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Top news stories personally selected by the publishers for their relevance to the Black American community.
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Whether because of the radio success of single Bittersweet or media coverage of her recent personal issues, nearly 117,000 people bought copies of Fantasia's new Back to Me album -- enough for her to enter The Billboard 200 chart at No. 2.
According to Nielsen SoundScan, only Katy Perry's Teenage Dream outsold the American Idol third season winner, now on the comeback trail following a suicide attempt a few weeks ago.
She was the only Idol alum that made the Billboard chart's top 40. Carrie Underwood, Adam Lambert and Daughtry also have albums in the Top 200. Mandisa, though she didn't make the Top 200, more than doubled sales of her Freedom album as the Women of Faith conferences started again.
Fantasia, Back to Me (117,000, debut, 117,000/12,000 digital total) (#2 Billboard Top 200)
Carrie Underwood, Play On (7,000, -22%, 1.713 million/201,000 digital total) (#62 BB200)
Adam Lambert, For Your Entertainment (5,000, -5%, 719,000/1,000 digital, +5%, 97,000 digital total) (#89 BB200)
Daughtry, Leave This Town (5,000, -11%, 1.132 million/198,000 digital total) (#92 BB200)
Carrie Underwood, Some Hearts (2,000, -9%, 7.106 million)
Carrie Underwood, Carnival Ride (2,000, -6%, 3.119 million)
Mandisa, Freedom (1,000, +151%, 119,000)
Danny Gokey, My Best Days (1,000, -7%, 181,000)
Kellie Pickler, Kellie Pickler (1,000, -11%, 429,000)
Idol-related
Kids Bop Kids, Kidz Bop 18 (23,000, +13%, 170,000) (#13 Billboard Top 200)
Glee Cast, Glee: The Music, Vol. 1 (5,000, -6%, 953,000/2,000 digital, +18%, 224,000 digital total) (#84 BB200)
Various, Now That's What I Call Music! 33 (4,000, -12%, 656,000) (#107 BB200)
Glee Cast, Glee: The Music, Vol. 2 (4000, -3%, 721,000/1,000 digital, +17%, 172,000 digital total) (#112 BB200)
Various, WOW Hits 2010 (3,000, -6%, 415,000) (#171 BB200)
Various, Now That's What I Call the USA (1,000, -15%, 41,000)
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USATODAY.COM
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/idolchatter/post/2010/09/fantasia-enters-billboard-200-at-no-2/1
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The arrest of two black men at a Warehouse District bar is rekindling accusations of racism in one of the city's hottest night spots.
It comes less than six weeks after Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson announced that the city had arranged for federal prosecutors to provide sensitivity training to bar owners and workers, in response to accusations by the NAACP that bars were discriminating against African Americans.
NAACP President George Forbes had believed the training was an appropriate response to the problems.
Then came the Aug. 21 arrest of Jason Ruiz and Alexander Parilla, who were recruited to work at high-powered companies from the prestigious Morehouse College.
Blaine Griffin, executive director of the city's Community Relations board, said the city is working with federal prosecutors to provide training -- as well as other efforts to bring best practices to the city on dealing with discrimination -- with the idea that everything should be completed by Oct. 1.
"We consider every one of these needs urgent, but at the end of the day, we're going to do a comprehensive approach to make sure we have the appropriate outcome," Griffin said.
In the meantime, Forbes said blacks continued to get harassed in the Warehouse District.
"I'm composed, but I'm pissed off," Forbes said. "I can tell you this -- it's going to stop."
Forbes said that Ruiz and Parilla were hanging out with two other Morehouse grads at the Velvet Dog on West 6th Street when they were separated around closing time.
Ruiz and Parilla were near the entrance and a bouncer told Ruiz to leave.
"He said, 'Nah, I'm not going to do that,' and (the bouncer) threw him up against the wall and sucker punched him," Forbes said. "I mean, just slapped him upside his head."
Forbes said the bouncer then called over an off-duty Cleveland police officer who worked at Velvet Dog who took Ruiz outside, "put a headlock on him, and hit him five times, like Gorgeous George or some wrestler."
The off-duty cop, Anthony Sauto, had a different version, according to police reports.
Sauto said he identified himself as a police officer and ordered Ruiz to leave the bar several times. Ruiz then tried to swing his left hand at Sauto while the officer was trying to handcuff him, according to the report.
Ruiz tried to grab the officer's belt, possibly going for his gun, so Sauto gave Ruiz a "few strikes" to his right eye.
That's when Parilla became verbally abusive and tried to intervene in arrest, so he was handcuffed.
Forbes, however, said the officer simply arrested Parilla because he was taking pictures of the incident with his mobile phone -- which the officer confiscated and erased.
Ruiz was charged with assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest and criminal trespass. Parilla was not charged.
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WKYC.COM
http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/news_article.aspx?storyid=146443&catid=3
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On a cool August afternoon, George Wilson took the time to walk the talk.
This wasn't about his exulted status as an NFL player, his role as a captain for the Buffalo Bills, or an appearance in a Mary J. Blige music video earlier this year.
No, his chat with a group of boys along the bleachers at St. John Fisher College was his way of doing something constructive to help protect, and intellectually nourish, one of the most at-risk groups: young African-American males.
The inspirational 29-year-old strong safety was making good on a promise he made last spring. His newly established George Wilson S.A.F.E.T.Y. Foundation (Saving Adolescents from Everyday Trials of Youth) is a commitment of time, money and selflessness.
"Community service is a passion I have," he says.
His timing could not be better.
A study released this month by the Schott Foundation for Public Education re-emphasized the glaring need for more intervention nationwide on behalf of African-American males, even as economic resources for public schools shrivel.
Worse for Buffalonians, only three school districts in the nation (Cleveland, Detroit and Dade County, Florida) posted lower results for African-American males than the city's 25% public high school graduation rate.
In January, Wilson was honored by the team as the franchise's NFL Walter Payton Man of the Year winner. The award is given for a player's combination of on-field and off-field contributions to the Western New York community. Among his good deeds were his "George's Jungle" sessions for Buffalo public high school students.
Bills coach Chan Gailey uses two words to describe Wilson.
"Unbelievable guy," he says.
In 2008, the White House presented Wilson with the President's Volunteer Service Award for his support with fitness programs for youth. Last spring, he hosted a life skills camping retreat in Nashville that promoted self-esteem and leadership.
In recent years, the Bills safety has been a guest at the University of Kentucky's Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Center, where his "Accusations, Allegations and Acceleration: How to Stay on Top of the Game" talk addressed, among other things, media portrayals of African-American athletes.
Wilson's "That's Life" six-week mentoring program this year featured topics that included the value of an education, resolving conflict, avoiding the lure of gangs, financial planning and making healthy nutritional and lifestyle choices. He took the group on visits to the University of Buffalo and Medaille College, where they were taught the importance of SAT/ACT prep work.
The motto for the workshop: "Failure is not an option."
For their graduation from the "That's Life" program, Wilson treated the boys to a fancy local restaurant, the Buffalo Chophouse, outfitting them in shirts and ties.
"I never thought there would come a day where someone (of his stature) would step up to the plate the way he has and do this for our young people," says Tony Johnson, director of operations for the Northwest Buffalo Community Center. "George is one of those people who is grounded; he never forgot where he came from. He understands the importance of making sure young people who are like he was growing up have a fair chance at success.
"I wish there were more athletes doing this rather than hanging out down in South Beach."
