News Stories on Black Culture
Black Spending Habits
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Digital Digest (Detroit), Feb. 8, 2006
These are tough economic times, especially for African-Americans, for whom the unemployment rate is more than 10%. Alarmingly, rather than belt-tightening, the response has been to spend more. In many poor neighborhoods, one is likely to notice satellite dishes and expensive new cars.
According to Target Market, a company that tracks black consumer spending, blacks spend a significant amount of their income on depreciable products.
In 2002, the year the economy nose-dived; we spent $22.9 billion on clothes, $3.2 billion on electronics and $11.6 billion on furniture to put into homes that, in many cases, were rented.
Among our favorite purchases are cars and liquor. Blacks make up only 12% of the U.S. population, yet account for 30% of the country’s Scotch consumption. Detroit, which is 80% black, is the world’s No. 1 market for Cognac.
So impressed was Lincoln with the $46.7 billion that blacks spent on cars that the automaker commissioned Sean “P Diddy” Combs, the entertainment and fashion mogul, to design a limited-edition Navigator replete with six plasma screens, three DVD players and a Sony PlayStation 2.
The only area where blacks seem to be cutting back on spending is books; total purchases have gone from a high of $356 million in 2000 to $303 million in 2002. This shortsighted behavior, motivated by a desire for instant gratification and social acceptance, comes at the expense of our future. The National Urban League’s “State of Black America 2004” report found that fewer than 50% of black families owned their homes compared with more than 70% of whites.
According to published reports, the Ariel Mutual Funds/Charles Schwab 2003 Black Investor Survey found that when comparing households where blacks and whites had roughly the same household incomes, whites saved nearly 20% more each month for retirement, and 30% of African-Americans earning $100,000 a year had less than $5,000 in retirement savings. While 79% of whites invest in the stock market, only 61% of African-Americans do.
Certainly, higher rates of unemployment, income disparity and credit discrimination are financial impediments to the economic vitality of blacks, but so are our consumer tastes.
Why Black Women Do Not Respect Black Men
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Crystal Evans, Men, August 28, 2009
{snip}
That black women are not as domesticated and docile as white women and that we black women do not know how to treat our men. We have gargantuan desires, expectations and wishes from our men and when our anticipations are not met, we make our spouses lives miserable.
The denigration of the black man’s image and relevance dates back to the socialization of the black woman. I can remember as a child that my mother inculcated my sisters and i to avoid relationships with black men because they would definitely cause me irreparable, emotional damage. She asserted that they would impregnate me and desert me. Use me, abuse me, ill treat me and abandon me.
My mother contended that black men were irresponsible fathers, substandard caregivers, cheap breadwinners (if any at all), lousy husbands and mates. She contended that they were the worst communicators, and lacked the capacity to compromise, reason without violence and to be civil. She told my three sisters and I to marry a white man. He will be a good husband to you and an excellent father to your children.
{snip}
To be frank with you, my mother has been proven right thus far. I have been with two black men and they have made my life a living hell. {snip} They were not pitched black. They were more like coloureds. They were the ‘coco butter’ complexion black men, the ones that look more like Chris Brown (befitting analogy). They were not from the ghetto and they have been exposed to education and the finer things in life which I assumed would have engendered some changes in their thought processes and general behaviors but obviously not.
It is difficult for any woman to have any respect for black men when most (I said most not all my detractors) are not standing up to their responsibilities. I have no respect norr regard for any man who does not take care of his family or exhibits conduct that are worthy of emulations by my children. {snip}
Conclusively, the reason why we have no respect for our men is because they have no respect for themselves. They have no knowledge nor understanding of what their roles are within a family. They do not understand that when they conceive a child that it does not end there, that they should be part of its upbringing and maintenance. Most black men are in part sperm donors and bed room racklers. They think bragging about the scores of children that they have dispersed all over the place denotes good fatherhood and that women are therapy valves for them to vent their inadequacies and insecurities.
