WHITEMAIL !-(INSTEAD OF BLACKMAIL!)- THE WHITE HOMOSEXUAL SLAVE MASTER HAS SPOKEN! -BLACKS ARE STILL SLAVES IN AMERIKKKA AND MUST OBEY THE SLAVEMASTER!-SO OBAMA MUST OBEY!- A JOURNALIST IN NIGERIA PINPOINTS HOW THEY FORCED OBAMA TO DO IT! -FROM PUNCH NEWSPAPERS,NIGERIA

Of principles, politics and Obama’s gay gamble
May 20, 2012 by Minabere Ibelema 7 Comments

When the United States President Barack Obama stunned the world by declaring his support for same-sex marriage, he explained that it was a matter of principle. He believes in equality for all people and that extending marriage rights to gays was an extension of that principle.

But there’s more to it.

The announcement was stunning, not so much for what Obama said but when he said it.

That Obama has been sympathetic to the gay community has been quite evident. Among other things, he saw to it that the Pentagon lifted the don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy that forbade gay military personnel from making public their homosexuality.

And his Justice Department refrained from representing the Federal Government in cases related to the Defence of Marriage Act, a law that forbade the recognition of same-sex marriages by federal departments and agencies.

For an administration to blatantly refuse to enforce a law that was duly passed by Congress and signed by a previous President is a rather serious matter. Though it is not without precedent, in some circumstances it could be impeachable.

Therefore,as a matter of law and politics, that stance was even more consequential than Obama’s declaration of support for same-sex marriage.

What was truly stunning then was Obama’s timing. Earlier in his political career, he had unequivocally opposed same-sex marriage. Then, as President, he had responded to a related question by saying that his personal view on the matter was still evolving.

That was, of course, the kind of answer that politicians give on issues of which they fear the consequences irrespective of the side they took. So, with about six months to go before the general elections, why would Obama risk it all by taking a stance now?

Well, it is a matter of blackmail and being backed into the wall. First, the latter.

When Vice-President Joseph Biden was asked recently about same-sex marriage, he said he was “comfortable” with it. It was inevitable that Obama would be called upon again to comment on the matter.

Obama was in a political quandary. He couldn’t afford to equivocate on a matter about which his vice-president had given a pointed response. He had to declare.

And then, there was the dimension of blackmail. No, not by any gay lover. Actually, the trending news before Obama’s same-sex marriage declaration had been about the release of love letters he wrote to his girlfriend in his earlier years.

The blackmail reportedly came from Hollywood, where some big wigs were planning a major campaign fundraiser for Obama. In case you are wondering the connection, Hollywood is a gay haven, perhaps second only to San Francisco.

According to the reports, some among the fundraisers pressured Obama to take a stand on same-sex marriage. The announcement, according to this thesis, was to appease that group.

Obama can use all the fund-raising help he can get. According to Bloomberg financial services, “The price tag on the 2012 presidential election is set to be the biggest ever.” That is higher than the combined price tag of more than $1bn for the 2008 election.

Even without a challenger in the primaries, Obama’s campaign has already expended more than $172m of the close to $197m it has raised so far. Yet the general elections campaign is merely in the warm-up stage.

Obama is set to duel it out with his enormously wealthy opponent, Mitt Romney. It is a circumstance in which even the most subtle blackmail can get it done.

Even then, the declaration of support for same-sex marriage is quite a gamble. If Obama were running for office anywhere in the world outside of Europe and North America, he is probably finished. Certainly, his stock has tumbled greatly in Nigeria.

Might the declaration cost Obama the election or help him? The best permutation at this time is, it all depends. Here’s what the political chessboard looks like.

Recent opinion polls show that a slight majority of Americans say that same sex marriage should be allowed.

The people who are most put off by Obama’s support of same-sex marriage are religious conservatives. But they vote solidly Republican, anyway. So, Obama has few votes to lose among them.

However, Obama’s staunchest supporters — blacks and Hispanics — are also overwhelmingly against same-sex marriage. Yet, he needs a heavy turnout by them — all voting predominantly for him — to win the election.

Obama knows this too well. His very next action after the announcement was to call the pastors of America’s largest and most influential black churches to explain himself. Predictably, he didn’t get many alleluias from them.

In fact, black pastors were already besieged with phone calls, texts and emails from dumbfounded members of their congregations seeking guidance. Many pastors had to address the issue in prayer meetings and Sunday sermons, with most disapproving but urging understanding.

“I believe the statement the president made and his decision was made in good faith. I am sure because the president is a good man,” Bishop Timothy Clark, of the First Church of God in Columbus, Ohio, told his congregation, according to USA Today.

In any case, African Americans’ support for Obama is so overwhelming and strong that it is unlikely that he will lose a lot of their votes in November. As would be predicted by the theory of cognitive dissonance, they are likely to find ways to rationalise away Obama’s decision.

The same may not be true of Hispanics, however. They are predominantly Catholic and, therefore, more conservative than African Americans in their view of social matters.

Independent voters, whose swings almost always determine the outcomes of presidential election, are another concern for Obama. Among them are people who are still sitting on the fence and for whom Obama’s position may be the tipping factor to the other side.

But the common wisdom is that independent voters tend to be swayed more by economic matters than social issues.

What is certain about all this is that Obama is an astute politician. He must have done the permutations and liked how the numbers turned out.
COMMENTS:

Echewe ozo May 20, 2012 at 7:37 am

If obama’s fada is a gay could he ve born obama d u.s president of today,when a man meets a woman during ovulation conception takes place nd dat is hw our mother’s bore us all,so dis unnatural method abi na shit una wan born,no bi shit fil d anus.to support stupidity or stupid gay is to make ve human extinction,b wise obama.


James May 20, 2012 at 9:00 am

A confused society indeed.


AGBEKE AYANTUGA May 22, 2012 at 12:28 pm

WHITEMAIL! (INSTEAD OF BLACK MAIL!) -THE WHITE HOMOSEXUAL SLAVEMASTER HAS SPOKEN! BLACKS ARE STILL SLAVES IN AMERIKKKA AND MUST OBEY! -SO OBAMA MUST DO AS THE SLAVEMASTER TOLD HIM! NO FREEDOM FOR THE BLACK MAN IN AMERIKKKA!
R







eturn to top of page

IN 2010 this white girl PREDICTED OUR BLACK skinned BEAUTY'S SUCCESS!-BLACK ON Gabourey Sidibe!



GABOUREY SIDIBE READY TO EXPLODE AFTER OSCAR CELEBRATIONS

March 8 2010

Hollywood, CA – Oprah Winfrey, as she usually does, said it right at last nights' Oscar ceremony. Presenting Best Actress nominee Gabourey Sidibe, Winfrey recalled her audition process which took three days and put her in the same category as Meryl

Streep. Winfrey called it the American Dream, and that's exactly what it has been for the 26-year old actress who was quite literally plucked from obscurity and thrust onto the biggest entertainment stage in the world, a dream many have but few ever achieve.

While Sidibe ultimately ended up losing the statuette to Hollywood veteran Sandra Bullock, the high profile that the nomination has given her and her performance will likely guarantee work for a long time to come. While it remains to be seen how the nomination will affect her long term prospects in the cutthroat film industry. While Winfrey extolled Sidibe's virtues and promised her a long career, the prospects for the actress to many seem very limited given the niche nature of her role and certain other character traits that generally run in conflict with Hollywood tradition. Regardless, Sidibe's star is shining very brightly right now and after a long night of celebrations, there's little doubt that she's ready to explode.

"Oscar nominations or even wins can really mean little in the long term. You can go through the list of winners that people have forgotten and losers that are now legends and you realize that ultimately the Oscar is exactly what it is, an award. It may help to increase a person or a project's visibility for a short time, but they still have to have the goods to make it work," said Scrape TV Entertainment analyst Tracey Temple. "Most people should really just enjoy it for what it is and not look at it as a magical path to success. It has never been that and never will. Given the attitude Sidibe seems to have she will likely do exactly that, which is the healthiest and fastest path to success."

Sidibe spent the night partying with castmates from her film 'Precious', enjoying the best of what Hollywood has to offer.

"She's really in a good spot. She's got a lot of good will and has ingratiated herself
with many members of the Hollywood
elite and that more than the nomination itself will do her a great service going forward. I'm no expert, but I think there's a very good chance that she could explode on the scene in a very significant way in the future," continued Temple. "Any cynicism aside, Sidibe is in her own way already huge and no matter the pressures or realities of Hollywood, she's likely only going to get bigger going forward. For some people there's this incredible momentum that they seem almost born to ride, and Sidibe has that. I foresee her getting huge and just exploding all over the place even though she didn't win."

Sidibe's next film role will be the lead in 'Yelling to the Sky' which like its star may be huge.

"Of all the nominees in this category she will likely benefit the most. Everyone else is already a star, they've reached their limits, but for Sidibe the outward potential is just massive. There's no guarantee that she will have huge hits like Bullock or hundreds of award nominations like Streep, but she has a really good chance of being huge," continued Temple. "No one can predict the future, at least not very effectively, but given what she has done and what she has, I don't see any limits to how big she can get. Sidibe is here to stay and she will be massive."

Sidibe reportedly really, really enjoyed the after parties.

Samantha Dryden, Entertainment Correspondent

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MARTIN DELANY- "FATHER OF BLACK NATIONALISM"-HIS MESSAGE STILL RINGS TRUE!-YOUNG BLACK MAN --BACK TO AFRICA WHERE YOU. CAN BE FREE,ALIVE! and SAFE!!

Martin Delany Week Celebrates Father Of Black Nationalism

Martin R. Delany. (Credit: Moonstone Arts Center)

By Cherri Gregg

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – This is Martin Delany Week, a time to celebrate an extraordinary African-American, known as the father of Black Nationalism.

Born in 1812, Martin R. Delany was a doctor, newspaper publisher, an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War and an author.

When much of the nineteenth century anti-slavery movement supported deporting freed Blacks back to Africa, Delany, who grew up in Southwestern Pennsylvania, spoke up, says Larry Robin, founder of Moonstone Art Center.

"He said you can't tell us what we should do! We decide what we should do. If this country is not going to be a place where we can prosper, then we should leave, but it's our choice."

The Moonstone is hosting a number of events this week celebrating Delany's life, featuring notables such as poet Sonia Sanchez and speaker Molifi Asante.

For more info go to MoonstoneArtsCenter.org/MartinDelany.

Excerpts from the Introduction to The Martin Delany Reader

by Robert S. Levine

Martin Robison Delany (1812-85) lived an extraordinarily complex life as a social activist and reformer, black nationalist, abolitionist, physician, reporter and editor, explorer, jurist, realtor, politician, publisher, educator, army officer, ethnographer, novelist, and political and legal theorist. A sketch of his career can only hint at the range of his interests, activities, and accomplishments. Born free in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia), the son of a free seamstress and a plantation slave, Delany in the early 1820s was taken by his mother to western Pennsylvania after Virginia authorities threatened to imprison her for teaching her children to read and write. In 1831 he moved to Pittsburgh, where he studied with black leaders, and began his lifelong commitment to projects of black elevation. He organized and attended black conventions during the 1830s and 1840s and during this same period apprenticed as a doctor and began his own medical practice. In 1843, he founded one of the earliest African American newspapers, the Mystery, which he edited until 1847. In late 1847, he left the Mystery and teamed up with Frederick Douglass to coedit the North Star, the most influential African American newspaper of the period. After an approximately eighteen-month stint with Douglass, Delany attended Harvard Medical School for several months but was dismissed because of his color. Outraged by Harvard's racism and the Compromise of 1850, in 1852 he published The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, a book-length critique of the failure of the nation to extend the rights of citizenship to African Americans, and a book that concludes by arguing for black emigration to Central and South America or the Caribbean. Delany's emigrationism conflicted sharply with Douglass's integrationist vision of black elevation in the United States. In response to Douglass's national black convention of 1853, Delany in 1854 organized and chaired a national black emigrationist convention, where he delivered "The Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent," the most important statement on black emigration published before the Civil War.

