Black Employers and Supervisors Should Always Resist Discrimination
One would think, given the ingrained history of discrimination and prejudice Blacks have had to endure in America, that all Black employers and supervisors would be committed to ensuring that discrimination is not present in critical areas and dimensions of their organizations. While Black employers and supervisors should not be held accountable for eliminating deep discriminatory views and mindsets of their employees, they should not be the ones guilty of discriminating against anyone. They should also not be guilty of allowing others within their organizations, especially those who hold leadership positions, to discriminate against people. If you are Black and fortunate enough to earn an opportunity to lead an organization and/or hold a supervisory position within an organization, you have a solemn responsibility to make sure that you are not promoting and/or engaging in the same discriminatory thought and actions that have hindered Black people since the day they arrived in this country.
Unfortunately, too many Black employers and supervisors are afraid of hiring highly qualified Black applicants because they view them as threats. They see highly qualified Black applicants as threats who could take their positions and/or learn something while in the organization that can enable them to not only do what they do but also do what they do better. For those Black employers and supervisors who are guilty of this type of discriminatory thought and actions, they have allowed themselves to fall prey to the damaging bondage of psychic slavery.
During slavery, racist White people employed a strategy of “divide and conquer.” The “divide and conquer” strategy was a coordinated and systematic attempt to have Black people to fight against one another rather than against their true oppressors, racist Whites. By giving certain slaves certain privileges, this engendered a jealousy, envy, and division among many of the slaves. Many slaves would be against other slaves because they saw them as threats to the privileges their racist White oppressors granted them. This same phenomenon exists in the postmodern epoch. The “privileges” granted to certain slaves over others slaves have been replaced today by the opportunities that certain Black people have been given to lead and supervise organizations.
Many Black employers fear hiring highly qualified and independent thinking applicants because they have a warped view that any Black person you hire is a reflection of them, the race, and ultimately on the worth of the organization. Many Black supervisors experience a great sense of inferiority when they are supervising Black people who have better credentials than they have. As means of not having to deal with these highly qualified Black applicants, many Black employers and supervisors are doing everything they can to not hire them and keep them out of their organizations. They suffer from such serious self-esteem problems that cause them to view people from their own racial group as threats. These highly qualified applicants are not trying to take their positions—they are simply seeking to gain employment. Some of these Black employers and supervisors feel like some powerful White people are going to come and take away their positions when it is discovered that there are more qualified Black employees than them in their organizations.
Many Black leaders in multifarious organizations need to stop discriminating against their Black employees and Black applicants. Psychic slavery is a real phenomenon that affects many Black leaders of organizations today. They are a part of the problem why Black people as a whole are not advancing at higher levels. Although the majority of the discrimination and racism that Black people suffer from today emerges from Whites, we, Black people, have to deal with the discrimination and racism that is within our own community too. In no way does this article attempt to suggest that discrimination and racism within the Black community is greater than the discrimination and racism that emerges from members of the dominant culture. This article does contend that within the Black community we do have a strong presence of these phenomena that we have to fight against just as stalwartly as we do when we fight against them when they occur from members of the dominant culture.
You need to be careful because some of the greatest threats to Black progression in the postmodern epoch lie within our own community.
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Commencement Ceremonies at HBCUs
Commencement ceremonies at colleges and universities across America venerate the accomplishments of students who have committed themselves to satisfactorily completing their academic programs of study. For graduates, their family, friends, and those who played some part in their educational experience, this is truly a proud day, a day that will always be remembered as special. As I recently attended Commencement ceremonies for various individuals at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, my position about Commencement ceremonies at predominantly White colleges and universities just not being the same as Commencement ceremonies at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) was reaffirmed. University of Wisconsin-Madison has over 43,000 students, with African-American students composing less than 2% of the student population. (African-American students are still the largest student minority group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.) University of Wisconsin-Madison, like other predominantly White colleges and universities, has a small population of Black graduates who participate in Commencement exercises. While this small Black population of graduates, their Black friends, and Black families bring some elements of an “authentic blackness” to the Commencement ceremonies of predominantly White college and universities, one can only witness a comprehensive “authentic blackness” during Commencement ceremonies at HBCUs.
