Book Excerpt Of The Week: “The Debt: What America Owes To Blacks” By: Randall Robinson

The Debt Randall Robinson“Racist behavior in our society is largely static, unnoticed, unremarked, and unconsciously accommodated by Americans of all colors. Everyone essentially behaves as everyone always has. Habit dulls senses, even the victims, especially when the victim sees that that crimes against the voiceless do not count.” -From, “The Debt: What America Owes To Blacks” By: Randall Robinson

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Be Wise When It Comes To Fools

The Husia“Do not send a fool in an important matter when you can send one that is wise. Do not instruct a fool lest he hate you for it. When one instructs a fool, he or she says ‘What they are doing insults me.’ The friend of a fool is a fool. The friend of a wise person is another wise person. If you are given bread for being stupid, you may learn to despise instruction. Although the way of God is before the people, the fool cannot find it…

It is better for a serpent to be in the house than for a fool who comes often. Those who associate with a fool are drawn into wrongdoing. Those who live with a fool die in captivity. The friends of fools sleep tied to them. And the wrongdoing of fools harm even their own relatives. When a fool lights a fire, he goes to close it and gets burnt. And when a starts a fight, she goes too close to it and gets knocked down. Those who walk with the wise share their praise, but those who walk by in the company of a fool create an evil odor in the street.” -From, “Selections From The Husia: Sacred Wisdom of Ancient Egypt” By: Maulana Karenga

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Book Excerpt Of The Week: “Selections From The Husia” By: Maulana Karenga

The Husia“Be diligent as long as you live, always doing more than is commanded of you. Do not misuse your time while following your heart, for it is offensive to the soul to waste one’s time. Do not lose the daily opportunity to increase that which you have. Diligence produces gains and gains do not endure when diligence is abandoned.” -From, “Selections From The Husia: Sacred Wisdom of Ancient Egypt” By: Maulana Karenga

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Definitions Better Than Webster’s: Learning

LEARNING:
“Learning refers to a short-, intermediate-, or relatively long-term change in perception, ways of integrating and organizing information, of communicating, expressing and applying processed information in the world by both verbal and nonverbal means that occur as the result of experience, imitation, deliberate and/or repeated practice, and the inferential construction of concepts, procedures and rules. Because experience, models for imitation, practice, some concepts, procedures, rules of thought and behavior can be consciously manipulated and scheduled, the potency and character of learning can also, to some significant degree, be enhanced or impaired.” -From, “Awakening The Natural Genius Of Black Children.” -Amos N. Wilson

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Book Excerpt Of The Week: “The 8th Habit” By: Stephen Covey

“I have found that by making four simple assumptions in our lives we can immediately begin leading a more balanced, integrated, powerful life: (1) For the body- Assume you’ve had a heart attack; now live accordingly. (2) For the mind- Assume that the half life of your profession is two years; now prepare accordingly. (3) For the heart- Assume everything you say about another, they can overhear; now speak accordingly. (4) For the spirit- Assume you have a one-on-one visit with your creator every quarter; now live accordingly.” -From, “The 8th Habit” By: Stephen Covey

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Book Excerpt Of The Week: “Sweet Poison: How the World’s Most Popular Artificial Sweetener Is Killing Us” By: Janet Starr Hull

Sweet Poison“It is daunting to go up against a big corporation. In some instances, it is even illegal. In Texas, where I live, the state legislature passed House Bill 722 into law in 1995. HB 722 states that anyone who speaks out against a perishable food product is guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to several thousand dollars in fines. The law gives corporations permission to sue individuals who make statements against their products. This is a serious matter and a potentially dangerous one for individual consumers.

