Clarence Otis, CEO of Darden Restaurants, which operates Olive Garden and Red Lobster, is one of 35,000 black millionaires in the U.S.

In the words of Kane Kinnebrew III, Black History Month is often spent mainly focusing on historic achievements. But what about the accomplishments of today’s African Americans? Despite how the media often portrays the black community in a bubble—or from one extreme to another—it’s time that we recognize the progress we’ve made in recent years, not just in the past. This is the first of what I hope will be many Black History Month report cards.

Number of black millionaires

35,000

according to The Wealth Choice: Success Secrets of Black Millionaires

Oprah Winfrey is richest black female billionaire and is one of only six black billionaires in the world. All other five are outside of the U.S.

How many black middle-class families?

30%

Ever since President Obama has taken office, there has been a lot of debate about what constitutes a middle-class family. I think it’s safe to say that if your household makes between $50,000 and $150,000, your family is considered middle-class nowadays. Since that is the case, 30% of black families fall in that category, according to the most recent census figures. Compare that with 43% of white families, 46% of Asian families and 33% of Latino families.

Number of black-owned business

1.9 million

From 2002 to 2007, the number of black-owned businesses reached 1.9 million and they raked in $137.5 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners. Critics will still note that 1.8 million of those black-owned businesses are sole proprietors with no employees.

Buying power of black Americans

$1.1 trillion

According to Nielsen and the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA)’s 2011 “State of the African-American Consumer” report, it was projected that black buying power will reach $1.1 trillion by the year 2015.

If you want to know how influential black spending habits are, check out this fun fact: African-Americans are a driving force for popular culture. 73% of whites and 67% of Latinos believe blacks influence mainstream American culture.

Here’s another fun fact about the buying power of blacks: Black people buy more hand and body lotion at a rate of 54% higher than the general population (you know we don’t like being ashy!).

Number of registered black voters

11.1 million

According to the census, the country saw an increase in black voters from 10 percent of the total electorate in 2006 to 12 percent in the 2010 congressional election.

Average income of African Americans

$32,229

The annual median income of black households actually declined by 2.7% from 2010 to 2011, according to census figures.The median income for white families also declined during the same period while the numbers for Asian and Hispanic households didn’t change.

Number of black-owned banks

28

down from 54 in 1994, according to the FDIC

Physical health of black people

In terms of the spread of HIV and cancer, there is some good news to report. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for the first time, the rate of new HIV infections among black women declined between 2008 and 2010.

A recent report also found that cancer rates among blacks in the United States are on the decline, especially among black men.

Still, blacks continue to be more likely to die of cancer than whites.

Even more alarming, heart disease remains leading cause of death of all Americans. African Americans have the highest death rates due to heart disease and stroke. In particular, black adults are much more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart attack and stroke deaths than whites.

Obama Waffles (via Christianitytoday.com)

Updated April 8, 2013

Last month, I ran across a story about a young white woman’s racist rant against President Obama. The incident got under my skin so bad that I made a promise. Since we’re coming up on the New Year, you could call it one of my New Year’s resolutions.

This 20-something-year-old from Turlock is part of a growing group of Americans who engage in digital-era racism. Right after Obama was re-elected, she called him the N-word and said that she wouldn’t mind if he got assassinated—not in a private text to one of her friends, but right there on Twitter. Needless to say, she got the backlash she deserved.

The part that gets me riled up is that the Turlock Twitter incident is by no means the first openly racist act against our country’s first black president. This stuff has been going on since he first got elected (and even before then). My promise in 2013 is to document all of the hate that gets lodged at Obama in hopes that people will recognize that we can’t possibly be living in a post-racial society when the most powerful person in our country is the target of the kind of blatant racism we used to see back during the Reconstruction period.

Let’s begin with Obama Waffles.

In September 2008, at the annual Value Voter Summit, these two conservative entrepreneurs decided that it would be funny to sell a box of breakfast food emblazoned with a minstrel caricature of a bug-eyed, toothy Obama next to a plate of Eggo waffles.

On one side of the box, the Obama cartoon had on a turban next to the text, “Point box toward Mecca for tastier waffles.” The box also came with a “recipe rap” titled, “Barry’s Bling Bling Waffle Ring.”

I’m glad that people got upset about this racist incident and scrambled that business plot like some eggs. What still doesn’t sit right with me, however, is the fact that the folks running the Value Voter Summit didn’t bother to stop the guys behind the Obama Waffles before they stepped in the building with their boxes full of racism.

Obama Bucks

Back in 2008, a Southern California Republican Party women’s organization debuted a picture in its newsletter of what the group called “Obama Bucks.” The fake $10 bill featured an Obama caricature, KFC fried chicken, BBQ ribs, the Kool-Aid Man and watermelon. Doesn’t get any more racist than that.