As a result of Wilson's encouragement, some teenagers got jobs this summer. At least one young man has enrolled in college. Another one, Diamond Solomon, plans to pursue a post-secondary education in business management.
"Some people think football is all about the money," says the 17-year-old senior at McKinley High. "But some people, like George, play because they love the game. And some people, like George, come back to the community and inspire."
Last spring, the player also established bank accounts for 17 boys ages 13-17. On a trek to Ralph Wilson Stadium, Wilson demonstrated the value of exercise and proper nutrition. He plans to expand his efforts to Fayetteville, Ark., where he attended college. Future "That's Life" seminars will include girls.
"These kids are from the city, they had never been out to the Bills' facility (in suburban Orchard Park)," Wilson explains. "To see the looks on their faces, I knew I had to do more. I promised them that if they finished the after-school program, I would invite them to training camp and treat them to a game this fall."
For Wilson, raised in a single-parent household, community service and positive role-modeling are not mere options. They are mandatory.
Wilson knows all too well it is most often about opportunity for young people, that confronting and slaying seemingly impossible odds takes perseverance, a team-first attitude and trust.
"Coming from a small town in Western Kentucky, my whole journey, I am able to say that I'm living my dream each and every day," he says. "I am able to share that journey. I used to question myself — "Will I ever make it?' — because it was taking me so long.
"Sometimes, opportunity is disguised as hard work. I am a career underdog, so I just try to show (young folks) that anything is possible if you are willing to work."
The sojourn for the self-motivated player from Paducah, Ky., where he hosts a free football youth camp, has been challenging and highly instructive.
Wilson posted a 3.7 GPA in high school, but says he spurned a scholarship offer from nearby Western Kentucky University because he believed he could play in the SEC.
No one else did. At least no one willing to offer him a free (or partial) ride.
So Wilson packed up his meager belongings, including a great big bag of hope, and headed off to the University of Arkansas. He walked on.
Despite a rash of injuries, the possession-style receiver with the aggressive blocking style started three seasons, twice leading the Razorbacks in catches, finishing as the school's second all-time leader in receptions.
"I rolled the dice and bet on myself at Arkansas," he says. "I knew I could play at that level. That first year, we had to pay for part of school. It definitely was a sacrifice that my mother and I made."
His initial rejection by major-college football programs would serve him well down the road.
NFL teams thought so little of Wilson that they passed on him in the 2004 draft.
Spurned again, he nevertheless signed with the Detroit Lions as a rookie free agent. Released, he caught on with the Bills, joining their practice squad that same year. Finally promoted to the roster in 2006 for the final game, Wilson was strongly advised the following spring by then-Bills coach *** Jauron to switch positions.
Potential pros often go this route; few are successful. Often, it is the end of their dreams.
"I had to make a career decision: Am I going to stay on offense and try to fight for a job, or take this risk and try to sustain my career?" Wilson recalls. "It was a tough decision. I went with my gut. I was all for it once I made the decision. I sold out."
Wilson never did snag an NFL pass. Well, at least one intended for him.
In his first NFL start in '07, the safety picked off Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo on Monday Night Football returning the interception for a touchdown. That same season, he returned a fumble for a score against the Miami Dolphins.
He had demonstrated early on that he knew the value of a takeaway. Ultimately, though, it is the giving nature of George Wilson that sets him apart from most of his peers.
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USATODAY.COM
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/2010-08-31-bills-georgewilson-serves-community_N.htm
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Selected work from the Stieglitz Collection. A judge on Friday rejected Fisk University's latest attempt to sell to an Arkansas museum a joint stake in a 101-piece collection donated to the school by the late artist Georgia O'Keeffe.
Judge Ellen Hobbs Lyle agreed with Fisk's argument at trial that the historically black university's precarious financial state makes the school unable to exhibit the collection. But the judge said the Fisk proposal to sell a 50 percent to the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Ark., for $30 million does not meet the terms of the donation O'Keeffe made to the school in 1949.
"Fisk either needs assistance with the Collection or Fisk needs to be replaced," Lyle said in the ruling.
A spokesman for Fisk said officials were still reviewing the decision, and a message left with the Crystal Bridges museum was not immediately returned. The museum was founded by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton.
O'Keeffe donated the art to Fisk because the school, founded in 1866, educated blacks at a time when the South was segregated. Her purpose was to "enable the public -- in Nashville and the South -- to have the opportunity to study the Collection," Lyle said in the ruling.
Lyle noted that the driving distance to Bentonville is 555 miles, and that Nashville is both more racially diverse and closer to other Southern states. The deal with Crystal Bridges would "dilute, override and in some cases thwart Ms. O'Keeffe's intention," Lyle said.
Lyle ordered the state attorney general to offer a "Nashville-based solution" within 20 days. She said a 2008 proposal to create a satellite Fisk campus within the city's Frist Center for the Visual Arts to show the collection is a "resourceful idea, but merely hypothetical at this point."
A similar arrangement has been adopted by the Louisville Museum to house art donated to the University of Kentucky with no-sale conditions akin to those set by O'Keeffe, according to the ruling.
Lyle's ruling also allows for Fisk to modify its Crystal Bridges proposal or propose other solutions.
"We hope all those in our community who care about the future of this collection and Fisk University will join us in seizing this opportunity provided by the Court to look for constructive and creative alternatives," Attorney General Bob Cooper said in a statement.
Ninety-seven of the works were part of a collection that belonged to O'Keeffe's late husband, the photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz. O'Keeffe donated those works to the university in 1949 while executing Stieglitz's will.
Four other works, including O'Keeffe's own 1927 oil painting "Radiator Building -- Night, New York," were given to the museum later.
Art historians say the collection the school has valued at $74 million has an appealing unity because many of the American artists were part of O'Keeffe and Stieglitz's circle of friends. Along with paintings by O'Keeffe, the collection includes works by Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne, Marsden Hartley and Diego Rivera.
Attorneys for the state argued that allowing Fisk to sell a donated art collection could deter people from giving future gifts in the Volunteer State.
Fisk put the art into storage in 2005 because the gallery where it was exhibited was falling apart, and there were fears the works would be damaged. That same year, Fisk's trustees voted to sell O'Keeffe's "Radiator Building" and Hartley's "Painting No. 3" to help keep the school afloat.
Lyle ruled in 2008 that Fisk University broke the terms of O'Keeffe's donation by trying to sell individual pieces or a share of the entire collection. But she stopped short of granting the art collection to a New Mexico museum that represents the late artist's estate -- as long as the school retrieved the collection from storage and kept it on display.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals later ruled that the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe had no right to the collection, clearing the path for the latest attempt to sell a share of the art to the Crystal Bridges museum.
O'Keeffe died in 1986.
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BUSINESSWEEK.COM
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9HNFA980.htm
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Former New York Giants Super Bowl star Plaxico Burress has come up short in his bid for work release during his two-year prison sentence in a gun case, a denial that could keep him behind bars until at least next spring, prison officials said Tuesday.
The state Department of Correctional Services said the nature of his November 2008 crime merited turning down his request for a work furlough, which would have let him spend some portion of his time free and working. Burress can appeal the decision but otherwise can't reapply for a work furlough until June 6, 2011, the date he comes up for potential full release if he gets time off for good behavior.
"The serious and negative impact illegal guns have on the community coupled with (the) dangerous nature of the weapon discharging in a public place renders him unsuitable for work release," the agency said.
Burress' lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, didn't immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Tuesday.
