US President Barack Obama is presented with and honorary doctor of law degree after delivering the commencement address during a ceremony at Morehouse College on May 19, 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia. AFP PHOTO/Mandel NGAN (Photo credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

His latest piece, comparing the cognitive dissonance of the “Black elite” in Spike Lee’s classic 1988 film, “School Daze,” to President Barack Obama’s seeming discomfort with speaking unreservedly about the plight of working-class Black Americans, is positioned as a “wake-up call” for the Talented Tenth among us. Taking direct aim at those Black leaders who never challenge the POTUS, Jackson opines that these people tip-toe around his silence on issues affecting people of color to avoid “jeopardizing their invitations to the White House’s Christmas party.”

Read below:

Not much has changed in the 25 years since the release of School Daze.  As a matter of fact, one could argue that this schism within the Black community has gotten worse.

This view is personified in the person of President Barack Obama.  He is light skinned, has no connection with the Black community, Ivy League educated, and seems very uncomfortable around Blacks who are not part of the bourgeoisie.

He is more comfortable talking about Newtown than he is Chi-town (Chicago).  He hangs with the likes of Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, and Hill Harper to give him “street cred.”

Yet, he ignores the very issues that gave birth to the Hip-Hop nation—police brutality, Black on Black crime, teenage pregnancy, the glorification of the drug culture, etc.

The Blacks that have regular access to this White House rarely, if ever, lift their voices to address some of the needs and concerns of those who can’t afford to raise thousands of dollars for the president.

These Blacks have not once criticized the Obama administration’s lack of action in regards to the issues of particular concern to the Black community.  Oh, I forgot, they don’t want to jeopardize their invitations to the White House’s Christmas party.

These Blacks rationalize that Obama can’t afford to be seen doing anything specifically for Blacks for fear that Obama will be called a Black president. Well, I thought he was the first Black president?

So, let me make sure I understand this; it’s ok to do specific things for the Black bourgeoisie—private invitations to the White House, rides on Air Force One, private movie screenings at the White House, but he can’t do things specifically to address the high unemployment rate in the Black community?

Read more at BlackPressUSA.com.

Freedom fighters Carl Dix (pictured above right) and Cornel West (pictured above center) held an intense dialogue about mass incarceration on the Upper West Side Monday evening. The event, “Mass Incarceration + Silence=Genocide,” served to challenge the sociopolitical forces herding a disproportionate number of Black and Hispanic men in to prisons. The Stop Mass Incarceration Network/ Revolution Books-sponsored event was tinged with revolutionary fire, which was-a testament to its keynote speakers.

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Watch the promo video for Dix and West’s incarceration dialogue here:

Dix first set the tone by sharing a letter he got from a prisoner in California, describing his solitary confinement experience. “He’s held 22 and more hours each and every day in a small, windowless cell. Someday they let us [the prisoner] exercise, but all that means is he gets to go from that small cell to a small cage,” the Revolutionary Communist Party co-founder said.

“Visits from his family and his lawyers can be cut off at any time or denied for any reason or no reason at all. He’s denied human contact for weeks, months, and even years at a time. His cell is sound-proof, so he goes long periods of time without hearing any sound. In his rare visits, it hurts his ears to hear his mother’s voice.”

Dix noted a contradiction in America’s inmate treatment while chastising other countries. “These are the conditions forming solitary confinement, right here in the U.S.A. country whose rulers never tire of going around the world, lecturing other countries about human rights violations. We’re not talking about a few hard cases treated this way; we’re talking about more than 80,000 people held under these conditions.”

“Now studies have shown that long term denial of human contact and long-term soundlessness can drive people insane. Yet this government arrogantly rejects international calls to limit solitary confinement to no more than 15 days.”

Mass imprisonment is part of a  larger scheme for killing off people of color, Dix argued. “A slow genocide has been more at work here in this country for quite sometime,” he said. “Grinding away, breaking the bodies, and crushing the spirit. The slow genocide can easily become a fast one, unless we act to stop it. This oppression is built in to the very fabric of this society. There ain’t gon’ be no savior coming down from Heaven or from the White House who can and would do anything about it.”

