EMPOWERMENT!

Black self esteem and empowerment!
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GOOD MORNING FLINT!
BY Terry Bankert 3/02/08
http://attorneybankert.com/
You are invited to join me at Face Book
http://www.facebook.com/people/Terry_Bankert/645845362
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Full article at:
http://goodmorningflint.blogspot.com

Summarized article on Flint Talk:

Inez Brown comment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsnzt3Ufy-4

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NAACP dinner stresses empowerment[FJ]
Empowerment was the theme at Saturday night'se 27th annual Flint NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner [FJ].

Empowerment refers to increasing the
spiritual, political, social or economic strength of individuals and communities. It often involves the empowered developing confidence in their own capacities. [W2]

"Thirty-five years ago the revelation of [King's] dream arrived," Brock said. "It has been 35 years since the dreamer was silenced, and his legacy is still not realized."[RB2]

The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination. [N]

Keynote speaker Roslyn Brock shared that theme at the Genesys Conference and Banquet Center in Grand Blanc Township. [FJ]

Ms. Roslyn McCallister Brock is Vice Chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) National Board of Directors and serves on the NAACP National Board of Trustees. Over the past 20 years, Brock has served the NAACP in several leadership roles. She made history when she was unanimously elected Vice Chairman of the NAACP National Board of Directors at the age of 35. She was the youngest person and the first woman elected to this post in the organization's history.[RB]

More than 400 people attended the dinner and awards ceremony. [FJ]

"We have a responsibility to motivate others to solve our own problems, as opposed to making others solve them for us," Brock said before the dinner. [FJ]

"Despite economic problems and unemployment and everything else, we, as a community collectively, still have the power to solve those problems, to not be divided." [FJ]

Brock, 42, is the vice chairman of the NAACP National Board of Directors. Unanimously elected in February 2001, she is the first woman and youngest person in NAACP history to serve in the position. [FJ]

"If we are lacking anywhere, it's in young adults, people 25 to 40," said civil rights pioneer Julian Bond, chairman of the national NAACP. "That's a population that is starting a family. They are establishing themselves in jobs, and those concerns, unlike those younger and older, are a top priority for them right now."[STP]

"For her to be such a young woman and to do all that she does " she just shows that you should be an example by what you do," said Frances Gilcreast, president of Flint's NAACP chapter. "She tries to keep herself empowered." [FJ]

The vision of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights and there is no racial hatred or racial discrimination. [N]

Does this vision extend to whites when they are disciminated against by white?[trb]

While 'racism' most commonly denotes race-based
prejudice, violence, discrimination, or oppression, the term can also have varying and hotly contested definitions. 'Racialism' is a related term intended to avoid these negative meanings. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to distinguish it as being either superior or inferior to another race or races. The Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief.[1] The Macquarie Dictionary defines racism thus: the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others.[W3]

But the NAACP has almost become a victim of its own success, said Derrick Bell, author of Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism.[STP]

One of its greatest victories was the landmark U.S. Supreme Court opinion Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, which outlawed segregation in public schools. Bell suggests the case may have been the worst thing to happen to blacks.[STP]

"Brown has been good for white folks," said Bell, a law professor at New York University. "They can now say, "We did it for y'all. Why don't you stop that bellyaching?' All it did was declare that segregation was unconstitutional. It didn't change patterns of segregation."]STP]

In 2004, Brock was named to The Network Journal's 40-Under-Forty Achievement Award. She also earned Ebony magazine's Future Leader Award In 1989 and Good Housekeeping's 100 Women of Promise award in 1987. [FJ]

The director of advocacy and public policy for Bon Secours Health Systems in Marriottsville, Md., Brock earned her bachelor's degree at Virginia Union University before heading to George Washington University for a master's degree in health services administration. She's also completed an MBA program at Northwestern University. [FJ]

Roslyn is the Director of System Fund Development for the Sisters of Bon Secours Health System, Inc., headquartered in Marriottsville, Maryland. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Virginia Union University. (B.S. ‘87) She also earned a master's degree in health services administration from George Washington University,(M.H.S.A. ‘89) and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (‘99).[W]

Before working for Bon Secours, Brock worked for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek. She currently is working on a doctoral degree from Virginia Union. [FJ]

"The NAACP is a volunteer job, and I have other jobs beyond that," Brock said. "But when I think about the sacrifices my forefathers made, that gives me energy." [FJ]

Racism has many definitions, the most common and widely accepted being that members of one race are intrinsically superior or inferior to members of other races.[W3]

In Detroit, NAACP Vice Chairman Roslyn Brock said Monday’s mock funeral is important for black self esteem. [BAW]

"It’s important for us to take the N-word out of our vocabulary because we can’t expect other people to respect us if we don’t respect ourselves," Brock told BlackAmericaWeb.com.[BAW]

Brock said the mock funeral to bury the N-word is symbolic, and the gesture itself has a history in the NAACP. In 1944, the NAACP Detroit chapter staged a mock funeral to bury Jim Crow.[BAW]

The Jim Crow laws (named after "Jump Jim Crow", a song-and-dance caricature of African Americans) were state and local laws enacted in the Southern and border states of the United States and enforced between 1876 and 1965. They mandated "separate but equal" status for black Americans. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were almost always inferior to those provided for white Americans. The Jim Crow period or the Jim Crow era refers to the time during which this practice occurred. The most important laws required that public schools, public places and public transportation have separate buildings, toilets, and restaurants for whites and blacks. (These Jim Crow Laws were separate from the 1800-66 Black Codes, which had restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans.) State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Voting Rights Act. During the Reconstruction period of 1865-76, federal law provided civil rights protection in the South for freedmen—the African-Americans who had formerly been slaves. Reconstruction ended at different dates (the latest 1877), and was followed in each Southern state by Redeemer governments that passed the Jim Crow laws to separate the races. In the Progressive Era the restrictions were formalized, and segregation was extended to the federal government by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913. [W]

Monday’s event, Brock said, "connects us with our history and ties us to our past."

As the NAACP moves toward its centennial, people inside and outside wonder whether its mission is still relevant.[STP]

Membership is down. In 1995, the organization had about 650,000 members. Today the number is about 500,000, according to the national office. And some lifetime members may never attend a local branch meeting.[STP]


"Have you raised your voice lately to address fairness, inclusion or identity?" she said. "Are you worthy of the legacy you have inherited?"[RB2]

If Barack Obama becomes President of the United states, is racism still a problem in the America or will he be the best tool for the cure.[trb]

Posted here by
Terry Bankert 3/2/08
http://attorneybankert.com/
You are invited to Join my political party of preference
http://www.michigandems.com/join.html

—where did this stuff come from----
[FJ]
THE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITIONSunday, March 02, 2008
By Kristyn Petersonkpeterson@flintjournal.com • 810.766.6315
http://www.mlive.com/news/flintjournal/index.ssf?/base/news-49/120443886855640.xml&coll=5#continue

[trb]
Comments of Terry Bankert

[N]
NAACP
http://www.naacp.org/about/mission/index.htm

[RB]
Roslyn Brock
http://www.naacp.org/about/leadership/directors/rbrock/

[RB2]
Flat Hat : Speech
http://flathat.wm.edu/January242003/newsstory8.shtml

[W]
Wichita NAACP
http://wichitanaacp.blogspot.com/2007/12/election-time-for-national-board.html

[STP]
The St.Petersburg Times, Tampa Bay
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/05/31/Tampabay/Is_the_NAACP_still_re.shtml

[BAW]
The Black America Web
http://www.blackamericaweb.net/site.aspx/bawnews/nwordfuneral710

[W]
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

[W2]
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empowerment

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