WhiteHouseBlackJournal.com

Home | Buy here | String Book | Fine print | Upcoming
   

  Audio-visual programs     Books
  Performances     Photography
  Services     
 

Sunday, October 4, 2009

White House Ramadan "Iftar" Dinner

White_House_Iftar.JPGBy Askia Muhammad

THE WHITE HOUSE— President Barack Obama praised Muslims in this country for enriching the American culture, and paid tribute to what he called “a great religion and its commitment to justice and progress,” at an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and prayer, in the State Dining Room on Sept. 1.
“The contributions of Muslims to the United States are too long to catalog because Muslims are so interwoven into the fabric of our communities and our country,” Mr. Obama told the audience which included three Cabinet secretaries, members of the diplomatic corps and members of Congress—including Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Andre Carson, (D-Ind.), the first two Muslim Congress members. Guests also included Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.),  House Judiciary Committee Chair and the Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus; Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) and Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Since taking office, Mr. Obama has made a special effort to reach out to the Islamic world to repair U.S. relations with the world’s Muslims. He made visits to Turkey and Egypt, and in a June speech in Cairo, the Egyptian capital, the President said: “America is not — and never will be — at war with Islam.”
Mr. Obama also released a video message to Muslims before the start to Ramadan. In the video, he said Ramadan’s rituals are a reminder of the principles Muslims and Christians have in common, including advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
White House dinners marking Ramadan are nothing new. Former President George W. Bush held Iftar dinners during his eight years in office, but his efforts were intended exclusively for international consumption. Aside from administration officials, all of Mr. Bush’s guests were diplomats from countries with large Muslim populations, and with the exception of 2001 and 2002, the White House Iftar celebrations excluded reporters from U.S. media outlets.
Mr. Obama, on the other hand welcomed American Muslim community leaders, including Imam Yusuf Saleem of Masjid Muhammad in Washington, D.C.; and Imam Plemon El-Amin of Atlanta Masjid al-Islam. Both men are members of the American Society of Muslims, which was led until his death in 2008 by Imam Warithudeen Mohammed.
Mr. Obama shared the story of a number of Muslims born in this country, including Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, who broke the Massachusetts state record formerly held by Rebecca Lobos, for most career points scored by a female high school basketball player. “She recently told a reporter, ‘I’d like to really inspire a lot of young Muslim girls if they want to play basketball.  Anything is possible. They can do it too.’ As an honor student, as an athlete on her way to (the University of) Memphis, Bilqis is an inspiration not simply to Muslim girls, she's an inspiration to all of us,” Mr. Obama said.
He also noted the contributions of, and borrowed a quote explaining religion from boxer Muhammad Ali.  ”A few years ago, he explained this view—and this is part of why he’s The Greatest—saying, ‘Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams, they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do, they all contain truths.’ ”
Mr. Obama also praised Nashala Hearn, from Muskogee, Okla. Ms. Hearn took a stand for the First Amendment-guaranteed right of freedom of Religion, at an early age, he said. “When her school district told her that she couldn't wear the hijab, she protested that it was a part of her religion.
“The Department of Justice stood behind her and she won her right to practice her faith. She even traveled to Washington to testify before Congress. Her words spoke to a tolerance that is far greater than mistrust -- when she first wore her headscarf to school, she said, ‘I received compliments from the other kids,’” Mr. Obama continued.
Ramadan is a month-long period of prayer, reflection and sunrise-to-sunset fasts, which began Aug. 22 in most of the Islamic world. Muslims believe that Allah (God) began revealing the Holy Quran to Prophet Muhammad ibn Abdullah (PBUH) during Ramadan, and the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims spend the month in religious reflection, prayer and remembrance of the poor.
“Tonight's Iftar is a ritual that is also being carried out this Ramadan at kitchen tables and mosques in all 50 states,” said Mr. Obama. “Islam, as we know, is part of America.  And like the broader American citizenry, the American Muslim community is one of extraordinary dynamism and diversity, with families that stretch back generations and more recent immigrants; with Muslims of countless races and ethnicities, and with roots in every corner of the world.
“Together, we have a responsibility to foster engagement grounded in mutual interest and mutual respect.  And that’s one of my fundamental commitments as president, both at home and abroad. That is central to the new beginning that I’ve sought between the United States and Muslims around the world. And that is a commitment that we can renew once again during this holy season.
“So tonight, we celebrate a great religion and its commitment to justice and progress. We honor the contributions of America's Muslims, and the positive example that so many of them set through their own lives. And we rededicate ourselves to the work of building a better and more hopeful world,” Mr. Obama said.

