Tell us how you REALLY feel: Arizona Immigration Law

Hi all, I hope you're having a beautiful weekend thus far. Further, I hope the fact that you're sitting here reading this is not indicative of the fact that there seems to be nothing to do in your city. Nevertheless, here's the scoop. On Friday, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the state's immigration bill into law.The law orders immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times and requires police to question people if there's reason to suspect they're in the United States illegally. It also targets those who hire illegal immigrant laborers or knowingly transport them.

Critics, including immigrant advocates and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, say they are concerned the law will foster racial profiling, arguing that most police officers don't have enough training to look past race while investigating a person's legal status.


The last immigration reform efforts in Congress were in 2005 when Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, Brown's predecessor, introduced a bipartisan bill that aimed to implement guest-worker programs and ways for more illegal immigrants to become citizens.


Click here to read the full text of the immigration bill.

Read the rest to discover my opinion and voice yours.

Tell us how you REALLY feel: The 5 BEST things about being snowed in

We've listed the 5 WORST things about being snowed in. Now its time to list the 5 BEST things about being snowed in.


1. No School + no work=free time. Have you ever worked so hard you started to dream about what you would do if you had a day off? Imagine what you would do if that 1 day off turned in to 6?? When was the last time THAT happened?! You can get caught up on work and get ahead at school. Best of all, you can take some of the pressure off of yourself because you've been granted a mini vacay. You can use the extra time to do things you wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity or the time to do. Think about the direction of your life. Think about your career path. Research different career paths. Find out how to start your own business or non-profit organization. OR

Your daydreams can be epic like the Odyssey;

Your thoughts can become deeper than the abyss; and

Your lazy can become legendary;

Thank you mother nature!

2. Snowball fights: there is something about landing a tightly pack imperfect sphere in the middle of a strangers face. The race to pack more snowballs is almost as fun as hitting people with them. Not to mention you allow yourself to completely submerse yourself in a child-like atmosphere. Its a feeling I love almost as much as I love sweet potato pie (reserve your judgment).

3. Spending time with your family and friends. As Young Professionals, we often get caught up in our lives so much that we forget about the people that matter. -->Since there is nothing else to do you learn more about the people in your circle and you should feel good about it. Play games, watch your favorite movies, and -->wrap it up snuggle up.

4. Snowball fights. They never get old.

5. The beautiful scenery. Before the snow is touched my the hands of man, it is beautiful. It covers trees and you can capture post card worthy photos on a daily basis. The next time you're frustrated about having to dig your car out, whip out a camera and start snapping.

Well friends, its that time again. Tell us how you REALLY feel. What is the BEST part about being snowed in?

Image source: http://www.epidemicfun.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/snowman_party.jpg

Talented Genration Salutes

Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes, (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best-known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. He is also best known for what he wrote about the Harlem Renaissance, "Harlem was in vogue."

Hughes' life and work were enormously influential during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s alongside those of his contemporaries, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas, who, collectively (with the exception of McKay), created the short-lived magazine Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists.

In his work he confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and expanded African America’s image of itself; a “people’s poet” who sought to reeducate both audience and artist by lifting the theory of the black aesthetic into reality. Moreover, Hughes stressed the importance of a racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate that united people of African descent and Africa across the globe and encouraged pride in their own diverse black folk culture and black aesthetic.

Langston Hughes was one of the few black writers of any consequence to champion racial consciousness as a source of inspiration for black artists. His African-American race consciousness and cultural nationalism would influence many foreign black writers, such as Jacques Roumain, Nicolás Guillén, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Aimé Césaire. With Senghor and Césaire and other French-speaking writers of Africa and of African descent from the Caribbean like René Maran from Martinique and Léon Damas from French Guiana in South America, the works of Hughes helped to inspire the concept that became the Négritude movement in France where a radical black self-examination was emphasized in the face of European colonialism.

Langston Hughes was not only a role model for his calls for black racial pride instead of assimilation, but the most important technical influence in his emphasis on folk and jazz rhythms as the basis of his poetry of racial pride. In 1930, his first novel Not Without Laughter won the Harmon Gold Medal for literature. Hughes's first collection of short stories came in 1934 with The Ways of White Folks. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935.

Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York. In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street has been renamed "Langston Hughes Place."

