Sunday Buzz Digest from DryerBuzz News Podcast and NetTV

Film to Help Black Boys and Young Black Men‏

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Toward the end of his life, tennis legend and activist Arthur Ashe sat down and wrote a letter to his young daughter to be read and re-read for inspiration and comforted as she got older and he wasn’t around. The letter was, and is, a timeless “literary broadcast” of life lessons and love for a soon to be fatherless child. The genesis of the documentary For Our Sons is in that same vein. It is a “cinematic broadcast” of life lessons and love for the many fatherless black boys in the US who are in danger of becoming a statistic.

The innovative 86-minute film consists of 19 powerful and important interviews with 19 powerful and “important” Black men from different walks of life, men who have “been through the fire” of growing up Black and male in the oftentimes hostile environment of the inner city but through strength and perseverance built for themselves their own versions of the American dream.

The film employs insightful interviews, contemporary images and archival footage, the biographical life lessons of men to create a moving and engaging narrative of what it means to go from Black boyhood to black manhood in America today.

Follow the buzz for full documentary via Film to Help Black Boys and Young Black Men

Victor Woods was breaking it down during a segment on Chicago Violence which aired on CNN with report Don Lemon.  We just had to see what’s up with that brother?

Victor Woods grew up in one of Chicago’s most affluent suburbs. He is the son of two college educated, professional parents, and the grandson of a prominent Baptist Minster. Victor was raised in a household with every advantage. Clever, intelligent, and extremely quick witted, Victor instead used his charms to organize and mastermind elaborate crime schemes at the age of 16. Growing up studying the Mafia through movies such as Scarface and The Godfather, his fascination with organized crime eventually led to his arrest at age nineteen.

Victor served two years in state prison which became his new training ground for learning the art of white collar crime. Upon his release from prison, he organized a $40 million dollar credit card conspiracy. He had several law enforcement agencies baffled for years—-until friends and partners in crime all turned against him to save their own necks. Unlike his associates, Woods refused to tell on his friends for a reduced sentence, and for his silence he spent the next six years in federal prison.

The odds were stacked against Victor and while in prison for a second time, he had the opportunity to reflect on his life’s journey. Victor decided to use his survival skills, and determination to make a positive change in his life. Instead of allowing prison to erode his character and will to succeed, Victor rose above the madness and adversity of prison life. Not just content with changing himself, he committed himself to changing the life expectation of other prisoners and began giving motivational speeches to inmates to encourage them to also reclaim their lives. Most extraordinary, in prison, Victor wrote a five-hundred and seventy page auto-biography of his life which is now the body of work called A Breed Apart.  Follow the buzz.

pewsocialtrends.org — It may surprise anyone following the charges of racism that have flared up during the debate over President Obama’s health care proposals, but a survey taken this summer found that fewer people perceived there are strong conflicts between blacks and whites than saw strong conflicts between immigrants and the native born, or between rich people and poor people.

A majority (55%) of adults said there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between immigrants and people born in the United States. Nearly as many — 47% — said the same about conflicts between rich people and poor people, according to a nationally representative survey by the Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends project.

The survey found that about four-in-ten (39%) believe there are serious conflicts between blacks and whites, and only a quarter (26%) see major generational divisions between the young and old.1

Follow the Buzz via Black-White Conflict Isn’t Society’s Largest – Pew Social & Demographic Trends.