Never a Good Idea to Refer to Shonda Rimes as an 'Angry Black Woman'

The Black Twitterverse exploded when Alessandra Stanley published her New York Times op-ed re: media mogul Shonda Rhimes earlier this week. I suspect that Alessandra didn't understand the blow-back that would be unleashed about the story referring to the 'Grey's Anatomy' and 'Scandal' powerhouse as "an angry black woman".

Shonda Rhimes went to Twitter to let folks know she wasn't happy with the description.

Confused why @nytimes critic doesn't know identity of CREATOR of show she's reviewing. @petenowa did u know u were "an angry black woman"?
— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) September 19, 2014

Shonda's star in 'Scandal', Kerry Washington, also had a short and sweet retort to the NY Times article:

Dear @nytimes http://t.co/20dzCSLKsx AND http://t.co/VJQ7n0Ujdn You're welcome. Love, K-Dub
— kerry washington (@kerrywashington) September 19, 2014

There was a fury of Twitter posts using the #IWasAnAngryBlackWoman hashtag after the article was published.   And there is an online petition seeking to have an apology and retraction of the article.

Moral of the story? Don't use the phrase 'Angry Black Woman' unless you can back it up!

One Day Those Who Flaunt Their Racism Will Experience the Backlash of Karma

I'm not sure what it is about wearing 'Blackface' that white folks think is funny? It's never funny. It's like folks that compare politicians to Adolph Hitler ... it's never appropriate. So you can imagine my dismay when someone forwarded to me the following image from Twitter:

I wonder if their parents were chuckling when they came across this tweet? I wasn't. Well, I did smile when it dawned on me that these two idiots looked like the Oompa Loompas.

Anyhow, a few hours after seeing this tweet I was introduced to the spoken word poetry of Dominique Christina. The sister is powerful. She is a spoken word champion and one of her poems is entitled, 'Karma'.

I've decided that whenever I come across racists on the Internet I'm going to spend a few minutes listening to Dominque as she shares her insights on what 'Karma' is going to be at some point in the future for these racist fools.



'...If I could write this shyt in fire, I would write this shyt in fire!' Yeah, this ignorant and evil folks that try to degrade and denigrate with their race-based humor will one day learn what 'Karma' is all about.

Racism Runs Rampant on Both Romney's Team and the Greek Olympic Team

I joined Pinterest last month. It is a social network that allows you to post photos on 'boards' that you create in areas that interest you. One of my boards is called 'Racism in America'.

Who knew that my board was too restrictive. Racism is running rampant in Europe as well.

Today we learned that an adviser to the Romney campaign suggested the Republican hopeful was better able to navigate the “special relationship” between the United States and England because of his understanding of “Anglo-Saxon heritage.” [SOURCE]

I guess that Anglo-Saxon heritage is a white supremacist homonym used in Europe.

“We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special,” the unnamed adviser said, according to the report in the Daily Telegraph. “The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have.”

Mittens didn't deny the report.

“I’m generally not enthusiastic about adopting the comments made by people who are unnamed. I have a lot of advisers,” Romney said. “I’m not sure who this person is … So, I don’t agree with whoever that advisor might be.”

The Romney campaign wasn't the only one with racist foot-in-mouth disease today.

Triple jumper Voula Papachristou was expelled from Greece's Olympic team for her comments on Twitter mocking African immigrants and expressing support for a far-right party.

Commenting on the widely reported appearance of Nile-virus-carrying mosquitoes in Athens, Papachristou wrote:

"With so many Africans in Greece, the West Nile mosquitoes will be getting home food!!!"

The Hellenic Olympic Committee kicked Papachristou from the team "for statements contrary to the values and ideas of the Olympic movement."

So ... this woman trains hard for YEARS to represent her country ... she fine-tunes her skills so that she is the best in her nation and one of the best in the world ... she is within a few days of being on a worldwide stage ... and in 140 characters or less she managed to screw it all up.


Racism is a sickness that makes you do and say things that are simply dumb! Hope she has Greek cable TV subscription so she can watch the Olympics on her couch!

I also hope that Mittens can get a backbone like the Hellenic Olympic Committee and locate the racist nit on his staff who made the 'anglo-saxan' comment. That guy needs to get kicked off the team as well!

Twitter Thursday! - What Is Your Twitter Name?

Drumbeats from Vincent Wright gave us the idea to see if there are any villagers who want to Twitter with us?

Tell us your Twitter name!
To get things started, here are mine:



Personal Twitter name: twitter.com/Villager
My Non-Profit Twitter name: twitter.com/BDPA

For those of you that don't know ...Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.


Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United Kingdom number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.

There are millions of registered Twitter users. Do you have one of them?

Wordless Wednesday: Earthquake Vagina

MissRFTC gained hundreds of twitter followers, including me, when she shared the following tweet, "I am totally serious. My Ob/Gyn was IN my vagina and an earthquake started rattling the room!"