12:27 pm edt 

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

A Justice like Thurgood Marshall
by Askia Muhammad

Now that Justice David Souter has announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, I’ve been thinking about the retirement announcement 18-years ago, of Justice Thurgood Marshall. He was salty, and he took no prisoners that day. Me, the "Race Man" in attendance, I was a little put-off by his brusque, almost bitter comments about race.

"My dad told me way back that you can't use race," Justice Marshall snapped when pressed as to whether or not his successor should be Black. "For example, there's no difference between a white snake and a black snake. They'll both bite. So I don't want to use race as an excuse." Ouch.

And he was right. Look what we got when President George H.W. Bush scraped the barrel to find a confirmable Black candidate who was compatible with his conservative agenda.

So now, I’d like President Barack Obama to nominate a Black woman, who exemplifies some of Justice Marshall’s finer qualities.

He was a successful trial lawyer, arguing 32 cases himself, before the Supreme Court. His side prevailed in 29 of them! He fought on the side of the downtrodden and dispossessed. I applaud that.

He went to Howard University Law School, not Harvard University Law or the other federal "judicial monastery" Yale Law School!

Because of racism in his home state of Maryland, "The Free State’s" policy when young Thurgood came along, was to pay the tuition for qualified Black students to attend any law school in the world, so long as they did not go to the University of Maryland Law School. At Howard, young Marshall fell into the clutches of a dean who was a cum laude graduate, Harvard Law Review (the "Original Barack Obama") trained and an Amherst valedictorian—Charles Hamilton Houston. So much for Jim Crow laws.

Current University of Maryland Law School professor and—like Justice Marshall—civil rights lawyer, Sherrilyn Ifill lists a number of other excellent qualities Justice Marshall possessed when he was named to the court in a commentary on CNN.

I still long to see a "real" Black person on The Court. This time, how about a woman who reflects Thurgood Marshall’s principles and ideals?

4:20 am edt 

Monday, May 4, 2009

Judging the judges, ‘Supreme’ and ordinary

by Askia Muhammad

I have never knowingly been inside the home of a judge.

Not for 50 years, since Lisa Griffith—the daughter of Judge Griffith—and I graduated from John Muir Jr. High School in Los Angeles and I quit my L.A. Herald Express paper route where I delivered to their home, have I even known where a judge lives. But that’s fine with me.

I have however, been kicked out of some pretty fancy parties, and been in some very distinguished homes.

Of course I went in and out of the White House for 30 years. I’ve been in a number of presidential palaces—in South Africa, Nigeria, Mali, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates, among others. I’ve been to the Kabah in the Holy City, Mecca. I’ve been (more than once) in the Dessert Tent-homes of Libyan Leader Muammar Qaddafi. On numerous occasions I’ve visited the homes of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. I’ve been personally acquainted with a couple of "Old Money" Millionaires, and have visited their homes. I was a guest in the home of an heir to the South African gold miner who inspired the movie character "Goldfinger." And I rubbed shoulders with Michael Jackson at Neverland, but I’ve never knowingly been inside the home of a judge.

I once had an acquaintance whose father was a judge. And I once flew home from Africa after judging Nigerian legislative elections seated next to a retired D.C. judge. But except for a few political fund-raisers, I’ve only been in the homes of two or three lawyers that I can recall.

Not so with doctors and various other "Bourgies." I’m a member of a social group that meets once a month in the homes of members that has goo-gobs of doctors in it. I’ve visited various newspaper publishers, broadcasters and college professors, including the home of the illustrious John Kenneth Galbraith, but I’ve never knowingly been in the home of a judge. And to tell you the truth, I don’t think my life is any poorer from not knowing any judges.

I believe judges and "certain" lawyers must intermarry, so as to keep their Tribe’s bloodline pure. Unlike doctors, whose ability to empathize with the plight of ordinary people can be an asset to a successful "bedside manner," if judges get too cozy with ordinary people it might skew their feelings too much in favor of the weak, the poor, the least of these my brethren. We can’t have that. After all, the law’s job (and judges are the chief custodians of the law) is clearly intended to always favor the side which represents "the money."

Why else would Landlord-Tenant Court automatically give the plaintiff-landlord (money) a default judgment against the poor tenant during the roll call, where every other civil proceeding requires proof that the defendant has been legally "served?" Why else is there no "justice" at all in the "criminal justice system"—just us?