Cornel West’s turn at the podium proved no less energetic. The beloved civil rights activist set the crowd ablaze with his vocal performance, repeatedly lowering his voice to a controlled state, before a crescendo into a passionate climax of political outrage. “How shall integrity face oppression?” he asked. West shot his arms out in a show of asked support, back hunched, questioning the audience. “How shall honesty face deception?!”

West then briefly spoke about W.E.B Dubois’ works about the African-American state. “Dubois was speaking on behalf of a great people, of a Black people who’d been terrorized, traumatized, and stigmatized for 400 years in a land that understands itself to be the moral example of liberty!”

“These days, anybody who musters the courage to tell the truth about the conditions: imperialism, capitalism, White suprema[cy], male suprema[cy] — the system under which we live — you better be ready to die! These folks will kill you!”

“But the important thing is what you’re up against — the criminality against poor people, the criminalizing of young people, disproportionately Black and brown,” West said, through his trademark southern gentleman twang mixed with hints of bombastic Black pastor.

According to West, true change can only come through Black struggle: “There will never be sentimental transformation in this country until Black rage is channeled through moral, political, and ideologically progressive venue. Because the fundamental threat to the status quo in this nation, it started with Black men. The way that this nation was founded [with] emergence and sustenance so tied to White supremacy that if you don’t hit it head on, you can have all the best ideas in the world, and you’ll never be able to have a truce in place.”

The two men shared their revolutionary visions for more than an hour, leaving many issues to ponder. This was the sixth such discourse between Dix and West, who both started the Stop Mass Incarceration Network in 2011.

SEE ALSO: President: ‘We Will Stand With Oklahoma’

Janae Hornsby, 9, pictured left and right with her father, is among the missing children after a tornado destroyed the town of Moore, Okla.

“Janae’s father described her as a vivacious, lovable little girl who loves to play and always has a smile on her face. Her father said when he heard that Moore could be in the path of the storm he rushed to be with his daughter, but was stuck in traffic and unable to get to the school before the tornado struck. His home, just a few blocks away, was also severely damaged.

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 MOORE, Okla.  — Emergency crews searched the broken remnants of an Oklahoma City suburb Tuesday for survivors of a massive tornado that flattened homes and demolished an elementary school. At least 24 people were killed, including at least nine children, and those numbers were expected to climb.

As the sun rose over the shattered community of Moore, the state medical examiner’s office cut the estimated death toll by more than half but warned that the number was likely to climb again. Gov. Mary Fallin said an untold number of people were still missing.

“We will rebuild and we will regain our strength,” said Fallin, who went on a flyover of the area and described it as “hard to look at.”

Many houses, she said, have “just been taken away, they’re just sticks and bricks.”

Amy Elliott, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner, said she believes some victims were counted twice in the early chaos of the storm that struck Monday afternoon. Downed communication lines and problems sharing information with officers exacerbated the problem, she said.

“It was a very eventful night,” Elliott said. “I truly expect that they’ll find more today.”

Authorities initially said as many as 51 people were dead, including 20 children.

New search-and-rescue teams moved at dawn Tuesday, taking over from the 200 or so emergency responders who worked all night. A helicopter shined a spotlight from above to aid in the search.

Fire Chief Gary Bird said fresh teams would search the whole community at least two more times to ensure that no survivors – or any of the dead – were overlooked. Crews painted an `X’ on each structure to note it had been checked.

“That is to confirm we have done our due diligence for this city, for our citizens,” Bird said.

The community of 56,000 people, 10 miles south of Oklahoma City, braced for another long, harrowing day.

“As long as we are here … we are going to hold out hope that we will find survivors,” said Trooper Betsy Randolph, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

More than 200 people had been treated at area hospitals.

Other search-and-rescue teams focused their efforts at Plaza Towers Elementary, where the storm ripped off the roof, knocked down walls and turned the playground into a mass of twisted plastic and metal as students and teachers huddled in hallways and bathrooms.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said she watched up close late Monday as rescuers tried to find people in the wreckage of the school.

“It was an incredible sight to see how big the debris field was and how much destruction there was,” Fallin said. “It would be remarkable for anyone to survive.”

Seven of the nine dead children were killed at the school, but several students were pulled alive from under a collapsed wall and other heaps of mangled debris. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain of parents and neighborhood volunteers. Parents carried children in their arms to a triage center in the parking lot. Some students looked dazed, others terrified.

