The Black Informant

Some of the “minor” details left out of this summer’s illegal immigration protests

Living here in California, I have a front-row seat to the whole issue of illegal immigration and how it can affect a community. So it is hard for me to just simply “move on” and away from this issue to talk about more pressing issues like the JonBenet Ramsey case — whatever!

Here is an article I came across recently that paints quite a different picture of the economic structure in South America than what  many in the pro-ILLEGAL immigration movement have been preaching.

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(This article contains MANY links)

Mexico’s Rich Don’t Like To Pay Taxes – They Think You Should - Brenda Walker

written in 2003

“Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States” is an  early example of the now-familiar annoying whine, first voiced by Mexican  President Porfirio Diaz .
Pathetic loser, mooch, social basket case, criminal narco-state: these are Americans’ mental pictures of Mexico.

But more than any other, the image is one of staggering poverty. Anyone who has been to a Mexican border town is immediately overwhelmed by the Third World - the oppressive dirt, decay, too many underfed children. More »

Alphas develop a plan to help black men

(blackcollegewire.org) Alpha Phi Alpha, Inc., the nation’s largest black fraternity, is developing a national strategic plan aimed at addressing such problems as the low numbers of black males majoring in education and black men’s disproportionate health issues.

“We want to make discussions on healthcare as common as dapping someone up,” said Mitchelle Artis, alumnus of the Alpha Phi Alpha chapter at Hampton University, speaking of the fraternity handshake.

More than 10,000 Alphas met in Washington this summer for a symposium and “town meeting” on the state of African American men, part of a five-day centennial convention.
The symposium was designed to define goals for black male advancement in health, wealth and innovation, and to develop black men personally, emotionally and spiritually. Plans developed from the discussion were to help create the “African-American jubilee century.” (more…)

“Ain’t no such thing as Press freedom in Gambia”

(Reporters sans Frontières-AllAfrica.com) As the campaign for the 22 September presidential election got under way today in Gambia, Reporters Without Borders said repeated attacks on the press and free expression meant the polling would be neither free nor fair.

“On the one hand, you have journalists with their hands tied because they fear the intelligence services,” the organisation said. “On the other, you have a government that controls the public media and cracks down hard on the independent media, despite the laws and treaties it has signed. This is why we already know these elections will not be fair.” More »

NEWS FLASH!!! Martin Luther King Jr. is dead!

During the recent special news report on ABC titled “Out of Control: AIDS in Black America”, the host mentioned 5 reasons why the AIDS crisis in Black America was not being “adequately” addressed (later this week I would like to address this entire program in greater detail. I felt kinda prompted to at least address one of their reasons after reading this article). One of those reasons mentioned during this program: “Failure in Black leadership to address the AIDS crisis” really got my goat (so to speak).

The question that immediately came to mind :“WHAT IS THERE TO ADDRESS?” There are two main ways the AIDS virus is replicating itself in the Black community: intravenous drug use and causal unprotected sexual intercourse (and not some green monkey roaming the streets in the black community biting the necks of our children). More »

Does economic status determine health?

I’m starting off slow today with postings (it’s been a lil while). Warming up :).

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(LATimes.com) Thousands of Latino patients stream though the East Los Angeles practice of Dr. Hector Flores and his partners each year.

The older ones go to the family practice with arthritis and hypertension, the younger ones with diabetes and asthma.

What surprises Flores, however, is not how sick they are, it is how sick they are not.

Overall, Flores said, his patients are much healthier than one would expect given their low levels of income and education, factors epidemiologists long have known are linked to poor health.

“You can predict in the African American population, for example, a high infant mortality rate,” he said recently, “so we would think a [similarly] poor minority would have the same health outcomes. More »

An interesting poll

Check it out…

LOS ANGELES - Ethnic and minority parents in California share high expectations for their children and rank education as a top concern, according to a New America Media multilingual poll released on Wednesday.

In the Asian-American community, an overwhelming 90% of the respondents expect their children to at least graduate from a four-year university. 86% of the African-American respondents and 80% of the Latinos polled also expect their children to at least graduate from a four-year university. More »

“Here I is!”

After a long battle with understanding the functions of a MySql database, I was finally able to bring the old site back up. The problem was clearly ME because I was reading too much into certain commands (which is why I went into engineering and not programing). The only downside is that postings for the month of June and July are gone. Oh well! I’m just glad to have recovered the other 98 percent :).

Why I decided to come back

Nothing real deep here. The other night my wife and I were looking at the ABC news special on AIDS in Black America. While I thought the program was pretty good, like always I had some additional thoughts on the subject that I wanted to share on the subject. I wanted to find a site online where there was at least a decent conversation going on about the subject, but was unable to find one. Then I began to remember all the links that I put together over the years that addressed such issues in greater detail. It was then that I realized that while I may have been “finished” with the site, perhaps some folks out there (my silent readers) were not. While checking out some of the web management tool with my new hosting company, I decided to check out my site statistics. To my amazement I discovered that just in the past 3 days I had well over 5000 actual visits to the site (something I did not expect to see at all). Although numbers do change over time, they can never be discounted.

I want to personally thank all of you for your patience while this site during this time. While I cannot promise that this site will still be around years from now, the one thing you can be sure of is that I will do what I can to earn your continued readership.

Glad to be back!

D. Brayboy

The Black Informant

PS: I am going to be doing some layout changes to the site over the next few days (As you can see, I am still on my quest to find the best template for this site). In the meantime just enjoy the light show :).