In 1856, Delany moved to Canada, where he set up a medical practice, wrote regularly for the Provincial Freeman, and met with the radical abolitionist John Brown to discuss the possibility of fomenting a slave insurrection in the United States. During the late 1850s, his views on emigration underwent a significant change. Instead of advocating black emigration to the southern Americas, he now argued for African American emigration to Africa. By 1859, he had obtained the funds that allowed him to tour the Niger Valley, and in December of that year, he signed a treaty with the Alake (king) of Abeokuta that gave him the land necessary to establish an African American settlement in West Africa. In search of financial support for the project, he toured Great Britain and garnered international attention for his participation at the 1860 International Statistical Congress in London. Around this same time, he published a serialized novel, Blake (1859, 1861-62) in an African American journal. He also published a book-length account of his travels and negotiations in Africa, Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (1861). Delany's African project collapsed in the early 1860s and by 1863 he was recruiting black troops for the Union army.

From 1863 to 1877, Delany recommitted himself to the integrationist U.S. nationalistic. He achieved national fame for meeting with Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and shortly thereafter receiving a commission as the first black major in the Union army. Following the war, Delany served for three years as an officer at the Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina, and he remained in South Carolina through the late 1870s as he attempted to make Reconstruction work in a stronghold of the former Confederacy. In 1874, he ran for lieutenant governor of South Carolina on the Independent Republican slate, then turned his attention to helping southern blacks who wished to emigrate to Liberia. In 1879, as he was seeking a federal appointment that would allow him to finance his own emigration to Africa, he published Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color (1879), an ethnographic study that, like his earlier Origin and Objects of Ancient Freemasonry (1853), expressed a Pan-African pride in blacks' historical, cultural, and racial ties to Africa.

as "one of the great men of this age," a person whose life was "filled with noble purposes, high resolves, and ceaseless activities for the welfare of the race with which he was identified," and who "has given us the standard of measurement of all the men of our race, past, present, and to come, in the work of negro elevation in the United States of America."

According to Frances Rollin, who published the first biography of Delany in 1868, Frederick Douglass similarly remarked, "I thank God for making me a man simply; but Delany always thanks him for making him a black man." When Delany asserted his black pride, and even racial superiority, he did so against the grain of a culture that regarded blackness as a mark of evil and inferiority. Whereas Brown and Douglass declared that they would be happy to see race simply vanish from the United States through intermarriage, Delany from the 1830s until his death in 1885 fought white racists' denigration of blackness by embracing it. And he did so, again and again, rhetorically: by insisting that within white culture his blackness in effect made an argument about racial identity and character that mulatto leaders, such as Brown and Douglass, simply could not make. The African American educator Anna Julia Cooper underscored this point in her remarks on Delany in 1892: "The late Martin R. Delany, who was an unadulterated black man, used to say when honors of state fell upon him, that when he entered the council of kings the black race entered with him; meaning, I suppose, that there was no discounting his race identity and attributing his achievements to some admixture of Saxon blood." In this respect, Delany's race consciousness and pride, his very sense of himself as a representative black man, can be understood as his defiant response to the white racist gaze upon his black body.

gotten until his resurrection as the father of black nationalism and the epitome of proud blackness." During the 1960s and 1970s, as a result of the Black Arts movement and the upsurge of interest in black studies, Delany was suddenly being celebrated for precisely what Payne, Brown, and Douglass had professed not to like about him: his prideful race consciousness and Pan-African identity.

Although Delany was a prolific writer who was unable to conceive of political action apart from writing and who wrote in a range of genres, most anthologies of American literature fail to reprint any of his multifarious and engaging writings, and, perhaps most astonishing of all, he is not included in the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, the most widely used anthology in African American literary and cultural studies. This neglect would have left his contemporaries truly mystified….

The historian Sterling Stuckey has argued that what links various expressions of black nationalism in the United States is a consciousness among African Americans "of a shared experience at the hands of white people" and of "the need for black people to rely primarily on themselves in vital areas of life." Rather than representing a single position—a race consciousness that is always aggressively separatist—black nationalism can embrace a range of sometimes competing and conflicting options—uplift, separatism, emigrationism, patriotism, racial anger, integrationism, and so on—and has to be constructed and reconstructed in response to different exigencies and contexts. Delany's special genius lay in his ceaseless and imaginative work at such construction and reconstruction.

In an influential revisionary overview of Delany's career, Paul Gilroy observes, "Delany is a figure of extraordinary complexity whose political trajectory through abolitionisms and emigrationisms, from Republicans to Democrats, dissolves any simple attempts to fix him as consistently either conservative or radical." …Like Douglass, Delany advocates a politics of racial integrationism when that politics seems possible and useful; at other moments, when that politics seems an impossibility (or destined to keep blacks in a subordinate position), he advocates creative modes of resistance, including separatism.

Delany was committed to action. "We must make an issue, create an event, and establish for ourselves a position," Delany declared at the 1854 National Emigration Convention. The extraordinary persistence and creativity of his efforts to bring about social change make him one of the most fascinating African American leaders and writers of the nineteenth century and arguably one of the three or four most influential.

True Patriotism

Martin R. Delany

The North Star, 8 December 1848

Patriotism consists not in a mere professed love of country, the place of one's birth – an endearment to the scenery, however delightful and interesting, of such country; nor simply the laws and political policy by which such country is governed; but a pure and unsophisticated interest felt and manifested for man – an impartial love and desire for the promotion and elevation of every member of the body politic, their eligibility to all the rights and privileges of society. This, and other than this, fails to establish the claims of true patriotism.

From periods the most remote, the most improper application has been made of the endearing term Patriot. Whether the most absolute monarch, crowned with the hereditary diadem, armed with an unlimited sceptre, the most intolerable despot bearing the title of sovereign – the most cruel and heartless oppressor and slaveholder under the boasted title of President -the most relentless butcher and murderer called Commander-in-Chief – the most haughty and scornful aristocrat who tramples upon the people's rights in the halls of legislation – the most reckless and unprincipled statesman "rioting upon the spoils of a plundered revenue" – whether Phillips, Curran or Gratan in defence of Irish constitutional liberty – Emmet upon the scaffold, refusing to let his epitaph be written until Ireland was free -William Tell, under sentence of death, baffling the schemes of the German tyrant, Gesler – the French baron, Lafayette, leaving his native country and princely fortune, to share in common the fate of the struggling American Washington, as the leader of his country's destiny – O'Connell, as the Liberator – Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, or John Quincy Adams, standing in the frontal ranks as defenders of American rights, or Mitchell and O'Brien, who sacrificed their all, being forever divorced and exiled from the most tender ties of domestic affections, by the severity of the laws of their country, for daring to discard provisions deemed pernicious to the welfare of their countrymen; all have laid equal claim to a share of the popular gratitude, and been endowed with the loved title of patriot.

A patriot may exist, whether blessed with the privileges of a country, favored with a free constituency, or flying before his pursuers, [and] roam an exile, the declared outlaw of the power that besets him. Love to man, and uncompromising hostility to that which interferes with his divine God-given rights, are the only traits which distinguish the true patriot. To be patriotic, is to be philanthropic; to be which, is necessary to love all men, regarding their humanity with equal importance.

Much has been the interest felt and manifested in this country in every movement, with exceptions to be named, whether home or abroad, in favor of human liberty, and those who were foremost in the struggle, bequeathed their names to present and future time, to become the subject of the poet and the theme of the historian. Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland, Germany, France, England, Scotland and Ireland, of modern date, all, have had their patriots, each of whom in succession, has shared largely of America's eulogium. And of all who have scanned the ordeal before them, there were none perhaps for whom there has been expressed more sympathy than the late victims of British displeasure, the Irish patriots and convicts, Mitchell and O'Brien, especially the latter, the severity of whose sentence aroused every feeling and expression of opposition to the execution of the sentence.

To witness the public demonstrations, as manifested in favor of the Irish struggle, in which Mayors of cities, Judges of Courts, sons of Ex-Presidents and Ex-Governors participated, and the universal interest felt in the result, is well tended to deceive, and betray into the idea those not otherwise advised, that this nation is a nation of justice. But how will America stand, when compared with other countries, dark as may be the gloom of their semi-barbarous laws? Condemned must she be in the moral vision of the whole enlightened world. Loud, long, and damning, must be the anathema uttered against her by those whom she treats and so regards in all her legal acknowledgments as aliens and enemies, ere their eyes be opened to a sense of their condition, and she still refuses to succor them.

But how many patriots have lived, toiled, suffered and died, having worn out a life of usefulness, unobtrusively laboring in the cause of suffering humanity, living to the community and the world a life of seclusion, passing to and fro unobserved, amidst the stir and busy scenes of a metropolis, and the throng and bustle of assembled thousands. This class of patriots may be found in every country, but to none are they more common than America, and in no country would they meet with less acceptance than in this Republic. Ever professing the most liberal principles, proclaiming liberty and equality to all mankind, their course of policy gives a glaring contradiction to their pretensions, and the lie to their professions.

Prone as they are to tyrannize and despotize over the liberties of the few, the philanthropist who espouses the cause of the oppressed, is destined to a life of obscurity; instead of commendation and renown, contempt and neglect are the certain and most bitter fruits of his reward. Marked and pointed out by the finger of scorn, he at once becomes the mock of the scoffer, and hiss of the reviler; and affliction heaped upon affliction presses upon him like a mountain weight, until at last he sinks under the mighty pressure, unable longer to bear it up. Yet, galling as this may be, it is a boon for which the downtrodden, oppressed American might anxiously long, compared with his own present miserable, unhappy condition.

Among them have existed, and there do exist, those who are justly entitled to all the claims of true patriotism; but proscription, as infamous as it is wicked, has stamped the seal of degradation upon their brow; and instead of patriots, they become the felon and outlaw. Anticipated

MUMA GEE-AFROCENTRIC NIGERIAN SINGER FINALLY GETS MARRIED!

The whole truth about my marriage —Muma Gee

By MERCY MICHAEL ⁠08/04/2012 00:00:00

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Muma Gee

Delectable Afro centric singer Muma Gee is back, a year after she took a break from the music scene, to tie the knot. Known for her outspoken persona, Muma's new album and single entitled Motherland and Port-Harcourt respectively has started to generate controversy on the internet. In this interview with MERCY MICHAEL, she opens up for the first-time on her fairytale marriage to her hubby, Nollywood actor, Prince Ike. The singer clears the air on issues surrounding her latest single and also talks about her experience on Gulder Ultimate Search reality show, among other issues.

HOW is family life? What has the transition been like?

The transition is just the fact that I have to work double hard to make up for the family and also for my fans. I have been in the studio. I did not get married in order to forget about my career. I have been working on Motherland which is my latest album. It will be released very soon. We have a new single, it is not in the making but we are not ready to push it out. In a few days, the video will be out. It is a world class video. We are ready for Muma Gee to be out now.

This is the first time I am speaking to the press after like a year plus. I have refused to speak to the press or grant interviews. I have been the hiding (laughs) not because I chose to hide or shy away but because I was weighed down and overwhelmed with the traditional rites of my wedding. 

Was the marriage ceremony tasking for you?