Just in case some of you ultra-professional and bourgeois people begin to develop the wrong impression about this article, you need to know that Commencement ceremonies at HBCUs are professional and they are respectful. You can be professional and respectful and show your great happiness and excitement for the graduates, especially for graduates you have come to see. Most graduates are not going to be offended if the members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. have one of their sorority sisters graduating and they yell out, “Skee-wee.” Members of Black Greek-lettered organizations are going to vociferously express their excitement and happiness for members of their organizations who are graduating. Black fraternity and sorority members make a tremendous contribution to the experience of being at an HBCU Commencement ceremony. Additionally, they help to remind us that we are not attending a funeral and that this is a joyous occasion that we should be evincing some outward expressions of our elation for the graduates.
The family members, friends, and associates of the graduates also provide noteworthy entertainment at an HBCU Commencement ceremony. At every HBCU Commencement ceremony, family members, friends, and associates are going to go wild in their support for the people they have graduating. Throughout the graduation, even in traditionally quiet moments and/or before the ceremony can really get started well, people are going to cheer for the graduates, blurt out their “Alright now, I see you Rashaun,” “I see you Nupe,” “You better walk soror,” and they engage in other acts they have planned to do before they came to the ceremony or that they spontaneously organized.
Many HBCU graduates are not simply going to just walk across the stage and not give us a performance that demonstrates their great pride and excitement for this awesome moment and that exhibits the merriment this moment that honors their academic excellence and accomplishments triggers them to do. Many graduates also coordinate things they are going to do before and when they get on stage to receive their degrees. It’s the things that the graduates do that make HBCU Commencement ceremonies far different from what you witness at a predominantly White college or university’s Commencement ceremony.
If you ever question whether or not Black people are committed to academic excellence and have zeal for academic accomplishments, you should attend an HBCU Commencement ceremony. You will get to see Black people from all backgrounds enthusiastic about the academic accomplishments of their fellow Black people. If you have never attended an HBCU Commencement ceremony, you should attend one near your area. You will have an opportunity to witness the “call and response” tradition that is highly characteristic of Black culture. Don’t, therefore, try to marginalize Black Commencement ceremonies by what you experience at them without a proper understanding of Black culture.
One thing is for sure, you will have an outstanding experience at an HBCU Commencement ceremony. You won’t be bored.
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Why Are You Not More Transparent Like Don Lemon?
Too many gay Black men hide behind relationships with women—even have sex with them—to avoid shame. They don’t want their family, friends, co-workers, and associates to know that at their core they are gay. I’m not talking about men who are truly bisexual. Authentically bisexual men exist and they men should tell their partners they are bisexual. However, my problem lies with those Black men who know they are gay and would desire nothing more to just be gay, but don’t have the courage to simply be gay, so they just hide their homosexuality behind public facades and dishonest relationships with women. Okay, even if these men are truly bisexual, why won’t they tell these women they are bisexual? Many gay Black men will get married and/or have babies with women just to attempt to conceal their homosexuality. Don’t the women who are they are having sex with have a right to know they are sleeping with men?
Don Lemon, an African-American male Emmy award-winning news anchor for CNN, recently disclosed on CNN and in his new book, Transparent, that he is gay. He also promulgated that he had been molested as a young child. Although there are many narratives available about men being molested as children and living a homosexual life as adults, what I appreciated most about Don Lemon publically divulging that he is gay is how casual he revealed it and how it’s not such a big deal to him. The comfortable way in which Lemon communicated that he is gay has the potential to unsettle some aspects of the ways in which homosexuality is discussed in the Black community. His verbal and non-verbal communication expressed a powerful message that what he was publically unveiling about his sexuality and sexual orientation is just as common as heterosexuality, and that homosexuality is not something novel, considering you know people who are family members and friends who are gay—if you are not gay yourself.
