The last days of 2010 have seen justice delivered to two young African American women who have been in prison for 16 years.

Jamie and Gladys Scott were accused and convicted of a robbery that occurred on Christmas Eve in 1993 in Forest, Mississippi. About $11 was taken and nobody was hurt, but the sisters’ conviction netted them both two consecutive life sentences. The girls were accused of luring two African American men into a situation which resulted into their wallets being taken.

Outrage about the convictions was swift, and activists began advocating for their release almost immediately, to no avail. At the time of their release, all appeals had been exhausted.

At the time of their arrest and conviction, Gladys was 19 and pregnant with her second child and Jamie was 22 with three children. Three teens boys also arrested in the case reportedly said at the outset that the Scott Sisters were not involved in the incident, but were said to be pressured to implicate the young women in a plea deal.

The teen boys received far lesser sentences and the Scott Sisters were sent to prison…for two consecutive life sentences.

On Wednesday, December 29, 2010, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who is said to be considering running as a Republican presidential candidate in 2012, suspended the sentences of the women. Jamie is seriously ill. Both her kidneys are failing – and Gladys’ release is said to be on the condition that she donate one of her kidneys to her sister.

This case has not received a lot of attention from mainstream media. There have been activists in Mississippi, however, who have been relentless in getting news about the plight of the women national attention. Recently New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote about the case, commentary was heard on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, and Ben Jealous, head of the National Association of Colored People, have taken the case on. The Innocence Project also took up the case.

Gov. Barbour’s interest in the case is most likely political. He recently praised the Citizen’s Council, a known white supremacist group, for helping schools in Mississippi integrate quietly.

What the Council did was make sure the schools integrate as slowly as possible, threatening and carrying out actions that intimidated people into not stepping over the color line, federal law notwithstanding.

The report about the release of the Scott Sisters said it would take 45 days for the paperwork for the release of the Scott Sisters to be completed. Once out, they will be allowed to travel to Florida to live with their mother, who has been caring for their children since their incarceration.

I hope that Jamie holds out that long, that she holds out long enough to get to Florida and get the help she needs. I also hope that those who love and demand justice never give up and give out, no matter how hard the journey.

Even as I write this, in the wee hours of December 30, there has been no mention of the case on CNN, the so-called “most trusted name in news.” I guess this doesn’t qualify, not like the blizzard, or like the missionary in Haiti who was released from prison after being accused of kidnapping a seriously ill Haitian child.

Hooray for the Scott Sisters. Hooray for those who worked tirelessly for their release. And shame on Mississippi for handing out such an inhumane sentence for this crime. We still have a way to go in meting out justice for minorities and poor people.

That is a candid observation!

I wonder if we parents, trying to make things “better” for our children, have not, in the long run, made them worse off.

When I was a kid, we had little money, but lots of love. There were five kids in our family. My mother hired me out to do housework for people, and to iron their clothes. Mind you, I didn’t ask to be hired out. She hired me out because she wanted to teach me how to be self-sufficient, AND she hired me out to her friends with explicit instructions to make me do whatever I was doing over if it wasn’t done right. “Right” was the standard that my mother set …The money I made was my allowance – for one didn’t get paid for doing chores around the house. If you lived in the house, you were expected to carry your weight.

I didn’t make a lot of money, but I learned to work.

I not only learned to work outside my home but inside as well. We cleaned house when it was already so clean you could eat off the floor. Every Saturday, without fail, my mother would wake us up EARLY, saying, “Get up! There’s work to be done!” We could see no such work, but that was no issue. We washed windows, using vinegar, hot water and newspapers to dry them; we washed all the sheets on the beds in the house; we dusted furniture and baseboards; we scrubbed floors, on hands and knees, because my mother said a mop couldn’t do nearly the job a little “elbow grease” could do. We washed clothes and ironed them all …and the house ethic was to get all this done before noon! All of our friends, or so it seemed, were asleep, and there we were, up, working and being warned to keep grumbling to a minimum.

We knew that we were to not only eat breakfast before we went to school, but we were expected to make our beds and wash the breakfast dishes …and still be on time. There was no “bailing out” if we were lax or slow and missed the bus or left so late, walking, that we were late to school. No, if we were late, we were punished. If we forgot our lunches (we didn’t buy our lunches) it was really too bad; Mama didn’t run up to the school to save us from imagined starvation. We’d just be hungry that day…and if we “forgot” enough times and were hungry enough times, we’d learn not to forget, she’d say. “Life don’t love nobody,” Mama would say, “so you’d better love life and live it so you can love it!” I didn’t know exactly what she meant, but I was sure it was an important bit of advice.