I had to be physically present to go through all the traditional rites, which took about a year. My marriage was like a project. It was a year plus project. My traditional marriage was about six stages and I did all. I was married properly and at a stage I was wondering if my husband won't get tired and give up but he stood by me all through. My marriage can be packaged as a documentary because the procedures and protocols were enormous. I enjoyed it as an Epeye girl, now an Ibo woman. And for the first time in my life, I was seeing a traditional marriage happening in two different states. In the morning, we had my traditional marriage in Rivers State and in the evening we were in Imo State for the second leg. So we had the traditional wedding in one day in two states.

Did you think your husband was ready for all of that? Before then did he know all of the procedures?

He didn't know. If you are a princess or a queen you have to go through all the rites. It is a rite of passage that you have to fulfil to get married properly. And at the end of all the traditional rites, I was wedded in the church. We recorded the activities from day one to the last day. It is on record, so when I die, the generations to come can go to the archives and see what it is like to marry an Epeye woman.

Now that Muma Gee is back, what should fans expect from your latest album to be released soon?

Motherland is about my community, where I come from, and most importantly, my roots. Accordingly, that is why I have songs like Port-Harcourt is back, because as soon as I got to Port-Harcourt, I was wooed. The video is on the internet but the audio is not out yet. Basically the album is going to be hot. It is a come-back album.

The titles of your album and single sounds as if you are going political? Could that assumption be right?

Why does everyone think I am going political? Some people seem to have that notion on the internet thinking that I have gone political, especially with the title; Port-Harcourt is back. When I landed in Port-Harcourt Airport for the 17th All States Sport Festival, to do the theme song for the opening and closing ceremony; I was shocked to see everywhere lighted up. I was happy because of the development. I had no choice but to talk about my experience. As an artiste it is my civic role to let the people know that there is a breath of fresh air and that is why I did the song.

Twice you cancelled your wedding date or so it was rumoured. Why? 

It was actually once. We had to shift date from 18th of November to December. We wanted to have it done on my birthday. My husband wanted to honour me with that but the task to shoot the video Port-Harcourt is back overtook that because we brought in cinematographers from the UK and the team was ready. And the other reason was that expectations were high from people, so we needed to reduce the number of guests to 1000 persons, restrictly by invite. The first invite we sent out was cancelled. We had to print another one which became the real invite. As a result, instead of 18th of November, it was held on December 23.

You were evasive about your marital status during the Celebrity Guilder Ultimate Search competition. Were you married at that time?

No I was not but one of the contestants laid so much emphasis on marriage, and bragged about it. And that made me joked that I was married and she asked about my ring to which I responded that it is not everyone that will wear their ring to the forest.

Where you engaged at that time?

I was not engaged. During the Guilder Ultimate Search competition, people speculated that I had an affair with Emeka Ike, which God knows it is a lie. I have suffered a lot in the hands of the press. Emeka Ike won and I was invited to his church, The Redeemed Christian Church of God for his thanksgiving service, where I met my husband. My husband happens to be Emeka Ike's best friend. He introduced us and that was it. And the same moment, he proposed. I didn't date my husband. We did not have carnal knowledge of ourselves until we were married because we are born-again Christians. I did abstinence at some certain stage when I gave my life to God and that was when I met my husband. I won't deny that I was emotionally attached to Emeka Ike as a friend and as someone who makes sense when we discuss but not as per dating, no.

Have you made up with that particular contestant?

I have not seen the contestant since then. We do not have similar lifestyle. Probably if we have similar lifestyle we would have met one way or the other and we don't attend the same events. Besides, I have been spending time with my family and my career. Since after Guilder Ultimate Search, I have not engaged in public outing that much too.

What did you do to find out if he is the right person for you?

From the day I met my husband and he said to me, I am not looking for a lover or a girlfriend but a mother and that I see in you made me ask a few questions about him. I investigated him. The first question I remember asking him was, what he studied in school; because most artistes do not have formal education. He had his first degree in Psychology from the University of Ife and Masters in International Communication from IMSUTH (Imo State University), so I felt there was prospect. He looks decent and he is the most handsome dude on earth. I have just my first degree even though I'm going in for my second degree in Business Administration, I read Theatre Art.

You said you didn't spend much time studying him before you got married to him. Why take that kind of risk?

I was ministered to by God as well. You know this thing that when you meet the right guy, you don't make mistakes, trust me! As a man when you see the right woman to be your wife, you will have the hunch divinely especially if you have prayed. One, I am not so tall and I needed a guy whom I will look up to. Two, I wanted a guy whose degree is above mine. Thirdly, I wanted a guy who is extremely intelligent, and when he opened his mouth to speak to me, I was convinced. We left Emeka's house where we were having the reception to his family house in Lagos and he introduced me to his family as his fiancée, same day, few hours after we met. Afterwards, we travelled to see his other family members. At that point, we hadn't gone to see my people. Well, I was just going with the flow. I remember we had to travel from Enugu to Asaba then to Owerri, and came back again to Lagos. All the while, we abstained from sexual acts because he is a Christ Embassy member, I too, a Christian. He proposed twice. First he proposed in Emeka's place without a ring and with a ring in Asaba after visiting his family. 

How did his family take it, considering the bad press at one time or the other?

You know as an artiste, people don't get to know our family background. Surprisingly, he comes from a family of 8 boys and a lady, and he is the first child. Every member of his family is married and responsible. They have a magistrate and various professionals; so everybody is civilized. They weren't in anyway against it and some even haven't even heard of Muma Gee and all the bad and good press, they simply didn't care. They were just surprised; perhaps they felt their brother hooked a big fish. In fact, the family calls me Gift. They don't call me Muma Gee. Trust me; no matter how big you are in life when it comes to family issues, you will be normal.

Apart from Emeka Ike, you have been linked to other men in the past. Was that why you decided to take that chance…

No, I realized I'd taken my music career to a certain stage and decided it was time to get a life. It came and I had to just do it. As an African woman, you are not acknowledged unless you have a man. You have to be answerable to somebody.

Was that the first time you were falling in love?

I was not even in love before I got married, the love grew. I will be honest with you; this was somebody I didn't know. The only thing was that I had confidence; Emeka was my pal, so he could not have seen fire and tell me to put my hand. Emeka Ike played a very vital role in given me confidence in this stranger I did not know but now, I know him more than anyone else in the world. Being a close pal of Emeka, if Emeka is a success story then he is not far from it and that was how I saw it. That thought gave me the confidence at first to say yes. So after that stage, I didn't fold my hands and just watch, I studied him as well and also prayed. When it comes to settling down, you do not relax. You have to pray probably until your knees peel. In my tribe, if you see what I went through before getting married you won't talk of divorce, the letter 'D' will not come out of your mouth. After going through the rigour of taking a wife from my place, Epeye land, you will be mad to send your wife away.

What has changed about you now?

What has changed categorically about me is my rate of working. Now, I work double hard to satisfy my family, and also satisfy my friends and fans out there. As a single woman it was just me, my career and my fans but now there is a lord in my life that is in charge and he has to be in charge. Before now I don't cook my food. Well, I love cooking but due to my schedules, I do not have the time to cook. Now it is mandatory because my husband does not eat outside unless he is not in the location where we live. Even with maids in the house, I still cook his food. Even when you play games and make the food when he is not around, he comes back and tells you that the food is not prepared by his wife. And you cannot force him to eat; in order not to make him starve I have to get into the kitchen.

Our BLACK SKINNED BEAUTY GABOUREY SIDIBE IS Busy Breaking the skinny/no shape/no nose/no lips/no hips/white/girl/standard/of/b2auty/glass/ceiling everywhere! BLACK ON!

Fw: MALCOLM X PBS Documentary video

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

-----Original Message-----
From: yeyeolade@gmail.com
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 06:03:25
To: Wordpress e-m<deli74suno@post.wordpress.com>
Reply-To: yeyeolade@gmail.com
Subject: MALCOLM X PBS Documentary video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zvGRmX2gcs&sns=fb.

Gabourey Sidibe-OUR BLACK SKINNED BEAUTY Sent Packing By Squirrels!!

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

-----Original Message-----
From: yeyeolade@gmail.com
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:34:25
To: Wordpress e-m<deli74suno@post.wordpress.com>
Reply-To: yeyeolade@gmail.com
Subject: Gabourey Sidibe-OUR BLACK SKINNED BEAUTY Sent Packing By Squirrels!!



Gabourey Sidibe - Gabourey Sidibe Sent Packing By Squatter Squirrels

23 April 2012 01:46



Picture: Gabourey Sidibe 5th Annual Women In Film Pre-Oscar Cocktail Party held At Cecconi's Restaurant West Hollywood, California ....

Gabourey Sidibe Sent Packing By Squatter Squirrels

Squirrels have chased Precious star Gabourey Sidibe out of her apartment.

The actress left a window open "a crack" in her New York apartment when she left to spend the Christmas holidays in San Diego, California and she returned to discover the place had become a doss-house for vermin.

She explains, "I left for three weeks... and I come back and it's, like, nine o'clock at night and I walk in to my apartment and it just feels, like, weird and sorta eerie, and I go into my bedroom and I find that squirrels have moved in and they brought in branches... They brought in sticks, they brought in cotton and this cereal box.

"(Apparently) when they find a place they like to eat they return every day to eat there. It's like the new restaurant... I think they were eating there and they started nesting.

"Thank God they weren't there when I got home because I would have freaked out... I panicked and I started calling every boy I know and, like, screaming on the phone, 'You have to get over here...' I didn't want them (squirrels) to return.

"I called my cousin Sean, who is dope... He came all the way from Brooklyn to help me just clean up the sticks... He's college-educated, he's, like, seven-foot tall... and he comes over... and he takes his socks and pulls them over his pants, so that squirrels won't run up his pants."

The actress and her cousin cleaned the place up and then went to bed, only to be woken early the next morning by an angry, homeless squirrel.

She adds, "He's banging on the window... I just start freaking out and throwing things at the window, going, 'Go away squirrel, you're not welcome here'. It literally chilled there all day waiting for me to open the window... I moved the hell out of there... Now I live on the 11th floor. I'm good."

Sibide showed off the extent of the mess her unwelcome visitors left behind during an appearance on late night U.S. show Jimmy Kimmel Live! by presenting the host with photos of the squirrel hell.

Video Link for Gabourey Sidibe 's Interview with Young filmmakers in Houston!

http://diff2012.dallasfilm.org/diff-video-dallas-shining-star-award-recipient-gabourey-sidibe/


DIFF Video: Dallas Shining Star Award Recipient Gabourey Sidibe

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Mike Daniel



Words can't accurately depict how vibrant a presence Dallas Shining Star Award honoree Gabourey Sidibe is in person. But this DIFF Video interview with the star of PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL 'PUSH' BY SAPPHIRE definitely gives you a better idea.

She was kind and thoughtful as she talked about her sudden rise to stardom, how the student filmmakers at last night's DFS Honors ceremony inspire her, and how her studies in psychology inform her acting.

Thanks, Gabby!

Gabourey Sidibe-Our Black skinned Beauty ! 3

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

Gabourey Sidibe-Our Black skinned Beauty ! April,2012-after a Nite on the Town!

THIS BLACK SKINNED BEAUTY KNOWS ITS WRONG TO BLEACH!-BLEACH AND DIE!

I eat Chocolate and I exercise for 2hrs -Fayose

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Written by Tayo Gesinde Sunday, 18 March 2012

ShareDefinition of style.
STYLE is a particular way that something is done and when we talk of style in terms of fashion, it means a particular design that suits you, that fits you and something that you decide to do in a  particular way that then becomes your style and which other people may decide to copy.