He considered all of the other aspects of his book to be far more important than the fact that he is gay. He even talked about the fact that he could have taken out revealing that he was gay at any point, but it was recent developments concerning young people and homosexuality that caused him to leave his story about his own sexual abuse and gay identity in the book. You will, therefore, have to give me some stronger arguments and rationales that he just penned this book to publicly disclose that he’s gay to get money. Even though he didn’t just compose this book to express that he’s gay to get money and/or attention, do you have the courage to do the same?
Speaking of courage, it’s the lack of courage that prevents gay Black men from telling their family, friends, and others that they are gay. While I’m fully aware that there are consequences for promulgating that you are gay to your family, friends, and others, you must remove the veil that you put on about your sexuality if you truly want to be a transparent person at your core. The target audience for my previous two sentences is really those Black men who are involved in relationships with women just to cover up their homosexuality. If you are accomplished and/or successful like Don Lemon, what would keep you from living a life where you are free to enjoy the freedom to live out your sexuality as publically as you live out other aspects about who you are?
Many Black married men are having sex with gay men and are not telling their wives. This lack of transparency threatens the lives of these women. It’s unfair to hide your homosexual affairs from the woman you are married to because she didn’t marry you for you to be loving up on some other man.
I find it quite interesting that supposedly heterosexual men will have sex with gay men and do things after they have sex to try to prove to the gay men that they are not gay. What? Really? Were you not gay when you were having sex with the gay men? You’re gay—face it! If you have sexual intercourse where you penetrate a man in his anus and/or you let a man penetrate you in the anus, you are gay. If you gave and/or received oral sex from a man, you are gay. If you have had sexual intercourse of any kind with a man, you are gay. If you are thinking about doing these things, then you are gay too. Face it!
Stop using these women as trophies to attempt to hide your homosexuality. If you want to be a homosexual, just be a homosexual. No, you don’t have to reveal your sexuality to everyone, but you should disclose it to the women you are involved with, married to, or considering getting involved with or marrying. Do you have the courage to tell them?
If you are transparent with the right people in your life about your sexuality, then you might just find out life is more free and enjoyable. Before just recently, Don Lemon had not told the world that he is gay, but he had let his co-workers and the people close to him know that he is gay. While you may not be gay, are there other aspects about you that you don’t have the courage to unveil to the people close to you? What factors, if any, keep you from living a more transparent life?
To Don Lemon, I salute you for having the courage to “be yourself.” I have been championing the message of “be yourself” all of my life. Don, you have given America an opportunity to wrestle with the importance of being transparent and have given us an opportunity to explore what being transparent really means. Thank you, Don Lemon!
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
NCORE’s Significance to American Higher Education
The National Conference for Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE) was founded in 1988 in response to increased racist incidents in American higher education. The Southwest Center for Human Relations Studies in Norman, Oklahoma launched NCORE in 1988. Since 1988, NCORE has been one of the leading national conferences on reconnoitering and analyzing issues of race, ethnicity, gender, civil rights, and sexual orientation in higher education in America. The mission of NCORE is to ameliorate racial and ethnic relations, help colleges and universities to engender more inclusive and welcoming milieus, and expand opportunities for historically underrepresented groups in higher education. This year’s conference will be held in San Francisco, California on May 31, 2011 – June 4, 2011. The conference registration fee is $700 and the conference student registration fee is $425. To register for this conference, go here: http://www.ncore.ou.edu/register.html. To learn more about NCORE, go here: www.ncore.ou.edu.
I greatly encourage all students, especially graduate students, to check with your departments and outside of your departments for funding to go to this conference. If you have a research agenda committed to improving issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, diversity, civil rights, and etc., you need to become actively involved in NCORE and participate in the national conference each year. For those who would like to learn more about issues of race and ethnicity in higher education, you should become an active participant in NCORE. Those who are underrepresented in higher education should definitely become actively involved with NCORE. This national conference was founded to enhance the quality of the educational experience and campus climate for underrepresented groups in higher education. NCORE needs your presence, involvement, and support to become an even more powerful force for good in higher education.
