A Hatemongering Pastor Runs For NYC Mayor

James David Manning, the pastor of the Atlah World Missionary Church in Harlem, has recently announced that he is running for mayor of New York, declaring that as mayor he would (unilaterally) eliminate local sales tax and raise the minimum wage to $27.

Over the years, the church's outdoor message board has posted numerous homophobic, racist, and false statements like the one that said, "YOU VOTED FOR OBAMA AND HE TURNED YOUR SONS GAY, TURNED HARLEM WHITE, EMPTIED CHURCHES, FILLED SHELTERS WITH WOMEN & CHILDREN."

Such wild and misleading statements have prompted others in the community to tie handwritten signs to the church's fence that said, " Hate Is Not A Community Value" and "Hate Breeds Violence," and to organize a picket line whose participants represented the city's diversity.

It's hard to see anyone taking Pastor Manning's run for mayor seriously. It's also hard to believe anyone who calls themselves a true Christian being a member of this hatemongering church.

Canadian Racism

Malcolm X once said that anything below the Canadian  border was the South, referring to the existence of white racism throughout the United States. That led other blacks to label the so-called "liberal" North as "Up South."

The "Up South" label could just as easily apply to Canada, a destination many fugitive slaves  headed for to gain freedom.

In Norman Jewison: A Director's Life by Ira Wells (Sutherland House Books, 2021), I learned that the Canadian-born film director (born in 1926),whose many films include In the Heat of the Night, A Soldier's Story, and The Hurricane, grew up in a Toronto neighborhood that was a five-minute walk from a Lake Ontario beach. At the beach, there was a sign Jewison would see that said, "NO JEWS, N******[NIGGERS], OR DOGS." The sign, writes Wells, a Canadian academic and journalist, was there to ensure that "the sight of a Black person or Jew" would not hinder the enjoyment of the beach by families seeking relief on a hot summer day. 

So despite being seen as a refuge for runaway slaves and a land that promotes racial tolerance and multiculturalism, Canada had its own struggles with racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry.

Note: Despite his surname, Norman Jewison is not Jewish. He is a white Protestant of British ancestry.

An Imminent Race War In America?

So much has been written and said in the national news media about Trump's racism;white nationalists in Charlottesville,Virginia; and white supremacy that I'm motivated to read The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-Up Call by the late journalist Carl T. Rowan (1925-2000), published in 1996 by Little, Brown, to see how prophetic it is.

After reading the book, I hope I will be motivated enough to write about it in an essay/review.

John Legend And A Racist Paparazzo

Gossip columnist Rachael Clemmons reported in "The Word" (Metro New York, January 24, 2017) that recently singer John Legend and his wife Chrissy Teigen were approached at JFK airport in New York by "a bonehead paparazzo" [Clemmons's description] who made a racist comment about Legend that Teigen later discussed on Twitter. The paparazzo said to her, "If we evolved from monkeys, why is John Legend still around?"

If that had been said to, say, Spike Lee, no doubt Lee would have gone ballistic. But Legend, being very gracious, told Variety that "I'm not hurt by someone saying that to me because I'm smarter, I'm stronger."

I wish Legend had said something like this to the paparazzo: "I have evolved. Unfortunately, it's primitive people like you who haven't evolved. Otherwise such a stupid, backward, and unnecessary comment like the one you just made wouldn't have come out of your mouth."

African-American Cartoonist Morrie Turner Dies At 90

Morrie Turner, the African-American cartoonist, who drew the Wee Pals comic strip, died last month at age 90. The Los Angeles Times obituary writer (January 29, 2014) wrote that Turner started Wee Pals in 1965, "soon populating the strip with clever kids spanning a rainbow of races and ethnicities."But the writer neglected to mention that Turner contributed one-panel cartoons to the "Humor in Hue" page in Negro Digest magazine (renamed Black World) in the 1960s and 1970s. Negro Digest was published by the Chicago based Johnson Publishing Company that also published Ebony and Jet magazines. Turner's "Humor in Hue" cartoons always had an anti-racism theme.