The bill sat on Governor George Bush’s desk for several weeks waiting to be signed into law. His office was inundated with phone calls from concerned consumers, health store owners, homeopathic doctors, nutritionists, wellness centers and the like, all protesting his signing this bill. Governor Bush didn’t do anything! He neither signed nor vetoed the bill. So the bill automatically became law. This is the law that the recent beef industry lawsuit against Oprah Winfrey was based on.” -“Sweet Poison: How the World’s Most Popular Artificial Sweetener Is Killing Us” By: Janet Starr Hull

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Book Excerpt Of The Week, “Women In Prison” By: Kathryn Watterson

“Another area worthy of investigation is the big business of building prisons; who is getting the contracts to build these billion dollar facilities that cost millions to run? What political donations have led to the sites chosen for new prisons, and to the many contracts made as part of the building process? Taxpayers should demand to know these facts, since public funds are being poured into prisons in such huge quantities for such unproductive results…Greater profits also can be made by spending as little as possible on the prisoners- just enough to keep order and promote the likelihood of return. The profit makers can insure the security of their investments by keeping the public in a state of fear from ‘the criminal element.’ As we’ve seen from the recent growth of the prison industrial complex- like the growth of the military industrial complex before it- when the public is living in fear, it doesn’t complain about the price tag, no matter how outrageous. It is important to realize that the safety and well being of the community is at odds with the interest of the profit makers.” -From, “Women In Prison” By: Kathryn Watterson

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The Dangers Of Waxed Food

Waxed Apples“Avoid waxed foods. You can tell if something is waxed by smelling the stem; if it does not smell like the food, then it’s likely waxed. the problem with wax is that it locks in pesticides that can be found on fruits like apples, pears, and nectarines. Other big pesticide offenders include berries, potatoes, peppers, spinach, lettuce, and celery.

Here are the fruits and vegetables with the highest and lowest pesticide contents, if you’re not going to go organic:
Highest: Peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, kale, lettuce, imported grapes.
Lowest: Onions, avocadoes, sweet corn, pineapples, mangoes, asparagus, sweet peas, kiwis, cabbage, eggplants.” -From the authors of the “You” series; Drs. Roizen & Oz

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Definitions Better Than Webster’s: Culture

Culture:
“Culture is the matrix on which the fragile human animal draws to remain socially healthy. As fish need the sea, culture, with its timeless reassurance and its seeming immortality, offsets for the frail human spirit the brevity, the careless accidentalness of life. An individual human life is easy to extinguish. Culture is leaned on as eternal. It flows large and old around its children. And it is very hard to kill. Its murder must be undertaken over hundreds of years of countless generations. Pains must be taken to snuff out every traditional practice, every alien word, every heaven-sent ritual, every pride, every connection of the soul, gone behind and reaching ahead. The carriers of the doomed culture must be ridiculed and debased and humiliated. This must be done to their mothers and their fathers, their children, their children’s children and their children after them. And there will come a time of mortal injury to all of their souls, and their culture will breathe no more. But they will not mourn its passing, for they will by then have forgotten that which they might have mourned.” -From, “The Debt” By: Randall Robinson

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Book Excerpt Of The Week: “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome” By: Dr. Joy Leary

“Some families take time to consider all that went well for them the previous day, to explore ways of making things even better, and plan what will go well the next day. Imagine every Black family doing this every day. It wouldn’t take long for you and your children to get in the habit of paying attention to the impact all of us have on others, and refining the impacts of our contributions. Everyday we would have evidence of the good that we do, and hence evidence of our value.

Where we are harboring beliefs that undermine our esteem, attending to the positive impacts we have will begin to destroy such limiting and fallacious beliefs. Creating value on a daily basis will provide strong, incontrovertible evidence of our efficacy and worth. False and negative beliefs about esteem and efficacy are some of the issues confronting many of us.

In the African American community there are many other false and negative beliefs that we leave unexamined. Beliefs about helplessness, beliefs about mainstream society, beliefs about victimization and many others that serve to put limits on what we can be, do, and have.

To address these falsehoods, we need to look at ourselves and a community as a whole from a strengths rather than from a deficit perspective. We need to identify, focus and articulate those positive characteristics in all of our interactions with our neighbors, co-workers, family and friends. And we need to especially share these encouraging observations with African American children whose views of themselves are still being shaped.” -From, “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome” By: Dr. Joy Leary

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