Make the decision today to become actively involved in NCORE and to attend this year’s conference in San Francisco. On Facebook, “like” NCORE’s new Facebook page by going here: www.facebook.com/NCOREconference. By clicking the “like” button on NCORE’s Facebook page, you can stay updated on the latest developments and news pertaining to NCORE.
Although significant progress has been made since the great influx of racial and ethnic minorities who enrolled in higher education institutions across the nation during the 1960s (Kaplan & Lee, 2007), racism is still highly prevalent on higher education campuses across the country. You need to be associated with NCORE so that you can learn about and discover subtle issues of race and ethnicity that are not as overt as some of the more popular national issues of race and ethnicity are.
Through your association with NCORE, you can learn about the gaps in the extant peer-reviewed literature, offering you an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the field. For graduate students, finding a gap in the existing research is one of the foremost highlights of one’s educational experience. Just think about how great of an opportunity you will have to discover a gap or gaps in the existing published research by engaging with scholars from across the nation and world who participate in NCORE.
If you are serious about improving the educational experiences and outcomes of underrepresented students in higher education, then you can make a strong step toward achieving this feat by becoming active in NCORE today!
Reference
Kaplin, W.A., & Lee, B.A. (2007). The law of higher education (4th edition). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Being Overly Self-Focused
Without a doubt, there’s a level of self-focus we all need to have to be successful in whatever we are doing in our lives. However, you have to understand when your level of self-focus becomes so extreme that it causes you to misjudge others. When you are overly concerned with yourself, you can fail to put things and people in their proper contexts. Some people have a way of making everything about them. Everything is not about you! Many things go beyond how you view and feel about them. When you limit your thinking predominantly to how you view things and rarely critically consider the views of others, you will end up being perceived as overly dogmatic and not a person to be taken seriously. Most people don’t want to be around individuals who are excessively dogmatic and who make everything about themselves.
If you would consider the things others may possibly be going through, it can better inform your judgment about what they say and do. When you disagree with others, do you ever give any meaningful consideration to trying to understand their arguments and rationales? If you would do this, then you might find out what are the significant factors that contribute to their arguments and rationales. Even if you still disagree with their arguments and rationales, you might gain a better understanding of how they arrive at their arguments and rationales. You may learn more about their arguments and rationales, and you may also learn more about your own arguments and rationales through engaging them more about why they say what they say and do what they do. For many people, however, they have an unwillingness to take the time to do this and don’t have the predilection to do this either.
Overly self-focused people are not able to see the pain, frustration, pressure, and struggle of others. They simply turn a blind eye to other people, especially when they are successful or things are going well for them at a particular time. One of the things that can be most repugnant about overly self-focused people who are successful and/or who things are going good for them at a particular time is how they will look down upon and viciously critique you when you’re are experiencing some difficult times and circumstances. The only thing they want to be clear is that the focus should be on them. They have no true concern for you.
At their core, overly self-focused people are imbued and defined by an egregious all-consuming selfishness. Again, you should have a certain level of self-focus that is going to help you to become successful and stay successful. The problem with your self-focus emerges when it reaches a level that no longer allows you to see, hear, and understand anything or anyone but yourself.
There’s a healthy level of selfishness to have, but don’t make everything about you.
Always take a moment to self-critique yourself to make sure that your self-focus is not reaching an extreme level, a level where it’s becoming an egregious all-consuming selfishness.
Sometimes we can get a little busy with focusing on ourselves that we forget about the people around us who we love. The people who we love, however, should not be placing too much of an undue burden on us. If you’re overly self-focused, then you will think any request from a loved one is an undue burden. Moreover, if you are overly self-focused, you will think any request you make is an undue burden or will be perceived as an undue burden.
Even when overly self-focused people give to others, they find a way to make that giving all about them. They promulgate to everyone that they gave to you and what they gave to you. Many times, they disclose their giving to you to everyone in mean-spirited ways.
