So, in honor of Martin Luther King Day, my white friends are throwing a party today

I'm not even sure I understand the logic here in not wanting your party to coincide with MLK Day. If you're a racist, wouldn't it be a good day to have a party, because then it could be like you were upstaging MLK, taking the day back for your own white celebrations?

americans in still-being-racist shocker.

(On saturday I had collared greens, blackeyed peas on rice, fried chicken and cornbread for lunch, but it had no special signifigance other than being really fucking good.xpost)

Way to go, businesses of the U.S.

i THOUGHT collard was the correct spelling! thank you. i was too lazy to look it up.

And if yer friends suck ass, and if they suck ass, well.. they're... no friends of mine.

get thee down south

Oh, and this late breaking news: AP Poll: Blacks Likelier to Celebrate MLK Day. YOU DON'T SAY? I thought America was this completely homogenous society that the seers used to prophisize about.

Which reminds me, I gotta call my grandmother tomorrow.

we have them here but they're hard to find unless you're at a "southern"/"soul food" restaurant or an old country buffet. it'd be nice to see them on more generic american-food menus, along with the usual burgers and salads and whatnot.

at least we're not spelling them "colored greens"

*runs like hell*

NUMMY!

They're, um, greens! Like leafy greens, like spinach. You cook them all soft and yummy with some butter and garlic and maybe some pork thrown in there for extra fatty deliciousness.

My favorite green lately is broccoli rabe, cause of the bitter mustardy quality. Had some serious success with this around Christmas -- whatcha do is you melt a few anchovies in with your butter/garlic before sauteeing it. Something about that bitter bite + a mild fishy/salty quality = total awesomeness.

Whitey can't win... he throws a party, he's showing disrespect, he don't throw a party, he's showing disrespect.

hmmm. my conscience says yes but my taste buds say nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

sorry, i typed it into google because i wasn't sure but thought it wasn't right. but it came up w/responses. i'm on my laptop and only now do i notice that just below the fold was "See results for: collard greens"

xpost - that Chicken & Waffle place is no where close to Roscoe's. went there and was bummed

im wondering, is there a way to celebrate MLK jr. Day?

i wish i still had my all-star king holiday 45 from the 80's.

or where the mail i've sent out isn't being delivered. there are too many such days this time of year.

isn't there a stevie wonder song about MLK day?

Now I'm hungry for JERK SEITAN

King Dream Chorus and Holiday Crew w/ Menudo, The Fat Boys, Kurtis Blow, Teenia Marie, El Debarge, New Edition, Whitney Houston, Melle Mel, Whodini Stacey Lattisaw, James Taylor, Stephanie Mills, Lisa Lisa and Full Force "King Holiday" (Mercury - 1986)

(and run-dmc too. i took that from their website.)

"I Have A Dream"
by Martin Luther King, Jr,
Delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

i kiss u 4 that

rowwrrr!

okra?? scrapple?? (is scrapple a southern thing or a midwestern thing?)

to my surprise, this is the line I felt most deeply while reading this out loud

on a different note, Dan you are crazy about the okra, I guarantee you that I could fry you up an okra dish that would change your mind on the subject

Surely that only applies to making money off of it in some way, not posting it on a message board.

And mustard greens >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> turnip greens >> collard greens.

Not sure if it's just when used in for profit publications. The literature book I taught from was only allowed to publish an excerpt.

Well, it's out there on the web, on a page from the National Civil Rights Museum, in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

The leaves are poorly digestible when raw and cannot be used in salads; they can be blended into a juice, usually in combination with sweet fruit juices to improve the flavor.

That is SO NOT TRUE. I tried that once and it was completely disgusting. But kale or collard greens fried w/garlic and butter are the best.

"they're gonna watch the Jerk, Soulman and eat fried chicken, collared greens and watermelon."

die ironic hipster scum.

Okra: I think it is a vile, slimy vegetable normally but when you cut it into small rondelles, cover it in corn meal and fry it in bacon fat, it's simply delicious.

MW

Baltimore

OFFICIAL celebrations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday turn 20 years old this week.

Like that of Dr. King's late colleague Rosa Parks, the name behind our 10th national holiday carries more resonance than impact - noble, universal, yet bounded by race and time. The annual King event draws tributes to the end of legal segregation, reprises of landmark oratory and varied appraisals of problems for minorities. Yet despite our high-stakes national commitment to advance free government around the world, we consistently marginalize or ignore Dr. King's commitment to the core values of democracy.

