BLACK BUZZ NEWS SERVICE
Princeton, New Jersey
August,12 2010
(BBNS)
Princeton... Melissa Victoria Harris- Lacewell is a dynamic Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.
Students at Princeton are practically busting down the walls to attend both of professor Harris' two courses, one of which is POL-337-AAs338, Disaster, Race and American Politics and the other course is WOM 202 Women in Politics, Media, and the Contemporary United States.
Professor Harris-Lacewell is an expert in the area of race relations in the United States and she can be seen regularly on NBC and MSNBC.
I have been impressed with professor Harris' scholarly and practical discussions on the topic of race in the so-called Age of Obama.
Further, professor Harris has shown that she has complete mastery of the subject matter and an uncanny ability to make people feel at ease when they may even vehemently oppose her position.
This great beautiful Black woman grew up in the Old Dominion cities of Charlottesville and Chester with a Black father, who was the dean of Afro-American Affairs at the famed University of Virginia, and a spectacular White mother , who taught at a local community college and worked for nonprofits that helped poor communities. Professor Harris-Lacewell states that: "I've never thought of myself as biracial. I'm Black and I'm proud."
Professor Harris, your parents did an outstanding job of raising you and they made sure that you had a very healthy positive self-esteem as it relates to your Blackness and self identity.
Far too often kids that come from these mixed marriages have very poor self-identity and a warped and distorted view of their Blackness because of the failure of both parents or one parent to properly educate the child on Black Culture, Black History and the Black perseverance and intestinal fortitude of Africans living in the Americas. If you have a racist White parent or grandparents raising a child such as in the case of President Barack Obama, you will see the failures of that parent or those grandparents manifested in how that person relates to and his perceptions of other Blacks.
Professor Harris was told from day one that she was somebody and that she had worth as an individual and human being, and the result is you get a proud Black woman with high self-esteem who isn't confused or mixed up about anything connected to race or class in the U.S.
I'm quite sure that professor Harris' father had to educate her mother on the realities of living in a racially oppressive society in the context of American history with the goal in mind of raising her level of consciousness and sensitivity.
Before professor Harris-Lacewell reached the age of ten, she knew about the achievements of Ida B. Wells Barnett, Harriet Tubman, W.E, Dubois, Nat Turner, Elijah McCoy, Martin R. Delany, Robert Smalls, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, Mary Church Terrell, John Hope, Arthur Schomburg, Shirley Chisholm, Jackie Robinson and many others.
Who was present in Barack Obama's family who could educate him on being Black in a positive manner and on the realities of individual and systemic racism? No one! That's why he's so damn confused about his own racial identity and thus lacks the skill and sensitivity to adequately address the many race problems that still plague the country. Barack Obama, like the true wimp that he is, would like for all these racial problems to just simply go away by osmosis or diffusion or hide them under cover like a secret disease that isn't talked about or discussed.
So many solo White mothers have done a horrible of job of raising children from these biracial unions, and White families in general don't quite measure up when it comes to educating these youngsters about their history, culture and humanity. When you don't have specific knowledge about Black history, Black Culture, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Liberation Struggle, the Women's Movement, Hispanic History, Native American Culture and History, how can you teach what you don't have?
We teach what we are taught. The unexamined prejudices of parents or grandparents are passed on to the children. This whole concept of biracial is something that Whites in power and brainwashed Negroes have been pushing for the last twenty five years to offset and to destroy any semblance of Black unity and cohesiveness.
These Negroes who call themselves biracial basically feel inferior and they have bought into the whole notion that White is right. Furthermore, many of the biracial Negroes usually have poor self esteem and poor racial identity. And those Negroes that jumped on that biracial bandwagon are definitely lost, deaf, dumb and blind but their parents or guardians are the true culprits for their offsprings' failures to take pride in their Blackness and their rich history.
Every Black person that has a modicum of intelligence understands that the vast majority of African Americans have biracial backgrounds due to 400 plus years of intense miscegenation contrary to the weak, flawed, academically dishonest scholarship of professor Uncle Henry Louis Gates Jr., and others of the same ilk.
Typically White people in general are hypocritical on the whole issue of biracial identification. They falsely want to have their cake and eat it to.
The disingenuous White liberal, Barbara Walters, host of ABC's TV program "The View", racially attacked Obama by questioning him as to why he didn't claim to be biracial. Obama responded to Walters question in a very perplexed, haphazard and clumsy manner by saying society has labeled me as African American. President Obama was not at ease with Walters catch 22 question about him not claiming membership as biracial.
Obama displayed a lack of clarity to Walters' line of inquiry due to his own inadequacies which were revealed in Obama not being prepared for Walters' question and his total lack of appreciation for his Blackness and understanding Black culture.
There is a more subtle message that Barbara Walters was sending with the question about Obama's biracial identity, and that is Whites will claim a Black that has achieved such as Obama because he has White blood in his veins, but the one drop of blood rule is reserved for all other Blacks.
Walters and other similarly situated Whites would never take ownership of Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass or William Monroe Trotter, who were just as White as Barack Obama. The only Blacks who are successful in the United States have white genes in them. That's the true secret racially coded language message that Barbara Walters was trying to send to her audience, masked and camouflaged by her employers, the corporate media.
Successful Blacks who have White mothers such as Barack Obama, Andre Watts, Halle Berry, Mariah Carey, Rod Woodson, Franco Harris, Derick Jeter, Alicia Keys, Lisa Bonet, Shemar Moore, Nicole Parker, Jasmine Guy, Sade, Rick Fox, Jason Kidd, Jordin Sparks, Faith Evans, Tim Duncan, ROCK, Hugh E., DRAKE, Leona Lewis, El and Chico DeBarge, Will Demp and a whole lot of others Blacks whom Whites want to claim, but when they can't win the ownership battle, they vociferously holler biracial for so-called successful Black people.
Barbara Walters is probably not even aware of the fact that her question on President Obama's racial identity was based upon her own racial insensitivity and lack of knowledge on the subject which is the result of living in a society where race always matters in everything we say and do on the front and back stage of American life.
Melissa Harris-Lacewell is the author of Barbershops, Bibles and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought on the methods African Americans use to develop political ideas through ordinary conversations in places like barbershops, churches, and popular culture. Her work was awarded the 2005 W.E. B.Dubois Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientist. It was also the winner of the 2005 Best Book Award from the Race and Ethnic Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. Ms. Harris' interests include the study of African American political thought, Black religious ideas and practice, and social and clinical psychology.
Ms. Harris Lacewell received her B.A. in English from Wake Forest University at the tender age of 20, and then obtained her Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University and her Honoris Causa Doctorate from Meadville Lombard Theological School.
She is presently a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where she is working on a Doctor of Divinity degree.
Melissa Victoria Harris Lacewell, you are an excellent role model for all students and particularly women of color and it is very unfortunate that I cannot attend one of your classes at Princeton.
We need more Melissa Victoria Harris Lacewells' at every level from kindergarten to the Ph.D. level of teaching in our schools, colleges and universities.
Congratulations Professor Harris-Lacewell, you are a invaluable asset to the Princeton University community and a shining example for the entire world community.
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