Voices In Color

Today's Black Fact

On this day in 1872, Thomas J. Martin patented the fire extinguisher.

Clinton Stokes Obama Pastor Row Amid Bosnia Embarrasment

Sigh. Oh Hillary...

Hillary Clinton Tuesday revived the row over fiery racial rhetoric by Democratic foe Barack Obama's former pastor, as she tried to dodge a storm over her overblown account of a 1996 trip to Bosnia.

With the White House race again consumed by bitterness, the New York Senator said she would have left the church had her pastor come out with remarks like those of Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

The Obama campaign accused her of trying to deflect from her own embarrassment, after she admitted that her claims that she dodged sniper fire during the Bosnia trip as first lady were untrue.

"I made a mistake, that happens. It proves I'm human, which, for some people, is a revelation," Clinton said, as the controversy raged, distracting from her claims of high-level foreign policy experience.

She used that same news conference in Pennsylvania, to pointedly discuss Wright, after a week of choosing not to comment on the issue.

"I think, given all we have heard and seen, he would not have been my pastor," Clinton said.

"We don't have a choice when it comes to our relatives. We have a choice when it comes to our pastors and the church we attend."

Read more: AFP

Affirmative Action Foes Push Ballot Initiatives

Sixteen months after voters in Michigan voted to kill affirmative action in the public sphere, opponents of preferences based on race and gender are pushing five more states to ban the practice.

Foes of affirmative action, which is meant to address current and historical inequities, delivered 128,744 signatures to Colorado authorities earlier this month. Similar organizations in Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska are circulating petitions as civil rights groups and educators are mobilizing to defeat the measures.

The initiatives are spearheaded by Ward Connerly, the nation's most prominent opponent of affirmative action, who said he has raised about $1.5 million for the campaigns. He sees the November ballot initiatives as the next step in his drive to end preferences in public education, hiring and contracting.

"Without any doubt, we have to understand that race preferences are on the way out," said Connerly, who heads to Missouri next week to deliver speeches on behalf of that state's constitutional amendment, now tangled in a court battle over the ballot measure's wording.

In the states where Connerly's self-described "civil rights initiative" appears on the ballot, voters are likely to see it alongside the name of the first black or female major-party presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) Connerly contends that the success of Obama and Clinton shows that preferences are no longer necessary "to compensate for, quote, institutional racism and institutional sexism."

Read more: The Washington Post

Today's Black Fact

On this day in 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. along with other notable civil rights leaders and thousands of supporters reach Montgomery Alabama after marching 4 days from Selma.

Sinbad Takes the High Road, Lets Hillary Be

Hilary's starting to remind me of Pinocchio...

Sinbad, the comedian who lit up the Internet earlier this month in an exclusive interview with the Sleuth about his 1996 trip to Bosnia with then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, isn't fighting back against Clinton's dismissive remarks about him.

"I made my statement, and she made hers," Sinbad wrote to the Sleuth this week in an email marked as "sent from sinbad's iphone."

Clinton was asked this week to respond to Sinbad's much different recollection of the Bosnia trip, which the New York senator and Democratic presidential hopeful has described as harrowing. Sinbad told the Sleuth that the "scariest" part of the trip was worrying about whether "we eat here or at the next place."

On the campaign trail this week, Clinton defended her version of the story and dismissed Sinbad's account, saying, "Sinbad is a comedian." Clinton said she remembers "landing under sniper fire" and that "we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

But the first lady's personal schedule detailing that trip, which the Clinton campaign released along with scores of other records from the Clinton White House this week, included "no mention of security threats," according to the Wall Street Journal, which followed up on our original Sinbad posting.

Read more: The Washington Post

'Meet The Browns' Is Easter Weekend's Biggest Hit

The Tyler Perry-labeled comedy-drama Meet the Browns, starring Angela Bassett, was the Easter weekend's biggest hit, theater for theater, grossing $20 million off about 2,000 screens, per estimates compiled Sunday by Exhibitor Relations.