For now, the wide receiver remains in protective custody, because of his notoriety, at a prison in the central New York community of Oneida.
The work release request was Burress' second since he started serving his sentence last September. Such requests are rarely successful - less than 2 percent of the nearly 27,000 applications received last year were granted, New York prison system spokeswoman Linda Foglia said.
Burress, 33, pleaded guilty last year to attempted criminal possession of a weapon.
The case began when Burress went to the Latin Quarter nightclub with a .40-caliber gun tucked into the waistband of his track pants. He later said he was concerned for his safety because a teammate had been held up at gunpoint days before.
The weapon slipped down Burress' leg and fired, injuring his right thigh. Prosecutors said the bullet narrowly missed a security guard.
The gun wasn't licensed in New York or New Jersey, where Burress was living, and his Florida concealed-weapons permit had expired. He also failed to report the incident to authorities.
The prison system hasn't released any letters written to officials about Burress' latest work release attempt, but the Manhattan district attorney's office said it had opposed his request.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has ruled that Burress would be reinstated and eligible to sign with a team upon completing his sentence. But the NFL is facing uncertainty about its 2011 season, with the possibility of a lockout looming if players and owners can't agree on a new contract. The current contract expires after this season.
Giants general manager Jerry Reese has said the team will keep its options open with Burress, who caught the winning touchdown for the Giants over the New England Patriots in the final minute of the 2008 Super Bowl. And some of his former teammates seem ready to welcome him back: Halfback Brandon Jacobs went to training camp one day this summer sporting a custom-made T-shirt saying "Free 17 Let Him Ball Out," a reference to Burress' No. 17 jersey.
Burress has had a satisfactory record in prison, with one "misbehavior report" that cost him a week of phone privileges and 30 days of recreation privileges, Foglia said. A corrections officer said Burress had lied last November about having permission to use the phone to call his lawyer at a time when calls aren't permitted, the report shows.
Burress also has completed an anger management program behind bars, Foglia said.
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WASHINGTONPOST.COM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/31/AR2010083104680.html
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Andrew Bloomberg, Raad Hassan, Drew Ryser, Phillip BryanHarris County District Attorney Pat Lykos and defense attorneys for four indicted police officers have filed a motion in court to keep a video tape from being released to the public. The video tape allegedly shows a 15-year-old being beaten by Houston police officers. It involved Chad Holley, who said he was the victim of a beating while in police custody in March.
The video was taken by cameras at a storage facility in southwest Houston. After the incident, 12 officers were disciplined. Five officers were suspended, seven were fired and of those seven, four were indicted.
Chad Holley
 "You will see him hit by a police car. You will see him laying on the ground giving up and surrendering. You will see his hands behind his back handcuffed and you'll see the police officers still beating the living hell out of this kid," said activist Quanell X. He said these details are clearly seen on the video that the district attorney is trying to keep from public view.
"Why is the district attorney's office working with the defense attorneys for the suspects, the cops who beat Chad Holley? They're now working together, prosecutors and defense attorneys, to do what? Suppress the tape to deny the public from seeing the tape," said Quanell X.
Attorney Carson Joachim, who represents one of the indicted officers, Drew Ryser, said it's simply protecting the right to an objective jury. In a statement he told KPRC Local 2, "… this protective order, that prevents the unnecessary dissemination of the video tape, will preserve this fundamental right that all parties involved are entitled to."
But Bill Van Fleet, co-counsel for the Holley family, said it's just an excuse to keep the evidence hidden.
"I have a lot of confidence in the citizens of Harris County being able to objectively view a video tape and determine in their minds what's right and what's wrong in this case," said Van Fleet.
Sunday afternoon, KPRC-TV and the Houston Chronicle filed a motion to allow you to see the tape. In a statement, KPRC attorney Tom Forestier said, "KPRC-TV and the Chronicle argue that the 'Protective Order' is an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech. KPRC-TV and the Chronicle also argue that Plaintiffs should be allowed to release the video because (Officer Andrew) Blomberg's arguments that he will be unable to obtain a fair trial in Harris County if the video is released are outweighed by the public's interest in the video and the public's right to know facts relating to allegations of police misconduct."
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CLICK2HOUSTON.COM
http://www.click2houston.com/news/24810548/detail.html
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As a getaway for two Democratic presidents, including the current one, Martha’s Vineyard is often disparaged as an undemocratic haven for wealthy white elites.
Kathlyn Joy Gilliam and Lorraine Parson thought differently from what they had read in black history books, and longed to visit.
“It’s always been said this is where the elite African-Americans came,” said Ms. Parson, 74. Mrs. Gilliam, her 79-year-old sister, added, “I didn’t realize how many African-Americans were here, though.”
By chance, the two women finally visited last week, while President Obama was here for his second August vacation since taking office. They did not see him, but they saw much of the island on a daylong tour of its African-American Heritage Trail: 22 sites that someday will probably add a stop for the secluded farm the first black president rented.
The island has often been called self-segregated, with most African-Americans here in Oak Bluffs. Its harbor drew freed slaves, laborers and sailors in the 18th century, and white locals sold them land. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, middle-class blacks bought or rented summer homes; many descendants returned annually. Most affluent whites live in Edgartown to the southeast or on farms and estates to the west, where Mr. Obama stays.
But many African-Americans here, year-rounders and summer visitors alike, insist it is not segregated. “This is one of the most integrated communities, racially and economically, that there is,” said Vernon Jordan, the lawyer and former civil rights leader, who has rented a summer place for years.
His wife, Ann, came here as a child from segregated Tuskegee, Ala., with her father, a surgeon. Her cousin is Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s longtime friend and adviser, who has vacationed here since she was a child.
“We’d hitchhike all over the island,” Ms. Jarrett said. “I never experienced a hint of discrimination on the island in more than 40 years.”
Influenced by Ms. Jarrett and other friends, Mr. Obama visited several times before he became president. In August 2004, amid his campaign for the Senate, Mr. Obama was here for a forum on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruling against segregated schools. Also participating were two summer residents and Harvard professors, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Charles J. Ogletree Jr.
In 2007, Mr. Obama came for a fund-raiser when he was running for president. He called the island “one of those magical places where people of all different walks of life come together, where they take each other at face value.”
According to the book “African-Americans on Martha’s Vineyard,” a 1947 article in Ebony magazine said the “most exclusive Negro summer colony in the country is at quaint historical Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard.” It added, “Negro and white swim together on the public beaches, rub shoulders at public affairs.”
Forty-two years later, in 1989, Ebony again declared the island “a vacation mecca.”
The heritage trail includes stops at the houses of former Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, the first black senator after Reconstruction and the first from the North; former Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr.; and Dorothy West, a Harlem Renaissance writer who for two summers in the 1990s was visited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, another Vineyard resident and a Doubleday editor who guided Ms. West to finish her novel “The Wedding.”
Also on the tour is the oceanfront mansion of Joseph Overton, the onetime Harlem labor leader, which was known as the Summer White House of the civil rights movement. It faces the Inkwell beach, named long ago by black youths or black writers — no one seems certain. The house’s visitors included the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who vacationed on the island with his family a number of times, as well as Joe Louis, Harry Belafonte and Jesse Jackson.
The exclusive Chilmark area has Rebecca’s Field, land that the enslaved Rebecca Amos inherited and farmed until 1801. Edgartown has a plaque honoring the daughter who was taken from her to be enslaved elsewhere, Nancy Michael, called “Black Nance.” It calls her “a most singular character” — in the words of an 1857 obituary — for the spells she conjured for departing ship captains.
