RODNEY L. HURST, SR. - THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES! - Blog

No More Pretending.

7/16/2019

RACISTS ARE MORE THAN PREDICTABLE, and they are as cowardly as they come. It goes without saying that donald trump is a Racist coward and a Racist bully who hides behind his White skin and the presidency of the United States. When he spouts his Racist limited vocabulary from his equally limited Racist Lexicon, he relishes the initial spotlight he receives; which is one of the benefits of White Privilege. Then, when his sh*t gets his uncouth behind in a bind, then his White Privilege outrage prompts him to say, “Are you going to believe your lying eyes and ears, or are you going to believe me?”
Over the last few years, the press has given this cretin president a pass. His Racist language and his Racist diatribe have been treated as a ho-hum affair with the media. So-called White Christian Evangelicals, who are nothing more than Racists wrapped in the Christian cross and the Bible, just fell at his feet. The reason you ask? They Liked the Racist diatribe oozing from his Racist lips.

In addition to the White Christians, you have the White “others” who are damned and determined to support and defend this Ignorance in the White House, come “Hell or High water.” Then, you have the Black others, who are too dumb and stupid and ignorant to realize when someone is kicking them in their Blessed Ass-urances every day, while allowing their Integrity—if they have any left—to be used as a door mat.

This proven and documented circumstance of donald trump being America’s poster boy for Racism, and the latest example of his core Racist attitudes directed at 4 Black and Brown members of Congress, means there is nothing for trump supporters to remotely hide behind. If you support the Racist donald trump, you are a Racist and you are supporting a Full-Throated Racist. There is no equivocation.

America is a Racist country, founded on Racist Christian ideals and Racist Christian ethics. donald trump simply plugged into the lava-like stream of America’s Original Sin. When you use the terms “chattel and property” to describe Black enslaved human beings from the days of the founding of this country, which was wholeheartedly supported by the White Christian Church, then that is all you need to know about America’s History. Again, America's Original Sin.

White Christian America is at another of the myriad of Right and Wrong crossroads it has faced. After failing many equality tests before, as it did in 2016, I am betting White Christian America still will not get it right when the opportunity presents itself in 2020. White America loves its Racism, its White Privilege, and certainly loves THEIR Racist in the White House.

The Struggle Continues.

Independence? Really?

7/5/2019

Know What You Are Celebrating on this “Independence Day”...
***When the Declaration of Independence was "passed" there were more than 1 million enslaved persons in America.
***The Declaration of Independence did not condemn slavery. In fact, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration enslaved more than 600 people over the course of his life, and raped Sarah “Sally” Hemings, one of his enslaved persons, enough times for her to conceive and bear him 6 children. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness rang hollow for those whose hue of skin was Black.
***Every celebration of Independence Day in America by Americans in the 17th, the 18th, the 19th, the 20th, and the 21st centuries, has seen millions of enslaved Blacks in chains, and Blacks basically Disenfranchised.
***In the late 1890’s and after the infamous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson “Separate but Equal” Supreme court decision, Blacks throughout the South led demonstrations against local transportation systems. Rev. John Milton Waldron, pastor of Bethel Baptist Institutional Church, and one of the founders of the NAACP, led a boycott of the Jacksonville Transportation System that historians say, “was very effective.”
***James Weldon Johnson wrote “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” in part on the campus of Bethel Baptist Institutional Church, in 1900 when White America lynched 3-5 Blacks on average a week. Sometimes less, most times more.
***There were 5 million enslaved Blacks in America in 1840, and at a value of 10 billion dollars, they were worth more than ALL the banks, insurance companies, and transportation companies, Combined.
***Dr. W. E. B. Dubois, Ida B. Wells, Rev John M. Waldron, and other Blacks and Whites founded the “National Negro Committee” in 1909, because of national call after a Race Riot in Springfield Illinois, and renamed it the “NAACP” in 1910.
***James Weldon Johnson coined the phrase “Red Summer” for the Summer of 1919 when there were 26 Race Riots throughout this country, with the worst riot occurring in Chicago, Ill.
***The entire area of Greenwood, Archer, and Pine in Tulsa, Oklahoma, referred to as Black Wall Street, was ravaged in 1921 by Jealous and Envious Racist Whites resulting in more than 600 Blacks killed and 1300 buildings destroyed.
***In January 1923, the Black town of Rosewood in Levy County, Florida was destroyed by Whites.
***"The Birth of a Nation", a Racist movie which glorified the Ku Klux Klan, was shown in the White House by Racist president Woodrow Wilson.
***After James Weldon Johnson became the first Black Executive Secretary of the NAACP, he helped Congressman John Dyer with his Anti-Lynching Bill. The Dyer Bill was ultimately defeated by a Southern Democratic filibuster in December 1922 and twice more thereafter. Congress simply refused to pass a Lynching Bill. Still has not.
***The Social Security Act of 1935 as advocated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, excluded from coverage about half the workers in the American economy. Among the excluded groups were agricultural and domestic workers ...and 60% of those workers were Black.

