IBW21

By Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

Trayvon Martin, 17, was visiting his father, in Sanford, Florida, from Miami. Over fifty years ago, Emmett Till, 14, was visiting his grand-father in Money, Mississippi, from Chicago. Emmett Till was abducted in the night, by Whites, tortured and killed. It was 1955. Much has changed. Too much remains the same.

“Islam sees him as a son of Islam … I can’t say categorically that (the president is not Muslim) because Islam has gotten a free pass under Obama.” – Rev. Franklin Graham

Those words, and others, were spoken by Rev. Franklin Graham on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” yesterday morning…

President Obama´s second State of the Union address must be considered in the context of important economic and political factors. On the economic front, though the “Great Recession” appears to be over, the recovery is anemic, leaving millions of people unemployed, underemployed, with large numbers of people also abandoning the labor market. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans continue to be adversely affected by the home mortgage crisis. Both phenomena fueled a mood of anger, frustration and despair that the Tea Party Patriots and Republicans were able to exploit to score stunning victories in the 2010 Mid-Term Elections. Republicans captured a substantial majority in the House of Representative, reduced the Democrats majority in the Senate, elected 21 Governors and won control of 19 additional state legislatures. President Obama called it a “shellacking.”

The task of the prophet in the time of angst is to caution against revenge. It´s calling friend and foe alike to the numinous-or, simply saying there is another way….

In the middle of this year´s Black History Month I was momentarily overcome by a weird feeling. There was a kind of ho hum, mundane, routine, business as usual atmosphere about this year´s commemoration with little passion or intensity. Maybe it was just me, but I had a sense that Black History Month was/is straying from Carter G. Woodson´s original mission of utilizing history as an instrument of restoration and liberation for people of African descent in the U.S.