And on Chappaquiddick is the dilapidated house of her grandson, William Martin, who became one of the few black whaling ship captains in New England.
The tour guide, Alex Palmer, said the heritage trail group had been trying to raise money to restore the 1830 house or see it sold to someone who would do the restoration, but had been unsuccessful. Yet when he drove to the site, a new owner, Michael Partenio, was there with his two young sons.
Mr. Partenio, a photographer and producer from Danbury, Conn., who is white, said he would rebuild the house much the way Captain Martin knew it — and admit tour groups. He had already bought a guestbook; the visiting African-American women were the first to sign.
Mae Margaret Donaldson, 65, of Dallas, a cousin of Mrs. Gilliam and Ms. Parson, was so moved that she told everyone to hold hands in a circle. She prayed for a blessing on the house and its owners. Then she hugged Mr. Partenio.
“We’re going to take good care of it,” he told her.
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NYTIMES.COM
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/us/30vineyard.html?_r=2
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African-Americans may be at an increased risk for developing life-threatening blood clots after receiving drug-coated stents that are meant to keep their arteries open, new research shows.
The study is published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Stents are tiny mesh cylinders that keep arteries from renarrowing after angioplasty, a procedure that widens clogged heart arteries. Stents are either bare metal or drug-coated.
While drug-coated stents were developed to prevent arteries from renarrowing, they may also increase the risk of blood clots forming at the site of implantation -- often referred to as "stent thrombosis." To reduce this risk, people with drug-coated stents must take anticlotting drugs for one year.
In the study, researchers culled information on 7,236 patients who had drug-coated stents implanted between mid-2003 and the end of 2008. Of these study participants, 22% were African-American.
The analysis showed that African-Americans were nearly three times as likely to develop clots after receiving drug-coated stents than their non-African-American counterparts. This increased risk was evident at 30 days after the procedure and extended out for three years, the study showed.
The findings held even after the researchers controlled for other known risk factors for blood clots such as diabetes, hypertension, and kidney problems. African-Americans had increased rates of stent thrombosis even though they took anticlotting medication at a higher rate than people of other races.
"The bottom line is this is not just because this population is sicker or less compliant, but there is something else there that needs to be explored," says study researcher Ron Waksman, MD, associate director of the division of cardiology at Washington Hospital Center and professor of medicine and cardiology at Georgetown University, in a news release. "Physicians and patients need to know that African-Americans are at a higher risk of developing stent thrombosis, which is associated with heart attack or death."
Role of Genetics
Exactly why African-Americans are at higher risk for developing blood clots with drug-coated stents is not fully understood. Possible genetic differences in the way their bodies react to the anticlotting medication clopidogrel (Plavix) may play a role, the researchers speculate. Clopidogrel carries a warning stating that it may not be effective in some people whose bodies have trouble converting clopidogrel to its active form.
"All in all, the study affirms that there are likely differences amongst patients in terms of risk profile and this is likely largely based on genetics," says Stephen Ellis, MD, section head of interventional cardiology at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, in an email.
Robert Iaffaldano, MD, an interventional cardiologist with MetroSouth Medical Center in Blue Island, Ill., says that these drug-coated stents are better than bare-metal stents in most scenarios.
"They prevent scar tissue from forming over the stent, which is what results in [renarrowing]," he explains. "But when skin or scar tissue grows over the stent, the body knows the stent is no longer a foreign object," he says. "With the drug-eluting stents, the body's natural response is to isolate foreign object by surrounding it with clot."
"Drug-eluting stents prevent scars from forming, but the price that you pay is that your body sees the stent as foreign for a longer period of time, which is why anticlotting drugs must be taken for one year," he says. With bare metal stents, anticlotting drugs are only taken for one month.
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WEBMD.COM
http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20100831/blood-clot-risk-from-stents-seen-in-african-americans
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In his empire there's the ideology--and then there's the money machine.
 
Five and a half hours before showtime Glenn Beck still isn't quite sure how he'll provide tonight's entertainment, "The Future of History"--two hours of monologue (and answers to preselected questions) before a nearly sellout crowd of 1,000 or so people at the Nokia ( NOK - news - people ) Theatre in New York City's Times Square. "But that's me--I'm the next-event guy," says Beck, flanked by two bodyguards as he walks the four blocks between the Fox News Channel studio, where he has pretaped the day's show, and the theater. He won't have to create tonight's performance from scratch, since he's left a long trail of words--millions of passionate, angry, weepy, moralizing, corny, offensive words--in his wake. "The body of work is pretty much the same," explains Beck, 46. "What I'm trying to do is get this message out about self-empowerment, entrepreneurial spirit and true Americanism--the way we were when we changed the world, when Edison was alone, failing his 2,000th time on the lightbulb."
At the theater he runs through images that will appear on one of three projectors behind him. There's David Sarnoff (the NBC founder), Philo Farnsworth (the early television pioneer) and someone Beck can't quite place but, he assures the handful of staffers dancing around him, will remember by the time the curtain goes up. "Does anyone know how many minutes of high-def TV equal one gigabyte?" Onstage Beck paces like a comic Hamlet, eyes bulging every time he figures out how to weave the props (stalks of corn, a chalkboard, a cockatoo he rented for $750 a night) he has ordered into the monologue.
He could rattle off the overarching themes in a deep sleep. He starts with the construction of the Manhattan skyline, using replicas of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building as visual aids. Then he moves on to the birth of radio and TV. Theme: thinking big, creating the American dream. He will work in several plugs for tonight's featured offering, a Web subscription service called Insider Extreme ($75 a year for behind-the-scenes footage, a fourth hour of his radio show, ten-minute history lessons and so on). "I can multitask like crazy," says Beck. "I'm riddled with ADD--a blessing and a curse."
His hyperactivity is a blessing and a curse for his 34 full-time staffers, too, who chase after Beck and his volcanic mental eruptions, helping him turn those words into new productions and sources of profit. Glenn Beck Inc., formally known as Mercury Radio Arts (after Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre on the Air), pulled in $32 million in revenue during the 12 months ended Mar. 1. You may love or hate him for his outlandish words, but that is how he gets an audience--and sometimes repels advertisers. Some classic Beckisms: "This President, I think, has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture" (2009). "Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization" (2007). "I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself or if I would need to hire somebody to do it" (2005).
With a deadpan, Beck insists that he is not political: "I could give a flying crap about the political process." Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. "We're an entertainment company," Beck says. He has managed to monetize virtually everything that comes out of his mouth. He gets $13 million a year from print (books plus the ten-issue-a-year magazine Fusion). Radio brings in $10 million. Digital (including a newsletter, the ad-supported Glennbeck.com and merchandise) pulls in $4 million. Speaking and events are good for $3 million and television for $2 million. Over several days in mid-March Beck allowed a reporter to follow him through his multimedia incarnations, with one exception, his 5 p.m. daily show on Fox News, which attracts just under 3 million viewers. (FORBES has a relationship with that channel via Forbes on Fox.)
By now everyone knows Beck's curriculum vitae--at least, the hideous details (which he doesn't hide) of his drug and alcohol addictions and the pettiness of firing an assistant for supplying a pen he didn't like for signing autographs. In the popular mythology his career was born twice: first after Sept. 11 (his national radio show, The Glenn Beck Program, launched officially in January 2002); then again when Barack Obama was inaugurated (his Fox News show first aired two days before, on Jan. 19, 2009). The summary omits a few details of his climb to fame and, more important, to fortune.
