Since the election of our first Negro/African American/Black/Brotha/Nigga/Nigger President the phrase post racial society has been tossed around.  Its bologna. Racism is live and well.  The issue of the day is this advertisement by Nivea which depicts a man of  African descent throwing away mask of an afro wearing, facial hair having black man for a clean shaven “civilized man”.

This ad is just the latest of a series of monthly, if not weekly examples of how racism is still bubbling up in every corner of society.  Last week it was the so called expert blaming the societal ills of the city of London on “black male culture.”  Oh let us not forget the movie “The Help”, which was written by a white woman.  Many say that the movie was a white washed version of the reality of black house servants in the mid 1900′s in America.  The week before that is was the use of the word “nigga” by white female rapper V-Nasty (who?) and all of the black male producers and rappers (also a few white celebrities) who came to her rescue, attempting to give her a “pass” to use the word freely because she was reportedly raised in a primarily black neighborhood(as if that means she can’t be racist, although I am not saying she is racist, I don’t know enough of her to make that claim ).  The week before that we had riots in London started by the alleged wrongful killing of a black man by the police.  I will stop there, as  this post might never end if I continue.  The point of it all is that racism is not something that no longer exists simply because we may chose to ignore it. We don’t have many social movements or rallies against racism anymore, and people who accuse others of racism are quickly ostracized as “pulling the race card” simply because the non-minority may not see or understand the way race factors into that particular event.  The term most appropriate is “white privilege.”  You may very well not be overtly or consciously racist, hell you may not be racist at all, but the fact that you don’t acknowledge or understand how the racism of the government and your ancestors has given you a huge leg up on minorities is a major cause of what many call racist actions or thoughts today.  If your great grandfather owned a business 100 years ago and that set the foundation for your family to be upper middle class and it allowed you to attend a particular University you may not realize that you are benefiting from a privilege.  In most of the country 100 years ago a black man (continue reading…)

Below are a few lessons I have learned during my journey through life to date… I just thought I’d take a moment to share.

1. Figure out what works, improve on it… Repeat

2. Figure out what doesn’t work and decide to stop doing those things or decide to fix the problem(s)… Repeat.

3. Learn from the mistakes of others…Don’t believe anyone who says that you can’t learn from someone who has never “done it” or has never “been there”.  The smartest people avoid pitfalls by observing others, the not so smart people want to learn everything from personal experience.

4.  Help everybody you can…especially if (continue reading…)

Why do you have a job? That is the question I posed to people I was having dinner with recently.

Both of the people I dined with were young graduate degree holders.  Both of them expressed disappointment with their current employment situation.  So I wondered why they were not taking advantage of their education and the current economic/political climate to start some venture of their own, even if it does not mean immediately quitting their day jobs.  Well at least one of the people at the table reminded me of the classic response, which is fear.  I wonder though, what are most people afraid of?  Afraid of failure?  Afraid of hard work?  Afraid of the unknown?  There could be a dozen things one could be afraid of, but I don’t understand the fear when you have nothing to lose.  Starting a business does not mean large expenditures or quitting your current job with no reliable income.  The only thing there is to sacrifice is your “free time” (if you are not happy with your position in life and successful, by your own definition of the word…you really should not have any “free time”)and a couple hundred dollars in filing fees.  Since I started my own company (continue reading…)

I must be a genius or people think I am a bit slow, because there are too many people who think that they can pull a fast one on me for some reason.  The way I see it people who try to pull one over on others or tell lies have to believe in their mind that they are smarter than the person they are trying to take advantage of.  I have to take a quote from the late rap artist Pimp C “Aye man I just look like this man, know what I’m talkin’ bout. I ain’t get this far bein’ no square man.“  I most certainly did not get this far by being no square mane.   I stay sharp.