Officials were still trying to account for a handful of children not found at the school who may have gone home early with their parents, Bird said Tuesday.

Many parents of missing schoolchildren initially came to St. Andrews United Methodist Church, which had been set up as a meeting site. But only high school students were brought to the church, causing confusion and frustration among parents of students enrolled at Plaza Towers. They were redirected to a Baptist church several miles away.

“It was very emotional – some people just holding on to each other, crying because they couldn’t find a child; some people being angry and expressing it verbally” by shouting at one another, said D.A. Bennett, senior pastor at St. Andrews.

After hearing that the tornado was headed toward another school called Briarwood Elementary, David Wheeler left work and drove 100 mph through blinding rain and gusting wind to find his 8-year-old son, Gabriel. When he got to the school site, “it was like the earth was wiped clean, like the grass was just sheared off,” Wheeler said.

Eventually, he found Gabriel, sitting with the teacher who had protected him. His back was cut and bruised and gravel was embedded in his head – but he was alive. As the tornado approached, students at Briarwood were initially sent to the halls, but a third-grade teacher – whom Wheeler identified as Julie Simon – thought it didn’t look safe and so ushered the children into a closet, he said.

The teacher shielded Gabriel with her arms and held him down as the tornado collapsed the roof and starting lifting students upward with a pull so strong that it sucked the glasses off their faces, Wheeler said.

“She saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down,” Wheeler said.

The tornado also grazed a theater, and leveled countless homes. Authorities were still trying to determine the full scope of the damage.

Roofs were torn off houses, exposing metal rods left twisted like pretzels. Cars sat in heaps, crumpled and sprayed with caked-on mud. Insulation and siding was smashed up against the sides of any walls that remained standing. Yards were littered with pieces of wood, nails and pieces of electric poles.

President Barack Obama declared a major disaster and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts.

“Among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew – their school,” he said Tuesday.

The town of Moore “needs to get everything it needs right away,” he added.

Obama spoke following a meeting with his disaster-response team, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and top White House officials.

The National Weather Service issued an initial finding that the tornado was an EF-4 on the enhanced Fujita scale, the second most powerful type of twister. It estimated that the twister was at least half a mile wide.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., forecast more stormy weather Tuesday in parts of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, including the Moore area.

In video of the storm, the dark funnel cloud could be seen marching slowly across the green landscape. As it churned through the community, the twister scattered shards of wood, awnings and glass all over the streets.

Monday’s tornado loosely followed the path of a killer twister that slammed the region with 300 mph winds in May 1999. It was the fourth tornado to hit Moore since 1998.

The 1999 storm damaged 600 homes and about 100 businesses. Two or three schools were also hit, but “the kids were out of school, so there were no concerns,” recalled City Manager Steve Eddy.

At the time of Monday’s storm, the City Council was meeting. Local leaders watched the twister approaching on television before taking shelter in the bathroom.

“We blew our sirens probably five or six times,” Eddy said. “We knew it was going to be significant, and there were are a lot of curse words flying.”

Betty Snider, 81, scrambled inside with her son and husband. She put her husband, who recently had a stroke, in a bathroom, but there wasn’t room for both of them. So she and her son huddled in a hallway.

“That is the loudest roar I’ve ever heard in my life,” she said.

She said she didn’t have time to do anything. She couldn’t duck, couldn’t cover her ears, couldn’t find another place to hide.

Snider lived through the 1999 tornado, but said this was the closest a twister had ever come to her house, which was still standing.

Monday’s twister also came almost exactly two years after an enormous twister ripped through the city of Joplin, Mo., killing 158 people and injuring hundreds more.

That May 22, 2011, tornado was the deadliest in the United States since modern tornado record keeping began in 1950, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Before Joplin, the deadliest modern tornado was June 1953 in Flint, Mich., when 116 people died.

Three Chicago teens have been arrested and charged with the rape of a 12-year-old girl. The teens allegedly posted video of the attack on their Facebook pages, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Scandale Fritz, 16, Kenneth Brown, 15, and Justin Applewhite, 16, were all ordered held in lieu of $900,000 bail in a hearing Friday; all three were charged as adults. The alleged attacks took place in December at Fritz’s home in the 400 block of West 60th Place in the Englewood neighborhood on Dec. 15.