So, imagine my surprise when I heard Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) say something utterly earthshaking May 3 on "This Week" on ABC News: "I would like to see more people from outside the judicial monastery, somebody who has had some real-life experience, not just as a judge..." said Sen. Leahy. Why, you could have knocked me over with a feather. A really "big-time," legal "A-List" person talking about President Barack Obama’s upcoming appointment to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, and sounding to me like he had read my mind.

Thank goodness for Sen. Leahy’s comments. Even if the president does (and probably will) choose an "insulated" legal-eagle from within the "judicial monastery," at least I am comforted to know that it’s not just me thinking that their breed is a bit too aloof, and that it might be a good thing if someone from outside the black-robed and powdered-wigged, legal monastic orders of Harvard and Yale law schools, might once again be considered for an appointment to the Supreme Court.

More than 40 years ago I interviewed Black Panther Party attorney Charles Garry in his office in San Francisco. He said he was a law clerk in the office of Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, who had a guiding principle: "If I make an error, let me err on the side of mercy."

Mr. President, that’s the kind of Supreme Court Justice I’d like to see.

10:48 pm edt 

Friday, April 10, 2009

President Obama: Shared destiny? Separate destinies?
By Askia Muhammad
 
The elevation of Barack Hussein Obama to be the 44th President of the United States makes for some interesting deliberations. He’s a Black man. That goes without saying, but that fact has meaning beyond its historical “first-ness.”

Brother Malcolm X once said, and the statement still speaks for me: “I’m not a Republican. I’m not a Democrat. I don’t even know if I’m and American.” President Obama is obviously a Democrat.
 
The reason that statement is pertinent to me is because of the promise in the Bible: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Now if that promise is also true of nations, then I personally don’t want any parts of the American inheritance for capturing, transporting, and subjugating hundreds of millions of Africans (incidentally murdering tens of millions during the Middle Passage) for more than 400 years; nor do I want America’s heritage for committing genocide against the native Indians; for despoiling the earth’s air and water; and for ruining the world’s economy with America’s thieving brand of robber-baron Capitalism.

But that’s just me.
 
Many people of the world, including many Africans have since chosen to come to this land, presumably because they wanted to participate in the American Promise. That is their choice. My fore parents were kidnapped and were given no choice in the matter. Now, as I survey the situation—with judgment potentially at hand—I have made my choice. I want my own destiny, thank you very much.
 
Unlike my forbearers, Pres. Obama’s African father came willingly to America, and his mother’s parents and grandparents, were also willing Americans.
I wonder about him. Is he going to get the same “reward” as previous presidents? Will Mr. Obama’s reward be the same as what’s coming to George W. (for Worst in history) Bush? Will Bill Clinton’s reward be the same as Ronald Reagan’s? Does Franklin Roosevelt have the same thing coming to him as Herbert Hoover?
 
How about Abraham Lincoln, who effectively “freed” the slaves? Is his portion the same as that of slave-holding Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? Have these men already gotten what’s coming to them?
 
For us today, these are complex questions because Black folks are absolutely giddy over “a Brother” in the White House, not as a butler or servant as we would have been when I was a child, but now as Resident-in-Chief. We did not know “who” we were before his election and inauguration. Now, some of us who thought we knew are absolutely confused.
 
Our condition is understandable. Dr. W.E.B. DuBois described us in his seminal book The Souls of Black Folks, written in 1896 or thereabouts. He asked: “Are we Black? Are we American?” and he described our dilemma as having “two warring ideals in one dark body.” That’s us, alright.
 
But Brother Malcolm made some harsh pronouncements based on today’s standards. Months ago, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two man in Al Qaeda tried to invoke one of the radical American Muslim’s most famous clichés, against Pres. Obama, referring to our “Brother President” as a “House Negro.” Not! Still, Brother Barack is not just IN the House; he is now Head of The House. That is complex.
 
Brother Malcolm also reminded us of the “chickens coming home to roost,” and what-not. Are America’s chickens yet to come home to roost for all Americans? What about us?
 
More interestingly from my perspective, Brother Malcolm said of the House Negro, that the House Negro identifies with the slave master more than the master himself. When the master gets sick, the House Negro asks: “What’s the matter boss? We sick?”
 
