Congratulations to all the women honored by the New Pittsburgh Courier 50 Women of Excellence, beauty and brains, and special kudos to the Legacy honorees Alma Speed Fox and Katie Everette Johnson, and to my sister Sonya Toler, former member of the Courier family.
While I’m doing it, also congratulations go out to Esther Bush. She took over a very good Urban League branch and made it one of, if not the, best branches in the country. I can’t think of any other non-profit community service organization that has done more and is more influential than the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh. Great Job Esther!
Oh…I don’t want to forget Renee Aldrich who has done a great job with the “Woman to Woman” organization over the past seven years. Now we need a “Man to Man” group because our young brothers need help. But that’s another column.
I’ve been very impressed with the marches and protests and rallies all over the country against police brutality. With the exceptions of some of the young fools, or thugs and hoodlums, most of these people have done a great job of bringing focus on the issue of racial inequality in this country, and the unnecessary use of deadly force against Black males by law enforcement officers. But what has really been impressive is that most of these people are young. Who said young people aren’t interested in anything but sex, drugs and rap music? They have taken the lead in these national protests. Remember when hip-hop was all about revolution? All about the Black struggle in this country? Now it’s about sex, drugs and the street life.
Us older people have been asking where are our young people? Well they are out front on this issue with no holds barred. I just hope they stay active and don’t disappear in a few months when this issue starts to die down. We in the Black community need more young people to step up and be leaders. Dr. King, Malcolm X and other leaders of the ’60s, ’50s and ‘70s didn’t wait for older people to ask them for their views they stepped up and took on issues that many older people were afraid to address. Hopefully that will happen again. And one such issue is the Black on Black violence issue.
I am also impressed with the number of Whites who are a part of these protests, and are willing to speak out against police use of deadly force against Blacks.
Apparently some U.S. Senators and Congressmen are seeking action to make toy guns look like toys instead of real guns. It’s so sad that kids have to be killed before this is taken serious. Yes there have been others, not just the 12-year-old, killed because the toy guns look so real. There have been robberies with toy guns. I just don’t see how this makes any sense at all to have a child walking around with a toy gun looking like it’s real. And that should include B B Guns. I played with toy guns when I was a kid, and they didn’t look anywhere near a real gun.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The Pittsburgh police and the city administration are to be commended on how they handled the protests in Pittsburgh. They allowed the people to practice their Constitutional rights by protesting, even blocking traffic, without incident. They simply stood back, made sure no one interfered with them and that there was no violence from the demonstrators or bystanders. Great job of showing the country how it should be done.
When we listen to today’s music we hear sex, sex, and more sex. The women or should I say girls, are half dressed singing do it to me, and the boys are singing about how they are going to do it to the girls. And as quiet as it has been kept, it was much the same thing during my era.
Well a recent concert by a young and talented Brigette Perdue went way beyond this as she truly has a message in her music. She played the guitar, the bongos and congos, as well as the keyboards; she danced and sang music that said something more than “bang me baby.”
The purpose of her show was to teach people to embrace their differences. Maybe if we did, we all wouldn’t be trying so hard to be just like everyone else, and we would stop being so critical of people who don’t dress in the latest styles created by some rich person, killing each other in the streets because we are trying to prove how tough we are.
“I wanted the audience to walk away appreciating what makes them uncommon and live that authentically. I wanted the audience to walk away appreciating what makes them as individuals uncommon. Uncommon is all about embracing your authentic, flawed self and celebrate that uniqueness.” Bridgette said to writer Genea Webb.
If more people thought like this there would be less violence, there would be less self-hatred and a whole lot more understanding between all people.
I hope she moves far beyond just Pittsburgh because she has the talent and a story that needs to be told throughout this country and the world. But far too often no one is listening to positive voices. As the old saying goes, voices crying in the wilderness.
(Ulish Carter is the managing editor of the New Pittsburgh Courier.)