Our men have let us down. To be honest the only reason why we even cohort with them is because of this primal mammalian need to have sex and our instinctual desire for companionship.
{snip}
{snip} But black men please do not give those reasons for not dating black women. Because we all now that a good black man is difficult to find!
Smithsonian’s African-American Museum to Display Emmett Till Casket
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William Lee, Chicago Tribune, August 27, 2009
The casket that held the mutilated body of civil rights martyr Emmett Till for 50 years will go on public display in the nation’s newest African-American history museum, officials said.
The move comes a month after the casket was found discarded at Burr Oak Cemetery near Alsip.
Officials with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture are expected to announce the casket’s donation just before a memorial ceremony Friday to commemorate 54 years since Till’s murder.
{snip}
“We are both honored and humbled that the Till family has entrusted this sacred object to the museum for preservation and safekeeping,” Bunch, former president of the Chicago History Museum, said in a news release.
{snip}
The casket will be taken to Washington, the site of the new museum, where it will be evaluated by conservation experts and readied for display when the museum opens in late 2015, spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas said.
Till’s body was originally buried in the casket with a glass top at his mother’s request so that the public could see her son’s badly-disfigured corpse. It was exhumed and autopsied in 2005 in an FBI probe to find possible accomplices in the crime.
After Till’s body was reburied in a new casket, his relatives had hoped to have the original casket donated to a black history museum, but it was discovered rusting in a damp shed at Burr Oak in July during the uncovering of an alleged grave-reselling scam.
{snip}
Email William Lee at wlee@tribune.com.
Few Blacks Show for Job Fair Opportunities
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Christian Morrow, New Pittsburgh Courier, May 14, 2009
For some yet to be determined reason, African-Americans are missing in action when it comes to unique job opportunities being created in Pittsburgh.
Despite a heavy turnout at two recent job fairs conducted by the Rivers Casino, which organizers said yielded a great pool of potential employees, the number of Black applicants might have approached about 10 percent at best.
“We had an exceptional turnout for both events, but yes, there were not a lot of African-Americans and that’s a concern for us,” said George Matta, business development and community relations manager. “We specifically reached out—through the Northside Leadership Conference, CareerLink and the Urban League—to assemble a diverse applicant pool. So yes, we are aware of it, and we’ve recontacted those agencies to make sure make sure we have a diverse pool.”
Mark Fatla, executive director of the Northside Leadership Conference, said the turnout news is disappointing given the coverage of the job fairs, especially in the New Pittsburgh Courier. He said it is possible that some folks are putting themselves out of the process because they believe they won’t get hired.
{snip}
Through outreach workshops in conjunction with the Urban League, CareerLink and Community College of Allegheny County, Fatla’s organization assembled a pool of 827 low-income and minority applicants for casino positions. Of those, he said, 324 were scheduled for interviews, 237 actually showed up, and of those 150 were scheduled for a second interview.
{snip}
The low turnout phenomenon seemed to be present May 9 at the Hill House Association where a scheduled Trade Union Job Fair had only 45 people fill out forms noting their interest in getting into union apprenticeship programs.
{snip}
![day_26[1]](http://bossip.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/day_261.jpg?w=445 "day_26[1]")
Looks like Serena Williams is ready to be up front about her boo Common and how she and him like to spend their QT:
The former MTV reality star who may or may not have stabbed her husband while their three kids watched pled not guilty to one charge stemming from the alleged incident.
Juelz Santana, the rapper who’s collaborated with Chris Brown, Sean Kingston and Cam’ron, was arrested at his home in New Jersey — after his wife told cops he threatened to kill her!
Thursday, August 27
Friday, August 28
Friday, August 28 through Saturday, September 5
Saturday, August 29 through Sunday, September 6
Saturday, August 29
Saturday, August 29
Michael Jackson will be buried on September 3 — instead of August 29 as originally planned.