It is not clear why it took so long to for the teens to be charged.

The girl, whose identity has not been released because she is a minor and a sex assault victim, went to Fritz’s home to speak with him. But when she entered the residence, she reportedly saw Brown with a gun in his pocket. Fritz then allegedly took the girl into the basement where he raped and sodomized her. After his alleged sexual assault, Fritz had Brown and Applewhite enter the basement and asked her to have sex with both teens.

At first, she refused but eventually gave in to their demands because Brown had a gun and both boys are reported to be members of the Black Disciples gang faction “Tay-Town,” according to DNAinfo Chicago.

In the video of the alleged sex act, Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Bridget O’Brien said that the boys can he heard yelling gang slogans. One of the boys is seen waving a gun in the air while the girl performed sex acts.

All three boys were charged as adults with aggravated criminal sexual assault. While it appears that the charge was Applewhite’s first arrest, Fritz and Brown were both expected in juvenile court this week on pending robbery, aggravated battery and theft charges, according to DNAinfo Chicago. Brown was convicted of unauthorized use of a weapon in 2012. He was still on probation for that crime when the alleged rape took place in December.

The day after the assaults took place, the girl told someone about the attacks, and a police report was made. The girl was then treated and examined at a local hospital. On Dec. 17, the video was posted on Brown’s Facebook page. Eventually, all three boys posted the video on their Facebook pages. Prosecutors say Fritz admitted to making the tape.

All three boys are due back in court June 6.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama pledged urgent government help for Oklahoma Tuesday in the wake of “one of the most destructive” storms in the nation’s history.

RELATED: Huge Tornado Hits Oklahoma City Suburb, Kills 51

“In an instant neighborhoods were destroyed, dozens of people lost their lives, many more were injured,” Obama said from the White House State Dining Room. “Among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew — their school.”

The President added that the town of Moore, Okla., “needs to get everything it needs right away.”

Obama spoke following a meeting with his disaster response team, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and top White House officials. On Monday, he spoke with Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and Republican Rep. Tom Cole, whose home is in the heavily damaged town of Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City.

The President has also declared a major disaster in Oklahoma, ordering federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts. Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Craig Fugate was due in Oklahoma later Tuesday to ensure that federal resources are being properly deployed.

The state medical examiner’s office has revised the death toll from the tornado to 24 people, including seven children. Authorities had said initially that as many as 51 people were dead, including 20 children.

Teams are continuing to search the rubble in Moore, 10 miles south of Oklahoma City, after the Monday afternoon’s more than half-mile-wide twister.

Watch the tornado here:

Must Read: Book Claims Puffy And Suge Had Tupac And Biggie Killed

The clip often begins (depending on who is spinning it) with Biggie Smalls chanting “Where Brooklyn at? Where Brooklyn at?” before going into the now famous lines from “Come On” where he runs down his personal arsenal:  ”I got seven Mack Elevens, about got eight 38s, nine 9s, ten mack 10s, the sh*ts never end/you can’t touch my riches/ even if you had MC Hammer and them .357 b*tches…”

What many listeners don’t know is where the session was recorded and who else was actually there. The freestyle took place during a Budweiser Superfest show at Madison Square Garden in 1993. The Notorious B.I.G. is joined on the track by not just Tupac, but by Big Daddy Kane, Scoob Lover and Shyheim The Rugged Child.  In fact, Biggie and Tupac were guests of Kane at HIS show.

Must Read: Michael Baisden’s Old School Joint of the Day: Tupac “Dear Mama” Mothers’s Day dedications

In this part of our interview with Big Daddy Kane and his group Las Supper (their album “Back To The Future” is in stores now! Buy it!) the hip-hop legend tells us twenty years later how this moment all came together.

They Reminisce Over You: Rappers Gone Too Soon

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Precious Allen, 31, the Cincinnati mother facing misdemeanor charges for allegedly helping her daughter beat up a female classmate who was allegedly bullying her is suing the Cincinnati school district and police, reports WKRC Cincinnati.

As previously reported by NewsOne, Allen, her daughter, and her sister, Dawn Brunner, burst into a classroom and assaulted a 15-year-old student with their fists and a combination lock. The student suffered cuts and bruises, and a teacher ended up with a black eye in the scuffle.

Allen claims that the student she is accused of assaulting actually assaulted her and that the school purposely deleted video that would have proved her innocence.

Watch news coverage of this incident here:

Allen was previously charged with felonies, but a  Hamilton County Grand Jury indicted her on charges of misdemeanor assault and aggravated trespassing.

Real Bronx Tours are taking mainly White Europeans and Australians on a tour of the Bronx with stops at for photo ops at a food-pantry line, “pickpocket” park, and housing projects.

According to an unnamed patron on the tour, one of the guides, Lynn Battaglia (pictured), from Pittsburgh, poked fun at impoverished areas, describing the South Bronx, in particular, as a crime-ridden borough infested with poverty and violence, which has plagued the area since the 1970s.

At one point during the tour, Battaglia allegedly told the tourists in front of pantry line, “I don’t know what that line’s about, but every Wednesday we see it,” Battaglia told the tourists. “We see them go in with empty carts, and we see them come out with carts full.”

The bus then reportedly stopped in front of St. Mary’s Park, where she reportedly told the foreigners, “If it were 1980, and you said to me, ‘Lynn, I want to die.’ My answer would be, ‘You’re in the right neighborhood,’” suggesting that the park is unsafe.

As the tour continued, Battaglia allegedly also blamed the borough for coming up with the term “pig” to describe police, “The policeman, his name is Patty, and he would walk up and down that street, and if he ran into an alcoholic, he’d beat them mercilessly. So they’d call him ‘Patty the Pig,’” she said.

“Pig” actually originated in London in 1811!

Borough President Ruben Diaz is incensed about the tour and referred to its guide as “the biggest fool on the planet.” Diaz added, “They should tell people about the Bronx that we all know, and that’s the Bronx that’s had the lowest crime rate since 1963 last year.”  Diaz contends, “To have foreigners come and gawk at a long line of people who are less fortunate than they are and to make money off of that and to view them as though they are some sort of entertainment is pretty disgusting.”

Meanwhile, Real Bronx Tours failed to provide a comment to the New York Post when contacted.

As an added note, I am from the Bronx and not only has crime gone down, but the borough has been significantly redeveloped since the ’80s. The Bronx is the birthplace of hip-hop, one of the centers of African-American culture, home to the legendary baseball team the Yankees, and has one of the world’s largest metropolitan zoos. 

The borough’s yesteryear image of being a lunar wasteland was perpetuated by those who are myopic and pessimistic. And today, the Bronx stands as a shining renaissance!

A manager of Chicago’s Navy Pier rode the tourist spot’s Ferris wheel for more than two days — 384 times, up and around — bringing the world record for the longest ride to the birthplace of the amusement park favorite.

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“I thought Chicago should have that title,” Clinton Shepherd said after finishing his record-breaking ride on Sunday. Shepherd, the park operations manager, spent 48 hours, 8 minutes and 25 seconds riding Navy Pier’s Ferris wheel over the weekend.

The first Ferris wheel was built in 1893 in Chicago for the World’s Columbian Exposition.

Guinness World Records allowed him to have one five-minute break each hour. He played hours of videogames to stay awake during the ride, and watched James Bond and Batman movies. His gondola on the wheel was specially outfitted with a big-screen TV, cushions and curtains.

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Supporters followed him on Twitter. A video camera recorded the feat while volunteer timekeepers documented Shepherd’s activities.

Fans could join Shepherd for a spin by making a donation to the USO. Shepherd’s girlfriend rode with him Saturday for a candlelight anniversary dinner with food from a Chicago restaurant owned by Michael Jordan.

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The 32-year-old Shepherd called his adventure “a very overwhelming experience” that was made easier by the support of friends, family and the city of Chicago.

“I was thrilled and honored to be able to have all the love and support I did,” Shepherd said.

The previous record was 30 hours and 35 seconds. Shepherd said he didn’t want to simply beat the record, “I wanted to shatter it.”

“It was little rough at about three in the morning, but the more I kept busy, the better,” Shepherd said.

He said his legs felt wobbly after the ride.