Black folks fought America's Racism with every fiber of their being, as they sought “Independence,” Then and Now! Start with a few great names: Thurgood Marshall, Roy Wilkins, Ruby Hurley, Dr. Martin Luther King, Ella Baker, Ruby Hurley, Constance Baker Motley, Stokely Carmichael, Harry T. Moore, Medgar Evers, John Lewis, Jackie Robinson, Frederick Douglass, Rev. James Bevel, Rev. Hosea Williams, Charlie Cobb, James Farmer, Whitney Young, Daisy Bates, The Little Rock Nine (Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls), The Greensboro 4 and the start of the 1960 Sit-in Movement (Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil), Bayard Rustin, Dr. W. E. B. Dubois, Ruby Bridges, A. Philip Randolph, Malcolm X, Adam Clayton Powell, Morris Dees, James Baldwin, E. D. Nixon, Rosa Parks, Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, Denmark Vesey, Vernon Dahmer, William Trotter, James Weldon Johnson, Rev. John. Milton Waldron, Ida B. Barnett, Harriet Tubman, Harry T. Moore, Charles Hamilton Houston, John Hope Franklin, Earl M. Johnson, Rutledge Pearson, Arnett E. Girardeau, yet these Real Civil Rights Fighters ---the list is extensive---were fighting then, as many continue to fight today, for "Independence."
Putting Things in Their Proper Perspective on This “Independence Day.” The Fight Against Racism-The Struggle, and the Fight for Black Human Dignity and Respect and Independence, Continues.

Justice for Some, Not All.

7/5/2019

Two of the most Hypocritical, Meaningless, and Hollow groupings of words, in America:
1)..."All men are created equal" from the Declaration of Independence; and
2)..."With Liberty, and Justice for All" from the Pledge of Allegiance.

The Struggle Continues!

It Remains the Same.

7/5/2019

Whenever there is a Racial crisis...which is everyday in America...White America is quick to say to Black America, "We need to come together as Americans" ... yet White America will not admit to its Racism...which separated us as "Americans" in the First Place.

The Struggle Continues!

Yep...a Black Mermaid.

7/5/2019

If an assortment of White males can portray a Real Black Jesus...and a White Elizabeth Taylor can portray a Real Black Cleopatra... then certainly a Black Halle Bailey can portray a fictional Non-descript Mermaid.

It is Just Plain Racism.

7/5/2019

All of the traitortrump's rallies proclaim the same thing...and that is...what drives the Trump base, in addition to this Racist president...is the pervasive and vile Racism on display from the stage ...and the Racism they get to "legitimately" strut and engage in...since they know there is a Racist, like them, in the White House.

We all knew it, so this is not a Revelation, well Black folks knew anyway, But Racism has broken America Real Good...and It Did Not Just Get that Way!

The Struggle Continues!

a trump is a trump is a trump.

6/7/2019

WHITE AMERICA, CAN WE TALK, AGAIN?
Once again donald trump proves his Racist White male Ego is as fragile and as disrespectful as can be. As a Disgraceful Draft Dodger-3D, he goes to foreign soil to criticize Americans and uses the Revered Normandy American Cemetery in France as a backdrop for his criticism. His Disrespect knows no bounds and is part and parcel of his fundamental lack of human decency. He reads a speech he did not write...using words he was not familiar with, nor in his limited lexicon...and some of you, and some in the press acted as if he had “leaped tall buildings in a single bound!” He was simply an insecure, fragile, unintelligent Racist acting as an insecure, fragile, unintelligent Racist.

donald trump showed you who and what he was before the election and White America, you elected him anyway. In the proverbial “adding insult to injury,” White Republicants in Congress are showing their complicity in the actions of this ridiculous Wimp of a president, by their silence and absolutely NO pushback. Additionally, most in the White press, continue to give him a White Privilege pass for an attitude and actions so egregious that had he been, say...President Barack Obama...he would have been “tossed” long ago. His galling performance on foreign soil is simply par for his Racist course.
White America, you did not have a problem with donald trump insulting women in his now infamous audio tape which everyone heard prior to the election...his fights with Black members of the media...his calling Black and Latin countries shithole countries...his execrable lack of support of Puerto Rico...his calling Black NFL players SOB...you know, the typical Racist stuff. The White Privilege Pass. WPP.
What is additionally appalling now White America, you do not see his attitude and his decorum as a problem. WE -Black America, that is- all know you salivated to elect another Racist in the White House, after 8 splendid years (for US) of President Obama, but you really outdid themselves by electing this narcissistic incompetent Racist degenerate as president. YOUR problem is having to endure his crassness and uncouthness all over the place as his actions and stupidity since they also affect you.
trump’s Racist child’s play continues as he sabotages America and many of the “Values” You supposedly hold dear. As a Black American I have never given you, White America, much credit for fighting against your own Racism and White Privilege; so I really don’t want to, nor do I need to hear a word from you about “how embarrassing trump is” since you have consistently done nothing to “rein him in.”
White America, donald trump is your mess. He is your mess to continue to Defend...or... TO CLEAN UP!