For me the most memorable cartoon that he drew was one consisting of ten-panels called "The Invisible Black: A Study in White Color-Blindness" (Black World, June 1970). It depicts a white male and female, who in their travels in different venues, are totally oblivious to the black men and women they encounter performing various job titles: flight attendant, bus driver, firefighter, et cetera. That is, until they happen upon a intoxicated black man with a liquor bottle in his hand, sprawled out in front of an apartment building. "Look, Henry," announces the woman, with obvious disgust, "isn't that typical of them!!!"

Two Civil Rights Songs

If I were a radio deejay like the late New York broadcaster Danny Stiles ("The Vicar of Vintage"), I'd play Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit." And then I'd segue into "Georgia Rose" by Carmen McRae. The songs complement each other. Both were recorded two years apart during the Civil Rights Movement days of the 1950s. One dealt with lynching, the other promoted racial pride and self-esteem.

Discrimination At The Union Club, 1983

Black and White Men Together/New York [later renamed Men of All Colors Together], an interracial gay anti-racism group, after nearly three months, has emerged victorious in the fight against the Union Club's discriminatory admission policy. After initially denying such a policy, the East Village gay bar and disco has agreed to meet all four of BWMT's demands. The demands are an apology to all those it has discriminated against including four black young men from BWMT (Charles Brack, Lawrence Dubose, Alfredo Perez, and Donald Reid) who were sent, along with four white members, to "test" the club's admission policy on August 12, 1983; the elimination of its discriminatory admission policy; compensation of the victims by making a substantial financial contribution to BWMT's Discrimination Documentation Project; and the hiring of Third World people as bartenders, waiters, bouncers, etc.

In BWMT's newsletter for November, it was announced that the Union Club has agreed to make a $2,000 contribution to compensate the victims. The club's manager, John Addison, previously stated that the club could not afford to make a financial contribution but BWMT refused to take the statement seriously. It is their belief that one way to put an end to discriminatory admission policies is to make the practice of it very costly to bar and disco owners. They see their victory at the Union Club as a way "to show the community as well as other bar owners that a multi-racial, non-discriminatory bar can survive and prosper in this community. Our goal," continues the newsletter, "is not to put gay establishments out of business; it is more important that we prove we don't have to endure discriminatory actions."

The settlement came four days after BWMT held a joint press conference and demonstration outside the club, located at 110 East 14th Street, on October 13.
Final payment of the compensation was scheduled to be made on or before October 31, 1983. BWMT plans to go back to the club in a few weeks to see if it is complying with the agreement.

In a letter published in the gay newspaper, the New York Native, John Addison, the club's manager, called the situation at the door August 12 a "misunderstanding." He invited the four black BWMT members "to return to the Union Club as my guest for the evening of their choice." Interestingly, the letter was dated October 12, the day before the press conference and demonstration during which he denied being a discriminator. Lidell Jackson, BWMT's press liaison, believes Addison's letter and his unsuccessful attempt to upstage BWMT at its own press conference by trying to hog press attention is his "way of trying to use the press to his best advantage."

However, articles in the New York Native about the club persuaded Dignity, a gay Catholic group, to cancel and reschedule its 11th anniversary party which it was going to hold at the Union Club on October 21.

In a related story reported by the Washington Blade, another gay newspaper, in its October 14 issue, the Washington, D.C. chapter of BWMT has dropped its complaint of discrimination against Badlands, a local gay bar and disco, which it had filed with D.C. Office of Human Rights. The complaint was filed on July 14, reports the Blade, after BWMT/DC received "a number of reports from local black Gays that Badlands was requiring blacks to show identification for proof -of-age while whites were not required to show such proof." The bar, says the Blade, "has agreed to contribute $5,000 to a Gay operated anti-discriminatory program."

Note: David Kaufman's the root.com article, "Logo's 'The A-List': A Symbol of Gay Apartheid?" (December 6, 2010) complains that "[t]he same-sex reality-TV show is set in New York but has no black lead characters. Not unusual in a gay world that is routinely segregated by race."

Anyone familiar with the gay world is not surprised by the lack of color-blindness in the gay community. It's nothing new as my above article, written in November of 1983, underscores.

Walking In A Black Person's Shoes

Those whites, who complain about blacks playing the race card and who see racism as part of a bygone era, should follow in the footsteps of the late white journalist John Howard Griffin, the author of Black Like Me: disguise themselves as blacks for a week or two, if they're brave enough to attempt it. I think the experience would give them a whole new perspective on race in America.