Character Corner: SHWANA RUTH-BRIDGES SPEAKS

Character Corner: SHWANA RUTH-BRIDGES SPEAKS

Credit Worthiness Is Not Directly Proportional to Character

I write this following a rather heated conversation I had this morning regarding credit scores. I once attended a course on Marriage at a local church and the pastor\teacher of this course maintained that one should consider the credit score of their intended and if said intended does not have "good" credit that you should not marry them.

I thought this was a crock of simmering kaka because credit can be rebuilt but a person who is willfully beligerent, vindicative, mean hateful or any other horrible human affliction of the mind or spirit is far worse than a tarnished credit record. My friend then rattled off a litany of statistical data to support that financial issues is the reason that marriages fail. Well, I submit that if a couple can't weather a financial rough spot or season then money is not the "real" issue. The real issue would then be honesty, integrity or trust (someone lied about spending or stashing cash or perhaps one partner doesn't trust the decisions the other makes)

I had to remind my dear friend that I unfortunately know a few unseemly woman who will do whatever they need to do to pay the electric bill or car note on time lest they ruin their hard earned credit rating. So, these types of women or men I'd venture to say are on no higher moral, ethical or socially responsible ground then the individual who take the credit ding but holds on to their virtue. Also, all credit problems do not stem from living above and beyond one's means sometime you just don't have the money on the day the bill is due because life happens.

Dr. Bernice Reagon -- Founder of Sweet Honey In The Rock

I love Sweet Honey In The Rock and I was searching Youtube for a video and I found this jewel:


Here is a bio I copy and pasted from Wikipedia:
She is a specialist in African-American oral history, performance and protest traditions. She was featured in 1992 in the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary The Songs Are Free: Bernice Johnson Reagon with Bill Moyers. She has served as music constultant, producer, composer, and performer on several award-winning film projects and was the conceptual producer and narrator of the Peabody Award-winning radio series, Wade in the Water, African American Sacred Music Traditions.

Reagon's work as a scholar and composer is reflected in publications on African American culture and history, including: a collection of essays entitled If You Don’t Go, Don’t Hinder Me: The African American Sacred Song Tradition (University of Nebraska Press, 2001); We Who Believe In Freedom: Sweet Honey In The Rock: Still on the Journey, (Anchor Books, 1993); and We'll Understand It Better By And By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers (Smithsonian Press, 1992).

Reagon has recorded on several albums on Folkways Records including "Folk Songs: The South," "Wade in the Water," and "Lest We Forget, Vol. 3: Sing for Freedom."[2]

Reagon is Professor Emeritus of History at American University in Washington, DC, and holds the title of Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, and was the 2002-04 Cosby Chair Professor of Fine Arts at Spelman College in Atlanta Georgia

The Real Housewives Of Atlanta

Check out Christopher Chamber's Post over at Nat Turner's Revenge. I can't say any better than he did or his readers in their comments. But I will say, uppity they are not, just bad examples of black womanhood (and one bad example of white womanhood for good measure).

Black People -- Choose Uppityness!!!!

I am not a big fan of gossip blogs or gossip bloggers but I ran across this video over at "What About Our Daughters" (which isn't a gossip blog). It's Nancy Graces' interview of Mary Balfour the mother of William Balfour who is Jennifer Hudson's sister Julia's estranged husband (whew, that was a mouth full -- that's why I hate gossip but I digress). Mary Balfour is decrying the innocence of her jail bird son and singing his praises because he got a GED in prison and by the way he was sent to prison when he was only 16 for car theft and attempted murder. She blithely explains when asked about his alibi that he was with one of the two girlfriends he has outside of his marriage.
So basically, this woman is a low-rent ghetto bunny, her values are askew and she needs serious life skill training.

Racial Masking..... Not Moi? Maybe Moi Afterall.....

I've just completed Shelby Steele's new book A Bound Man - Why We Are Excited About Barack Obama and Why He Can't Win. He talks in great length about how we present ourselves to white america always through a mask. He says: "Whites have trouble reading blacks because we are always showing them only what we want them to see, always pushing them this way and that. We always have two narratives: what we tell each other and what we tell whites." This one sentence has caused me some trepidation and I initially scoffed that this isn't true of me as I'm all about transparency and authenticity but if I am honest with myself I would have to admit that I would more freely share "dirty laundry" if you will with other black people rather than whites. So I'm bummed that I haven't risen above Mr. Steele's contention. But after some 2 or 3 hours of soul searching I can't come up with another example so I won't judge myself too harshly.

It was a quick read and much more substantive than this little snippet -- it's just that one sentence gave me pause.

As If I Have Time To Maintain A Second Blog...

I just started this blog because I was annoyed. I will not use this as a forum to express my disdain for the state of black america -- I'll leave that to my first alter ego Conservative Black Woman. Here I think I will celebrate women who have the audacity to be uppity, meaning that they have the audacity to think outside of the "black" box. I will celebrate those who tell the truth even if it means that they are called ugly names. So check back in a bit-- I've got research to do.