Empowerment Experiement...Buying Black

Here is a quick narrative from an article in Clutch Mag on "Hood Politics: The Foreign Business Takeover"....

Darren walks into the American Deli on Random Rd. in Atlanta, Ga. Orders the usual Chicken Philly and Wings special. The waitress  – Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Japanese, who knows – takes his order, shouts back to the cook in an indecipherable dialect and takes the next person’s order.

10 minutes elapses and the waitress shouts, “89!” Darren looks down at his receipt. One more order away.

“Number 90!” Darren steps to the counter, grabs his order, looks in the bag and asks for more blue cheese.

“It’s gonna to be fifty cents extra,” the waitress says.

“It was just thirty cents last week,” he responds.

The waitress, with a bewildered grin on her face, gives a half shrug. Darren pays the extra fifty cents, grabs the blue cheese and walks out the store. As he opens his car door, he turns around to notice the Korean Beauty Supply store and the Discount Store on the same strip as the American Deli. Across the street is a nail shop, ran by Vietnamese business owners (he knows that much).

Shaking his head, he dips into his car and cranks it up. Pausing for a second, he ingests the situation of it all. The movies. The looks of perceived condescension. The lack of Black business owners in the hood.

With the blare of Nas and Damian Marley through the speakers, he drives off.

So I honestly thought I did a blogpost on the Empowerment Experiment, but I guess I didn't,...and I just sent it in an email to some of my friends. Basically a family (The Anderson's) decides to only buy from and support black businesses for a whole year. Yes you might think that it is nearly impossible, but after watching the video, you will see that it isn't as crazy as it sounds.

I think it is so important that black people become more aware of their "buying power"...It seems as though whenever my family or certain groups of my friends get together the topic of black businesses always surfaces. As you can see from the narrative of "Darren" and his experience in American Deli, others have come into the black community and have been reaping the profits of the "black dollar"... The Clutch Mag article refers to a lot of these issues...so what should be done? It is just such a problematic situation. Some would say boycott/forgo buying from these businesses (which can work, but there needs to be more of a movement)..also there is a need for more black businesses, but more importantly black people need to support each other... I'll keep this short for now. It's really To Be Continued..

Until Next Time...

Screen on the Green=Fail

So anyone that knows me, knows that I like to be outside... I just like fresh air and sunshine and what not. So it's only natural that I enjoy parks. So every summer, Atl has Screen on the Green in which they show a movie outside. Last year it was moved to Centennial park because of the drought in Piedmont Park, but finally it was back to Piedmont this year and boy was I excited... So my friends and I even planned on going to see the movie this Thursday and things just kinda fell through...In fact last summer I think I went to almost every movie.. So of course it is weird when I wake up and check my twitter timeline to read about the "debauchery" that occurred last night...

Some of the lines from the article I read was just crazy...no where did they mention the teens were black, but they might as well have. They also mention that there was over 10,000 people at Screen on the Green... 10,000? I know it is usually a lot, but dang.... So here is the full link to the article...and below are the lines that I thought were hilarious, random, or just plain sad.

One movie-goer said free chicken sandwiches may had contributed to the brawl.

"It was an absolute mob scene, from the Chick-fil-A girls getting mobbed trying to hand out free sandwiches to the complete lack of respect for the people watching the movie," said Marc Freund.

"After enduring the first 30 minutes of the movie with people walking around and screaming, we decided to leave," Freund told the AJC. 

Midtown resident Jeff Keesee said there were "gangs of kids roaming the aisles, doing stunts to get crowd reactions. People just standing around talking, yelling -- disrespect, rudeness, unruliness -- a total disaster."

Sweatland wrote that as his group headed to their cars, he saw a group of "high school-aged kids" throwing rocks at passing vehicles. One of the rocks "completely shattered the back window" of one of the cars, he said.

Josh Hice, 26, of Newnan, was driving by Piedmont Park Thursday night with a friend when he said he was attacked by a group of high school-age people.

"There was a car stopped in front of me and a car stopped behind me, and there was this crowd of about 30 high school kids parading down the street," said Hice, who was driving an open-top Jeep.

First, a girl came up and spat in his face, Hice said, then he was punched in the face by another teen.

"It split my lip, then they start climbing all over my Jeep, and I turn around and my buddy is getting punched in the face and has blood pouring out of his nose," Hice said. "It was ridiculous. We were definitely victims of a hate crime."

Traffic ahead of Hice finally moved "and I just peeled out of there. I peeled out even with one of the dudes still hanging on the back of the Jeep, and he just jumped off."

Until Next Time...

Stressed? Study Says Calling Mom Helps

So I am currently taking an extended study break before I head to the library because the final I had this morning drained me. I decided to check out CNN and they had this interesting article about how calling your mom actually lowers your stress level and releases oxytocin,"the bonding hormone", (which I can go on and on about because I learned about it in A & P).... Anyways, just thought it was interesting. I generally call my mom a lot, lol..but since it is finals week, and I am stressed out of my mind. A whole lot of mom calling has been going on. lol. Well here is the link to the article...and some excerpts that I thought were particularly interesting...

It's a situation every mother has been through: Your child is stressed out or upset, but she's at school or summer camp--too far away for you to give her a hug.

That doesn't mean she can't be comforted, however. According to a new study, talking on the phone with Mom is nearly as good as getting a hug for helping stressed-out kids calm down.

At least for young girls, talking on the phone with their mothers reduces a key stress hormone and also releases oxytocin, a feel-good brain chemical that is believed to play a key role in forming bonds, the study found.

"Mothers know without being instructed how to soothe a child," Campbell says. "They know because they come from a long line of women whose genes remained in the gene pool because they kept their kids alive. The challenge is for scientists to illuminate how mothering works--and that's where oxytocin comes in."

Even though Pollak's study was conducted on young girls, the findings are relevant for older children and even adults, Dr. Strathearn says.

Oh and I love the fact that CNN decided to include a picture of a black female with a fro on the phone...lol. CUTE! Until Next Time...

It Must Suck to Be a Black Woman | Clutch Magazine: The Digital Magazine for the Young, Contemporary Woman of Color

It Must Suck to Be a Black Woman | Clutch Magazine: The Digital Magazine for the Young, Contemporary Woman of Color

OMG...this is exactly how I feel. Thank you Clarissa Matthews...I am tired of hearing all the news specials, magazine articles, radio interviews, talk shows, research studies, etc.. About how black women will pretty much be single forever because of the shortage of black men and how they are mostly in jail, gay, or underqualified...ugh. So tired of it... Oh yeah and then if they do find someone they are going to end up being a single mother on welfare...what the heck is that about. I'm over it...

If you have a spare minute, just browse through the article...quick read. Interesting..

Until Next Time...

African-American youths account for half of new HIV infections; CDC launches "i know" campaign to reach them | ajc.com

African-American youths account for half of new HIV infections; CDC launches "i know" campaign to reach them  | ajc.com

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I have so much to say about many of the articles I read, and I rarely have time to provide my commentary, so I am just going to post/share when I read something particularly intriguing...I have been saying I am going to do it later and I just never get around to it...Also on many of the websites they have Blogger feature so all it takes is me entering my username/password and it automatically posts to my blog, which is cool..

However this article is personally VERY scary... WE (definition: Young Black Americans) really need to address this and do something about this...this pandemic that seems to be infecting Blacks, including young Americans at alarming rates has got to be stopped...

Until Next Time...