Overall, the film placed second. Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!, playing on nearly twice as many screens, retained the No. 1 spot with a strong second weekend take of $25.1 million.

Read more: E! Online

Lupe Fiasco Refuses To "Dumb It Down”

I am absolutely in love with Lupe Fiasco. Rarely do I buy entire albums, but on this one I did and I love every bit of it.

There is obviously something in the waters of Lake Michigan. Hip Hop artists hailing from Chicago consistently challenge audiences and other artists both lyrically and sonically. Interpreters of the world around them, they translate their ideas into some of the most imaginative, socially conscious, sensitive, and provocative songs of the genre. Few Chicagoan rappers (or those from anywhere else, for that matter) embody these and other sensibilities more eloquently than Lupe Fiasco does on his sophomore CD, The Cool.

The Cool is a genre-bending ride through infested cities, dark caverns of paranoia, happy destinations around the world, and wide rivers of hope. His songs are consistently contradictory: Sesame Street Bright (“Go Baby,” “High Definition”) and Blade Runner dark (“Streets On Fire”), apocalyptic (“Little Weapon”), and promising (“Hip Hop Saved My Life”), bleak (“Intruder Alert”), and encouraging (“Fighters”), problem-laden (“Dumb It Down”), and solution providing (“Superstar”). Fiasco has taken the artistic bar that Kanye raised and turned it sideways. Add to this formula the ridiculously pleasing hooks provided by Mathew Santos (John Legend if he played guitar instead of piano) and the borderline alt-rock swing of his friend The Gemstones (thought it was a band with one wild-ass drummer but it’s really just a singular, multi-talented, incredibly nimble, guy ), and you have built a masterpiece.

That Lupe is a talented wordsmith is undeniable. He has proven himself in battles and ciphers around the world where he has buried many an MC while simultaneously perfecting his chops. However, he is the exception to the rule that many gifted rappers known for being able to “spit off the top” (improvise lyrics on the fly) rarely translate well on record. Instead of gaining appreciation by the masses, they are relegated to a “back-packer” status wherein they are respected by many conventional artists, fans, and writers but fall to deep lyrically for the average radio listener. Fiasco addresses that ideal by being incredibly visual and melodic without losing any intellectual cred.

Read more: EbonyJet.com

Husband Of Singer Bailey Rae Found Dead

The husband of soul singer Corinne Bailey Rae was found dead and another man was arrested on suspicion of supplying drugs, police said on Sunday.

West Yorkshire police said they had been called to an apartment in the Hyde Park area of Leeds in northern England on Saturday, where they found the body of a 31-year-old man. They later identified him as Jason Rae.
A 32-year-old man was arrested under suspicion of supplying drugs and freed on bail.

A post-mortem examination was carried out on the body but the results were inconclusive, police said, adding that they were awaiting toxicology reports.

Source: Reuters

LeBron Shrugs Off Criticism Of Vogue Cover

I actually liked this cover…

LeBron James has done lots of magazine covers and heard lots of criticism for various things in the past five years. So he's brushing off the heat he's getting about his most recent close up.

James made a measure of history when he made the cover of Vogue's April issue alongside supermodel Gisele Bundchen. He was just the third male in the history of the publication to make the cover and the first African-American male.

But after the photo hit newsstands, some thought that his pose and facial expression gave off a poor impression. The most vocal was an ESPN.com columnist who said James resembled King Kong cradling a ''fair-skinned love interest.'' The writer said James ''looks like he's on his way to a pickup game for serial killers'' and was an example of ''a black athlete being reduced to a savage.''

James, who was aware of the story, shrugged off the comments.

''I was just having fun with it, I was just showing a little emotion,'' James said Saturday. ''We had a few looks and that was the best one we had. Everything my name is on is going to be criticized, in a good way or a bad way. Who cares, honestly, at the end of the day.''

Read more: Ohio.com

Today's Black Fact

On this day in 2002, Halle Berry becomes the first black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the movie "Monster's Ball.