PEBO from the start and helped get him elected.

what barack marley said...even though i can't believe we're still talking about this!!! now i guess we can move on to the birth certificate *rolls eyes*

I think if your last name is Kennedy you are always being touted for political seats you don't necessarily deserve. I like CK but she's not an elected official....on the other hand, I guess that's to her advantage. I'm sure there are people that have earned the spot...but that Uncle Teddy can surely get her up to speed since he's been as Senator since Congress began :-)

black is what black is...it's more than a complexion, it's a cultural identity. i'd much rather have a conversation about the talented tenth black folks going to the White House....since neither Barack and Michelle grew up in those kinds of upper class black families. I think that's pretty interesting and will be interesting as to how that will play out with Barack's black, non-biracial, base. LOL

Why do people hate Hillary so much? The campaign is over with and she did her thing for Obama after she lost. Why not take your opponent, who you already know is tough and sharp and make her one of your top allies? He needs tough people around him so he's clean of any fallout from controversy. I think it's a smart move, and she'll do well.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/11/59...

all about valerie jarrett and her impressive family....all bourgie black folks to be sure...but i'm not mad at that.....despite the fact that in my experience some can be elitist and snobby....let's hope that's not the case here.

talented tenth indeed...and it will be interesting to see how it all plays out...i'm not mad at black folks with a history of achievement as long as they are inclusive of the host of diverse black folks that helped elect their new boss...

agreed, primaries are over with. she came out for barack as she said she would his judgment so far has been good, so let's just see how it finally shakes out. folks thought he was advocating valerie jarrett for his senate seat and that didn't happen. in any case, we have no say in the decision.

I think it's totally unrealistic for them to go to public school. Amy Carter did, but that was a long time ago and she wasn't black. At the end of the day it is security. However, it is sad that most black folks believe that in order to get a good education you have to send your kids to predominantly white private schools. That may in fact be the case, but I definitely think it affects your cultural identity. I went to public school in NYC my whole life but my early experience with mostly white peers left me unprepared for college when racial lines are very seriously drawn. And interestingly enough, although I had diverse friends as a child, my friends are now overwhelmingly black, which I think is the same for a lot of folks. As someone who worked for a black company it's interesting the class divisions that spring up when color is not the issue. But I guess that's a whole other story and one that hasn't been discussed too much by the black community in the wake of the Obama election. However, it is something that Michelle Obama pondered in her now infamous Princeton thesis.

that is an ugly dog. but a lot of people have and love ugly ass dogs. however i vote for a maltipoo, the dog that rihanna has. it's cute. sorry but cuteness is one of the reasons to get a dog in the first place. but truthfully i hope the girls get whatever they want. shame on people trying to make this political fodder. they're kids and they'll have enough to adjust to without having the public choose their damn dog.

i have two cats, well one cat and a kitten...and malia and sasha are welcome to them!

okay, just kidding but anyone with cats understands how i feel.

Unfortunately I will have to tell those future kids that I was taking out the garbage at the exact time that they called the Presidency for Barack Obama. However it was a pretty amazing feeling to stand there in the few seconds of silence until my neighborhoods behind their own closed doors erupted in cheers and cars drove by honking horns. It was far louder and more drawn out than similar celebrating just the week before when the Phillies won the World Series...

I think that the embrace of lightskinned black people has a place and time for discussion but not here. Clearly, people in the U.S. both black and white render their judgement of blackness on how black an individual looks, not necessarily their ethnic history. Here's an example - Vanessa Williams is not biracial. Lenny Kravitz is. Bow Wow is not biracial, Halle Berry is. Yet all of the above consider and describe themselves as black.
I have nieces and cousins who are not biracial who are lighter than Obama. Also, if you've ever seen Obama in person, he's shades darker in real life than he is on the screen. Most African-Americans in the U.S. have biracial heritage so it's pretty fair to say most of us could claim biracial at some point in our ancestry. But at the end of the day, he appears to live and identify as a Black American man with both white and African roots. And that's how people both black and white responded to him. Clearly racism is alive and well when white people who can see he was entirely raised by white folks and continue to harbor racist notions about the color of his skin. That definitely tells you a lot about race relations in America. But at the end of the day, we'll embrace him as a black man and that's really that. But truly, it's another conversation for another day for another thread. Right now, we'd like to bask in the moment and see what the brother's going to do with the mess he's faced with. And yeah, I said and mean "brother."
Thank you.

but a brother did look tired...he looked like they told him some shit now that he can get all the intel that make him think damn, what did i just get into...but he was steady and funny at the presser....

it was truly entertaining......