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Raised in Mount Vernon, Wash., just north of Seattle, Beck received a present from his mother on his eighth birthday that changed his life: a record collection of Depression- and World War II-era radio productions. When he wasn't putting on magic shows, Beck imitated radio voices into a handheld recorder. At 13 he won a contest that got him a guest gig on Mount Vernon's am station, KBRC. Two years later his life began to unravel after his mother, an alcoholic, died in a boating accident that Beck has since judged a suicide. He started drinking and smoking a lot of pot. "I had convinced myself that I was going to repeat my mother's life, that it was all genetic," he recalls. "It gave me permission to get even worse." By age 18 he was crisscrossing the country, serving as a Top 40 deejay in markets that took him to Provo, Utah; Washington, D.C.; Louisville, Ky.; Phoenix; Houston; Baltimore; and New Haven, Conn., where he cratered.
Married, with two kids, Beck barely held things together; ratings at New Haven's KC101 were sinking, and his salary and responsibilities were being slashed. "Every single minute of every single day was a struggle for me," he says. His worst moment: blacking out at night, then breakfasting the next morning with his kids when "they said, 'Dad, Dad, that was the best one ever, tell us that [nighttime] story again.' I realized that not only could I not remember the story, I didn't even remember tucking them in." Beck took himself to Alcoholics Anonymous. But he credits Tania, his second wife, whom he met three or four years later, for pulling him out of the deep ditch. At her insistence they shopped around for a church and became Mormons.
In the late 1990s (Beck is fuzzy on dates), while filling in as a talk radio host at WABC in New York City, Beck got a lucky call from media agent George Hiltzik, who had been tipped off by the program director. Beck told him he had an offer to do talk radio in Tampa. Hiltzik was impressed with Beck's passion--and his urge to make a lot of money. They cut a deal with WFLA in Tampa, and in early 2000 Beck headed south. Within a week or so he read a story about parents who had built a tree house for a child with leukemia and were fighting the homeowners' association that claimed the structure violated height restrictions. Could he do the broadcast from the tree house? He was off and running.
Mercury Radio Arts, formed in 2002, holds all the pieces of Beck's media dominions, managing the live performances and producing (or co-producing) the radio and TV broadcasts and everything on the Web. At the center is Christopher Balfe, the 31-year-old president of Mercury. He first flung himself at Beck 14 years ago in New Haven after the radio host announced on the air he needed someone to build a Web site. Balfe juggled high school, then college (University of Connecticut), while working for Beck. When the "Pasty Patriot" headed for Tampa, Balfe went to work for Accenture ( ACN - news - people ), consulting for the likes of RCA and the U.S. Air Force. In 2003 Beck lured him back to expand the company beyond the radio show, offering a 70% pay cut and no benefits. How could he resist? "There's only one Glenn," says Balfe.
But not nearly enough staffers, apparently. Every day Balfe meets with the division heads and gathers the larger group on Monday afternoons to review their plans and to make sure they're all on message--and cross-promoting the hell out of one another's projects. Chris' brother Kevin, 35, runs the publishing unit and coauthors Beck's books; their mom, Patricia, sorts and responds to fan mail (and hate mail, prominently displayed on the Web site) and passes along news tips to producers. Hiltzik's son Matthew is Beck's personal publicist. Carolyn Polke, Mercury's digital czar, also came from Accenture; Richard Bonn, who runs the tour division, moved over from Premiere Radio Networks, which syndicates The Glenn Beck Program. Steven (Stu) Burguiere, the radio executive producer and sidekick, has been with Beck for more than a decade. Like many employees, Burguiere started out as an intern with little relevant experience. Beck likes them that way since they tend to come at things with a fresh perspective.
Chris Balfe has two goals: building on existing businesses and creating new ones. "We have 400 radio stations; we could have 500. We sold 3 million books last year; we could try to sell 4 million or 5 million. We have 5 million [monthly unique visitors] on Glennbeck.com; we could have 10 million." Balfe is constantly prowling for new stuff. "The Insider Extreme is an example that didn't exist two weeks ago and is now core to a lot of the things that we're trying to do," says Balfe. Overseeing it all is Beck himself. "I think I drive everybody nuts," Beck says. "I care about the paper [the book is printed] on, I work with the director of the TV show on lighting and camera angles and the boxing of the show. I am instrumental in the writing of the theme song of the radio show ... and the music behind the documentaries on the Internet."
How do the different pieces work?
Start with publishing, the most lucrative unit. Kevin Balfe keeps a spreadsheet of every new idea Beck blurts out. At last count there were 17--fiction, nonfiction and self-help--that survived a vetting; that doesn't include 10 or so potentially marketable thoughts Beck dropped during a semiannual skull session with his publisher, Simon & Schuster, earlier this year. Most of his six published books--each hit the New York Times bestseller list, with five debuting at No. 1--have grown out of some other performance or activity. The first, The Real America: Messages from the Heart and the Heartland (2003), came to him on the bus between several rallies he staged to show solidarity with the U.S. military on the eve of the Iraq invasion. Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government (2009), a diatribe against unions, health care, progressivism and so on, emerged from his radio and TV shows. His tribute to Thomas Paine, Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government (2009), seemed to Beck, who wrote it over several 2 a.m. fits of energy, to have little commercial possibility; he planned to release it anonymously on the Web. Simon & Schuster disagreed and got the book on shelves in roughly 12 weeks, where it climbed to the top of the charts.
Ideas feed off one another. The Christmas Sweater (2008) is a quasi-autobiographical account of Beck's troubled childhood told through a 12-year-old named Eddie. Beck has turned the effort into books for adults and kids, along with a traveling stage show simulcast in 450-plus movie theaters. After a live performance in Salt Lake City in December 2008 he told his staff to take a seat. With a sweat-drenched towel still wrapped around his neck, Beck described a story that will one day appear on bookshelves, something he'd cooked up while onstage. "It downloaded in my head during this scene," he recalls, "and I could have given my right arm for a pencil." Beck acknowledges he wasn't taking his medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder at the time (he rarely does on tour, he says). "I bet you it's safe to say I lose 20% of what goes on in my head because I'm currently doing something else, and I can't stop to write it down." Adds Chris Balfe, "Thank God."
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Radio is Beck's third lung--and the second-largest generator of cash for Mercury. That's thanks to a five-year, $50 million participation deal with Premiere, which picked him up in 2002. With a weekly average of 9 million listeners, Beck's is the third-highest-ranked radio talk show in America, behind Rush Limbaugh (15.3 million) and Sean Hannity (14.3 million). On a recent day Beck plugged the evening's Insider Extreme event and advertised LifeLock, the identity-theft company, in a particularly personal way: "I wish I could protect my children--[my daughter's] got a boyfriend in New York City--I can't lock my children up, but I can lock my computer up. ... "
Then he spurs his favorite hobbyhorse. "Our future is being decided right now," he says. "It's being decided by special interests. We've entered a European period of America. ... " A good warm-up for some carpet bombing of pet targets: Obama, Nancy Pelosi and health care. A rapacious reader, Beck defends his decision to give prominence to "evil" books like The Coming Insurrection (2009, MIT Press), written anonymously by a group of French radicals, who postulate the coming implosion of capitalism. "Why?" Beck asks. "Because I'm not one who bans books. That's what *** do." No cultural sensitivity training for him anymore, something he and his colleagues once had to swallow at KC101 in New Haven after dropping some Asian ethnic slurs.