The Struggle Continues!

NEWS and The Black Press.

4/8/2019

IF YOU UNDERSTAND HOW WIMPISH AND INEPT THE WHITE PRESS IS TODAY CALLING OUT donald trump and his incompetence and his Racism, imagine what the press was like back in the day, during the Civil Rights Movement?

White reporters did not have a clue about issues that affected the Black community and were not interested in “fairly covering” issues that affected the Black community. They somehow felt that being White and a "news" reporter gave them the wherewithal and the "creds" to legitimately understand those political and those Moral issues.
White reporters NEVER had the insight and the empathy and the sensitivity to cover the Civil Rights Movement. They were just there, and those of us in the movement did not trust the White press.

As Blacks fought the hatred of White American Racism during the Movement through court cases and sit-ins and picketing and marches and demonstrations and registering to vote and then voting...and ALL under Threats of Violence...if it were not for the Black press, great and informed stories about the Civil Rights Movement would not have been told. Black journalists put themselves on the front lines of these stories before and during the Civil Rights Movement, while also putting their bodies in danger, so the sacrifices of activists would not go unnoticed.

White skin, contrary to popular belief, did not then, and does not now, make you an expert on Blackness. Does Not make you Understand the issues that affect a Black person's Life, Daily. You cannot learn that in a Journalism school. You cannot learn that by reading some news story off the Internet.

Today, the White press is still woefully inadequate covering the Pathology of obvious Racism, and the Pathological Core Racist Attitudes of a White Racist president and his White Racist administration. Nothing Has Changed. WE Still have to Tell The Story.

The Struggle Continues!

The Pathology of Racism

4/2/2019

AS WE APPROACH THE 51st ANNIVERSARY OF DR. KING'S ASSASSINATION APRIL 4, 2019, WHEN WILL WE STOP TALKING ABOUT RACISM... WHEN WILL I STOP TALKING ABOUT RACISM...AND WHEN WILL AMERICA STOP KILLING ME BECAUSE I AM BLACK?

I WILL STOP TALKING ABOUT RACISM when you admit White America, the pathology of your White Privilege and your White Supremacy are real.
I WILL STOP TALKING ABOUT RACISM when you admit White America, it is impossible for JUSTICE to coexist with INEQUALITY. Justice is a constant—either it is or it isn’t. Inequality is a by-product of Racism and is also a constant.
I WILL STOP TALKING ABOUT RACISM when you admit White America that you are not concerned about my well being as a person whose hue of skin is Black.
WHEN WILL AMERICA STOP KILLING ME BECAUSE I AM BLACK? TRY NEVER!
If you are Black and you stand still, like Eric Garner, America will KILL you.
If you are Black and you run, like Stephon Clark, America will Kill you.
If you are Black and you run away, like Walter Scott, America will KILL you.
If you are Black and drive away, like Sam Dubose, America will KILL you.
If you are Black and you walk away slowly, like Terence Crutcher, America will KILL you.
If you are Black child playing in a park like Tamir Rice, America will KILL you.
If you are a Black teenager not bothering anyone, like Trayvon Martin, America will KILL you.
If you are a Black teenager and simply playing your music like Jordan Davis, America will KILL you.
If you are Black and get on your hands and knees like Kenneth Walker, America will KILL you.
If you are Black and you comply with every word that you are told...even if you pose no threat...like Brendan Hester and Philando Castile...and even if there is absolutely no reason for Police to be afraid, “America’s Occupation Troops” will pump bullets into your Black body, and never miss a minute of sleep.
If you are Black 23-year-old Richard Collins, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army ready to graduate from Bowie State and defend this Racist country, America will KILL you.
If you are Black and White and you help Blacks register to Vote, like Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Viola Liuzzo, America will KILL you.
If you fight Racism, like Harriette and Harry T. Moore, like Vernon Dahmer, like Medgar Evers, like Dr. Martin Luther King, like Rev. George Lee, like Herbert Lee, like James Reeb, like Samuel Leamon Younge Jr., like Wharlest Jackson ---and the list goes on and on and on---America will KILL you.
If you are a Black youngster visiting your relatives in Mississippi like Emmett Till, America will KILL you.
If you are Black children and attending church in Birmingham Alabama, like Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley America will KILL you.
If you are Black and attending church in Charleston South Carolina, like Cynthia Hurd, Daniel Simmons Sr., Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Ethel Lance, Tywanza Sanders, Myra Thompson, Susie Jackson, and Depayne Middleton Doctor. America will KILL you. (Simmons died later in the hospital.) The Only Reason a White person could walk into a Black church ...sit for an hour in that church...and then shoot and KILL 9 Black persons praying, is Deep Rooted Racism and Even Deeper Hatred.
Racism and Hatred is the order of the day in Racist America.
When Racism is the 800-pound gorilla in every room, What do you do?
You fight the hatred of racism with every fiber of your being even when the Racism is perpetrated by the president of the United States and his appointed Attorney General ---who to remind you-- was confirmed by the United States Senate.
Don’t Talk About Me Until You Have Talked To Me…
Don’t Underestimate Me Until You Have Challenged Me…
Don’t Judge Me Until You Know Me.