And what was the response from the white woman who was president of the organization? The typical obliviousness that has become common among those who cast aspersions at our first black president. “I didn’t see it the way that it’s being taken. I never connected. It was just food to me,” the woman said when questioned about the racist imagery.

Chimpanzee Email

Remember all the hype about President Obama’s birth certificate? An Orange County Tea Party activist thought it would be funny to send an email to her group that included a photo of a family of monkeys with Obama’s face over the child. The woman behind the email described it as a harmless joke meant to make light of all the birther attacks that kept questioning whether Obama really was born in America.

The woman’s response? “In no way did I even consider the fact he’s half black when I sent out the email. In fact, the thought never entered my mind until one or two other people tried to make this about race. We all know a double standard applies regarding this president. I received plenty of emails about George Bush that I didn’t particularly like, yet there was no ‘cry’ in the media about them,” she said, according to the Los Angeles Times. There it was again: denial.

New Yorker Cover

In 2008, when the anti-Obama racism was at its peak, the New Yorker magazine—known for its satire—thought it would be provocative to publish a cover featuring an illustration making fun of the rumors, innuendos and lies that people believed about the president and First Lady Michelle Obama (Did you really have to give Michelle the Angela Davis afro? I mean, come on.).

This episode was interesting because it showed that white people can be racist even when try not to be. The editors of the magazine were shooting for satire, but instead all they got was the ire of the American public who could sense the racism from a mile away from the newsstand. I wonder if anyone from the New Yorker has ever seen “Ethnic Notions.”

‘Re-Nig’ Bumper Sticker

I saw a few people in the Bay Area riding around with these bumper stickers during the 2012 election. They read: “Don’t Re-Nig In 2012.” Nice one racists. Forget all that innuendo stuff that folks previously tried to get away with. You just went ahead and said, “Yeah, I don’t like black people, especially powerful black people, and I’m beyond denying that anymore.”

There are plenty of episodes like these that have been happening since President Obama got elected, which means I’ll most likely have more to say in the future. My point is this: With all this hate flying around, it serves as a constant reminder that our country still doesn’t know how to deal with the racism that is embedded in our culture (and everyone is not a racist, let me just add).

It’s almost like we need a color-coded alert system similar to what Homeland Security did with its terrorist alert meter that keeps the American people abreast of the constant threat of racism. For a while, we thought that the threat was just at green. Then Obama came along, and the alert started inching toward red. Now that he’s in the Oval Office, it’s been on red for quite some time. As Americans, we’re just scared to admit it.

Occupy Wall Street protesters join a labor union rally in Foley Square in New York’s Financial District. (Jason DeCrow/AP)

The Occupy Wall Street protests that have now turned into a global movement have been an interesting development. Through the movement, we have seen that people are so fed up with corporate greed—backed by the complicity of Wall Street companies—that they have decided to speak out and attempt to shame the corporate giants into submission.

I don’t know if that will ever happen, but I do know this: Throughout all of the demonstrations, camping out at parks and challenging the status quo, it seems as if the Occupy movement has missed one very important thing.

A few weeks ago, my pastor, the Rev. K.R. Woods, of Covenant Worship Center in Berkeley, made it all clear in his sermon when he touched on this very subject.

The title of his sermon was simply “Occupy,” and he based his sermon on Luke 19:10-26, also known as the Parable of the Ten Minas, in which Jesus tells a story about a king who gives his servants ten talents and tells the servants to make use of them.

The point my pastor made, which is so profound, was that folks in the Occupy movement are directing their frustration at other people instead of recognizing that the problem—greed—is, in actuality, a spirit. Greed is not a political issue. It’s not even a financial evil. It is a spiritual problem. And you can only fight something spiritual with spiritual weapons. The only spiritual weapons I know about come from Jesus Christ.

“The word occupy to those who are out there in front of City Hall, the word occupy for those who are camped out in Oakland, the word occupy to those who are camped out in London and France—it means to seize in order to bring to a halt,” my pastor said. “But the word used here in the text for occupy means the exact opposite. It means to seize in order to advance.”

He went on to say: “They’re trying to deal with a spiritual problem by occupying it in the natural. They can camp out, riot, burn stuff. But the demon that is behind the chaos only becomes more emboldened. It takes believers, you and I—the people of God—to tell the devil enough is enough.”

You can hear more from the sermon in the clip below.

So wouldn’t the Occupy movement be so much more effective if, instead of occupying a park or a bank, people occupied the rows of a church where the power of Jesus could set folks and their debt free?