Dress sense.
When we talk about dressing, I think it comes from within, when you are happy, whatever you put on will look  so elegant as if it is more than it is  actually worth.  Once I am happy, even if I am putting on something that is not more than two hundred naira, as long as I am happy with it, it is okay, I will be happy putting it on. So my mood determines what I wear. Beauty is from within once you are happy, whatever you put on will look nice on you but if you are not happy, no matter how expensive what you are wearing is, it will look hagard on you. So I think your mood determines how you will look when you put on anything.

Beauty regimen.
I don't have a special beauty regimen other than to have my bath once or twice a day depending on the weather. I use Elizabeth Arden's Visible Difference. I have been using that cream on my body for twenty-three years and I use Dr Miracle for my hair. I use Neutrogena bodywash and cleanser and Ghana-soa.  I maintain my skin by drinking lots of water, I don't do facials and that is because when you drink plenty of water, it  will flush out all the toxics in your body and makes your skin look shinning.
Favourite designer.  I must be sincere with you, I do not have any. I'm not a designer-freak. If I see anything I like, I go for it not minding who the designer is.

Favourite perfume.I love perfumes, I use  Tresor, Gucci, Flower Bomb, Mariah Carey, Samsara, just to mention a few. I use any perfume as long as the smell is fantastic.Favourite colours.
I love loud colours because  I don't wear jewellery so I don't like  to wear any colour that will hide me, so to speak. I love red combined with black, I love any shade of blue and yellow.
On make- up.
That is my signature, everybody has one. If I use make-up, nobody will be able to recognise me because they are used to seeing me without it . I stopped using it 15 years ago  based on personal conviction and I can't go back to them again. I  am not condemning those who use it but I won't. I love it that way. As a first lady, some people tried to persuade me to use make-up but I said no, don't even go there.

Choice of accessories.
I love watches, leather watches, Gucci watch,  Fendi, lots of them as long as they are  good and nice. Shoes and bags are my weak point. I buy them alot. In fact, there was a time that I had to pray that  God should assist me in that area, that I should stop buying them. I will say it was answered and not answered. I love them so I still buy them.
Most expensive item in my wardrobe.
I am weak when it comes to clothes and so they are likely to be  the most expensive items in my wardrobe.
Fashion item I can't do without.
What I won't be caught dead wearing.
Three quarter dresses because I am tall. It is either I wear something that is either a little below my knee or long.
Opinion on toning.
To me, toning, bleaching, anything that lightens your skin that changes your God-given colour is not good. Try to maintain what your creator has given you. If death comes and you stand before your creator, will he recognise you when you have changed your colour from black to white? I don't like thatso just maintain your skin.
Opinion on cosmetic surgery.
Well, if it is due to medical reason, I don't have an objection but anything that is not done for medical reason or because that thing is threatening your life, I don't like it and I can't do it. I am not condemning those who do it but personally, I can't go for such surgical operation.
My take on provocative dressing.
Dresses are meant to cover your nakedness. When you wear something  that is provocative, you are vulnerable to attacks such as rape because people who look at you are human beings who have blood and water running through their veins. In my opinion, it is not good to dress provocatively, the Bible too condemns it. It is good to wear something that ministers grace to you and those around you.
Diet and exercise. I exercise for two hours every morning and I watch what I eat, that is the only way one can keep one's body together. Secret of beauty.
God. If you have the peace of God, no matter what you are going through you will always be at peace with yourself and I am  grateful to God.
Special treat.
I eat chocolate. I also relax by reading Christian magazines, listening to music and watching home videos , however, I don't watch just any film, I watch only does that have good messages to pass across.
Hairs and dose nails.
I don't wear long nails so I just do my normal manicure at home, for my hair, I love braids because it last longer even though when you loosen it, you lose some strands of hair but I still prefer it.
Advice to women on how to stay young and beautiful.
Maintain your skin, don't use anything on your skin that may cause skin cancer later on. Eat good food and exercise your body regularly.

JACKIE ROBINSON'S SON DAVID GOES BACK TO AFRICA AND FINDS BLACK MANHOOD,BLACK FREEDOM AND A WIFE TOO!-BLACK MAN COME BACK TO AFRICA!

• May 05, 2003
• Vol. 59
• No. 17

Fields of Dreams

By Pam Lambert

Dreaming of Africa, Jackie Robinson's Son Found a Wife and Way of Life in Tanzania

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First you ford the rushing river. Then you jounce down a rut-filled dirt road past what passes for a town this far into the boonies of Tanzania—a few brick houses and a single modest store. Thirty bone-jarring minutes later you're there. "Welcome to my home," says David Robinson, 50, youngest child of baseball legend and civil rights pioneer Jackie Robinson, as his Land Cruiser lurches to a stop amid a compound of faded brick buildings with rusted tin roofs. "If you had told me at 12 years old in Connecticut that I would end up growing coffee, or even living in Africa, I would have never believed you."

Remarkable as it may seem, Robinson is doing just that. While his Hall of Famer father spent his life fighting for equal opportunities for blacks in the U.S., earning a place in history books as the first African-American to play in the majors, David chose a very different path. Since 1989 the son of this social trailblazer has become a literal one in Tanzania. Clearing away the forest with only hand tools, Robinson and his team of workers have managed to cultivate a 120-acre coffee farm. Other farmers have joined his now 700-family-strong Mshikamano cooperative, whose Sweet Unity Farms premium coffee is making its way into the U.S.—and boosting the area's standard of living. "He came back to mother Africa to help," says local official Darry Rwegasira. "He opened the way for others to come and see that there are opportunities here."

The seeds for Robinson's journey were planted when he was a teen, still living on his parents' six-acre spread in Stamford, Conn. (where they were the only black family in the neighborhood). At 15, David went on a seminal trip to Africa with his mother, Rachel. Jackie, who had retired from baseball when David was 4, did not make the trek. "My father wasn't big on Africa," Robinson says. "He couldn't look back to Africa, because the American reality was confronting him."

But for his son it was another story. Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana—David was mesmerized. The trip "was life-altering for David," says Rachel, 80. "He began to develop the notion that the destructiveness of slavery was that we were all torn apart as a people, that we wouldn't be whole until we reconnected with our African roots."

Although Robinson spent several months in Africa at 19 after dropping out of Stanford, family concerns drew him home. Earlier that year his brother Jackie Jr., 24, who had struggled with drugs, fell asleep at the wheel of David's MG and died in the crash. The blow, Robinson believes, worsened his father's heart problems and diabetes. In October 1972, Jackie suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 53. "I saw my brother, my father and grandmother dead in a three-year period," Robinson says. "It made it clear to me that I couldn't live a frivolous life."

Robinson married. He also joined with other black activists to start a grassroots housing organization that rehabilitated brownstones for Harlem residents. But his eye remained on Africa. "I would spend three nights a week dreaming of getting back," he says. "I had an emotional attachment."

Robinson divorced and then, at age 32, made the move with his 4-year-old daughter Ayo in 1984. It was initially tough for him to decide which country to settle in since, "like 99 percent of African-Americans, we didn't know where our ancestors had come from." But because of its economic and political stability, he chose Tanzania.

After trying his hand at a variety of jobs, Robinson began looking at the coffee-growing Mbozi district in southern Tanzania, where it was traditional for a man to be given land in his village. "Because of the slave experience, I had lost my tribe," Robinson says. "But I was back. I had chosen Tanzania." After lengthy negotiations, the council elders took Robinson to the edge of the forest and told him that whatever he could clear away, he could have. The area, to say the least, was remote. "When I took my mother here the first time, she told me that she hoped we might run into some bandits. Anyone." David and about 15 local workers began the difficult task of turning forest into farmland. At that point Robinson knew nothing about coffee cultivation. "Ignorance is one of the greatest facilitators of doing things," he laughs. "You don't know what you are really up against."

Besides his 27,000 coffee plants, Robinson would put down other roots in his new community. Deciding to marry in the Wanyamwezi tribe ("They took heavy losses in the slave trade...and the women were reported to be very beautiful"), he embarked on a traditional bridal search. A friend in the tribe adopted Robinson as a brother, then later brought him to the house of a cattle farmer with three eligible daughters. As is customary, the women did brief cameo appearances in front of Robinson—after which he had to choose or risk insulting the family. "I pulled myself together," he says, "and went with the tallest."

Then Robinson had to do his own cameo in front of the chosen daughter, Ruti Mpunda, before leaving the house. To his surprise, her first answer was a no. "She told me later, 'Would you agree the first time a stranger asked you?' " Robinson says. "She had a point." But Ruti, then 18, quickly changed her answer. "I really liked him, he was very handsome, I wanted him," she says. "It was a good decision. He is a very good husband."

During their 13 years together, the pair have had six children, who range in age from 12-year-old twins Rachel and Racheli to Nubia, 13 months. (Son Jackie died at age 3, in 1997, from malaria.) The farm's solar panels generate enough power for four lights and a radio, but Robinson prefers candle-light. Until recently, the nearest telephone was a l½-hour drive away. "I could have a more physically comfortable life," he says. "But that would not be emotionally comfortable."

About the only thing Robinson really misses is family. He tries to visit his mother, sister Sharon, 53, and nephew Jesse, 24, on frequent business trips to the U.S. to promote his coffee. "Both my and my father's lives have really been about seeking out the road to freedom, equal rights and development," muses Robinson as he surveys his plot in the sunset. "This," he says, "is my Ebbets Field."

Pam Lambert
Bryan Alexander in Tanzania

• Contributors:
• Bryan Alexander.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
 http://allthatsnoir.blogspot.com/2010/04/sweet-unity-farms-coffee-exceptional.html

All That's Noir

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Sweet Unity Farms Coffee - Exceptional Coffee Brought To You By Exceptional People

There's an old saying that "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

So, what would you expect from the son of legend? Great works and great deeds.

David Robinson doesn't disappoint. Son of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, founded Sweet Unity Farms Coffee in Tanzania, Africa.

David Robinson created Sweet Unity Farms, a collective of African farmers, working to produce some of the world's best coffee.

To learn more about "Sweet Unity Coffee" and the great things they're doing, visit:

http://www.upcountryinternational.net/

at 7:48 AM

ALEC WEK -OUR BLACK SKINNED BEAUTY SUPREME!

MISS BLACK CLARKSVILLE IS A BLACK Skinned BEAUTY !

Pageant beauty shines in spotlight

Miss Black Clarksville aspires to stardom

3:34 PM, Mar. 15, 2012




Larsa Summerville, 18, recently won the 8th Miss Black Clarksville Scholarship Pageant and will enter the University of Alabama in Huntsville this fall. / THE LEAF-CHRONICLE/Karen Parr-Moody

Written by

Karen Parr-Moody

Leaf-Chronicle



Larsa Summerville being crowned winner of the 8th Miss Black Clarksville Scholarship Pageant. / John Davis

CLARKSVILLE, TENN. — After beating seven other contestants in the 8th Miss Black Clarksville Scholarship Pageant, Larsa Summerville, 18, now hopes to rise into a glamorous position in the modeling or television business.

Walking along the streets in downtown Clarksville last week, clad in a crown and pink sheath dress and toting her winning trophy, Summerville cut a commanding figure. She towered over passersby at a whopping five feet, 10 inches. This height was pushed over the 6-foot marker with the help of shiny beige platform heels. One could imagine that she might one day glide down the catwalks of New York, Paris and Milan.