There were no elaborate Christmas gifts; we often got one toy (not a brand name) and always a book. Mostly, we had each other and good food. My neighbor always got the latest stuff, and I was jealous, but in the end, it was the books I got that meant the most to me. We never had the latest clothes; we got our sneakers from Sears – Keds, they were – and we wore them until we could wear them no more.

I raised my children well, I think, but I wasn’t as hard on them as my mother was on us. I felt like she had been a little dramatic, like it wasn’t necessary to make one’s child work like a Hebrew slave in order to teach them life’s lessons, but maybe I was wrong.

So many of us wanted, once we grew up and had children of our own, to make things easier for our children than they had been for us. We wanted them to have “the things” we never had. So, we did that- many of us – made things easier, and got them the “things” that we never had, but at the end of the day, what have we done? I didn’t buy my kids expensive clothes and shoes, but I did a fair amount of bailing them out. I left meetings to get lunch money to my son, or a left-at-home assignment for my daughter. I felt my mother had been a bit too hard on me, and so I was not going to repeat her parenting methods.

But I think I might have fared better had I adopted more of her standards. I talk to so many parents who think, in retrospect, that they gave their kids too much, that they made things too easy for them. The result is a fair number of young people who are floundering because they are so used to being accommodated. There is no glory in that, no power. My mother (and my dad, too) insisted that we learn to not depend on anyone. They made it clear that wearing “the latest clothes” did not equip us to deal with this life that “don’t love nobody.” We would never have thought of expecting a gift that cost $300!

There must be a balance between the methods of my mother and my own methods. Don’t get me wrong; my children, both of them are a joy and a delight and are doing well. But sometimes, I find myself bailing them out, and I pray that I am not doing them more harm than good, my son especially. There is a fine line between helping and hurting, and because I want them to be all right, I might be overstepping the line too often.

I hope not. I think we baby boomers have had good intentions but we might have created far too many economic cripples, which is not good. I hope I have not done that, and I hope that other parents reading this will think twice and fight the urge to bail our kids out. It seems that there was real value in the “hard” ways of our parents.

Or at least that’s how I see it.

It’s a candid …observation.

Sarah Palin is just wrong.

She may be popular and no doubt, she voices the sentiments of her base, but when it comes to her thoughts on black people and patriotism, she is wrong.

Ms. Palin makes an observation in her newest book that African Americans are not patriotic and that they should just shut up and get with the program. I am paraphrasing, but the gist of her opinion is clear. She believes that racism is a non-entity, a buzz word used by a group of people who just don’t have the desire to be real Americans.

Really, Sarah? Have you read any history at all?

In her book, “The Grace of Silence,” National Public Radio reporter and author Michele Norris recounts the story of Isaac Woodard, an African American who served in the Second Worl War. Woodard, 27, had returned home after serving 15 months in the South Pacific. He was on his way home to meet his family in South Carolina after being discharged from Camp Gordon in Georgia.

He was on a bus, and at a scheduled restroom stop, Woodard, still wearing his uniform, reportedly told the bus driver that he needed more time. The bus driver became annoyed and told Woodard to shut up and sit down. Woodard responded, something black people were NOT supposed to do, no matter how they were talked to by white people. He said to the bus driver to “talk to me like I’m talking to you. I’m a man, just like you.”

Well, that angered the bus driver, who called police. When the bus made its next stop, it was met by police officers who confronted Woodard as he got off the bus. They reportedly took him to an alley and beat him mercilessly. One officers beat him over the head with his “billy,” and eventually took that billy and punched him in the eyes, over and over, eventually taking the billy and poking it in the soldier’s eyes. This officer later said that Woodard had been drinking and had advanced on him, something that could not be corroborated. He later said he “might have stuck” his finger in Woodard’s eye.

A “billy” says Norris, was a nightstick loaded with lead pellets.

Woodard woke up in jail, unable to see. His injuries were so horrific that another soldier prisoner wanted his eyes bequeathed to the young veteran once he died, but a doctor examining Woodard said that a transplant would be impossible: “Woodard’s eyeballs were pulverized,” this doctor’s report said. There was no possibility of the soldier regaining his sight by a corneal transplant.

The report of the attack on Woodard was widely reported, angering radio personality, writer and actor Orson Welles so much that he went on a personal vendetta to make sure the offending officer was brought to justice. Welles was eventually accused of being anti American and fled the country to escape being questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee. The offending officer was brought to trial, but was of course found innocent of all charges. Norris notes that Woodard “wept openly through what remained of his shattered eyes.”

