Black Community

EAST ELMHURST, N.Y. - Ed Charles compiled a .263 batting average over an eight-season major-league career. In his final year - 1969 - the third baseman nicknamed "The Glider" helped the "Miracle Mets" win a World Series. Charles, an African American, knows none of that would have been possible if not for Jackie Robinson, the man who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier 60 years ago. In a recent Q&A, the now 73-year-old Charles spoke to how profoundly the man who remains his hero affected him and countless other major-leaguers.

THERE'S a well-documented lack of diversity in Hollywood, but Councilman David Oh's Black Film Advisory Committee (BFAC) aims to shine a spotlight on black filmmakers in Philadelphia. The Committee strives to create a cultural and creative hub for anyone interested in working in the movie business, especially minorities. Kimberley Richards, special assistant to the councilman and coordinator of the committee, is in the process of planning the BFAC's second event - "The Return of 'The Set,' " a networking affair that brings together people from all aspects of film production - from producers to on-set caterers.

RE MICHAEL Smerconish's "Think Rodney King, but Upside-Down": He writes: "We'll be spared an insufferable visit to town by Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the rest of those who make a living doing nothing but stoking the fires of racial unrest. " I remember he wrote a column seemingly scolding the "black community" for the positive attention afforded Omarosa, the infamous reality-show contestant, by the likes of Oprah Winfrey and the NAACP, while puzzled that these two groups hadn't offered the same to Condoleezza Rice, a woman significantly more accomplished.

There seems to be a major loss in the black community. We feel it. We acknowledge it, see it - feel and recognize that we are not the same. We have succumbed to the marketing schemes of the manufacturers who cater to us and to the political wagon whose wheels we have changed, but it is the same buggy that carried us here.Take, for example, an incident that happened the other night in Germantown. It is unfortunate that one would have to call this unusual, but it is anymore. At the senior citizens building, someone was actually blasting gospel music.

AMERICA IS a great country. What black people need to do is to get together - black churches and all other black groups - and do what we can to get our people to destroy their guns and their drugs. In their place, go to church. Turn to God up in heaven and also become a more educated people. Let's go to college and become well-educated people, and let's wear clean, decent-looking clothes. Let's have shaves and look decent at all times. Get off these corners. If mankind lived the way God intended, all the money we spend on wars is money that could be spent rebuilding the black ghettos.

I am deeply concerned about the attempts of your paper to cast the United Black Business Association as anti-Asian. The picture you painted in a Dec. 15 article and a Dec. 16 editorial was grossly inaccurate and irresponsible. And Signe Wilkinson'sw editorial cartoon is proof that your paper either misunderstands the economic revolution in the black community or has embarked on a racist campaign to subvert that long-overdue revolution. Michael Sokolove's article states that "interviews with community leaders, merchants and others in the black community make clear the Asian business presence is breeding quiet resentment and sometimes outright hostility.

WHEN I FIRST heard that the Nutter administration would be cutting certain public libraries, I automatically knew the ones in the African-American communities would be targeted first (exception of the Fishtown branch). Mayor Nutter clearly understands the consequences behind challenging the Philadelphia Eagles' multibillion-dollar football stadium, which owes the city $8 million, or targeting the Mummers Parade, which are both white-folks recreational establishments. But because this mayor has developed a slave-master relationship with the white community in this city, his tenure will forever be in a form of psychosocial obedient debt to them for electing him. Unfortunately, resulting in the cutting of urban libraries where young African-American children go to access resources is no concern to this psychologically trained "Happy Negro" mayor.

The speeches on the Mall in Washington on Saturday were wonderful. Thousands of African Americans gathered to hear them at the Millions More March, the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March. Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, and survivors of Hurricane Katrina spoke. Nearly every speaker said once again precisely what needed to be said. But now what? Frankly, I'm tired of listening to speeches and hearing brave people blasting and boasting into microphones about how African Americans can gather in great numbers without violence and dissent.

I'M A SENIOR-citizen African-American woman married to the same African-American man for almost 40 years. As I read Jenice Armstrong's column, I wondered why there's such a problem addressing "The Elephant in the Room" when it comes to the dating issues facing black women. Why does no one just come out and tell the truth on the issue of skin hue and black men's overwhelming preference for light-white women? A black women may be educated, successful and everything else, but if she's of a "chocolate or licorice" hue, many black men will refuse to date her. It's OK for a man to be dark, but it's anathema for a woman.

THERE'S a well-documented lack of diversity in Hollywood, but Councilman David Oh's Black Film Advisory Committee (BFAC) aims to shine a spotlight on black filmmakers in Philadelphia. The Committee strives to create a cultural and creative hub for anyone interested in working in the movie business, especially minorities. Kimberley Richards, special assistant to the councilman and coordinator of the committee, is in the process of planning the BFAC's second event - "The Return of 'The Set,' " a networking affair that brings together people from all aspects of film production - from producers to on-set caterers.

IF THEY DON'T CARE about their own community, why should we?   That's a question you can imagine after another shooting in another black community gagged by the "stop-snitching" credo. But it's not exclusively a "black thang," according to Chuck Williams, director of Drexel's Center for the Prevention of School-Aged Violence. The shut-up-and-look-away culture is also found in other minority communities — plus some white precincts, such as Penn State, Enron and Tyco. Some people do care, and do come forward.

Well, here we go again. SEPTA Police boohoed and bellyached for more money and a better contract, and in return they thank SEPTA and SEPTA's riders by locking them out. In a failed effort to keep the homeless people out of the concourse, SEPTA Police are locking the entrances at Broad and Filbert streets and 15th and JFK Blvd. after a certain hour on weekdays and all day on the weekends. Now the homeless have a private facility to set up camp while SEPTA's paying riders have to walk another block or two to make the entrance to ride SEPTA.

TULSA, OKLA. - Acting on a tip and shadowed by a helicopter, police arrested two men early Sunday in the recent shootings that terrorized Tulsa's black community, leaving three people dead and two others critically wounded. Although police identified the men as white and all the victims are black, authorities have not described the shootings as racially motivated and declined to discuss that issue Sunday. Community leaders, however, expressed concern about the motivation for the shootings on Tulsa's predominantly black north side, as well as the possibility that they would provoke a vigilante response.

IN HER opinion piece on the Boy Scouts, Christine Flowers writes, "Isn't it nice to know that in the town where the Constitution was written, there are some people - including some lawyers - who think it's OK to blackmail citizens into forgoing those rights, I mean, behavior?" The question was never about whether the Boy Scouts have the right to exclude openly gay members. The issue is whether an organization that excludes openly gay members has a right to remain headquartered in a city-owned building without paying any taxes.

Robert Douglass Jr., a 23-year-old African American artist, was no doubt bursting with pride on Feb. 22, 1832, the centennial of George Washington's birth. On that unseasonably warm day in Philadelphia, schools and businesses closed, and the whole city turned out to celebrate. A parade of some 10,000 participants wound its way through the streets, ending at Independence Hall for ceremonies and speeches. Hanging from the building was Douglass' massive painted transparency of Washington crossing the Delaware.

LOS ANGELES - The founder of Dot Records, who helped introduce black rhythm-and-blues to white audiences in the early rock era, has died in California. Randy Wood was 94. His son, John, told the Los Angeles Times that Wood died on Saturday at his La Jolla home from injuries he suffered in a fall. Dot Records grew out of a record shop that Wood owned in Tennessee. In the 1950s, when black music couldn't get radio play, Wood made white covers of songs by Fats Domino and other musicians whose "race records" were hits in the black community but largely unknown to whites.

I'M A BLACK man and a lifelong resident of Philadelphia. I mentioned my ethnicity because I want to address what I perceive as unfair attention directed at black people by those uncertain about their own status, economically and socially. But first I need to let it be known that I don't deplore racism - if it's positive. Positive racism is the ethnic preference and pride that allows an individual to celebrate his or her ethnicity by associating with members of their own ilk. Annual parades, Irish, Puerto Rican, Chinese, among others, are a reflection of this.

Left has overplayed the race card Finally, I understand the race card. It is the bottom card in the deck. The one that is up the sleeve. The one suit that will trump all other cards, regardless of how well you played your game. Until now. Now, that card has been played and played 'til its edges have been dog-eared and you can see it in the deck, and you know when it will be played, with all the predictability and certainty of a summer thunderstorm. It has lost its edge, its power.

I'M A SENIOR-citizen African-American woman married to the same African-American man for almost 40 years. As I read Jenice Armstrong's column, I wondered why there's such a problem addressing "The Elephant in the Room" when it comes to the dating issues facing black women. Why does no one just come out and tell the truth on the issue of skin hue and black men's overwhelming preference for light-white women? A black women may be educated, successful and everything else, but if she's of a "chocolate or licorice" hue, many black men will refuse to date her. It's OK for a man to be dark, but it's anathema for a woman.