Later, when she sat down to chat, Summerville possessed none of the shyness of some girls her age. The Clarksville High senior was direct, with no lack of confidence when detailing her hopes and dreams for the future. These include attending the University of Alabama in Huntsville this fall, then transferring to that university's main campus in Tuscaloosa after finishing her core courses.

Despite her confidence in general, Summerville claims she had no idea she would win the trophy on Feb. 25 at the Miss Black Clarksville Scholarship Pageant, which was founded by Carol Berry to increase the number of minority scholarships in the community.

"I thought I was going to get fifth or sixth place," she said. "I did not think I was going to win at all, because all of the other girls were so good."

When she did win, Summerville burst into tears, following in the stilettos of a long line of beauty contestant winners before her, with a few exceptions. The first black woman to be crowned Miss America, Vanessa Williams, was a cool customer. She let one small tear trickle down before erupting into a wide smile.

The year was 1983 and Williams became more than the 56th Miss America; she became a new face in a world of American beauty that historically excluded blacks. Summerville wasn't even born then. But she understands the complicated nature of black beauty firsthand, both in how it is perceived by the outsider and possessor alike.

MISS BLACK CLARKSVILLE IS A BLACK Skinned BEAUTY !

Pageant beauty shines in spotlight

Miss Black Clarksville aspires to stardom

3:34 PM, Mar. 15, 2012




Larsa Summerville, 18, recently won the 8th Miss Black Clarksville Scholarship Pageant and will enter the University of Alabama in Huntsville this fall. / THE LEAF-CHRONICLE/Karen Parr-Moody

Written by

Karen Parr-Moody

Leaf-Chronicle



Larsa Summerville being crowned winner of the 8th Miss Black Clarksville Scholarship Pageant. / John Davis

CLARKSVILLE, TENN. — After beating seven other contestants in the 8th Miss Black Clarksville Scholarship Pageant, Larsa Summerville, 18, now hopes to rise into a glamorous position in the modeling or television business.

Walking along the streets in downtown Clarksville last week, clad in a crown and pink sheath dress and toting her winning trophy, Summerville cut a commanding figure. She towered over passersby at a whopping five feet, 10 inches. This height was pushed over the 6-foot marker with the help of shiny beige platform heels. One could imagine that she might one day glide down the catwalks of New York, Paris and Milan.

Later, when she sat down to chat, Summerville possessed none of the shyness of some girls her age. The Clarksville High senior was direct, with no lack of confidence when detailing her hopes and dreams for the future. These include attending the University of Alabama in Huntsville this fall, then transferring to that university's main campus in Tuscaloosa after finishing her core courses.

Despite her confidence in general, Summerville claims she had no idea she would win the trophy on Feb. 25 at the Miss Black Clarksville Scholarship Pageant, which was founded by Carol Berry to increase the number of minority scholarships in the community.

"I thought I was going to get fifth or sixth place," she said. "I did not think I was going to win at all, because all of the other girls were so good."

When she did win, Summerville burst into tears, following in the stilettos of a long line of beauty contestant winners before her, with a few exceptions. The first black woman to be crowned Miss America, Vanessa Williams, was a cool customer. She let one small tear trickle down before erupting into a wide smile.

The year was 1983 and Williams became more than the 56th Miss America; she became a new face in a world of American beauty that historically excluded blacks. Summerville wasn't even born then. But she understands the complicated nature of black beauty firsthand, both in how it is perceived by the outsider and possessor alike.

ORISA O! - YORUBA RELIGION IS FASTEST GROWING RELIGION IN AMERIKKKA AND OTHER PARTS OF THE AMERICAS!

http://www.thegrio.com/news/african-religions-gain-following-among-black-christians.php

Are blacks abandoning Christianity for African faiths?

By Chika Oduah 7:59 AM on 10/19/2011

READ MORE: Atheist, Christianity, Faith, Orishas, Religion, Voodoo, Yoruba

43 Love it

12 Inspiring

4 So Sad

2 ROTFL

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Choir members sing during Easter service in Harlem at Mount Olivet Baptist Church April 8, 2007 in New York City. The historic church was built in 1907 and was originally a synagogue. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) The placement of fallen fragments of coconut helped William Jones decide on whether or not to go to graduate school.
The Yoruba priest that Jones had invited into his Brooklyn apartment had examined the four coconut pieces he had strewn on the floor before telling Jones that it would be OK for him to further his studies.
That was more than a decade ago and today, Jones, 42, is still a practitioner of the Yoruba spiritual tradition. He said that consultations with Yoruba priests leave him with a sense of inner peace.
"I go to see a priest or a 'babalawo' when I need clarity on something," said Jones, a well-known digital artist.
It's the customized advice from babalawos (masters and diviners in the Ifa Yoruba tradition) and Yoruba priests (practitioners of the Yoruba spiritual tradition that have undergone the rites of initiation) that attracted Jones to what is believed to be the indigenous spiritual practice of the Yoruba ethnic group after realizing his dissatisfaction with the generalized sermons offered at Christian churches.
Jones had attended predominantly African-American churches throughout the earlier part of his life and had considered himself to be a spiritual person. The Christian church just did not give him the personal attention he wanted.
Another African-American, Ozahu Belagun, 37, could not accept the Christian teaching of the metaphysical space for torture and condemnation, known as 'hell.'
"How can you tell me I'm going to a place [hell] that you've never been?" Belagun asked.
"And how do you know that you're not going there?"

Belagun, known as Pompey Blocker before he acquired an indigenous African name, has explored a variety of spiritual orientations. His mother was a Jehovah's Witness. He practiced Islam for three years and was inducted as a Freemason in 2005.
Now he practices voodoo and asserts that it's nothing like the hocus-pocus sorcery depicted in Hollywood films.
"I've always been connected to things that other people would shun and say is evil," Belagun said, referring to the tradition of voodoo.
Voodoo is believed to have historic roots in present day Benin and thus it shares similarities with other West African-derived religions.
The more popular of these are: Ifa Yoruba spiritual tradition, Palo, Candomble, Umbanda and Santeria (also known as Lukumi).
These practices are also known as orisha-centered religions because all of them recognize spirit-deities, known as orishas. Orishas, also spelled orixas or orisas, are spirits that control various natural forces and principles, including: fertility, water and love. Orisha literally translates in the Yoruba languages as 'owner of head," because it is believed that followers eventually take on the personality of designated orishas.
The Yoruba tradition has gained in popularity among blacks exploring African spirituality because of its accessibility in America. The Yoruba ethnic group is one of the largest three in Nigeria and those who have immigrated to the United States, have brought the teachings of Orisha and Ifa (the systemic basis of Yoruba spirituality) with them.
The fact is while West African-derived religions have historically been looked down upon, research shows that more African-Americans are exploring and adopting them. Many of these African-Americans were Christians and have either completely abandoned the Christian doctrine, like Jones, or are still incorporating Christianity with the West African-derived religions to create a unique, sort of 'on-demand' syncretism.
For example, Oluwole Ifakunle, or Baba Ifakunle, said he receives phone calls from Christians soliciting his babalawo services.
"The first thing they ask is, 'you know how to read?'" Ifakunle said. (Consultations during which babalawos and priests communicate with the orishas through the use of items such as coconuts or cowrie shells are known as readings.)
After that initial inquiry, he said the Christians usually go on to explain that they are dealing with a problem that has not been resolved the 'Christian way,' which includes praying with a pastor or fasting.

Ifakunle said that one Christian woman called him after suffering from a series of what she believed were demonic nightmares. But according to him, it's not only Christian parishioners who seek his spiritual counsel.
He said that a number of Christian pastors and ministers have visited his Harlem-based shrine.
"They usually come to me when they want to increase their church membership," he said. "Then I'll do a ritual to help them."
Anthropologists say these examples of religious syncretism are nothing new. Black slaves, particularly in present-day Haiti, hid their African spiritual practices from slave owners by disguising and incorporating them into the Roman Catholic religion they were often forced to accept. In fact, voodoo orishas, called loas or lwas, were reconfigured to mirror Roman Catholic saints and vice versa. So Papa Legba (a powerful spirit intermediary) became St. Peter, St. Lazarus or St. Anthony. Ayizan (the loa of trade and marketplace) became St. Clare of Assisi.
So while syncretism has occurred throughout history, what is relatively new is the heightened interest of West African-derived religions in the United States.
"Since the '50s and '60s there has been an increase with more African-Americans embracing these religions," said Sylvester Johnson, associate professor at Indiana University's religious studies department.
"Today, the practice in the U.S. is mostly in urban areas."
Johnson attributes the concentration of African-American practitioners of orisha-based religions in cities including Miami, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Sacramento and New Orleans can be attributed to the black pride movement of the 1960s and '70s.
In Atlanta, a city commonly referred to as the heart of the nation's black middle class, black pride is still very evident today.
"Atlanta has attracted a lot of black professionals, who have tended to lean toward a more black consciousness and afro-centric attitude," Johnson explained. The city has a number of Santeria and Yoruba followers. Africanized churches like the Shrine of the Black Madonna the First Afrikan Church serve the needs of those desiring a more African cultural experience.
The research of Harvard University African religious traditions professor Jacob Olupona reflects a greater tolerance and appreciation for not only African religions, but for other aspects of African culture. He said more African-Americans are traveling to places like Senegal, Ghana and mostly Nigeria where they gain a better understanding of indigenous spiritual practices.
"Part of it is a search for one's roots and one's identity," Olupona explained.
While there are no concrete statistical data that quantifies the number of African-American practitioners of orisha-based religions, 70 million is the often-quoted figure for the number of "African and New World peoples who participate in, or are closely familiar with, religious systems that include Ogun," based on research cited in the highly acclaimed book, "Africa's Ogun: old world and new," by anthropologist and professor Sandra Barnes.
Ogun is among the pantheon orishas.
In his book, "Orisa Devotion as World Religion," Olupona explains that orisha devotion was preserved by captured Africans during the transatlantic slave trade and is manifested in various forms throughout the Americas.
Olupona notes the diversity among African-American followers of orisha-centered practices.
"It's not just the lower socioeconomic class of African-Americans," he said. "You have the middle-class and educated people and professors who are adopting African religions."
One of these more educated individuals is Dianne Diakité, an associate professor at Emory University's religion department who freely participates in Yoruba and other African-based religions.
She says that the recent spread of West African-derived religions in the Unites States arises from the impact of African and Caribbean immigrants.
However, the attitude she refers to as 'Afrophobia,' continues to generate fear about things related to African culture.
"Historical records indicate that most black churches and missionaries of the 19th century understood African religious traditions as a threat to the moral and cultural uplift of black communities and described anyone practicing those religions as barbaric, primitive and savage," Diakité said.
She explains that contemporary stereotypes and distortions have characterized African religions as superstition, witchcraft and fetishism.
'Afrophobia,' as Diakité describes it, is a consequence of slavery and colonialism.
But perhaps that fear, or at least a hesitation, may be justified when investigating what is involved in West African-derived religions. Animal sacrifices, secret initiations, the chanting of the names of ancestors in libations, the personification of spirits in masquerades, shaving of body hairs, spirit possessions and refrain from eating tabooed foods are some of the aspects associated with the African religions that may be difficult for some people to accept.
"A lot of African-Americans are not ready to make that transition yet," said Belagun.
"Christianity is basically a third generation belief system among African-Americans-- they're Baptists and their mother was a Baptists and then their grandmother was a Baptist."
When it comes to religion, African-Americans tend to take it quite seriously. The most recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Life reported nearly eight in ten African-Americans, 79 percent, say religion is very important in their lives, compared with 56 percent among the general U.S. adult population. 16 percent of African-Americans attend evangelical Protestant churches and 59 percent attended 'historically black Protestant churches.'
Among 'historically black churches' 85 percent say religion is very important. 30 percent of respondents among 'historically black churches' attended religious services more than once a week and 80 percent said they prayed daily.
Nearly two-thirds of members of historically black Protestant churches are Baptists.
Overall, not only are black Americans are most likely to report a formal religious affiliation, but they are also the most religiously committed racial or ethnic group in the nation, according to the survey.
However, the study also confirms that the United States is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country. Even African-Americans are exploring non-Christian alternatives.
The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey found that those who claimed 'no religion' grew in every state within the last 18 years. Between 1990 and 2008, the number of nonreligious Americans nearly doubled, from 8 to 15 percent, according to the ARIS study. Among African-Americans, the increase was also nearly double, from 6 percent to 11 percent.
So, while increasing numbers of African-Americans are denouncing religion for atheism, others are adopting African religions, especially those from West Africa.
A growing dissatisfaction with Christianity among African-Americans seems to reflect disenchantment with the tradition of the black church.
"When you got churches full of pedophiles and crooks, people want to see what else is out there for them," said Kenny Depeyster.

