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Margaret Kimberley is a woman of the people. She speaks for the people, and is not encumbered by corporate constraints.  Her weekly column on BC is the best-read item on our menu. We are honored that she writes for us, and writes so well.

She also speaks truth to power, and to the powerless, and to those who purport to speak for the powerless – the false leadership that is subsidized by outside forces.

False leadership comes in various flavors. Sometimes it is licorice, simulating Black. It stains your tongue, but doesn’t tell the truth.

Margaret Kimberley’s weekly columns hit hard – like they’re supposed to do. In the Blackest major city in the nation, Detroit, misguided politicians tried to set aside a few square blocks for Africa Town.  This is crazy. Most of Detroit is “Africa Town.”  The whole city should be developed to serve African Americans. Ms. Kimberley said so, on October 7, 2004:

”Detroit’s population is 80% black. In theory, the entire city should be a boom town for black people. If a majority black population and black political leadership can’t provide economic development for Detroit, then the African Town discussion is a waste of time and energy that might be better spent developing a real plan for that city.”

We must speak the truth, especially to our own people. Halfway measures don’t get us the whole way to freedom and prosperity. And half-ass politics gets us nowhere. Margaret Kimberly spares no one, in the search of truth. Certainly, the Democratic Party, to which Blacks have been wedded for generations, is an actor in the racist game. Senator John Kerry conceded, in the face of massive voting fraud in Ohio, Florida, and many other states, almost before the sun came up on the day after the election. He was complicit in the crime, as Ms. Kimberley wrote on November 11, 2004:

”The same politicians who looked over the Democratic field and decided that Senator Empty Suit was going to be the savior of the party are now blaming gay marriage for the loss. They have said nothing about electronic voting irregularities in Ohio and Florida that disenfranchised their most loyal voters. They have said nothing about the system of electoral racial separation that condemns black voters to use punch card ‘hanging chad’ machines and provisional ballots that aren’t counted.”

Ms. Kimberley cuts no slack. Nor should any of us. White people are determined to choose our leaders. At Harvard, the leadership factory, a committee of white men decided that a know-nothing, twenty something Black man would be our next leader. His only credentials were that he bad-mouthed Black society.  That seems to please Harvard. So Roland Fryer became the Black flavor of the month, according to the New York Times Magazine.  Margaret Kimberly wasn’t having it, as she explained, in a March 31, 2005 column, “Self Hatred at Harvard”:

”Unfortunately the Fryers among us are more dangerous if they are allowed to get some book learnin’ than if they had none at all. Immediately after winning the brass ring they begin the stale lamentations about the state of black America. What is wrong with black people? Why don’t they do better?”

Apparently, we don’t do better, because we don’t please white people. Or more accurately, we don’t please white people ensconced in corporate offices. The kind of white people who give money to Harvard, to pay for those racist professors who chose Fryer as our next leader.

The pharmaceutical industry in the United States is a band of bandits, that have forced drug prices in the U.S. to astronomical levels. They are, literally, killing people. The Bush administration, like the Clinton administration before it, has given them a license to do so. Now the NitroMed Corporation, out of Lexington, Massachusetts, is cashing in on the high rate of Black heart disease, a condition that is directly connected to the daily harassment and oppression that is meted out to African Americans every time they step out of the door. Instead of national health insurance, they offer a pill called Bidil. Margaret Kimberly was outraged:

”There should be an outcry over Bidil. A system that allows millions of people to go without health insurance, and consequently creates conditions such as heart failure, is now using those same people to repackage two generic drugs as a sort of medical magic bullet. Surely many of the African American heart failure patients would have been better off with universal health care, not a profit making gimmick that does them little good.”

Ms. Kimberley takes on the powers-that-are. She is unafraid, and a heroine of The Black Commentator.

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July 28 2005
Issue 148
Summer Reading Issue

will publish again on September 8 2005

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