When the slave master’s house catches on fire, Brother Malcolm said, the House Negro will help put the fire out. But he said there was another kind of Negro slave—the Field Negro. Unlike the privileged House Negro who got to wear clothes like the master wore, and eat the leftovers of the food the master ate, the Field Negro suffered the worst of conditions, such, that when the master’s house would catch on fire, the Field Negro would not only, NOT help put the fire out, he would pray for a strong wind. A wind which would accelerate the fire, hastening the destruction of the mansion. Is that how we feel about General Motors and Chrysler?
 
So, in the conversation about the “Brother President,” the discussion should not be about who he is and what he does for us, but rather, who “we” are, and whether we want our destiny to be the same as those in the Big House, or those in the Field.
 
Remember the prophetic words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who told singer Harry Belafonte and others (paraphrasing): “I am afraid I am leading our people to integrate into a burning house...”
9:53 pm edt 

Monday, March 30, 2009

The White House, ‘The Gray Lady’ and The Black Press
 
by Askia Muhammad
 
More than 28 years ago, when—thanks to Ted Clark—I started doing commentaries for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” I was in a constant race with the staid old “Gray Lady”—The New York Times, so named because of its stodgy, hidebound, gray appearance and style—and with The Washington Post to pitch story ideas to my editors before they appeared in those two important, national “newspapers of record.”
 
 After a story appears in one of those publications, no reporter can claim it’s still “news.” So for me, as often as not when editors rejected my story suggestions, if and when the story later appeared in print, I would always call and remind them that I pitched the story to them, before it was seen in The Times or The Post. I wanted them to know they could trust my “nose for news.”
 
But once in a while, there is still some “news” after a story appears in The Gray Lady. In this instance, it’s an old saga made new, by a report by Times writer Rachel L. Swarns, published March 27, 2009. “Obama Brings Flush Times for Black News Media,” reads the headline
 
“For the nation’s black magazines, newspapers, and television and radio stations, the arrival of the Obama administration has ushered in an era of unprecedented access to the White House,” she begins. That may well be true, and it’s about time!
 
“At his news conference Tuesday (March 24), he skipped over several prominent newspapers and newsmagazines to call on Kevin Chappell, a senior editor at Ebony magazine,” she continued. “It was the first time an Ebony reporter had been invited to question a president at a prime-time news conference.” Stop right there.
 
What we see today may or may not be “The Greatest” days The Black Press has ever seen at the White House, but understand: these are just “The Latest.” And, by a long shot, they certainly are not The First!
 
The Times article, well intentioned as it may have been, is a classic example of how short-term memory can revise history.
 
First, the declaration that this was the first time an Ebony reporter had been invited to question a president at a prime-time news conference, may have been technically accurate because back in the day when Black reporters broke the glass ceiling in the White House Press Corps there were very few prime time news conferences at all.
 
When I came to Washington in 1977 for the Chicago Daily Defender during the Carter administration, Johnson Publishing icon Simeon Booker—a member of the second Nieman Fellowship class of journalists at Harvard University in 1947, and a winner of the prestigious National Press Club Fourth Estate Award, among many, many, many notable achievements—was writing his “Ticker Tape USA” column in JET magazine and had long been an accredited White House correspondent.
 
Mr. Booker told me that when he agreed to work for the immortal John H. Johnson, his first condition of employment was that his office and everything about the Johnson Publishing Co. news bureau had to be not just “First Class,” but “Top Shelf First Class,” just like all the other well respected news operations in town. The office was and is located in the 1700 block of Pennsylvania Ave., just one block from the White House, for example.
 
But most press conferences by Presidents Carter, Reagan, and even George H.W. Bush, were not held in “prime time” unless it was a national emergency. Black reporters from the Black-owned press were rarely called on, ever in those days. In fact, in 1969 Mr. Booker had to press then Nixon administration communications head Herbert Klein to allow JET to even have a seat in Mr. Nixon’s press conferences.
 
Mr. Booker’s colleagues Roy Betts and the late E. Fannie Granton, were also White House “hard pass” holders, as was JPC photographer Maurice Sorrell. With my own White House “hard pass,” Roy Betts and I, along with Don Agurs representing Mutual Black Network, Tamu White of Howard University Radio, and Glen Ford of Sheridan Radio, often attended, press conferences, but were never called on, although Mr. Agurs did get an exclusive one-on-one interview with Mr. Carter, and I managed to ask him a question at two press conferences, and participated once in a high level briefing with just eight other reporters.
 