Revolutionary Paideia will continue to passionately advocate for people to not be consumed by selfishness. You should never let selfishness define you. Let love, compassion, generosity, and community define you. Plato says it best, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
It’s Natural to Grow Apart from People
You may think it’s a bad thing to grow apart from some of your relatives and friends, but you should stop feeling this way because it’s natural to grow apart from some of them. As time passes, you can begin to see differences between some of your relatives and friends that are not just simple differences but are differences that are incompatible with the core values and principles that define you. While you may have tolerated things they have done in the past that are conflicting with the core values and principles that define you, time may unveil to you that you need to separate from them. I would argue that you made a serious mistake in tolerating them in the first place and never should just simply tolerate people who you claim you love. However, we all do make mistakes and the best thing we can do is acknowledge our mistakes, learn from them, move on, and progress.
Although you may disagree with people on many political, social, cultural, and economic issues, it is ultimately their core values and principles you should be more concerned about than their political, social, cultural, and economic viewpoints. You should assess your relationship with people by who they are at their core. You should ask yourself the following query: What kind of human being is this person? Is this the kind of human being I want to be associated with and who is or can be a positive force in my life? Does the good outweigh the bad with this person? If you don’t like what kind of human being this person has become, then you should peacefully sever your relationship and ties to this person. If you don’t believe that the person is the kind of person you want to be associated with and isn’t a positive force in your life, then you should peacefully disassociate yourself from the person. When the good does not outweigh the bad with this person, then it’s time to disassemble the relationship.
Of course, you should not simply discontinue a relationship with some of your relatives and friends without making serious efforts to engage them and talk to them. You cannot worry about how other people will perceive the reality that you no longer associate yourself with these people. There’s no need to go into great details about why you are no longer associating yourself with certain relatives and friends. One of the best explanations is it’s natural for people to grow apart from one another.
When every little aspect about a person begins to irk you, then you know it’s time for you to either take some time away from this person and/or resolve whether it’s time for you to sever your relationship with this person. Far too often, we delay the inevitable when we already know the relationship is really over.
Relatives and friends who disassociate themselves from one another don’t have to become enemies. You can still be peaceful to one another. You certainly shouldn’t just maintain a relationship with one another out of fear of personal information and secrets you know about one another. If those secrets and personal information come out, then just deal with this reality but don’t let fear of those things keep you in a miserable relationship.
Always give your relationships an opportunity to work, but do know when it’s time to end them or modify them. We are all human beings and we all do change. The changes that happen with us may cause us to no longer be connected with others anymore. Accept this natural development and do what is necessary to appropriately respond to this natural evolution.
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Exploring Secret Relationships
Let me begin this article by saying that I’m an open book—always have been and always will be. There’s absolutely nothing I avoid discussions about. Most people are not able to say they are an open book. You may say, “You’re right and I don’t want to be one either.” I’m just making this point up front, however. I think that it may be my unfiltered candor that may be my greatest strength and greatest flaw in this article. People’s strengths and flaws allow us to learn so much from them.
In only the most extreme cases can I see the necessity of maintaining a secret relationship. By secret relationship, I mean hiding a relationship you are in that you are building something meaningful in and/or desire to continue to build something meaningful in the relationship. Moreover, by secret relationship, I mean those relationships where a person refers to another person in intentionally ambiguous terms to keep the person’s identity veiled, but still keeps alluding to that person with such fondness. To go even further, by secret relationship, I mean any relationship where one is not publically transparent about the individual he or she is in a relationship with. Sometimes these secret relationships are nothing more than “invisible relationships,” that is, non-existent relationships.
Many people who maintain secret relationships will publically share with us a significant amount of personal information, but will not share with us at least the simple identity of the person who they are in a relationship with. Therefore, for these people to try to claim that the reason why they are not public about the relationship they are in is due to a desire to protect the privacy of the relationship, I would have to contend that their position is quite contradictory.
It seems to me if you have a strong fondness for a person and/or want to develop something even more substantive with a person, you would naturally divulge the identity of the person you are in a relationship with. If the person is making you feel this good, then why is his or her name left undisclosed? I’m not saying that a relationship is not valid that is not publically promulgated, but what I’m saying (or at least trying to understand) is why is there a need to keep the name of the person you are in a relationship undisclosed when you are so public when it comes to alluding to this person?
What are you hiding?
Although I recognize some of the strengths of a relationship that is kept tremendously private without people ever knowing the folk are in a relationship, I would like to express that there are some weaknesses to these secret relationships. When you don’t identify the person you are in a relationship with, even before you consider yourself in a relationship with the person, you run the risk of not learning things about the person you need to know that he or she will not tell you.
Personally, I know people who are in secret relationships and it’s resulting in them not learning things about the people they are in a relationship with that would cause them to no longer desire to be in a relationship with those people. Sometimes your secret relationships are not so secretive. However, because people will respect your desire to keep your relationship a “secret,” they will pretend that they don’t know you who you are in a relationship with. By pretending like they don’t know who you are in a relationship with, they feel like they have to withhold vital information from you. One guy I know who’s in a secret relationship is involved with a girl who tried to holla’ at his very close friend and has had sex with another one of his good friends and still is having sex with her because the good friend does not know a relationship exists. From my experience and vantage point, being secretive and silent does not prove beneficial inevitably.
By having a secret relationship, you prevent yourself from receiving some much needed relationship advice. You won’t receive any relationship advice because no one knows about your relationship or does not know who you are in a relationship with.
Furthermore, being in a secret relationship can be tremendously dangerous. If people don’t know you are in a relationship with a person, then they never know about you possibly being in danger by this person. They don’t know what the person looks like, and don’t know that you may be spending time with this person in a private place that’s totally isolated from everyone who knows you. This is a perfect storm for disaster to evolve.
What are reasons why secret relationships continue to persist? What do you consider to be extreme cases in our contemporary period where secret relationships are necessary? Do you think that it’s necessary for a person to reveal who he or she is in a relationship with?
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Celebrating Osama Bin Laden’s Death Isn’t Characteristic of “Small Minds”
In the immediate moments after President Obama promulgated that our great military killed Osama Bin Laden, people across the nation started celebrating in the streets, at bars, through social media, and etc. The majority of the American people are proud that the American military killed Osama Bin Laden, according to the majority of scientific polls. Most scientific polls show that at least 85% of the American people agree with President Obama’s decision to kill Osama Bin Laden. Most Americans agree that Osama Bin Laden was an evil man who orchestrated the tragic and abhorrent attacks on our nation on September 11, 2001.
All Americans are not proud and in a celebratory mood about Osama Bin Laden being brought to justice, however. On Facebook and Twitter, I had an opportunity to witness some great disrespect for the brave men and women who serve in uniform. Although I do everything within my power to respond to attacks on our military, Americans have the freedom to attack those who service in uniform. The courageous men and women in uniform have fought and died for the right of all Americans to enjoy the freedom of speech, which is one of the bedrock principles of America.
One University of Wisconsin-Madison female law student argued on Facebook that people who celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden have “small minds.” The following is one comment that she made: “while it may be a ‘happy moment,’ it is hardly an occasion for public celebration. Small minds celebrate the death of Bin Laden, while greater minds can see beyond that. What saddens me is knowing that we have come to a point, as human beings, where we feel comfortable putting our humanity aside to celebrate a man’s death (even if our enemy). Too bad we’re not better than that…” She kept arguing that all people celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden have small minds. This young woman is, therefore, calling me a “small mind” when she is not even qualified to tote water for me or hold my jockstrap. She would never directly address me because she knows she’s an intellectual lightweight and I’m an intellectual heavyweight.
On Facebook and Twitter, there were the usual people on there saying ridiculous stuff and attacking our troops, and they were contending that we should not be happy about this moment and should not be celebrating Osama Bin Laden’s death. On Twitter, I observed some people on the Left challenging how contradictory and wrong it is for Americans to be celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden.
I would just like to say that people don’t have small minds just because they celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden. Many Americans lost family members and friends on September 11, 2011 because of what this evil man orchestrated. I guess some people will continue to think that the victims’ family and friends have small minds because they celebrate Bin Laden’s death.
Bin Laden was successful in disrupting and altering crucial aspects of the American way of life. We have lost numerous lives because of this man. He has had a tremendously negative impact on our economy. Americans have a right to feel angry with this man. A way for us to express our anger and to appreciate the successful mission of our troops is to celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden. Osama Bin Laden’s death symbolizes much more than the death of a single man, but the death of the man responsible for beginning this War on Terrorism.
It’s too unfortunate that some skinny and long neck female law student at University of Wisconsin-Madison and others would think that people like me who celebrate Osama Bin Laden’s death have small minds. Those who have small minds are not open to opposing positions from the ones they hold. If you ever want to be successful, you are going to have to be willing to be open to engaging the viewpoints of others without trying to attack them for having viewpoints that differ from your own.
If passionately celebrating Osama Bin Laden’s death means I have a small mind, then I’m proud to have a small mind because the killing of this evil man is an outstanding achievement for America’s national security interests. I support our military and congratulate the men and women who serve in uniform for doing a stellar job of defending our nation and protecting our liberties.
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Tips for Improved Blog Writing
Although blog writing allows one some flexibility from the standards of academic writing, one should never abandon the elements of effective writing. You can have fun with blogging and you don’t have to approach blogging like you do an academic paper. However, no matter what approach you employ as a blogger, you should not neglect the core principles of effective writing. From the beginning of this piece, I want it to be clear that I’m not trying to present myself as the world’s greatest writer. I’m far from the world’s greatest writer, but I’m a very accomplished writer. I’ve had many of my articles posted here at Revolutionary Paideia featured on many sites. I’m a university English Instructor and published scholar. I do, therefore, know a little something about effective writing. The fundamental purpose of this piece is to offer some writing advice to bloggers about how they can ameliorate the quality of the writing in their blog posts.
I’m not a blog expert. I have only been blogging for a little over one year. I’ve been reading blogs for a while now. One thing I have found to be problematic about many of the blogs I have read and/or stumbled upon is the writing does not reflect that the authors have fully given themselves an opportunity to be benefit from the complete writing process. As an English Instructor, one of my primary goals for my students is to have them to buy into the notion of writing as a process. While you can see that many bloggers have thought about what they want to write about, many of them are not engaging in the editing and proofreading stages of the writing process.
One the easiest ways for a blogger to give his or her readers a negative dominant impression about his or her blog and writing is to post pieces on his or her blog that have not been carefully edited and proofread. Some bloggers feel like they have to maintain a certain kind of schedule, and this leads them to feel like they have to just get the piece posted—with little to no editing and proofreading. Never let your self-created blog posting schedule interfere with you posting pieces that have been carefully edited and proofread. Bad writing is just as unattractive as a funky mouth. Why would you rush to post a piece that no one can understand?
Good writing is not boring writing. Don’t try to justify your bad writing with the trite excuse that you don’t write that well on your blog because you’re trying have fun and not bore your reader. I hate to tell you but bad writing is boring. It’s the kind of thing that will cause the reader to move on to the next blog.
One thing you can do to improve the quality of the writing on your blog is to have someone who you know who’s a good editor to review your work before you to publish it on your blog. Even for good writers or people who perceive themselves to be good writers, you can benefit from letting someone review a draft of your post before you promulgate it on your blog. The feedback you receive from a good editor can help to improve your public online image. With the power of Google, you don’t want a potential employer to perform a Google search on you and discover your poor writing.