The Struggle Continues!

NEVER Forget Who You Are.

4/2/2019

I have been blessed to meet ...to learn from ...and to have been taught by ... some of America's best and brightest determined Black minds. They taught me about Civil Rights and Black History because I wanted to learn about Civil Rights and Black History, and I have never taken those learning experiences lightly.

When you have learned from and “rubbed elbows with" Civil Rights and Black History Royalty" such as ...Rutledge Pearson and Thurgood Marshall and A. Philip Randolph and Constance Baker Motley and Ruby Hurley and Arnett Girardeau and Robert Hayling and Bayard Rustin and Roy Wilkins and Earl Johnson and Clanzel T. Brown Sr. and Leander Shaw and Robert “Bob “Saunders, and more recently, Charlie Cobb (to name a few)...you know you have learned, and you know you have learned well. Remember I started my journey at age 11 in Mr. Pearson’s American History classroom, and then to the "classroom" of the Jacksonville Youth Council NAACP. There is an Ethiopian proverb which says, “He who learns, teaches.” It might sound corny to some, but it resonates with me.

You teach about Racism...and you speak about Racism, and you teach that disrespect and hatred and disdain and insolence are the traits which lead Racist White America to support ...idolize...and vote for a Racist president like donald trump. A Reprehensible and a Despicable racist. And you want to make sure you “teach” and teach Blacks well who get daily get caught up and smothered in this, “Racist Integration Generation.” Not that my words are the end all to be all, but some words and comments and reflections, which might get them to think and even reconsider the dangerous Non-Civil Rights and Non-Black History path they are traveling.

When someone tells you and shows you they are a Racist, then believe them. It was most unfortunate to have Black presidents of HBCU and Black preachers visit the White House and “kneel” before the throne of donald trump. They appeared to have no problems doing just that. Many of them could not spell Civil Rights Movement, let alone lead a phase of it. Yet they came to the office of an Avowed Racist and for what? What part of Racist and Racism did they NOT understand? And what have they gotten for their alleged toil and trouble? Nothing! Nada! Zilch!

A group of young Black Republicants visited donald trump in the White House today, and before you ask Why...let me say it was a patronizing and a condescending photo op. Just as donald trump used the Black college presidents and the Black preachers earlier, he used these Black students.

You expect that those who should know better would stand for decency and principles and integrity. Apparently not and for whatever reason, these young Blacks are headed down that same path of Nothingness, even betraying who they are, to put a few dollars in their pockets. Can you say Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson and Rev. Darrell Scott and Kanye West? donald trump has a presidential platform. And as an egomaniacal narcissistic Degenerate Racist, he shows you daily who and what he is...and he did again this week, when he proudly proclaimed he was “A Nationalist”...as in White Nationalist/Supremacist/Racist.

I would love to teach some Young Blacks about that Black image looking back at them in the mirror... what IT means and correspondingly, what THEY Mean.

And many of us try. Every moment is not a teachable moment. Sometimes you must leave some Blacks and some Young Blacks where you find them and move on. And as tragic as that sounds, I am reminded everyday that you cannot make a Race horse out of a Jackass. Many Young Blacks and Not So Young Blacks still cannot realize or internalize when they are being used by THE MAN. It is ALWAYS obvious, but they must take the blinders off their eyes. It might sound easier said than done, but if they don’t, then they become that Black person with No Place To Go! VOTE!!!

The Struggle Continues!