"I think I say the things that people are afraid to say--and sometimes the things people are too smart to say," Beck laughs. Even to his occasional regret. "I would take back the things that I say right from the hip, without thinking," he says, without getting specific.
"I don't necessarily believe that [what Beck says] is reflective of his own personal politics--I don't even know if he has personal politics," says Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a trade magazine devoted to talk radio. "I see him as a performer."
In the halls of Mercury's midtown Manhattan office hang pictures of Beck's heroes: Orson Welles, Jack Benny, Paul Harvey, Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope. But it is a photo of Walt Disney ( DIS - news - people ) that hangs alone outside Beck's corner office. "I aspire to Walt Disney's never-ending quest to try to improve the quality of what he's doing," Beck says, hands flailing, eyes intense, "his never-ending vision of yes, it can be done." Not to mention his building one of the most lucrative and durable entertainment empires of all time.
Beck's media empire is bringing in $32 million a year. Here's how:
Publishing: $13 million
Includes profit participation with Simon & Schuster, which sold 3.5 million copies of his books, and Fusion Magazine.
Radio: $10 million
Includes five-year, $50 million participation deal with Premiere Radio Networks.
Digital: $4 million
Includes an ad-supported Web site and newsletter, plus Insider and Insider Extreme services and merchandise.
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Events: $3 million
Includes tours, performances and various speaking engagements.
Television: $2 million
A three-year contract with Fox News.
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Every famous family has a member or three who do things that leave you in "oh no (s)he didn't" disbelief. Usually it's the Jackson family (Michael, not Jesse). Hello? Rebbie? LaToya? Jermaine? But they're not in the cross hairs today. That honor goes to the King family (Rev. Dr. Martin, not Rodney). King’s niece, Alveda King, showed up at Glenn Beck’s “Restoring America” rally to frequently invoke the “I have a dream” speech that her “Uncle Martin” immortalized on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 47 years earlier to the day.
The week leading up to the big rally, King had been flogging “Restoring America” as extension of her famous relative’s legacy. Look, it was one thing when Beck proclaimed that he was trying to reclaim the Civil Rights movement. But to be aided and abetted by a King relative, an anti-gay and pro-life one at that?
It is Alveda King’s right to do this. And I think she is dead wrong. I wasn’t alive on Aug. 29, 1963. But everything I’ve learned about the man who led the movement that made an appointment with destiny that day in Washington leads me to think that he wouldn’t appreciate a little-known relative claiming to speak for him while lending the (extended) family name and the credibility that accrues with it to a person who has so poisoned American political discourse of late.
The King children have been known to battle with each other and with other people over the monetary value of the words and image of their father. Dr. King’s legacy is precious. Alveda King on Saturday besmirched it.
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The 2010 election cycle is likely to be filled with mystery, wonder and surprise. Both major parties, the tea party movement and myriad other groups will be vying to have their voices heard above the political din. Saturday continued the noise. Two rallies descended upon Washington, D.C., marking the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington.
Both conservatives and liberals voiced their opinions this past weekend. Several months ago Glenn Beck's show chose the date for its "Restoring Honor" Rally and secured the Lincoln Memorial location, apparently not even realizing the King tie-in until later. It was originally designed as a spiritually oriented event to show the nation that the community of faith is united behind "our unswerving commitment to be 'One Nation Under God.' "
Then Rev. Al Sharpton decided to develop a competing rally, accusingly titled, "Reclaiming the Dream." Beck's rally originally was cast as spiritual, while Sharpton and his allies characterized his march as a protest to Beck's event.
The question for last weekend is, "What would Martin have done?"
At this critical juncture in history, all Americans need solution-based moral and political leadership. We need to break the historically tainted lenses through which we view our collective moral and political decisions.
African-Americans are at an even more acutely strategic moment. Having slipped to the second most numerous minority, African-American civic and moral leaders must decide to exert their political power and become a conscience to both Democrats and Republicans.
If only 18 to 20 percent of black voters feel at liberty to vote their values, blacks could become the swing vote that changes the destiny of our nation -- race by race, candidate by candidate. The most natural unifying alliance that African-Americans could build is with white and Hispanic evangelicals, who share their core values and worldview. With this kind of radical new alignment, new approaches to our most pressing problems could be developed and tested. Our newly defined "good guys" of whatever party could begin to emerge.
Wishful thinking? Perhaps.
Yet this past weekend we celebrated the legacy of the ultimate dreamer, whose famed words moved him from being seen as a national security threat to center stage of the nation's value system. Forty-seven years after the speech, everyone wants to be identified with the passion, power and purpose of his message. In order to make real moral and political change possible in 2010, once again some black leaders have to wander off the "political plantation" upon which their people currently reside -- the Democratic Party.
Therefore, although I have very close friends and associates on both sides, I chose to participate with Glenn Beck on Saturday and attempt to build the new coalition I have just discussed.
Rallying with Beck may temporarily bring a backlash of ridicule and rebuke to many of the black civic and religious leaders who joined me. Long term, however, the courage of these leaders will point the way and embolden others. Despite any personal discomfort, we believe it is time to make a real change.
My personal reasons for involvement in the Restoring Honor rally were primarily moral, not political. First of all, I believe that there needs to be a spiritual alarm sounded in the nation. I am convinced that the only answer to our country's moral free fall is another great awakening. This means that we preachers must preach to individuals with a desire to see them transformed internally and spiritually.
Second, this critical mass of faithful believers will need to start a grassroots movement to recapture the essentials of "living faith." We then must take responsibility for the disappointing political and cultural leaders we have elected or tolerated.
I would like to encourage everyone to pray for a spiritual awakening in America, which will affect the way we vote and the way we rebuild our most cherished institution. Last weekend, I joined hundreds of thousands of Christians in prayer and reflection. I believe that America can continue to fulfill its call to be an instrument of God -- if the churches return to faithful prayer, practice and preaching of the word of God.
My dream for America is based on the same Bible that inspired Dr. King's dream ... the same Bible from which he preached ... the same Bible that formed the basis of most of our American laws and values. If King were alive today, he would lament the fact that Al Sharpton has become simply a protester and not a dreamer. He would decry the divisive tone of the "Reclaiming the Dream" event fashioned in honor of his vision.
I believe he would applaud the Glenn Beck event with just one word of caution: "Be careful to finish what you start!"
Bishop Jackson is senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in the Washington, D.C., area and is chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition.
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Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) admitted to awarding thousands of dollars in scholarships to four relatives and a top aide's two children in violation of rules set by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which provided the funds.
The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday that the recipients were ineligible for the scholarships due to the CBC Foundation's anti-nepotism rules as well as a requirement they live in the district of the member that awarded them the scholarships.
Each member of the Congressional Black Caucus is given $10,000 annually to award in scholarships; members are given a large amount of leeway in how they choose the winners and disburse the funds.
Johnson initially denied any favoritism when she was contacted by the Morning News last week, but later admitted to having unknowingly violated the rules. She said she would work with the foundation to "rectify the financial situation." She said she has awarded scholarships to hundreds of students since joining Congress in 1993 and the most any student usually receives is between $1,000 and $1,200.
The CBC Foundation's general counsel Amy Goldson said Saturday that the scholarships awarded by Johnson in violation of eligibility requirements are "of great concern." She said recipients found to be ineligible might have to return the scholarship money to the foundation.