I used to find pleasure in crushing those who attempted to take advantage of me, but at this point I have crushed so many people that it is no longer entertaining and frankly its getting old.  When will people learn to listen when I tell them that I respect honesty no matter if I like the news they bring. Just tell the whole truth the first time and we can work out the details (continue reading…)

A couple of weeks ago I was having dinner with an old friend when the subject of role models came up.  She was speaking about how Michelle Obama was her role model.  This was coming from a professional, educated woman and it made me think about who my role model in life is, or was.  I quickly realized that I never have had a role model.  I have never wanted to be anybody else, I have never wanted to be like anyone else, no one has ever inspired me to do anything or importance.  Until recently I had never understood the whole argument about why young people need to see people like themselves in certain positions in order to feel as if they can also reach a certain level of success.   At no point in my life have I ever thought that (continue reading…)

FastCompany has a project under way to show the amount of influence we have as individuals online.  I am quite interested to see how much influence I have relative to the other few thousand participants.  So I need you to follow this link fcinf.com/v/bkbr then re-Tweet this link, re-Post this link to all of your social media sites, post this link to Facebook and any other method that you can think of to legally spread my influence around the net I would appreciate it.  I wish there were (continue reading…)

For a long while, I have been interested in the discussions regarding interpretations and translations of the bible.  This topic is quite complicated, and I think that it is one of the issues that will likely never be resolved.  This past week I came across an article about a researcher who claims that there is a high likely hood that Jesus Christ was not killed while nailed to a cross.  This is one thing that I had never questioned, and I had never heard anyone argue this point until now.  This particular researcher did an analysis on the words crucifix and crucify(and their variations).  Apparently it was found that the words “crucifix” and “crucify” had nothing to do with the word “cross”, what the word crucifix actually meant thousands of years ago was “suspension device” or what we would call a pole or maybe even a tree in some cases.  According to the researcher at the time of Christ the word “crucify” simply meant “to suspend”. (continue reading…)

Why is it that some ladies want to keep their ex-husband’s last name after a divorce?  This is something that I do not understand.  If you no longer want to be with that man, why would you want to keep his name attached to yours?  Today I watched two television shows starring woman who are divorced and I spoke to a woman that I know personally who all are divorced yet have kept their ex-husband’s last name.  I have heard a couple of arguments of why a woman would want to do such a thing including: to have the same last name as her children and to maintain her name recognition (in the case of celebrities or well know business women).  I don’t think that either of those are really valid reasons to keep the name of a person you no longer wish to share your life with.  I think that these women simply do not want to endure administrative hassle of changing their name, or they are purposely attempting to keep a link to their ex-husband for some reason (e.g. spite, residual emotional feelings, marketplace name recognition, etc.) If you are attempting to keep the same last name as your children, what happens when you re-marry?  At some point these women are likely to have a different last name than their children, I do not know of any man who would be satisfied if his wife (continue reading…)

Do women(not all women of course) really feel as if they are doing men a favor when they decide to participate in sexual intercourse?  I ask this question because of the things that I hear people say.  I have heard women say that they should not have sex with a man unless they get “something” out of it.  That “something” is usually money or gifts.  I have also heard comments about how men “use” women for sex.  Both of those lines of thinking make me wonder how personal accountability was removed from the equation.  No one is forcing women to have sex, except in the case of a rape, which is a whole nother issue. If a woman chooses to have sex with a man it is either because she (continue reading…)

“What you know cannot really hurt you” That is a quote from a book I started reading this morning. The strange things is that I was trying to write this post last night but I tossed it in the recycle bin as I lost interest half way through writing it. I was surprised to open a new book to be greeted on page xx(page 20) of the prologue by almost the same words I wrote last night. I suppose that means I need to finish composing my thoughts on this subject.

The post I was attempting to write last night was about how the course of one’s life can and does change unexpectedly. I would bet that if you think about the series of events that brought you to your current position in life you would have only a handful of critical decisions or a handful of days that  didn’t unfold as planned, for better or worse. Most of the things we plan tend to fade into obscurity (continue reading…)