The truth is, Ms. Palin, that from the time of the Revolutionary War, African Americans have yearned to fight for this country. They too often believed that serving in the military would prove their obeisance to America and perhaps soften America’s white supremacists to let them live as full citizens. That proved not to be the case; African Americans were first not allowed to serve in the military, and then later allowed to serve but not as combat soldiers, but rather as cooks and servants. Nonetheless, African Americans continued to sign up and they lived on the hope that their service would make America see them as people of worth and not objects of scorn.

Yet, when they returned home, they faced, again, the wrath and hatred of American whites. They were shuffled back into the waiting arms of racism, denied loans to buy homes, the right to live wherever they wanted, and dignity for their children, service notwithstanding.

Woodard’s story was only one of many. United States Attorney General Eric Holder’s dad, who had fought for the United States, had to “stand for hours during his train ride home while German prisoners of war, all white, sat comfortably in cushioned seats,” Norris notes. Army veteran Etov Fletcher was beaten severely after he tried to register to vote. Another African American veteran and his wife, along with another African American couple, were reportedly shot down by a group of white men in a secluded wooded area. Reports said that at least 60 bullets had been loaded into these people.

Marine veteran Timothy Hood was shot in the head by a police officer and killed because he moved a segregation sign on a streetcar and refused to stop when ordered.

In spite of horrid treatment in this country, African Americans continued to sign up for military service. They served because they loved this country and wanted so badly to be regarded as human beings and not chattel. No matter how hard they fought, though, it was never enough to erase racism. The Woodard case was reportedly the case that moved President Truman to order the military to integrate.

Judging by the ignorant and insensitive statements made by Ms. Palin, I guess she didn’t know any of that. Her statements wreak not only of ignorance but of arrogance and insensitivity.

Sarah Palin is a force, but I am afraid that she is a force of the disease called American racism, and I believe her base resonates with her message because they feel the same about race. I would suggest that she read some history because unfortunately, this country is not just made up of white women from Alaska who wear lipstick.

No, Sarah Palin, this country includes brave men and women of color who fought and died for this country in spite of being treated like disposable paper plates by people like you.

And that is a candid observation.

Well, by now I have heard the rantings by black men, and have read the put-downs by critics of the film “For Colored Girls.” I expected as such.

I thought from the beginning that putting Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem would be difficult; melodrama in a poem is taken better than melodrama on the silver screen. And I knew many black men would object to the way those men in the film were depicted.

But I think the men, at least, are missing the point. I don’t think the film (or the choreopoem) was an indictment against “all black men” at all. I think it was a shaking out of the reality of how we women, colored or otherwise, will take anybody just to have somebody.

When I saw the film, I just rummaged through my mind, turning pages and pages of experiences I’ve had and/or that my friends have had, trying to be with “someone.” I remembered nights of tear-drenched conversations with me and some of my sister-friends as they poured out their pain because the man they were with was not treating them right.

And yet, they stayed. And, in lighter moments, some of them talked about how they didn’t know what was wrong with them, but they liked the “bad boys” over the nice ones. They laughed …but later, they cried.

I think about the women I have known, highly educated, powerful, and talented, like Janet Jackson’s character, in miserable marriages, but not willing to let go or get out because they liked their affluent lifestyle. In their quest for social status, they closed their eyes to their husbands’ cheating. They took being called out of their name, being disrespected…because they wanted the house and fancy car.

I think of Kimberly Elise’s character, and of friends of mine who have stayed in abusive relationships, risking their lives and the lives of their children. Whatever for? If a person shows you who he or she is, says Maya Angelou, you should believe him or her. Kimberly Elise’s husband in the film was sick, plain and simple. Her staying with him was not going to make him well; he was not going to get better. Yet, she stayed. Love, she told herself, was the reason. No, it’s not love. It’s something, but it isn’t love. Real love makes us know when it’s time to let go and go on.

Whoopi Goldberg’s character reminded me of how we women, too often use religion as the “perfect husband,” neglecting ourselves and our families in the process. So many of us claim to be “religious” when in fact, we are mentally ill, bitter, angry and afraid. Because of bad experiences in our lives, we decide that God will be our mate, and we will be perfect, above the fray, so to speak …and what we do is pour our blood-stained tears and ripped quilts that represent our tattered lives, on the heads and into the hearts of all around us.God is not our husband. God…is our God.

I could go on and on. I am still processing it all, but what I am clear about is that for me, this movie was not about bad men, or men being bad. It was about us women, settling for less, and therefore enduring much more misery than a person ought to, because we don’t take time to “find God in ourselves.”