Johnson awarded between nine and eleven scholarships annually from 2005 to 2008, the most recent year for which data is available. In each of those years three or four students related to Johnson or her district director Rod Givens were among the winners. Johnson said every qualified applicant got a scholarship and she divided the funds equally among him or her.
Two of the Johnson's grandsons, two of her great-nephews, and Givens's son and daughter were the scholarship winners in question. The Morning News said it was unable to reach any of the scholarship recipients and Givens did not respond to requests for comment.
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Shais Rison, left, and Yitzchak Jordan are black Orthodox Jews, a rarity in New York and the nation.
In yeshivas, they are sometimes taunted as “monkeys” or with the Yiddish epithet for blacks. At synagogues and kosher restaurants, they engender blank stares. And dating can be awkward: their numbers are so small, friends will often share at least some romantic history with the same man or woman, and matchmakers always pair them with people with whom they have little in common beyond skin color.
They are African-Americans and Orthodox Jews, a rare cross-cultural hybrid that seems quintessentially Brooklyn, but received little notice until last week, after Yoseph Robinson, a Jamaican-born convert, was killed during a robbery attempt at the kosher liquor store where he worked.
At his funeral and in interviews afterward, a portrait emerged of a small, insular but energized community that is proud but underpinned by a constant tug of race and religiosity.
In Crown Heights, one of the city’s hubs of Orthodox Jewish life, blacks and Jews have long lived side by side and have occasionally clashed. In 1991, riots broke out after a car in a motorcade carrying a Hasidic leader veered onto the sidewalk, killing one black child and badly injuring another.
Nobody keeps track of how many black Orthodox Jews are in New York or across the nation, and surely it is a tiny fraction of both populations. Indeed, even the number of black Jews over all is elusive, though a 2005 book about Jewish diversity, “In Every Tongue,” cited studies suggesting that some 435,000 American Jews, or 7 percent, were black, Hispanic, Asian or American Indian.
“Everyone agrees that the numbers have grown, and they should be noticed,” said Jonathan D. Sarna of Brandeis University, a pre-eminent historian of American Jewry. “Once, there was a sense that ‘so-and-so looked Jewish.’ Today, because of conversion and intermarriage and patrilineal descent, that’s less and less true. The average synagogue looks more like America.
“Even in an Orthodox synagogue, there’s likely to be a few people who look different,” Professor Sarna said, “and everybody assumes that will grow.”
Through the Internet, younger black Orthodox Jews are coming together in ways they never could before.
In Crown Heights, a group has struggled to form a minyan, the quorum of 10 men required for group prayer, though Mr. Robinson’s death leaves them one short. On the first Wednesday of each month, about 15 to 20 called “Jews of color” (not all of them Orthodox) meet to trade their experiences and insights. There is also a New York branch of the national group Jews in All Hues.
“They are strengthening their blackness through Judaism,” said Asher Rison, 62, a black Jew who lives in the Mill Basin section of Brooklyn, said of the younger generation. “They don’t have a place of their own, so they are trying to carve out their own niche.”
Mr. Rison converted more than 25 years ago after meeting his wife, who is also black and traces her Orthodox roots back to the late 1800s. The oldest of their five children, Shais, 28, is the founder of Manishtana.net — a Web site that plays off the classic Passover question, “Why is this night different?” — and Jocflock.org, a dating site for Jews of color, sometimes dubbed “J.O.C.’s.”
Shais Rison said he opted for a yarmulke over the black fedora worn by many Orthodox men and preferred his gefilte fish as his mother prepares it, seasoned with Jamaican peppers and spices. He said balancing being black and an Orthodox Jew was part of the broader identity struggle of being black.
“I have encountered people who actually get that Judaism isn’t about skin color,” he said. “But the majority of people will stare at you as you walk down the street. You would think that we were covered in chicken feathers.”
Shais Rison said it was often other black people who questioned him and his Jewish friends of color, viewing them as suspicious or as sellouts. And not all black Orthodox Jews agree on how to balance their loyalties. Some, he said, “see being Jewish as not being black anymore.”
“Those are the people who don’t want to associate or get together with other black Jews,” he said. “Everyone wants to play the only one, like ‘I’m a black Jew, and I want my struggle to be unique so people will look at me as a commodity.’ ”
Yochanan Reid, a former musician who was attracted to Judaism during a difficult period in his life and converted about six years ago, said he was “a Jew first.”
“There are those who consider themselves black and Jewish and those who consider themselves Jewish,” said Mr. Reid, 29. “But, where do I live? I live where the Jews live. I speak the language that the Jews speak. You eat kosher food because you are a Jew. You dress a certain way. I am also black, but how does that define me? I am a Jew first.”
Akeda Fulcher, a family court advocate who lives in Crown Heights, said that she was a fourth-generation observant black Jew, and that new efforts at multicultural curriculums in Jewish schools helped ease racial tension among the Orthodox.
“There is nothing in the Torah that says you can’t be black and Jewish at the same time,” she said. “I think it gives my Judaism flavor. I think that my foods, my music, my dance, my struggles — everything that makes me a black woman also make me a beautiful black Jewish woman. There is no difference between the two for me. I am what God made me, and everything about me is beautiful because of that.”
Yitzchak Jordan, a black Orthodox rapper, said he became interested in Judaism as a child in Baltimore, learning from his Puerto Rican grandmother, whose own father had worked for a Jewish family upon moving to the mainland. At 14, he started wearing a yarmulke and observing Shabbat. He converted about 10 years ago, and he later studied at a yeshiva in Jerusalem.
Walking along Kingston Avenue one afternoon last week with Shais Rison, Mr. Jordan, who is known as both Yitz and Y-Love, was greeted by young white, Orthodox Jews with handshakes and head nods. “I love your music, man!” one told him. In Basil, a new kosher cafe, he beamed between bites of pizza as one of his songs played over the speakers.
Mr. Jordan said that he had a large following in Israel that his music had been embraced by a generation of young Jews that feels marginalized.
“A black Orthodox Jewish kid is far less likely to grow into an Orthodox Jewish adult because you have a lot of racism in the school system, not so much institutionalized but more like social racism,” he said. “When people hear my music or see my face on a T-shirt, they can relate.”
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In addition to spawning passionate debates in the public, the news media and the political class, the proposal to build a Muslim community center near Ground Zero in New York has revealed widespread misconceptions about the practice of Islam in this country -- and the role of mosques in particular.
1. Mosques are new to this country.
Mosques have been here since the colonial era. A mosque, or masjid, is literally any place where Muslims make salat, the prayer performed in the direction of Mecca; it needn't be a building. One of the first mosques in North American history was on Kent Island, Md.: Between 1731 and 1733, African American Muslim slave and Islamic scholar Job Ben Solomon, a cattle driver, would regularly steal away to the woods there for his prayers -- in spite of a white boy who threw dirt on him as he made his prostrations.
The Midwest was home to the greatest number of permanent U.S. mosques in the first half of the 20th century. In 1921, Sunni, Shiite and Ahmadi Muslims in Detroit celebrated the opening of perhaps the first purpose-built mosque in the nation. Funded by real estate developer Muhammad Karoub, it was just blocks away from Henry Ford's Highland Park automobile factory, which employed hundreds of Arab American men.
Most Midwestern mosques blended into their surroundings. The temples or mosques of the Nation of Islam -- an indigenous form of Islam led by Elijah Muhammad from 1934 to 1975 -- were often converted storefronts and churches. In total, mosques numbered perhaps slightly more than 100 nationwide in 1970. In the last three decades of the 20th century, however, more than 1 million new Muslim immigrants came to the United States and, in tandem with their African American co-religionists, opened hundreds more mosques. Today there are more than 2,000 places of Muslim prayer, most of them mosques, in the United States.