His own words present a vast and urgent landscape for freedom. "No American is without responsibility," Dr. King declared only hours after the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" repulse of voting rights marchers in Selma, Ala. "All are involved in the sorrow that rises from Selma to contaminate every crevice of our national life," he added. "The struggle in Selma is for the survival of democracy everywhere in our land."

His public appeal gathered an overnight host from many states behind a blockaded vigil. When white supremacists beat one volunteer to death with impunity, Dr. King responded with prophetic witness against the grain of violence. "Out of the wombs of a frail world," he assured mourners, "new systems of equality and justice are being born."

Selma released waves of political energy from the human nucleus of freedom. Ordinary citizens ventured across cultural barriers, aroused a transnational conscience and engaged all three branches of government. After the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, Dr. King claimed that the distinctive methods of sharecroppers and students had revived nothing less than the visionary heritage of the American Revolution. "The stirring lesson of this age is that mass nonviolent direct action is not a peculiar device for Negro agitation," he told the Synagogue Council of America. "Rather it is a historically validated method for defending freedom and democracy, and for enlarging these values for the benefit of the whole society."

This effusive axiom went unnoticed, but the blessings of freedom did ripple far beyond the black victims of caste. As Dr. King predicted, the civil rights movement liberated segregationists themselves. The integrity of law enforcement rose with a stark decline in racial terror. The Atlanta Braves joined the first professional sports teams to spring up at integrated stadiums, and business radiated Sun Belt growth into a region of historic poverty. In elections, new black voters generated the 20th century's first two-party competition to displace the ossified regimes of white supremacy. The stigma of segregation no longer curtailed a Southerner's chances for high national office, and fresh candidates rose swiftly to leadership in both national parties.

Parallel tides opened doors for the first female students at some universities and most private colleges, then the military academies. In 1972, civil rights agitation over doctrines of equal souls produced the first public ordination of a female rabbi in the United States, and the Episcopal Church soon introduced female clergy members in spite of schismatic revolts to preserve religious authority for men. Pauli Murray, a lawyer who was one of the pioneer priests, had pursued a legal appeal that in 1966 overturned several state laws flatly prohibiting jury service by women. "The principle announced seems so obvious today," Dr. Murray would write in a memoir, "that it is difficult to remember the dramatic break the court was making."

Overseas, as an amalgam of forces suddenly dissolved the Soviet empire atop its mountain of nuclear weapons, Dr. King's message echoed in the strains of "We Shall Overcome" heard along the Berlin Wall and the streets of Prague. Likewise, South African apartheid melted without the long-dreaded racial Armageddon, on miraculous healing words from a former prisoner, Nelson Mandela. Students shocked the world from Tiananmen Square with nonviolent demonstrations modeled on American sit-ins, planting seeds of democracy within the authoritarian shell of Chinese Communism.

These and other sweeping trends from the civil rights era have transformed daily life in many countries, and now their benefit is scarcely contested. Yet the political discourse behind them is atrophied. Public service has fallen into sad disrepute. Spitballs pass for debate. Comedians write the best-selling books on civics. Dr. King's ideas are not so much rebutted as cordoned off or begrudged, and for two generations his voice of anguished hope has given way to a dominant slogan that government itself is bad.

Above all, no one speaks for nonviolence. Indeed, the most powerful discipline from the freedom movement was the first to be ridiculed across the political spectrum. "A hundred political commentators have interred nonviolence into a premature grave," Dr. King complained after Selma. The concept seemed alien and unmanly. It came to embarrass many civil rights veterans themselves, even though nonviolence lies at the heart of democracy.

Every ballot - the most basic element of free government - is by definition a piece of nonviolence, symbolizing hard-won or hopeful consent to raise politics above anarchy and war. The boldest principles of democratic character undergird the civil rights movement's nonviolent training. James Madison, arguing to ratify the Constitution in 1788, summoned "every votary of freedom to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government," and he added that no form of government can secure liberty "without virtue in the people."

By steeling themselves to endure blows without retaliation, and remaining steadfastly open to civil contact with their oppressors, civil rights demonstrators offered shining examples of the revolutionary balance that launched the American system: self-government and public trust. All the rest is careful adjustment.

Like Madison, the marchers from Selma turned rulers and subjects into fellow citizens. A largely invisible people offered leadership in the role of modern founders. For an incandescent decade, from 1955 to 1965, the heirs of slavery lifted the whole world toward freedom.

Weariness and war intruded. In the White House, President Lyndon Johnson wrestled the political subtleties of sending soldiers to guarantee liberty at home. "Troops leave a bitter taste in the mouths of all the people," cautioned Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The president moaned simultaneously over predictions of bloody stalemate if he sent troops to Vietnam, saying the prospect "makes the chills run up my back," but he succumbed to schoolyard politics. The American people, he feared, "will forgive you for everything except being weak."

Lamenting religious leaders who accommodated the war, Dr. King defended nonviolence on two fronts. "Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them?" he asked. "What then can I say to the Vietcong, or to Castro, or to Mao...? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?" In politics, Dr. King endorsed a strategic alternative to violence. "We will stop communism by letting the world know that democracy is a better government than any other government," he told his congregation, "and by making justice a reality for all of God's children."

Pressures intensified within Dr. King's own movement. To battered young colleagues who wondered why nonviolence was consigned mostly to black people, while others admired James Bond, he could only commend the burden as a redemptive sacrifice. Change was slow, however, for a land still dotted with lynching, and frustration turned to rebellion as the war in Vietnam hardened the political climate. When offered incendiary but fleeting fame in 1966, the leaders of various black power movements repudiated nonviolence along with the vote itself, which they had given so much to win.

Meanwhile, Lyndon Johnson steadily lost his presidency at home before he could forge any political order in Vietnam. Although casualty figures confirmed the heavy advantage of American arms, Johnson fell victim to a historical paradox evolving since the age of Napoleon: modern warfare destroys more but governs less - one reason military commanders seem, in my limited experience, more skeptical than civilians about the political use of lethal force.

Dr. King grew ever more lonely in conviction about the gateway to constructive politics. "I'm committed to nonviolence absolutely," he wrote. "I'm just not going to kill anybody, whether it's in Vietnam or here." When bristling discouragement invaded his own staff, he exhorted them to rise above fear and hatred alike. "We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at nonviolence now," he told them on his last birthday.

His oratory fused the political promise of equal votes with the spiritual doctrine of equal souls. He planted one foot in American heritage, the other in scripture, and both in nonviolence. "I say to you that our goal is freedom," he said in his last Sunday sermon. "And I believe we're going to get there because, however much she strays from it, the goal of America is freedom."

Only hours before his death, Dr. King startled an aide with a balmy aside from his unpopular movement to uplift the poor. "In our next campaign," he remarked, "we have to institutionalize nonviolence and take it international."

The nation would do well to incorporate this goal into our mission abroad, reinforcing the place of nonviolence among the fundamentals of democracy, along with equal citizenship, self-government and accountable public trust. We could also restore Dr. King's role in the continuing story of freedom to its rightful prominence, emphasizing that the best way to safeguard democracy is to practice it. And we must recognize that the accepted tradeoff between freedom and security is misguided, because our values are the essence of our strength. If dungeons, brute force and arbitrary rule were the keys to real power, Saudi Arabia would be a model for the future instead of the past.

Gunfire took Dr. King's life, but we determine his legacy. This holiday, let that inspiration remain our patriotic challenge.

Taylor Branch is the author, most recently, of"At Canaan's Edge," the third volume of his biography of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2010/02/05/nbc_black_history/index.html

I totally don't get Salon's take on it nor Questlove's. I read elsewhere that the chef (who's a black lady) really wanted to cook some of her family's traditional food. What's wrong with that?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/nbc_lost_soul_UM3zLz05eb8QDjm6JsbNwK

lol

(Has ?uestlove said anything substantive about it beyond the original Twitter post? I mean, it's hard to judge tone from a couple words and a picture, but it seemed somewhat jokey and only vaguely miffed, way more of a raised eyebrow than a complaint.)

ta-nehisi coates posted about it. he def took the picture as a joke, the whole thing is retarded

From that Post article:

"Thompson, who has 1.2 million Twitter followers, clearly realized he'd started a food fight.

An hour after he circulated the menu, he tweeted, "i think i need a twitter break. i done started something. and now i must put out fire."

Actually, on reflection, it's the NBC mgmt I don't quite get.

I guess I was asking if he elaborated anywhere, because while most people would read the Twitter post as a sort of mock-offended joke, the chef seems to be saying he really felt insulted?

I know it's not realistic to expect anything else from a corporate hierarchy, but the sort of tight-lipped damage-control methods people use for dealing with this kind of stuff almost always make them look way worse than they would if they just spoke reasonably. (Especially when the original thing is a casual, ironic joke, not some big righteous complaint.)