The grammar error I see most often on blogs, even from many of the better written blogs I read, is noun-pronoun antecedent disagreement. The pronoun you use to refer back to the noun with has to agree in both number and case. Here’s an example of the error: “When a person does negative things in public, their public image will suffer greatly.” “Person” and “their” don’t agree. This error may seem obvious to you now that it is being highlighted, but it’s one of the main errors I see too often in the blogosphere and elsewhere.
The following is a list of more writing tips I recommend for bloggers:
1) Eliminate unnecessary uses of “that” in your sentences. This is something you should check for during your editing process.
2) Avoid repetition. When you’re editing your work, go back and look for repetitious words. Additionally, look for repetitious beginnings of sentences. Don’t have 4-5 sentences in a row that all begin with “I.”
3) Don’t create your own words without informing your reader of the definition of your newly coined words.
4) Use apostrophes appropriately.
5) Don’t write sentence fragments, save for when you’re intentionally and appropriately using them.
6) Make sure your sentences are clear. If you know you’re not the strongest writer, just keep it simple.
In no way am I trying to denigrate any blogger, I just enjoy reading good writing and want many of my fellow Black bloggers to improve their writing.
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Revolutionary Paideia Seeks Nominations for the 2011 Black Weblog Awards
Dear Readers:
I would like to get your support to be nominated for Best New Blog, Best Writing in a Blog, Blog to Watch, Best Blog Post Series (“Black Men Masquerading”), and Best Culture Blog in the 2011 Black Weblog Awards competition. Click on the following to nominate me: Nominate Me! In a little over one year and one month, I have been able to amass well over 145,000 readers (and the readership is constantly increasing at astonishing levels). Most blogs could only dream about achieving this type of readership so soon. I have been able to gain such a large readership by not focusing on the number of comments that each blog post can get, but concentrating on producing quality material each time I publish a piece. I never pen an article here at Revolutionary Paideia that does not provoke serious thought. However, this is a site where we have fun too.
Revolutionary Paideia is a special blog because it does not make an effort to be this kind of blog or that kind of blog—it simply is a blog that promotes ideas that have significance for African-Americans and the world. When you arrive at Revolutionary Paideia, you are not going to see all of the frivolous stuff that you see on many other blogs, including many of the Black bloggers’ blogs I’m competing against. You will come away from this blog with some substance, even when some of the posts are just having fun. We all like fun, right?
Although I know that many of my very passionate readers will want to nominate me for every category, I request that you don’t nominate me for every category because Black Weblog Awards will discard your ballot. I’m focused on winning the following categories: Best New Blog, Best Writing in a Blog, Blog to Watch, Best Blog Post Series (“Black Men Masquerading”), and Best Culture Blog. With well over 145,000 readers in just a little over one year and one month of blogging, I think this says something special about this blog and qualifies it to be Best New Blog and Blog to Watch.
I truly believe that the writing at Revolutionary Paideia is far superior to the writing of any other blog. To be fair, most other bloggers don’t have the advanced training in English that I have and are not university English Instructors as I am. The reality is, however, that my writing is simply far superior than the rest of the bloggers out there. This may sound arrogant but I’ve never ran away from the label of arrogant. If you don’t believe I have the best writing in the blogosphere, simply go click on any other blog and compare the writing to my writing. If you don’t agree that my writing is better, then don’t vote for me in this category. However, if you come to the conclusion that my writing certainly deserves Best Writing in a Blog, then take a moment and nominate me for Best Writing in a Blog.
I deserve to win Best Culture Blog because of the quality and range of cultural issues that my blog has tackled. I have not been afraid to grapple with any cultural issue and have not approached cultural issues from the perspective of pleasing people either. We have too many bloggers out there who are writing just to receive a “cyber high five” from their readers. Revolutionary Paideia is not here to make you feel cozy—it’s here to unsettle, unnerve, and unhouse you.
Tell everyone you know to vote for me in the aforementioned categories. Let’s win these awards and show people that we can win them by being substantive. Let’s continue to shake things up! I appreciate your support and thank you for your vote.
Best,
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