We are so afraid of sister-friends (?) saying that we “can’t get a man” that we take any man, to our own detriment…and while I’m talking, let me say that this isn’t merely a heterosexual phenomenon. I have seen plenty of same-sex relationships where the dynamic to just have somebody leads to the same tragic results.

If women, no matter our color, would wake up and look for the God and the good in us, and learn that the measure of our worth is not based on whether or not we have “someone,” but rather on how we love ourselves first, there would be no need for a statement on how we too often live our lives. If we could kick up our heels and find the God and the good in us, a choreopoem such as this would be far different.

An afterthought: I was much more bothered by “Precious.” I found myself angry that so many white people filled the theater and would probably leave thinking that that was the way many to most black people live. I rejoiced at Precious’ triumphs, but just hated what I thought was a furthering of the stereotype of black people. Maybe that’s what black men are feeling.

I don’t know. It’s something to think about…

Just a candid observation.

I have been trying to figure out the wide array of emotions I’ve been feeling since Tuesday’s election. I think I’m beginning to understand, but only beginning.

I think I took the mid terms personally, both as a woman and as an African American. I have been stunned, more often than I’d like to admit, at the spirit of the political ads that ran and the political rallies that were held. The Republicans couldn’t really attack President Obama frontally, because he wasn’t running for office, but they attacked him nonetheless by the ugly signs they carried and seemed to brush off as not being any big deal, they called him a Nazi and a Socialist and probably, behind closed doors, things far worse.

The attack on the sitting president was nothing new, but the viciousness, which I believe in my heart was and is based in racism, was profoundly disturbing. I am still processing it. I am still thinking back on what I heard, the buzz words that said to those who were in position to understand, that this black man has to go, however we do it, and no matter who gets cut down in the fray.

So, I’m wrestling with that …but I am also wrestling as a woman. The attacks on Speaker Nancy Pelosi were as sexist as attacks on President Obama were racist. I was stunned again. This woman, the first female speaker in the history of this country, was vilified by men and women candidates alike. Why? She did her job. She did it with skill, and patience and intelligence and perseverance. She did not back down, she did not whine (as does Sarah Palin whenever she gets bad press), but she was steadfast and she was effective. And for that she was cut up like a piece of paper, to be thrown away.

She was and is tough, as anyone in politics must be, especially one in her position.

So, this African American man and this white woman joined forces, along with Harry Reid, and pushed forward an ambitious presidential agenda. They accomplished something, with all of its flaws, that had not been accomplished for nearly 100 years. They did their best, followed their advisers and their guts. They did in fact bring about change; whether everyone likes it or not, it is change, nonetheless. No, there are no jobs, and I just shrugged as I listened to Republicans say that once they were in office, there would be. Well, how? Corporations are sitting on profits, not hiring. Are the Republicans saying that the inaction of the corporations was intentional, to help bring about a Waterloo for President Obama? I don’t know. Everything is so …ugly.

And I guess that’s where I am stuck, in a bowl filled with the ugliness of America. Mitch McConnell’s primary goal is not to get Americans back to work but, rather, to get Barack Obama out of office. Karl Rove is in the fray, having supplied a fair amount of money to bring on the Republican onslaught, and the Chamber of Commerce is on board for the castration of this African American man and the castigation of this white woman.

I am still processing it all. I wonder what people in other countries think of the way Americans have dealt with their president. It has all been so disrespectful. Disagree if you want with our national leader; I certainly disagreed with George Bush …but I would never have thought of being as disrespectful of him as have so many been of Mr. Obama and Ms. Pelosi.

Even today, Michelle Bachman, who is seeking a leadership position in the Congress, was on television spewing blatantly inaccurate information about the cost of Mr. Obama’s trip to Asia, saying that it is going to cost $200 million a day. Really? I mean, it’s par for the course for the opposition party to criticize the members of the other party, especially when the drive is on to get someone from that party out of office and out of the way. But to unabashedly feed into the anger of jobless people with such a blatant lie …well, that’s a low blow that is unconscionable and unacceptable.

I read today that repeal of the health care reform bill is not likely to happen, because the insurance companies like it, minus a few things they’d like this Republican Congress to fix. Well, if that’s the case, if repeal is not likely to happen, and if there are no jobs, which means that the economy is not going to suddenly burst onto the Yellow Brick Road and finally reach the Wizard of Oz, what will be the cry of the Republicans who have so ably fit into the molds of racism and sexism which are so much a part of America?
I don’t know.

But I do know that the ugliness of America, its spirit which is so infused with racism and sexism, has reared its head with a boldness that is troubling. I pray for the strength of the president and for Nancy Pelosi.

And I pray for America, so sick but so in denial about that sickness.

That is a candid observation.