A few years ago, there was a notorious “drug-dealing” corner near Lake Merritt.  It was a predominately African American neighborhood and most of the citizens simply avoided the corner.  They stayed inside at night.  There was little police presence there. Drug dealers ran the corner.
 

While standing in front of the Oakland Public Library, a young white man gave me a flyer to Occupy Oakland’s “Weekend of Action!” While I agreed with some of Occupy Movement’s positions, I disagreed with a lot of their tactics.  I told the man I had problems with Occupy Oakland.  Though it was called “Occupy Oakland,” the media focused on white protesters from other cities.  I he

Occupy: to take possession and control of (a place), as by military invasion
~Dictionary.com 

For years, some Oakland leaders seem to have portrayed financially-strapped Oakland as a blank canvas in need of occupation from the outside.

Perhaps it was meant to be a comedy skit or political satire. 

Last Monday, I watched CNN cover the “controversial” University of California, Berkeley’s, “Increase Diversity Bake Sale.” The bake sale was to protest affirmative action at the UC campus.

Bruce Norris’s “Clybourne Park” has been called a provocative play on race relations and gentrification. He wrote it after seeing Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.” 

Oakland’s African American youth are often labeled “at risk” and “disenfranchised.” They have been called “the lost generation.” 

The cover of San Francisco Weekly (August 18 – 24, 2010) read “HELD CAPTIVE:  Inside the Brutal World of Kidnapping Immigrants.”  The article opened with “Coyotes Who Smuggle Immigrants Torture and Extort Their Victims, Helped by Our Government’s Failure to Enact Immigration Reform.”  Such accusati

As an African American reader in the San Francisco Bay Area, the mainstream media often reminds me of a statement W. E. B. DuBois wrote in 1879: