I'm Ba-ack!

My 30 Days of Silence Are Over. August was a challenging month. I had to pull back from blogging because of a number of issues, frustrations, and prior commitments. I've been lurking though; here, there, and everywhere, keeping up with the happenings in the Afrosphere.

Well I'm back, for the most part, even though some of my technology challenges remain, which will effect the frequency and aesthetic quality of my posts for a while. I had everything set up just the way I wanted it, and then my computer died. NO warning, no symptoms, nothing... she just died on me.

Just a couple of quick thoughts to get me back up to speed. My last few posts have been about Michael Vick, because here in Atlanta, it;s all the news that's fit to print. I have been supportive of MV7, and as we all now know, he has pled guilty to the federal conspiracy charges and admitted to his financial involvement in the dog fighting operation. The saga should be over at this point, but it's not for several reasons.

First, now that he has entered a guilty plea, we get four whole months of debate about what his eventual punishment is going to be, from the courts, from the NFL, and in terms of money he will lose. The plea negotiation evidently included a recommendation for 12-18 months in jail and about $250,000 in fines. The NFL has suspended him indefinitely, effectively disallowing him from earning an income in about the only way he is really capable of doing so. And thus far, the estimates of his financial losses, including the remainder of his current contract, the signing bonus that will be forfeited, and the lost endorsements, has been estimated at over $100,000,000. In spite of the fact that a federal prosecutor was willing to accept a plea agreement that did not include any admission of personally engaging in dogfighting, or personally torturing or killing any dogs, there is still a vociferous minority, mostly PETA terrorists and closet white supremacists, who insist that he should be punished to the full extent that the law allows, and banned for life from the NFL.

If nothing else, hopefully Michael Vick will come out of this experience a more mature person, with a better understanding of how this world works for Black men, and a new appreciation for how someone with his resources can possible work to make things better. History will record this as yet another example of a Black man being disproportionally punished in a criminal justice system and social climate that still seeks to absolutely demonize the Black man.

The continuing saga of Genarlow Wilson, the Jena 6, Ron Pettaway, and numerous other Black men who are caught up in the evil machinations of the "justice" system have received a highly commendable level and content of comment and I have nothing salient to add. I do hope that we can begin bring these types of discussions around to ways that we can establish a group ethos that continuously stays on top of these types of issues and maybe work to stop some of these things before they get out of hand the way the aforementioned cases have. It;s really too late for us to start countering the assault on Black men if we continue to wait until the sentences are handed down.

For those of you who still drop by to sample the Exodus Mentality, I do appreciate it, and I assure you that there will be something here for your viewing pleasure real soon.