The Annual State of the Black Union

I'm sitting here watching the annual "State of the Black Union" on C-SPAN (God bless them folks for showing this every year). Based on what I am seeing and hearing from the second panel, I absolutely regret missing the live broadcast of the first panel, assuming they were just as fired up, passionate, eloquent as the second one was.

I must say, even though I believe I'm just being redundant, Dick Gregory, who is part of the second panel, is a genius. He just responded to Tavis Smiley's question about the current political landscape vis-à-vis the Black community, but Mr. Gregory decided to go off on a tangent for a minute or two. His initial response had me (and the live audience) rolling on the floor laughing. When he rounded back around to the original question, he spoke about how he had learned compassion from his wife. He brought tears to my eyes. I know him as a social and political activist, vegetarian proponent and comedian. But I did not know that he is also a feminist. He spoke at length of Black women as victims of racial and sexual discrimination. But not only as victims of the society from without the Black community, but also from within. About the lack of respect for Black women, he brought up how Dr. Condoleeza Rice is referred to as "Condi" where Madeleine Albright is "Madame Albright". This conference doesn't just speak to what has been and continues to be done to us from those outside of the community, but also what we do to ourselves. In a nutshell, be accountable to yourself and to others.

And thank you Rev. Al Sharpton for shining the light on Hillary Clinton's camp using loaded (i.e. bordering on racist) language when speaking of Barack Obama.