Here is another one of my favorite poems from Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Check out a montage Nike created for the 2008 Beijing Olympics:

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz (1961)

Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (1994)

Dear Lovely Death (1931)

Fields of Wonder (1947)

Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927)

Freedom's Plow (1943)

Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

One-Way Ticket (1949)

Scottsboro Limited (1932)

Selected Poems (1959)

Shakespeare in Harlem (1942)

The Dream Keeper and Other Poems (1932)

The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times (1967)

The Weary Blues (1926)

Prose

Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings by Langston Hughes (1973)

I Wonder as I Wander (1956)

Laughing to Keep From Crying (1952)

Not Without Laughter (1930)

Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964 (2001)

Simple Speaks His Mind (1950)

Simple Stakes a Claim (1957)

Simple Takes a Wife (1953)

Simple's Uncle Sam (1965)

Something in Common and Other Stories (1963)

Tambourines to Glory (1958)

The Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters (1980)

The Big Sea (1940)

The Langston Hughes Reader (1958)

The Ways of White Folks (1934)

Drama

Black Nativity (1961)

Collected Works of Langston Hughes, vol. 5: The Plays to 1942: Mulatto to The Sun Do Move (2000)

Don't You Want to Be Free? (1938)

Five Plays by Langston Hughes (1963)

Little Ham (1935)

Mulatto (1935)

Mule Bone (1930)

Simply Heavenly (1957)

Soul Gone Home (1937)

The Political Plays of Langston Hughes (2000)

Poetry in Translation

Cuba Libre (1948)

Gypsy Ballads (1951)

Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral (1957)

Translation

Masters of the Dew (1947)

For his contributions to African American culture and his inspirational literary works, Talented Generation salutes Langston Hughes!

On THIS date in black history

February 5

1866 - The distribution of public land and confiscated land to freedmen and loyal refugees in forty acre lots is offered in an amendment to the Freedmen's Bureau bill by Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. The measure is defeated in the House by a vote of 126 to 37. An African American delegation, led by Frederick Douglass calls on President Johnson and urges ballots for former slaves. The meeting ends in disagreement and controversy after Johnson reiterates his opposition to African American suffrage. I want my 40 acres.

1934 - Henry (Hank) Aaron is born in Mobile, Alabama. He holds the record for runs batted in with 2297, and his a Gold Glove Winner in 1958, 1959, and 1960. In April 8, 1974, he hit a 385-foot home run against the Los Angeles Dodgers, surpassing Babe Ruth's record of 714 career home runs. He ended his career with 755 home runs.

1941 - Barrett Strong is born in West Point, Mississippi. He became a Rhythm and Blues singer best known for his recording of "Money (That's What I Want)." He was also be a prolific songwriter, responsible for hits such as "Just My Imagination," "Papa Was A Rolling Stone," and "Ball of Confusion." He received a Grammy Award for Best Rhythm & Blues Song for co-writing "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone."

1956 - L.R. Lautier becomes the first African American to be admitted to the National Press Club.

1958 - Clifton W. Wharton, Sr. becomes the first African American to head an American diplomatic mission in Europe when he is confirmed as minister to Romania.

1962 - A suit seeking to bar Englewood, New Jersey, from maintaining "racial segregated" elementary schools, is filed in United States District Court.

1968 - Students in Orangeburg, South Carolina try to end the discriminatory practices of a local bowling alley. Their confrontation with police and the National Guard, and the subsequent death of three students, creates widespread outrage among students on campuses across the South.

1969 - Cinque Gallery is incorporated by African American artists Romare Bearden, Ernest Crichlow, and Norman Lewis. Located in the SoHo district of New York City, the nonprofit gallery's mission is to assist in the growth and development of minority artists and to end the cycle of exclusion of their work from the mainstream artistic community.

1972 - Robert Lewis Douglas, founder, owner and coach of the New York Renaissance is the first African American inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. The New York Renaissance was an African American team that won 88 consecutive games in 1933.

1977 - Sugar Ray Leonard defeats Luis Vega in 6 rounds in his first professional fight.

1989 - Kareem Abdul-Jabar becomes the first NBA player to score 38,000 points.

1994 - White supremacist Byron de la Beckwith is finally convicted of Medger Evers' murder, more than thirty years after Evers was shot in the back from ambush. After deliberating for seven hours, a jury of eight African Americans and four whites convicted 73-year-old De La Beckwith of Medgar Evers's murder, sentencing him to life in prison. He died there seven years later. As a Mississippi State Supreme Court justice wrote about the retrial: "Miscreants brought before the bar of justice in this state must, sooner or later, face the cold realization that justice, slow and plodding though she may be, is certain in the state of Mississippi."

Tell us how you REALLY feel...

In case you missed it, pictured above is the cover for Vanity Fair's annual "Young Hollywood" issue which is set to hit stands soon. It doesn't take long to realize that there is a common thread among all the actresses portrayed here: they are all white, thin, and female (as one blogger put it). Many have pointed out that young hollywood has a diverse pool that could have easily been depicted by using actresses like Gabourey Sidibe, for example, who just got an Oscar nomination for Precious and many more. Its no question that the issue furthers stereotypes that Hollywood should only be occupied by people who look like those on VF's cover who reads Vanity Fair anyway.

I'm not going to knock all the females that posed for the issue, but I want to know what you think?

Tell us how you REALLY feel about Vanity Fair's latest cover. Do you think Vanity Fair is racist? Is it just a publicity stunt to sell mags? Do you even care? Do you think it matters that the issue will be released during black history month? You may recall this is not the first time VF has snubbed people of color and it may not be the last.

Your Platform awaits in the comment section