According to recent Pew and Gallup polls, about 40 percent of Muslim Americans say they pray in a mosque at least once a week, nearly the same percentage of American Christians who attend church weekly. About a third of all U.S. Muslims say they seldom or never go to mosques. And contrary to stereotypes of mosques as male-only spaces, Gallup finds that women are as likely as men to attend.
2. Mosques try to spread sharia law in the United States.
In Islam, sharia ("the Way" to God) theoretically governs every human act. But Muslims do not agree on what sharia says; there is no one sharia book of laws. Most mosques in America do not teach Islamic law for a simple reason: It's too complicated for the average believer and even for some imams.
Islamic law includes not only the Koran and the Sunna (the traditions of the prophet Muhammad) but also great bodies of arcane legal rulings and pedantic scholarly interpretations. If mosques forced Islamic law upon their congregants, most Muslims would probably leave -- just as most Christians might walk out of the pews if preachers gave sermons exclusively on Saint Augustine, canon law and Greek grammar. Instead, mosques study the Koran and the Sunna and how the principles and stories in those sacred texts apply to their everyday lives.
3. Most people attending U.S. mosques are of Middle Eastern descent.
A 2009 Gallup poll found that African Americans accounted for 35 percent of all Muslim Americans, making them the largest racial-ethnic group of Muslims in the nation. It is unclear whether Arab Americans or South Asian Americans (mostly Pakistanis and Indians) are the second-largest. Muslim Americans are also white, Hispanic, Sub-Saharan African, Iranian, European, Central Asian and more -- representing the most racially diverse religious group in the United States.
Mosques reflect this diversity. Though there are hundreds of ethnically and racially integrated mosques, most of these institutions, like many American places of worship, break down along racial and ethnic lines. Arabs, for instance, are the dominant ethnic group in a modest number of mosques, particularly in states such as Michigan and New York. And according to a 2001 survey (the most recent national survey on mosques available) by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, they represented the plurality in only 15 percent of U.S. mosques.
4. Mosques are funded by groups and governments unfriendly to the United States.
There certainly have been instances in which foreign funds, especially from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf region, have been used to build mosques in the United States. The Saudi royal family, for example, reportedly gave $8 million for the building of the King Fahd Mosque, which was inaugurated in 1998 in Culver City, a Los Angeles suburb.
But the vast majority of mosques are supported by Muslim Americans themselves. Domestic funding reflects the desire of many U.S. Muslims to be independent of overseas influences. Long before Sept. 11, 2001, in the midst of a growing clash of interests between some Muslim-majority nations and the U.S. government -- during the Persian Gulf War, for instance -- Muslim American leaders decided that they must draw primarily from U.S. sources of funding for their projects.
5. Mosques lead to homegrown terrorism.
To the contrary, mosques have become typical American religious institutions. In addition to worship services, most U.S. mosques hold weekend classes for children, offer charity to the poor, provide counseling services and conduct interfaith programs.
No doubt, some mosques have encouraged radical extremism. Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheik who inspired the World Trade Center's first attackers in 1993, operated out of the Al-Salam mosque in Jersey City, N.J. But after the 2001 attacks, such radicalism was largely pushed out of mosques and onto the Internet, mainly because of a renewed commitment among mosque leaders to confront extremism.
There is a danger that as anti-Muslim prejudice increases -- as it has recently in reaction to the proposed community center near Ground Zero -- alienated young Muslims will turn away from the peaceful path advocated by their elders in America's mosques. So far, that has not happened on a large scale.
Through their mosques, U.S. Muslims are embracing the community involvement that is a hallmark of the American experience. In this light, mosques should be welcomed as premier sites of American assimilation, not feared as incubators of terrorist indoctrination.
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While Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and their 'tens of thousands" of followers gathered to flip off Abraham Lincoln and the Civil Rights Movement, I joined tens of, if not a hundred thousand other people and rallied and marched to Reclaim the Dream. We rallied for two and a half hours at Dunbar High School, the first high school built for black students in the US.
There were so many people that we filled the athletic field to maximum capacity, and there were still people in the streets waiting to get in.
"We can overcome racism"
Speakers who were black, Latino, white, ministers, educators, laborers, media personalities, politicians, and activists spoke about what it means to keep moving forward, to fulfill and Reclaim the Dream.
Demanding a vote for DC.
They rallied for DC to have representation in Congress and for DC to become the 51st State. They spoke of the need for better education, to protect public education. It is this education that will enable the next generation to obtain the jobs needed to ensure the future of our financial and economic security. Education is a Civil right.
Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan
Equality is still elusive in the work place. Those who believe in the Dream and work to fulfill it will not back down from those who try to own Dr. King's message, but have no idea what its true meaning is.
Rev. Dr. Al Sharpton
We lined up to march and there was no pushing, no shoving - did I mention there was only one police officer at the gate to enter the field? Did I mention that no one told us to "1. Leave your signs at home" and "2. Leave your guns at home"? No, that was the list given to the other rally. We were non-violent. No one was threatening
Then, we marched for three miles from NW Washington, DC, to the sight of the future memorial for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I was about a fourth of the way back from the front and was astounded to turn around and see the mass of people behind me, extending so far back, that I could not see the end of the march.
It was at this point that my camera died. And, yes, that is a sea of people going all the way as far back as you can possibly imagine.
I felt such an amazing amount of positive energy. We turned from 6th Street onto Constitution Ave, and began to see the first of Tea Party-ers, already disbanded from restoring honor. And, it is here that I would like to say, there is no honor in hate.
As we passed, the majority of the Tea Party-ers stood and stared with their mouths hanging open. Maybe they couldn't believe that so many black people could possibly be rounded up in one place. Wait! Was that a white woman? They stared at me as if they couldn't believe it. A white woman marching with black people. And, there were quite a few of us. A woman came running towards us on the sidewalk with her thumbs down motioning emphatically. "Where's your red, white, and blue?!" she screamed into one woman's face. "Why aren't you wearing it?!" She failed to notice that she herself was not wearing it. It is not the color of skin nor clothing that determines a true American.
A young man yelled at a woman who was wearing a T-Shirt with pictures of Dr. King and President Obama. "There are two people on your shirt! One of them believes in God! The other doesn't!"
Some of them as they stood with their flags that desecrate real US flag or sat in their camp chairs in the shade and waved as if we were a parade out of sarcasm or stupidity. I honestly don't think many of them had any idea that our rally and march was taking place until they saw the masses in the streets. After all, they watch Fox News, and would they even mention us and possibly steal Glenn and Sarah's thunder? I don't think so. There weren't that many people on the mall in support of restoring honor when we marched by the Washington Memorial. It looked like any other Saturday during tourist season in DC.
We arrived at the future sight of the Rev. Dr. Marting Luther King Jr Memorial. When I walked into the filed, it was already filled to about a third of its capacity. Twenty minutes after I got there, the last of the marchers arrived.
And, where is our coverage? We far outnumbered them. Why are we only a footnote in the media? We stood in the sun and rallied for two and a half hours and then marched three miles to another rally in an open field with the sun still beating down, and who gets the coverage? Those that spew poisonous propaganda that divides the country, when what we did was to show determination and intent to further the dream that would unite it.
As Rev. Dr. Al Sharpton said, "They may have the Mall, but we have the message!"
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