His reference to highly publicized scandals, including the sexual harassment accusations against Georgia mega-church pastor, Bishop Eddie Long, notes that these cases are now 'bigger and in the public eye.'
Depeyster is a 'palero,' a follower of the Palo spiritual tradition that is believed to have emerged from the Congo basin region in central Africa. Palo was carried to the New World via the slave trade and was preserved by Afro-Latino communities in the United States. Today, African-Americans are also a part of the tradition. Depeyster has been a palero for about 16 years.
Christianity, he said, was not emphasized in his family.
But for Yoruba spiritual practitioner, William "Baba Bill" Mathews, 62, Christianity was a strong influence in his family's life. Mathews eventually left the church because he felt it lacked spirituality.
He remembers an incident as a 7-year-old boy one Sunday when he had told his grandmother that he did not want to go to church.
"My grandmother smacked me on my head and she said, 'why don't I want to go to God's house?'" Mathews recalls.
"I told her, 'God don't live there; God lives in nature.'"
According to Mathews, that childhood premonition was his calling into orisha. He openly practices Yoruba spirituality saying that it is no longer something to be ashamed of.
"During slavery, the blacks had to hide what they were doing, but that is no more," he said.
Mathew appreciates the simplicity of West African-derived religions and its accessibility regardless of one's educational status. He says Christianity has become highbrow and "difficult to understand." According to him, that's why the Yoruba tradition has grown "leaps and bounds" in the United States.
Mathews and his wife recently visited the Oyotunji African Village in northern Beaufort County, S.C.
Organized in the 1970s by the late Efuntola Oseijeman Adefunmi in an attempt to reclaim ancestral Yoruba customs and tradition, the Oyotunji village serves as a tourist attraction and a mecca for African-American followers of orisha-centered religions.
Adefunmi, an African-American born in 1928 as Walter King, served as a spiritual father for many blacks seeking knowledge about orishas. His historical significance and cultural relevance is well cited among religious scholars. The Oyotunji community that he founded is said to be North America's oldest, authentic African village.
"The Oyotunji community is a utopia," Olupona said. "It is a symbol of the black power movement that took place in this country in the 1970s."
Reverend Terri Adisa, an interfaith spiritualist, asserts that African-Americans can find more spirituality in Oyotunji village than in a typical black Christian church. She says the church has moved away from teaching members how to apply practical spiritual principles toward a more superficial doctrine.
"Christianity today is not about God, it's about 'church-ianity," Adisa said, referencing a term that is gaining popularity.
"It's about how to act and behave and dress in church," she said, "but when you get to the parking lot you're cussing at each other."
That disapproval of what Adisa perceives as a lack of sound spiritual commitment is not unlike the views of other African-Americans who have chosen to follow an African religion. Similarly, another Yoruba priest said that the Christian phrase of "being born again," is really another way to say "hypocrite."
Paleros, Yoruba spiritualists, voodoo practitioners and other followers of orisha-centered religions seem to be attracted to the tradition because they say it brings results. They enjoy going to a priest (which varies in name according to the tradition) and having the priest indicate their symptoms and the solutions.
"It's like going to a doctor," Jones said.
Nonetheless, that 'doctor-like' treatment may not suit everyone. Christianity still dominates in black America, but the ones who have ventured beyond say they are satisfied, at least for now.

• Asantewaa Oppong

  There is only one religion that is responsible for the 20 million Africans being brutally forced across an ocean, two world wars, the death of millions in wars for oil and other materials... that religion is Christianity. Let us be mature. Christianity is relatively new. Vodou always was and always will be. It is a religion based on the female observations of the universe. The great white male is only trying to be her by claiming the shed his blood (menstruation and birth) for humanity. Of course African people are returning to their roots. She is coming back again! The ancient, black, divine female. As her coming nears her children will return to her earth loving traditions. And they will forsake the illusions of a great white father who has no blood to shed except in war; which he cannot get enough of. You hate it because you can't control it. It will happen with or without your approval. 12-21-12.

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  • 12/16/2011 02:27 AM
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  JPYoung

  Asantewaa, I understand that people who claimed to be Christian did the horrors that you mentioned, but let's keep everything in perspective. I doubt that Christianity is relatively new. Also, not everyone who says they believe in God actually do. Blaming christianity is not the answer. "There is only one religion that is responsible for the 20 million Africans being brutally forced across an ocean, two world wars, the death of millions in wars for oil and other materials... that religion is Christianity". That statement is a stereotype, trust me. That's just like saying every muslim is a suicide bomber or terrorist, which we know is a lie. Same thing applies to Christianity, not every Christian that says the name of Jesus is a Christian. These same people distort the bible to fit their idealogy of race, love, money, etc. Don't be fooled by people who claim they know Christ, they have to show it by word and deed (what they say and their lifestyles).

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  • 01/25/2012 09:17 AM
  • in reply to Asantewaa Oppong
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  HonestAnswer

  I'm learning that in order to truly understand the faith that I practice (Christianity) I need to learn about other religions and how they parallel that of the one 'we' as Christian believers hail as being the most high. Don't get me wrong, I love the holy trinity (the father, the son and the holy spirit) its what works for me. But I've been doing a lot of research and I'm finding that I honestly should look more into an African Holistic (spiritual) Diet that assist with me harmonizing my soul, while elevating my spiritual self.
  Everything from the foods that we as black people eat (so called 'soul food') to the mentality (street code) many of us subscribe too has all been forced feed to us by a culture of people whom enslaved us emotionally, mentally, physically and/or psychologically. And the only way that 'we' as a people can get back to the essence of who we really are is by learning where we come from and the practices of our ancestors that bread life into the strong people we're meant to be (the original Hebrews and Canaanites).
  We as a people pray to a god...

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  • 12/03/2011 03:06 PM
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  Ghetto Saint

  The Ethiopians are the true bearers of the message of the historical Black Christ!
  What the Americanized Negro is follow is whart his wikad white slave master gave him in the non spiritual language of Anglo Saxon English as bastardized language!!!!!
  This is the reason why when Etiopians come to America they start their own churches because of the non spritual innovations the the Black churches etc!

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  • 12/02/2011 12:15 AM
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  David

  Christianity is the adopted name of the people that followed the teachings of Jesus after his death and resurrection. God called his son out of Egypt after King Herods death and his family settled in Nazareth near the sea of Galilee. This area or Jesus and his family were not European but European Roman rule made it a white man's story. Jesus is the resurrection and the light of truth because he taught that its just not about rising from the dead from the body,but rising from the dead of whatever it is that keeps a child of God from being more than a conquerer of pitfalls in life especially those who follow the words of, idolize and worship men/women. That's ones baggage and bondage, shake loose of that and see what truth and life is.

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  • 11/30/2011 12:12 PM
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  RastusClay I dance as good as I want. Uh huh. Yup. I be yo daddy, ax yo mamma.

  I left the Church of the Impertenent Misconception and immersed myself in traditional African Orisha nature religion. Now I lead my own drum circle and live in the most bodacious hut in the krall. Too bad I forgot my lighter I could use it to make fire and keep the lions away.

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  • 11/29/2011 02:28 PM
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  The Cipher

  What disturbs me about this article, is that these people all have said " I didn't get the answers I wanted", or something to this effect. Our relationship with our creator is to be based off of a desire to worship and serve , not "I'm not getting what I think I should get from God" To me I find it selfish, and it misses the point of the real fellowship that should exist btwn The creator and the creation. If God designs ways in which we are to come before him, who are we to say "this isn't working for me, I think I should worship you another way that speaks to me" Let us be humble in our dealings with the Spirit realm.

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  • 10/31/2011 01:28 PM
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  WhoWeAm IRC

  I think the turn to African based religions is more of a RE-turn. We all know the history of how blacks in America came to be Christian anyway, but I think this modern day revival is fascinating. At the site (http://whoweam.com/portraits/n... ) we recently interviewed an elderly black American who talked about being a staunch believer that the Bible is the manual on how to live life, but then he goes on to talk about how you have to remain open minded in today's world. I think one of the greatest abilities of the blacks in America is our ability to remain versatile in our approach to the "rules" of life. Perhaps it's a survival technique.

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  • 10/31/2011 12:31 PM
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  ageofknowledge

  Or perhaps ancient demons are calling...

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  • 10/31/2011 07:14 PM
  • in reply to WhoWeAm IRC
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  ageofknowledge

  Ah yes the occultic tribalism of the dark continent. These participants might want to be careful. It's a fine line between killing and eating each other and just dancing around singing about it.

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  • 10/29/2011 02:41 PM
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  Black&Mild

  i think im going to become a voddooo priestess if they allow tranny's to join their religion
  i am into female mutalation and i love to drain cats of their blood to use it as pasta sauce in my spaghetti, who want a plate? this spaghetti will allow you the insight to know if you need finish GED school or sign up to a CNA at your local scam college.....no need to go to harvard thats where christians go
  http://occupyhiphop.wordpress....

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  • 10/25/2011 10:29 PM
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  GRAND MASTER SEN$Ei {{-_-}}™ Black people shouldn't join the "melting pot". {{-_-}}

  The article failed to mention Ma'at, a religion based on Egyptian mythology. {{-_-}}

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  • 10/22/2011 05:48 PM
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  GRAND MASTER SEN$Ei {{-_-}}™ Black people shouldn't join the "melting pot". {{-_-}}

  Jesus was Black anyway so Christianity IS an African religion. Don't tell the right wing that. {{-_-}}

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  • 10/22/2011 05:44 PM
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  AnonymousNegro

  this is ridiculous I doubt that voodoo is a practice of most Africans if any there are very few. It's more of a Haitian thing. Anyway I know lotsa Africans who worship a white God but if they do decide to find another religion or spirituality then I support em.

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  • 10/22/2011 03:20 PM
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  JPYoung

  Brothers allow me to set the record straight for all. Jesus isn't white, that's the garbage that America and the western world wants you to think. Jesus was not white, He was of Middle eastern decent; that means He could've been light skinned or dark skinned since Jews and other races from that area are naturally dark. I repeat brothers, He's not white or european. Don't believe that nonsense.

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  • 01/25/2012 09:23 AM
  • in reply to AnonymousNegro
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  ninou2040

  Voodoo is primarily an african practice. It all started in Africa and haitians just brought it there during slavery. But it is mostly practiced in West Africa.Since most african countries have the same basic beliefs and religion that look alike, I think the article is just referring to them as Voodoo, a global word to all of them.But each of them has differences on the process etc...

