Imams kicked off a plane.

That sounds like a movie title or something.

There have been times when I was getting on a plane and I felt a strong urge to tell the pilot that I was uncomfortable with certain passengers: The ones with the infants who were acting up in the waiting area, for instance. Or, the family with the screaming obnoxious teen aged kids. But I never did it, because I knew that it wouldn't do me any good.

So how did those passengers in Memphis manage to get the pilot of an ASA flight heading to Charlotte to return to the gate area after taxiing onto the runway? I guess all fears aren't created equal. Only a really strong fear would cause a pilot to do such a thing to protect his or her airplane.

Boy It must really suck to be a Muslim these days. I guess if you are a Muslim and planning a trip you have to make all kinds of contingency plans and prepare yourself for the worst. Kind of like us Negroes used to do back in the day when traveling down South. We always had to pack our food because stopping in some places just wasn't an option. Rest room stops? Forget about it. Your restroom was where you felt safe getting out of the car and getting your tinkle on. God forbid you really had to do the business. But I digress.

Anywhoo, it seems that the Imams were heading to a conference on prejudice and "Islamophobia". "My brothers and sisters, do we ever have a story to tell you about our trip...." Talk about irony. Fellows tell your peeps to hold your next conference in a place like Philly. We see folks in traditional Muslim garb everyday. Even if they were born and raised right here in the USA. Just an FYI; you guys might not want to hold a conference south of the Mason- Dixon line in the future.

Oh well, all is well that ends well. There were apologies all around and the men said that they were treated very well by TSA agents. In fact, they said that the folks at Delta Airlines seemed downright embarrassed by the whole incident. Meanwhile, those worried passengers were able to head along on their merry way without having to worry about those funny looking people on their plane.

I could never be so lucky.

"A country without a memory is a country of madmen."

That quote by George Santayana is apropos right about now.

There are a lot of tea party folks in congress at this particular time in our history, so don't be surprised if children studying A-merry-can history fifty years from now won't know that people of color were slaves and that Native Americans were slaughtered.

"...the Tea Party organizations argue, there should be “no portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

“The thing we need to focus on about the Founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn’t existed, to everybody — not all equally instantly — and it was their progress that we need to look at.."

Don't be alarmed folks, this is the Tennessee tea party folks we are talking about. (This time.)
Oh my! I wonder how the black tea party folks feel about this? I suspect that it's not a big deal. "We should focus on the future on not the past. We have to stop playing the victim role." And were there any bigger victims than slaves? Getting rid of slavery from our history books might take care of our victim problem here in A-merry-ca. Not!

Honestly, nothing is more reprehensible than trying to rewrite or whitewash (no pun intended) history. Hello! It's our history; warts and all. It really did happen. Trying to close our eyes and pretend that it didn't happen makes us look silly and intellectually shallow.

And this brings me to my man Mark Twain and his classic A-merry-can novel, Huckleberry Finn. Seems the N-word appeared in his classic 219 times, (Damn, that's more times than an entire Lil Wayne album.) and one of the publisher's of the book has replaced the N-word with the word slave. (Nigger. Slave. What's the difference? )

Anyway, this push from the PC folks to sanitize and soften the words from a very popular A-merry-can novel is also wrong. If you are going to use the book as a teaching tool, use it. Don't change the words as they were written by the author. I have no idea what was in Mark Twain's heart, but I know what he wrote, and it shouldn't be changed.

Finally, if there is anyone reading this from Memphis, Tennessee, please tell me what the hell is going on in your city. Is someone going around and poking holes in the condom packages? Ninety girls pregnant from the same school! WTF?

"Sixteen-year-old Terrika Sutton is one of the Frayser students who became pregnant. Sutton, who has a 2-month-old daughter, says she was in her fifth month when she found out she was expecting a child. The teen mom surprised her parents and classmates alike when she broke the news to them about her situation:

"They were like, 'Terrika, I never knew you would get pregnant,' and I was like well it happened."

The young mother goes onto say, though, that teen pregnancy is nothing to be proud of and that something should be done:

"It's a shame that all these girls at Frayser are pregnant, but it ain't nothing new. They probably planned on what they gonna do to get pregnant. Ain't no telling. They need a class where they can teach girls before they get pregnant to use protection and stuff and so they don't try to get pregnant." [Source]

Terrika, your parents needed a class as well: How to be a parent.

Folks, tomorrow is the day we celebrate MLK's birthday here in A-merry-ca. Please remember what the man was fighting for when he was taken from us by a racist career criminal. Let's continue to strive for a more perfect union where all people are entitled to social and economic justice.

Tomorrow people of good will (black and white) will be volunteering all over my fair city. Everyone of those people are field Negroes and honorary field Negroes as far as I am concerned, and I only wish that my hand was big enough to pat everyone of them on the back