On that same notion, wouldn’t it be so much more inspirational if churches occupied the cities in which they reside so that more souls could be saved?

If a church couldn’t do that, then why not occupy the block surrounding the church so that at least the people in that area could be blessed?

And if that couldn’t be done, then why not just occupy your family so that you and your loved ones could prosper in God’s love.

The gist of the film is that there is still a deep-seated bias and negative attitude about beauty toward dark-skinned black women. Most black folks are aware of the divisions that have been created in our community because of slavery and the construct of race, which tries to place a value on skin color and causes all kinds of frictions among men and women (“Looks like light-skinned brothas are coming back…” You’ve heard them all before.).

I spoke to two of my aunts about the film, and they shared their experiences of being treated differently because of their darker skin.

I’m sure most people have also heard about the article evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa published in Psychology Today in May titled, “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” You already know how that one ended.

I asked some of my Facebook people for their thoughts on the film, and the response I got from one of my former Cal classmates was so on point that I wanted to share it in its entirety. From April Brown:

Many cultures have similar issues with darker skin tones being undesirable, and while I do think this is an interesting topic to explore I hope the conversation is not about Dark skinned girls V.S. Light skinned girls, because we truly don’t need any further division. The last comment about the lack of a Black Community as a result of lack of language and other cultural aspects is what I would like to hear a dialogue about, and how this void is being filled by others who do not have our best interest at heart.

April also added:

and something else came to mind after thinking about this for awhile. Why is it a “popular belief” that lighter skinned women are more attractive, but not that lighter skinned men are more attractive. Is it just because in society at large women are judged based on beauty and men are judged by other criteria? I really can’t think of many women I know who prefer a lighter skinned man for any reason other than having children who have hair with a loosened curl pattern?

I’m sure that when it comes out, this film will bring out a lot of deep-rooted emotional pain. But let me repeat the comment I made after I first saw the preview of this film, just to make a point here.

I know this is an issue in our community and in America, but it’s still unfortunate that blackness is still too often viewed as not being beautiful. I never understood that. My grandma always taught me that there are 21 shades of blackness, and we’ve got a lot of them in my family. So I have never associated beauty with skin color, although I guess many people still do that.

The issue for me here is this: why are we focusing so much on these skin color extremes when the real battles are outside of our community? It seems like this film is more about the problem with black relationships (i.e. marriage, dating, raising our kids). If we’re talking about real issues in the black community, I think a bigger issue is this thing of being black enough (something I’ve had personal experience with, even though both of my parents are black [I actually have had to explain that to people]).

Or perhaps the bigger and more important issue is just self-esteem and mental health (check out allhiphop.com).

Either way, it seems like there are just too many people who haven’t heard enough about what the Bible already tells us: that we’re fearfully and wonderfully made.

Photo by sfbike (via Flickr)

A story in the LA Times this past week (“UC Irvine says fried chicken and waffle dinner on Martin Luther King Jr. Day was insensitive”) immediately caught my attention not just for the obvious reasons but also because it brought up memories of a similar incident that happened when I was a student at UC Berkeley.

As background, the LA Times story was about a last-minute decision by the dining hall staff at UC Irvine to serve chicken and waffles for a Martin Luther King Jr. symposium organized by the school’s Black Student Union, which sparked an uproar among the school’s minuscule black population (only 2 percent of the school’s entire undergrad makeup).

Without being there and being in those UC Irvine students’ shoes, it’s difficult to come to any definitive conclusions about what the correct reaction should be. But for the sake of this post, I’m going to do just that because I know exactly how they feel, having had a similar experience.

On the last day of Black History Month (Feb. 28, for those who have forgotten) in 2001, the Daily Californian printed a full-page ad by prominent conservative writer David Horowitz titled, “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea-And Racist Too.” Needless to say, the black students at Cal saw this as a complete slap in the face and raised issue with the campus paper and university (check out my bio on my portfolio website to understand the connection this incident has with my career in journalism).

But incidents like these aren’t just limited to happening once every blue moon. You remember what happened last year at UC San Diego, right? A student hung a noose in the school library like it was a joke during Black History Month. That was preceded by an off-campus party that was labeled the “Compton Cookout,” which mocked black culture and, of course, also ignited racial tensions.

So the question I pose about all of these incidents is this: How are black people most appropriately supposed to react? As expected, are we supposed to complain about the fact that someone basically said, “Hey, these black students are celebrating their culture. I know what will make them happy. Let’s serve them some of that good old-fashioned soul food because we know they’ll like it and all we serve throughout the rest of the year is that un-ethnic cafeteria food.”? Or should we just bite our tongues, be ourselves and enjoy the fact that, on at least one day out of the year, someone was considerate of our interests—even if it makes us a little self-conscious. Because, let’s be honest, there’s nothing like soul food and it does taste good.