Tweet Your Senators to Pass Health Care Reform Now!

To help President Obama push through health care reform, you can send a tweet message to your senators from here by simply entering in your zip code.

In this message you can voice your support for timely passage of a reform bill.

What say u villagers? Are you down for a little 140-character activism?

(Th)ink by Keith Knight: Revolution

(Th)ink is an editorial cartoon written and drawn by cartoonist Keith Knight (the K Chronicles).

Twitter in Plain English

My mom and my brother's godfather are both new to Twitter. They both are trying to figure out what all of the fuss is about Twitter. I thought that they would both appreciate this video overview:





What ideas, advice or guidance would you give to a Twitter novice? What do you wish someone had told you about Twitter when you first joined?

Twitter Milestone: 700 Followers

I have talked about Twitter here on this blog over the past few months. It appears that the rest of the world discovered Twitter as well. You can barely watch television for an hour without someone telling you about their Twitter account. The world has not yet discovered my personal Twitter account yet ... but, I want to express my appreciation to the 700 folks that do follow me!

Special honors go to Louis Pagan. He is a New York-based entrepreneur/author of http://www.latinopundit.com/ and http://www.louispagan.com/. Louis was the 700th person to follow me on Twitter!

Are you on Twitter? How do you use it to improve your life or business?

Aretha Franklin and Her Hat

I enjoyed seeing Aretha Franklin at Obama's inauguration earlier this month. I was glad that she didn't show her cleavage ... and her hat made me smile. Here is video of her inauguration performance of 'My Country 'Tis of Thee':





It turns out that the Queen of Soul wasn't satisfied according to her recent NPR interview.

"I did everything I could to guarantee my voice would be where I wanted it to be, where it should have been, but Mother Nature just said, I don’t think so," Franklin told host Michel Martin.

Sis. Franklin plans to provide the original hat worn at the inauguration to the Smithsonian to be installed in the presidential library. Villagers can pay $179 to order one directly from the hat's creator, Luke Song, who has been making hats for 25 years at Mr Song Millinery in Detroit.

For those who can't afford to spend that much money on Aretha's hat, you can make your own version at home, for about $15, using the instructions from the Lemondrop.com blog.

It could be that this whole Aretha's Hat phenomenon has gone too far. There is a Facebook group dedicated to the hat with over 103,915 fans. There is even a Twitter page for the silly hat!

I'm not sure that I would have the nerve to sit with a sister that wore that hat out in public. How about you? Would you wear such a hat out in public? Would you buy such a hat as a gift for the woman in your life?

Twitter Grader * Where Do You Rank?

By simply entering your Twitter username into Twitter Grader. The site calculates your grade using a combination of factors including:

• The number of followers you have
• The power of this network of followers
• The pace of your updates
• The completeness of your profile
• …a few others

The top-ranked Twitter account is Barack Obama. My account is ranked in the 75th percentile. Where do you stand?

Twitter 3rd-Party Applications

I recently made decision to use Twitter. I had the account for over a year, however, I wasn't really a tweeter. I added widgets on my BDPA Foundation and Electronic Village blogs that shares my tweets with interested blog readers. Currently, I follow 50 people on Twitter and there are 56 people that follow me.

I have become much more interested in 3rd party applications as a result of my recent forays into Twitterville. Therefore, I was very intrigued by a recent post from Kim Beasley that shared a short list of great 3rd-party applications for Twitter. Kim wrote,

"If you haven’t started using Twitter yet then you are missing out on a great way to network online. I decided to try out Twitter a couple of month ago but I didn’t do much with it until with the last week. Admittance to being addicted is a mild way to explain how much I love Twitter. Let me share a few details about Twitter, keep in mind that when I say Tweet it means that you have just sent a message via Twitter. A person who uses Twitter is a Tweeter. The entire network or universe of Twitter is called Twitterville. Meeting people offline is called a TweetUp.

OK, enough about my love of Twitter and onto the 3rd-party applications (apps) that you can get that will work well with Twitter. Below is a short list but look for more details about the entire list that will be released soon.

• Twhirl: offline program that will allow you to send tweets from your desktop



• TweetLater: online website that will all you to automatically except followers and to schedule your tweet for future release



• TweetBurner: online website that will allow you to track the activity of links that you post to Twitter



• Twitterfeed: online website that will send RSS feeds to your Twitter account

Are you on Twitter?

Why Does Twitter Exist?

I'm slow on the uptake with most technology. I don't have a Blackberry. I never use the camera or text features on my cell-phone. My daughters set up an I-Pod Shuffle that I received at a national conference a few years ago. I'm just slow on this stuff. So, it comes as no surprise that I don't get the point of Twitter. I don't see a business reason for using it ... and I can't imagine that others much care that I'm 'just chillin'.

Do you have a Twitter account? Click here to see mine.

Can you give me a clue? Why do you use Twitter?

[NOTE: AM McReynolds points us to a great article on Twitter]