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  • 10/24/2011 09:16 PM
  • in reply to AnonymousNegro
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  Pharaoh Sco

  You know alot of "brainwashed" Africans who worship a white God, Any man for that matter is a damn fool to worship a God that doesnt look like him, thats just human nature. NO white man can create a black man but a black man can create a white man..a white god NEVER that.

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  • 10/23/2011 01:42 PM
  • in reply to AnonymousNegro
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  The Magic ManO

  Imagines in media play strong to the general populations hatred and disguise of traditional Africa derived religions. These imagines are never showing the beauty of the music, dance, rituals, and the great "wisdom" which is inherit in African tradition. The ancient has given rise to the modern so what is more ancient than African worldview which is alive and well in African tradition religion. It is through the Great African Empires that we the world have inherited culture, art, philosphy, mathematics, astrology, science, theology, and so much more. It is clear Judeo-christian believers who are the major controls to the economic engines which fuel the christian right choose to maintain an unpopular expression of African traditions. It is wrong to hate the parents of everything they have derived there beliefs from. The African consciousnes give rise to thinkers and their ancient religions build the believers individual-selves. That a chain become stronger through each individual link and that a community of many strong individuals for the purpose of serving the whole will produce strength. Keeping the memories of great thinkers and leaders in African traditions are celebrated because while many of the desert religions choose to wait...

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  • 10/22/2011 11:42 AM
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  RastusClay I dance as good as I want. Uh huh. Yup. I be yo daddy, ax yo mamma.

  Jambo. Ungawah. Boogabooga.

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  • 11/29/2011 02:21 PM
  • in reply to The Magic ManO
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  Odwirafo

  Mikyia mo (Greetings),
  The number one reason why our people are abandoning christianity as well as islam, et. al. is because it is a matter of record that jesus, moses, muhammed, allah, yahweh, buddha, brahmin, etc. are all absolutely fictional characters who never existed of any race whatsoever. When eurasians invaded ancient Afuraka/Afuraitkait (Africa) thousands of years ago, they came into contact with religion for the first time. Over the past 2,500 years eurasians have corrupted fragments of our Ancestral Religion and manufactured the above-mentioned characters. For details on the origins of these fictional characters and the cosmological foundation of Afurakani/Afuraitkaitnit (African) Ancestral Religion see:
  KUKUU-TUNTUM - The Ancestral Jurisdiction
  www.odwirafo.com/kukuutuntumpa...
  Odwirafo
  www.odwirafo.com

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  • 10/21/2011 01:03 PM
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  Ghetto Saint

  We can both agree that Christianity is pretty much a joke looking at the satanic deeds of the wite katholick preest and the bishap long's of the world.
  But the greatness of West Africa are in the Islamic personalities such as: Kan Kan MANSA MUSA of the MALIAN Empire, ASKIA MUHAMMAD of the SONGHAY Empire, TARIK BIN ZAID conqurer of SPAIN!!!!!! Female Muslim Scholar NANA ASMA'U of the SOKOTO Empire!!!!!
  Becareful when the Ghetto Saint is present!!!!!!
  BTW see the navy Blue and Gold trim BUBU that Ghetto Saint is stuntin in that style of dress is of Muslim Design that you all are jockin!!!!!!

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  • 10/21/2011 09:07 PM
  • in reply to Odwirafo
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  Ghetto Saint

  It was Muslim hero Sheik Uthman dan Fodio who defeated the pagan Yoruba and established protection for women and equity in norhtern Nigeria!!!!!!!
  Peep these facts Islam is the fastest growing religion:
  WHAT THE MEDIA and PERSONALITIES SAY ABOUT ISLAM
  Quote:
  "Islam is the fastest-growing religion in America, a guide and pillar of stability for many of our people..."
  HILLARY RODMAN CLINTON, Los Angeles Times, May 31, 1996, p.3
  Quote:
  Already more than a billion-people strong, Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion. ABCNEWS, Abcnews.com
  Quote:
  "Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the country." NEWSDAY, March 7, 1989, p.4
  Quote:
  "Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the United States..." NEW YORK TIMES, Feb 21, 1989, p.1
  Quote:
  "Moslems are the world's fastest-growing group..." USA TODAY, The populationreferance bureau, Feb. 17,
  1989, p.4A
  Quote:
  "Muhummed is the most successful of all Prophets and religious personalities. " Encyclopedia Britannica
  Quote:
  "There are more Muslims in North America then Jews Now." Dan Rathers, CBSNEWS

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  • 10/21/2011 08:56 PM
  • in reply to Odwirafo
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  Ghetto Saint

  Do your homework before bumping your gums the Ghetto Saint hear ya

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  • 10/21/2011 08:59 PM
  • in reply to Ghetto Saint
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  Nana Akosua Baakan Agyiriwah

  The funny thing about it is that many Africans have turned to Christianity or Islam. When you go home to Africa, you will be surprised how many churches and mosques are there, and how most people see African-derived faith systems as primitive and backwards. They see it as the religion of the heathen, and want nothing to do with it. In Nigeria they are killing children because they are believed to be "witches". They have holding cells/prisons for some of the elders who have been charged with witchcraft/demon possessed. It is sad but true, and I think that African Americans should remove the romanticism from their eyes and see what is really going on in Africa. Going back to Africa...?? Well, let's make sure it's a trip imbued with open eyes, hearts and a large dose of undeniable truth.

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  • 10/20/2011 01:49 AM
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  redfalcon06

  In most cases, what was traditional African has left Africa and landed on other more receptive shores. It was summon by those who are still receptive to the ancestral knowledge and culture. If you have divorced your culture for that of the west, then, that is your choice. But, we, who were forced to give up our culture are now trying to regain it. Thanks, but no thanks to the return to a blond, blue-eyed, pale-skinned savior who does not look like us and has not saved our bodies or minds. Bring us something from Africa that we can use from the heart and sound of Mother Africa, not the same ole death and poverty that we received after getting off the slave ships.

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  • 10/24/2011 11:58 AM
  • in reply to Nana Akosua Baakan Agyiriwah
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  funlayo

  With all due respect, Nana, there is definitely truth in what you have said, however, that's not the whole story. Having spent extended periods of time in NIgeria, I can say unequivocally that these "witch hunt" stories so beloved by the Western media are only a modicum of what is going on. There are still many, MANY Africans who respect and practice traditional religions. Why don't we see any mention in the media of Isese Day? The day of honoring traditional deities and values all over Southwestern Nigeria when people come out in droves to pay their respects to the various Orisa and ancestral spirits? Or coverage of the Osun Osogbo festival when thousands come out to honor Osun and make pilgrimages to pray at the banks of the river? And the many other public displays of pride in culture and traditional worldview?
  These are not the images the media here, which is about 2 steps above being an all out tabloid, wants seen. While you're right that a good majority of people have converted, many people still respect their indigenous traditions even if they don't practice them. And many more people have positive engagement with traditional religions...

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  • 10/20/2011 10:08 AM
  • in reply to Nana Akosua Baakan Agyiriwah
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  DoinMe

  People are waking up from the bondage of organized religion period. More people are seeking a closer relationship with God and in my opinion, God ain't nowhere near some of this madness that has brainwashed millions.

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  • 10/19/2011 07:31 PM
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  ripuree

  Am I to believe that black people are finally awaking in significant numbers, to realize that Christianity is a criminal organization, that is responsible for too many crimes on us, for too long, to be any good for us? Is there truly value to drinking a known poison day by day, in the hopes that one day it may become our cure? And if a father finds his daughter who was given up for adoption at birth, then engages her in a sexual relation, (knowing that he's her father) when she realizes the depravity that had been perpetrated on her for so long (which produced her father's child, plus her own child and sibling) should she just forgive, forget and continue embracing her father because he's repented, and further is a man of God? Well I am saying that the relationship of Christianity to black people is just as the examples above, especially the latter.
  The foundational arrogance and evil officiated by the Catholic Church and Christianity on Africans, Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals are yet to be acknowledged as main reasons for the unbelievable acts of brutality and genocide committed by Europeans in the name...

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  • 10/19/2011 07:00 PM
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  Cocolicious

  It's not Christianity, itself, that is criminal - it's Romanized Christianity which is responsible for helping corrupt and rob the world. There is a legacy of sodomy laced in with Roman Christianity, a legacy that continues today, present/visible in many Christian churches. The original Christian religion comes from the Horn of Africa - the Eastern Orthodox Ethiopian Church.

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  • 11/30/2011 12:49 PM
  • in reply to ripuree
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  redfalcon06

  That was really beautifully stated. We need more of our beautiful black women to realize that they are the mothers of civilization, and have the right to speak this type of truth on these forum. Much respect!!!!! Why not return our own way? The way that we are living now is taking us to hell on earth. Let's return to the way of our ancestors and be restored to our original greatness? Peace and Blessings to us all.

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  • 10/24/2011 11:28 AM
  • in reply to ripuree
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  LotusLeader

  Hello Ripuree,
  Sir, thank you so very much for an excellent analysis of Christian history from it's Roman Empire re-branding now know as Christianity, the world has been duped for thousands of years. Your concise assessment lays bare the root cause of many of our communities issues. Low achievement (self-hatred), Violence (Torture) Abuse (Rape). This is how our people became Christian and later Muslim. Convert or Die was always the motto. It still is. Thank you, again Sir.

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  • 10/19/2011 11:42 PM
  • in reply to ripuree
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  ripuree

  Thank you. But "RIPUREE" is a mother and grandmother.

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  • 10/20/2011 12:21 PM
  • in reply to LotusLeader
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  LotusLeader

  Please forgive, did not have my glasses, so sorry. Excellent post. Thank you again, Madame.

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  • 10/21/2011 11:16 PM
  • in reply to ripuree
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  hungryforknowlege

  follow your heart & mind!!! not, anything someone wrote or said, remember WE ALL ARE HUMAN, no one nos the WAY. it is up to YOU to find the way. Remember the FIRST SLAVES, were NOT BECAUSE of RACE, IT was because they were not christian. SO DONT believe that RELIGION IS NOT A TOOL TO DIVIDE AND CONQUER THE MASSES!!!!!!

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  • 10/19/2011 06:13 PM
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  redfalcon06

  When the minds and hearts of the people have been totally filled with lies and racist attacks, how can we still think that we can safely follow our minds and our hearts in their present condition. We need to learn more about the traditional African values. We cannot limit ourselves to what has been marketed to us through the television, accepted by converted Africans, false teachers, and preachers. If we really want to know the truth, we must return to our history and culture and explore what was really known and practiced by our people. That means going back to the original source of the sciences, religion, and literature - Ancient Kamit or what is known today as Egypt. There you will find that our people lived by laws, not how we felt, which can be manipulated by others who want to enslave your minds. Read the book by Dr. Ra Un Nefer Amen, "Maat: 11 Laws of God", by Dr. Ra Un Nefer Amen? Visit www.taui.biz?

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  • 10/24/2011 11:24 AM
  • in reply to hungryforknowlege
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  Tiffany Thompson

  Those old voodoo practices of worshiping unseen entities and trading souls has been passed down through every religion through every race for billions of years. Reincarnated/recollecting delinquent souls inside and around all of us have passed on those abominable acts-even under the umbrella of modern religions. Tell me it is not true and I will tell you: You are a liar brainwashed by the very souls that keep you living an animal’s existence with 98% animal DNA.

