For once I agree with Tom Joyner! I never thought the day would come, but it has, he actually made a very sensible, intelligent point on his show this morning.
Although I listen to his show every morning, as a rule it's just for the comedy, (which isn't even always funny) and to get my blood going to get me ready for the day. He gets me going by making me angry, usually at least once, sometimes three or four times. I don't deny that Tom Joyner has done a lot of good for the black community, but sometimes I think his 'Black Pride" goes too far. There are times when I have to turn him off or risk throwing my radio across the room. How can you talk about someone else's behavior and then turn around and do the same thing? Example: He always talks about how his show is geared for the black community because mainstream 'white' media isn't concerned about us. Well how can you expect them to be, when the only news stories you do are the ones that involve blacks, and if it does involve whites, (say a number of people get killed) you ask "Were any of them black?" You'll read the names of the blacks who died, but no one else, as if they don't count! We're ALL human beings, regardless of our color!
Now don't get me wrong, I'm about as militant as they come when it comes to standing up for the rights of blacks. I don't believe though that we can behave just as badly as they do and expect them to change! TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT. Show them that we are better than them; use your program to show mainstream media how it should be done!! If you want to make things better, and you know they're not going to take the first step, be a bigger and better man; hell, be a bigger and better HUMAN BEING and you be the one to take that step. Those young people who sat at that lunch counter in Woolworth's; do you think they would have made an impact if they had just said "Well, they won't let us eat in theirs, so we won't let them eat in ours. We'll do the same to them." Hell no! White America would have looked at them and just shook their heads and gone on about their business! That's what's happening now; okay, you're concerned about black people, instead of encouraging them to act just as ignorant toward the rest of the country as they always have toward us, teach them a better way, teach them how to rise above it.
Whew, I'm sorry, I really got off topic didn't I? I started off talking about how for once I agree with him; I actually applaud him for his show this morning. It was primarily about (what else) Hilary Clinton winning Pennsylvania. Even more, it was about the fact that so many black Americans are now saying that if Obama doesn't win, they won't vote. Surprisingly, (to me) Tom Joyner was telling his listeners how wrong that is! (see The FlyJock's Blog) He even had a poll up to see what his listeners would do if their candidate (no matter who, Clinton or Obama) did not win. It was truly pathetic at first to hear how many people were saying that they would not vote at all...don't they understand that to not vote is the same as voting for McCain? This time more than ever, every vote counts, and we must make our Democratic voices heard! Do we really want four more years of Bush? Well that's what we're going to get if we don't vote Democratic, and I was delighted to hear Tom Joyner telling his listeners that. For once he was educating them, not just exhorting them to "support the brutha". Slowly the numbers began to change, and I was so proud of our black folks, hearing them finally begin to wake up to the fact that this is not just a Clinton vs Obama issue, it's not just a white vs black issue, it's not just a woman vs man issue; this is a Democrat vs Republican issue first and foremost, and that's what we have to keep in mind. If we continue to be carried away by the emotion of having the either the first black or the first woman president, we're going to end up with neither. We've got to focus on the issues at hand, and one of those issues is that we're not going to change what's going on in this country if we don't put the right person in office. The right person is NOT Obama, it's not Clinton, the right person is A DEMOCRAT.
Whoever you are for in this historical time, whoever you want to be be president, there's one very important fact that used to be emphasized a lot in election years, but somehow seems to have been forgotten in the hoopla. If you don't like the way the country is being run, and you want to make a change, you have to vote. Every one of us who thinks "my vote doesn't count, I'm only one person!" is a member of a whole lot of "only one persons", and that crowd is enough to change the world. We have the power to bring our troops home, we have the power to get affordable health care, we have the power to stop this mortgage crisis; it all starts with just one vote: YOURS.
And that's Live From Bikini Bottom...
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