Later, after one particularly hurtful snub by Pres. Carter at a late afternoon press conference just ahead of a meeting he was to have (also in the East Room) with a group of Black mayors, Tamu White and I literally hid in the bushes along the North Portico, until Mayors Marion Barry and Richard Hatcher approached. We whined and cried, telling them the president just had a press conference and did not call on any Black reporters, even though he was set to meet with the Black mayors immediately afterward.
 
Mayor Hatcher spoke to the president about our complaint and at the next press conference, this time in prime time, just days after the Delta Force got bogged down by a sandstorm in the Iranian desert trying to rescue the American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, I was called on again. Instead of asking my "civil rights" question, I asked the (scowling I'm told, I can't remember because I was too nervous trying to not sound afraid) President why he did not try to use peaceful means to get the hostages out, instead of launching the disastrous attack? Well, as you might imagine that was it for me and other Blacks from the Black Press being trusted to ask questions at press conferences for years to come.
 
The legendary Ethel L. Payne was a Black Press pioneer at the White House. She was so highly regarded for her work at The Chicago Defender that when the U.S. Postal Service issued its first stamps honoring women journalists in 2002, Miss Payne was one of the four journalists pictured. She was also a thorn in the side of presidents, even incurring the wrath of Pres. Eisenhower when she demanded to know as the U.S. anti-apartheid (Civil Rights) movement was heating up, why he would not simply issue an executive order banning segregation on interstate bus travel, which was his prerogative, via the Interstate Commerce Commission.
 
Before Miss Payne there was Alice Dunnigan, who also represented the Chicago Defender and the Associated Negro Press (ANP). She fought and secured her credential in 1946.
 
In the 1980s, along came Bob Ellison representing Sheridan Radio. He was a trusted member of the White House Press Pool, and was even elected President of the White House Correspondents Association. Since then of course we have had the twin Divas, Sonya Ross (an honorary member of The Black Press) working for the Associated Press (AP), and April Ryan of American Urban Radio Network (AURN). They were (and April is a) fixture(s) of the White House Press Corps and were frequently called on by Presidents and by Press Secretaries at daily White House Press Briefings.
 
The Gray Lady also makes a big deal out of a reception held for members of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) with the current White House incumbent. President Obama, the author reports: “gave Black Enterprise magazine his first print interview and gave a black talk show host one of his first radio interviews. This month, he invited 50 black newspaper publishers to meet with him at the White House.”
 
The fact of the matter is that the then President-elect actually gave an interview to Ebony magazine before anyone else. It’s about time the Black Press got to the front of the line.
 
But receiving Black editors and publishers is nothing new. In 1981 or 1982, L.H. Stanton, publisher of National Scene magazine (a monthly rotogravure supplement which appeared in NNPA newspapers, which I edited) attended a reception for publishers with Pres. Reagan. The president signed a comp copy of a picture shaking hands with Mr. Stanton.
 
In 1978 Black Enterprise publisher Earl Graves took a delegation of the “BE 100” top businesses to the White House to meet Mr. Carter, and I'm certain he as well as John H. Johnson, who is the namesake of the Howard University School of Communications, were also among delegations of their peers at White House receptions, probably on multiple occassions.
 
In addition, in 1992 or ‘93, Pres. Clinton hosted a delegation from NNPA. I attended that event, and my friend Sharon Farmer, Chief White House Photographer (a Black woman!) took my picture when His Nibbs shook my hand. I have an unsigned copy of that print.
 
So, that’s why I maintain the Times’s claim is a bit off the mark. Again: we may or may not be seeing “The Greatest” days The Black Press has ever seen at the White House, but understand: these are just “The Latest.” And, by a long shot, they certainly are not The First!
 
Read! Learn all about yourself. Remember, history is best qualified to reward our research. 
11:54 am edt 

2009.10.01 | 2009.05.01 | 2009.04.01 | 2009.03.01 | 2008.11.01 | 2008.06.01 | 2008.05.01 | 2008.04.01

Link to web log's RSS file

WhiteHouseBlackJournal.com
 
Since 1973, the second inauguration of Richard Nixon, National Scene News Bureau has covered Washington, Capitol Hill and Diplomatic events, providing audio, editorial, and photographic news content for broadcasters and print clients spanning the terms of seven U.S. Presidents.

South Lawn
BillandJerry.jpg
Clinton and Rawlings, South Lawn.

 
 
We don't just take pictures. We record history!

 
Historic audio and photographs for collectors and scholars.

 
 
"A superb political analyst..."

East Room
EastRoom.JPG
President George W. Bush

Reports from 50 capitals on six continents.