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  • 10/19/2011 05:59 PM
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  Tiffany Thompson

  Our children are treated like animals for the slaughter-only for their souls. Foods are used to lure souls in to feast. Then those souls are snatched up and traded.
  Every race has taken up those nasty rituals of worshiping unseen entities, sacrificing and snatching souls out of their young, old, and animals and luring souls to feast on food to enhance their old reincarnated lives. Its high time people admit they have drained the lifeblood out of every living thing to the point we are nothing but dead drones living off the souls of others. Those are abominable acts passed on by the old reincarnated/recollecting souls inside and around us, which must cease, if humanity is to survive.
  
  http://profiles.google.com/tif...

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  • 10/19/2011 05:58 PM
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  redfalcon06

  No one can deny that many people have practiced sacred rituals of sacrifice. But, the true understanding of the sacrifice is usually not never explain to observers. They just leave you watch people dancing around the fire. So, you don't know what is going on and assume that the people are simply heathens. The purpose of the sacrifice is for man/woman to give up the negative conditions or energy that is related to that animal spirit. For example, if a person suffers from fear or anger and has a desire to rid him/her self from these limiting "human" weaknesses, that person might offer up an animal that exhibits that behavior. For example, a chicken (fear) or a bull (anger) might be used as symbols of those conditions. However, if one does not wish to practice in that way, then there are other ways of accomplishing the same thing. Don't throw the "baby - essence" out with the bathwater (dislikes). You can make other offers and give up those conditions within your mind and spirit by using divine laws and meditation and reflections. Learn how to heal these conditions to improve life?

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  • 10/24/2011 11:44 AM
  • in reply to Tiffany Thompson
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  Ghetto Saint

  you sound like u used to be a witch or something like that!

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  • 10/19/2011 07:29 PM
  • in reply to Tiffany Thompson
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Tiffany Thompson
The practices of worshiping unseen entities (which are demons pretending to be deities and gods); sacrificing children, adults and animals; and luring souls to feast on food have been going on around the world for billions of years. People have been worshiping demons, hiding it and participating in sacrificing souls for fame and fortune and religion and even so-called love. Only to end up like Haiti, Louisiana, Florida, Mexico, Cuba, England, Ethiopia, Jerusalem, Asia etc., etc., etc., a world filled with people preoccupied with worshiping unseen entities; snatching, trading and sacrificing souls (from children, adults and animals). Now the world is turned upside down. People are wondering where their souls are, and “trying to find themselves” and dying far too soon.
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• 10/19/2011 05:57 PM
• 1 Like



redfalcon06
This is simply the foolishness perpetuate by Hollywood that so many people have eaten which causing us to be so sick today. Don't allow yourself to be fooled into believing those western lies. Most of these lies were perpetuated to keep black people physically and spiritually enslaved. Many historically educated black people all over the world know that this is and was a lie. If you are an African-American or an African, you owe it to your ancestors to research how they lived. Don't just repeat the lies used to destroy our minds, here? Go and study the glorious teachings of so many black historians and spiritual scientist living in the USA and other western countries. You will find the truth. Study Dr. John Henry Clarke, Dr. Ben, Dr. Asa Hilliard, Dr. Chiek Anta Chiop, and so many more?
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• 10/24/2011 12:07 PM
• in reply to Tiffany Thompson
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Ghetto Saint
sorry miss wite lady but speak for yourself!
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• 10/19/2011 07:28 PM
• in reply to Tiffany Thompson
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Tiffany Thompson
I do not care what religion blacks practice. The results will be the same.
Worshiping unseen entities and sacrificing souls are not new things. They are old reincarnated/recollecting practices brainwashed into the very fabric of every race/culture from one generation to the next. As they (the souls inside and around us) make us believe, it is necessary to worship them and sacrifice others (humans and animals); they lead us to early deaths
http://profiles.google.com/tif...
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• 10/19/2011 05:56 PM



GRAND MASTER SEN$Ei {{-_-}}™ Black people shouldn't join the "melting pot". {{-_-}}
You're entitled to your opinion. But I must say that abandoning religion should not mean abandoning a code morals and ethics. For most people, Christianity and other religions provide this. If you can find a way to keep up with a set of standards and a list of do's and don'ts for yourself without religion, more power to you. It's not religion which keeps society together; it's morals.
The problem is that a lot of people abandon religion for the purpose of abandoning morals. They don't want ANYONE or ANYTHING telling them what to do, not even themselves. That goes past atheism; that's anarchy. And then we're back to being 98% animals. {{-_-}}
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• 10/22/2011 05:54 PM
• in reply to Tiffany Thompson
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redfalcon06
Christianity and other western religions are not only source of morals and values. We must explore other sources because it has been proven to us that many of the people that we have accepted as spiritual preachers and teachers have fallen prey to the same decadence that they teach against.
We have the right to explore other sources and especially those developed by our own people throughout history. Stop being believers and begin to know through experience.
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• 10/24/2011 11:48 AM
• in reply to GRAND MASTER SEN$Ei {{-_-}}™



Arumugamudaly
Tiffany, you are consistent in your affirmation. I must confess, I share your concern. Please pardon me to share an old axiom that "a good man sees weed where flowers should grow, but does not just point it out. He uproots the weed and plant flowers there. He nurtures the flowers and sees them grow." Man is not doomed, there is a way out! If you know, please share it. Thank you
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• 10/21/2011 01:03 PM
• in reply to Tiffany Thompson



donald wilson
"There be some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ.
But though we or an angel from heaven preach ANY OTHER GOSPEL unto you than that we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Galatians 1:7.
Cocconuts!!!! (LOL)
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• 10/19/2011 05:36 PM



redfalcon06
Today, after so much oppression, destruction, and disease, and much deceit have been practiced in most of the western religions, it is almost criminal to continue to tell people to not seek other alternative gospels, by reading such a verse from any book that suggests that a people continue to practice a doctrine that they have become disenchanted and seek another way of life. How could any righteous person suggest such a thing, by telling them to not listen to any other gospels? That verse appears to have been written to hold a people in contentment and to maintain their enslavement. We can no longer listen to these types of teachers or preachers. What happened to the free will of man that he/she uses to make righteous decisions based on the divine laws?
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• 10/24/2011 01:20 PM
• in reply to donald wilson
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Arumugamudaly
Donald, may we learn not to laugh at others belief. Hold fast that which you have received but let us learn to respect others views. The problem with western religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) is their intolerance of others religions, their exclusivity unlike the eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism) that are tolerant and inclusive. All religions had been infiltrated, there is a need for true seekers to test every thing by the Spirit of Truth in them. There is no religion higher that Truth. Truth is the summit of Being. It is the Truth that you know that can and will set you free.
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• 10/21/2011 01:15 PM
• in reply to donald wilson
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Ghetto Saint
Why Erase the comments from the Ghetto Saint??????
Did I hit a nerve?
Well you explain how Blacks became Christian in this country when all of the historical documenrts show that the "slaves" were either Animist or Muslim???????
When did Blacks become "christian" in the diaspora and did torture, rape and mutalition play apart in this??????
Do'nt play wit the Ghetto Saint!!!!!!!
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• 10/19/2011 03:40 PM
• 6 Likes



Najaa Young
My parents converted in the early 70's to the Ifa/Yoruba tradition and my brothers and I were subsequently raised in this tradition. I am doing a documentary on this subject right now visit our website to view an excerpt www.americanafricansdocumentar....
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• 10/19/2011 02:34 PM
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wreed123
So What? What difference does it make? I say whatever floats your boat, so long as you live by the golden "do unto others" rule. I haven't heard yet of a religion, created by people (as they all are) that has a lock on absolute truth. Worship on!
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• 10/19/2011 01:58 PM
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mourice
Seeking an understanding of how NATURE works is getting closer to God. Not chants and pomp and showing off and garb and CLAIMING to represent God. The VAST majority of those who claim to represent God are actually the anti-Christ in formal garb. THE VAST MAJORITY PROBABLY MEANS YOUR PASTER, PREACHER, WHATEVER TITLE. Promise. More and more people are seeing that reality. Jesus was not white (he was a brown skinned, curly afro person born in the Jewish culture). That would make "the founder of Christianity" an enemy of WallStreet, the business world in general and mainstream white society, because he's not white. Yet they tout THEIR "christian" faith as superior to YOUR christian faith because THEY'RE WHITE. Blacks have been catering to the BRAND of Christianity that IS racist. That's NOT what the REAL Jesus taught. Thus why more and more non-whites are cutting themselves off from the white version of Christianity. I just don't want them to land in another misleading trap in the process.
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• 10/19/2011 01:49 PM
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LVCofer
Hippocracy is what you are spouting. Do your research and stop listening to other peoples comment and couching your opinion on that. Read up on the Council of Nicea 325AD and the Council of Chalcedon as well. There is so much info available to bring clarity to those who believe blindly something that did not even exist and obtain an overstanding of how other cultures had no spiritual foundation, yet wfter being taught by the People of Alkebulan or whatever name you wish to call the land we now like to call Africa. Find out how WSR became Ausar became Osirius became the Father or how Heru became Horus became Jesus OR do you want to know. You need not change your beliefs but the truth will set you free from the religious shackles that bound you. You must "Sankofa"!!! and this will help anyone who wants a better understanding of the Universe and the principles of MAAT. "Medu Neter"Too much info, nevertheless KNOW This . . . . . Blacks cannot ben racist. Racism implies Power and we have not power. You are now dealing with White Supremacy. ...
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• 10/19/2011 02:50 PM
• in reply to mourice
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mourice
The reason that people are open to other faiths is because faith in this country is in politics and that has PROVEN itself to be empty accept to those sitting on masses of cash. That's NOT 99% of the population. The church is political that's why white churches versus black churches in the first place. If Jesus were alive (skin as of copper, hair as of sheep's wool) they would call the "founder of Christianity" by the n' word. There whiteness IS their faith. The bible - that is ignored by all and is "the word" - never mentions "white people" that's why they rewrote the ORIGINAL. Misleading the entire inhabited earth. Now after centuries of deception people are groping for something real and lasting. Instead of just latching onto ANY FAITH, however, my advice would be to just routinely say a quite, private prayer to the "real" God and not think that brick and mortar buildings (or whatever structure) is God. It's not. Watch out for the NEXT misleading bunch trying to be THE NEW WHITEMAN.
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• 10/19/2011 01:31 PM
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Cocolicious
I'm open. Christianity has a corrupt legacy. My mom would tell me about the old priestess and witch doctor in her village and how this woman had so much knowledge, foresight, wisdom and could cure diseases. IMO I think that's where I should be looking to, traditional practices that focus on nature. That's where our ancestors were before all the mayhem swept through and ruined all the peace.
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• 10/19/2011 12:44 PM
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redfalcon06
Stay open to your own culture. That is the only way that black people can restore their minds from the holocaust of Christianity and the enslavement of the African Mind. Return to the natural laws and you will find the truth. It is all around us, but only those who are seeking can find it. Stay open?
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• 10/24/2011 01:28 PM
• in reply to Cocolicious
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thefriendraiser
i would have loved to see Buddhism explored in this post but very fascinating.
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• 10/19/2011 12:36 PM
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thefriendraiser
whoever said SMH has no understanding of life.
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• 10/19/2011 12:32 PM
• 3 Likes



Vic
It's a start.
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• 10/19/2011 11:25 AM
• 5 Likes

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American Africans is filming in the following cities:

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We are currently looking for people to interview who fit into the following categories:

1. African Americans who adopted African names, cultural traditions and religions as a direct result of being involved in the Black Nationalist and Pan African Movements of the 1960’s and 70’s, had families and raised their children in this manner.
2. People who were raised in African centered households, to be considered a member of this group you must have an African name (legal or adopted by your parents) and your parents practiced an African religion.
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