The answer is both. Black folks have a right to be upset about this, and the fact that someone made the decision to serve chicken and waffles—one of the greasiest kinds of soul food—is just down right insulting, no matter what the person’s intentions might have been. On the other hand, this didn’t have to be blown out of proportion because, let’s be honest, it’s not every day at a majority white and Asian university that you get to enjoy soul food. Bottom line: W.E.B. Du Bois’ observation that African Americans live behind “the veil” and have double consciousness still rings true. And despite the U.S. having a black president, most Americans don’t get that concept.

Moral of the story: Serve more greens and cornbread.

My master’s project, “A Seed is Forever,” recently won an award at the 2010 Online Journalism Awards. It won the “Best Student Multimedia Feature Presentation” award, of which I’m very proud. This is what the judges said about my project:

“The judges decided that this was a winning entry because we were really impressed by the quality of the production of this piece. We were also really impressed that it was all put together by a single journalist. The reporter did the reporting, did the programming of the flash site, did the design work, the video editing, without really compromising the quality of any of those different elements. The story allows you to follow two different threads using guides. We thought that this is something we’d like to see more of generally in the news industry–helping lead the reader through the story, and this is what this piece managed to do very well.”

Now that the project has gotten some recognition, I need some help getting it published somewhere so that it can accomplish what I originally set out to do: bring awareness to the subject of my project, youth and agriculture in Sierra Leone. Got any ideas?

In the first video, for example, I started off the story by fading out of a blur to reflect what many people in Richmond wake up to see every morning: a constant plume of smoke coming from the Chevron plant. In the second video, I overlapped several sets of B-roll to compliment what the speaker was saying about population growth.

And in the third video, I experimented with Motion to make use of a map I created to relate to the subject of the story: “mapping” out Richmond’s health and wellness plan. I was also able to infuse some of my own style into each story by using subtle hip hop tracks to compliment the mood in each story.

There’s Something in the Air

There’s Something in the Air from Martin Ricard on Vimeo.

Water for Life

Water for Life from Martin Ricard on Vimeo.

Richmond’s Health Plan

Richmond’s Health Plan from Martin Ricard on Vimeo.

For our final class project, we came up with an experiment (we were thinking Pandora…BTW, there have been some interesting pieces done recently that look into how the model behind Pandora could be applied to the other industries. Check out this New York Times Magazine story and this post from eMedia Vitals.) looking at how journalists can better measure the engagement of their readers.

With the help of my classmates, I put together this Prezi presentation to show our results. Hopefully, the J-School paid attention (and I know they did…hopefully).

Christian Nymphos

Although the name sounds like a bad idea for a porno, there’s no need to get your mind out of the gutter with this one. This is a website for married women dedicated to “teaching saints how to walk in sexual freedom with their husbands.” Although sex mostly doesn’t get talked about in the church, believe it or not, Christians do know how to spice things up (under the right circumstances, of course).

Left Behind: Eternal Forces

This Christian video game became an instant hit when it came out in 2006. It allows players the choice of either mowing down enemy soldiers or conducting warfare using prayer and worship as weapons rather than guns.

Scripts Footwear

Although these just look like Chucks with Bible verses on them, you gotta give it up to the marketing people at Scripts Footwear who thought of creating a brand of shoe that is both good for the soul and sole.

Ursula M. Burns (via The New York Times)

I know the honeymoon period over President Barack Obama seems to have passed in the eyes of most Americans (his approval rating is now 44 percent). But in the black community you’re still likely to hear talk about how much Obama’s election has meant to African Americans–particularly, young African Americans.

The notion is that now that Obama has become the most important person in the land, black children all across the United States finally have been shown that they can do anything. To me, that thinking is still too small.

Let’s look at some examples of other black folks who have achieved legitimate HNIC status. Despite how you might feel about the economy or executive compensation, we can look no further than the five black CEOs (yes, these are the only ones) who are running Fortune 500 companies:

• Clarence Otis Jr., CEO of Darden Restaurants, which runs Olive Garden and Red Lobster
• Kenneth I. Chenault, CEO of American Express
• Rodney O’Neal, CEO of Delphi Corp., one of the world’s largest automotive parts manufacturers
• Ronald A. Williams, CEO of health insurance giant Aetna
• Ursula M. Burns, CEO of Xerox

So does this mean President Obama’s election should not hold any historical, racial or emotional significance to the black community? Never. What this does mean is that when we now tell our kids that they can become anything they want, let’s expand the horizons of their occupational dreams by showing them there are plenty of tangible opportunities for black people in America. Just a thought I wanted to share.