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Society Hill has been offline since December 2010...a lot has been going on in society since our brief hiatus but we are back and better than ever...even though we are almost 4 months into 2011, we hope that 2011 has thusfar been a prosperous and productive year for all.  Today starts a new beginning for Society Hill as we are more committed than ever to bring you  our take on some of today's top headlines and news events. Our first new blog posting in this new beginning will be about President Obama's visit to Harlem, NY later today as he stops at the Studio Museum Of Harlem and hosts a Democratic fundraiser tonight at one of Harlem's newest restaurants and attractions Red Rooster--the brainchild of celebrity chef and tv personality Marcus Samuelsson who has also served as an Obama chef. The fundraiser runs for $30,800 a plate and is sure to attract a whos who of the political elite. As in all cases when the well off and politically connected are in town, the old addage what's good for the goose is good for the gander may or may not serve well in this much hyped visit by the President of the United States. While some are glad for the exposure, more are concerned about the economic and living conditions of the Harlem community more than anything else. We'll be discussing this much anticipated visit by President Obama and what it may or may not mean not only for the Harlem community for whom the spotlight is upon but the larger community as well.

We'll also offer our take on the ongoing crisis in Libya with Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi. This message is timely given President Obama's address to Nation last night. The full text of last night's speech made by President Obama will be posted here on Society Hill. We will analyze President Obama's address to the Nation and what it means for us as citizens of this country given the fact that we still have two wars that have yet to be declared over.

We'll also provide the latest news in finance, lifestyle and entertainment. In short, WE'RE BACK and BETTER THAN EVER! Thanks for sticking with us as we were on hiatus and we hope to serve you better. Feel free to leave your comments here or visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/societyhill or drop us a line on Twitter at www.twitter.com/societyhill or an email at thesocietyhillblog@gmail.com We look forward to hearing from you and share us with a friend. You'll be glad you did...

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Colgate-Palmolive Markets 'Blackface Toothpaste' To China

Back to the Days of Blackface


A toothpaste brand popular in China is criticized as racially offensive.

Of all the unfamiliar products in a Chinese supermarket, one of the most shocking to American visitors is a toothpaste featuring the logo of a minstrel singer in a top hat, flashing a white smile. Even more shocking: the paste, known as Darlie in English and as Black People Toothpaste in Chinese, is a product of the Hawley & Hazel Group, a Hong Kong–based company established in 1933, which is now owned in part by the Colgate-Palmolive Co.


Darlie used to be called Darkie. According to the book America Brushes Up: The Uses and Marketing of Toothpaste and Toothbrushes in the Twentieth Century, the CEO of Hawley & Hazel saw blackface performer Al Jolson in the U.S. and thought, “Jolson’s wide smile and bright teeth would make an excellent toothpaste logo.” He was right: the firm now claims to be one of the market leaders of toothpaste products in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia.


After Colgate purchased 50 percent of the firm in 1985, religious groups, African-Americans, and company shareholders protested the racially offensive nature of the brand. After more than three years of criticism, Colgate switched the name from Darkie to Darlie and modified the logo to a less crude version of a black man. In 1989 The New York Times quoted the Colgate-Palmolive chairman as saying, ‘’It’s just plain wrong … The morally right thing dictated that we must change [in a way] that is least damaging to the economic interests of our partners.’’


Yet the Chinese name of the product has remained unchanged. And China is not exactly a paradise of racial harmony. While the crucial dichotomy in China is between Chinese and non-Chinese, many blacks face discrimination in the country. A Ghanaian who lives in China and asked to remain anonymous told NEWSWEEK that a prospective employer told him, “We can’t hire you because you’re black.”


Still, the Chinese don’t view the toothpaste’s name as something reprehensible. “To most people in China it wouldn’t even occur to them that Black People Toothpaste is offensive,” says P. T. Black, who researches Chinese consumers. According to the Chinese news site Southcn.com, Hawley & Hazel has even trademarked the name and image and recently sued two companies in Shenzhen for making toothpaste using a similar logo with the words “Black People.” The court ordered the defendants to pay more than $300,000 in damages.


Yet Colgate is a Western company and, as such, “should know better,” says Kwame Dougan, an African-Canadian living in China. Colgate declined NEWSWEEK’s interview requests, instead releasing a statement saying, “There are different perspectives on this issue.” Hawley & Hazel also declined an interview request. Darlie doesn’t exactly advertise its relationship with Colgate; Colgate’s Web site has only two mentions of Darlie, both of which talk about how the brand is driving growth in the Asia-Pacific region. Darlie products examined in China for this story featured no mention of the Colgate label.


“I think that the brand should simply be retired,” says Laura Berry, executive director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, one of the organizations that originally pressured Colgate to fix its Darkie brand. Until then, Darlie smiles on.

Johnson Publishing Company Sells Worldwide Headquarters To Local College; Committee Announced To Find New Home

JOHNSON PUBLISHING COMPANY SETS PLAN TO MOVE CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS


Columbia College Chicago to Transform 820 S. Michigan into Library


CHICAGO - Johnson Publishing Co, Inc. (JPC) announced today the sale of its Michigan Avenue headquarters building to Columbia College Chicago and launched its search for a new home as the legendary publisher opens the next chapter in its history. The move is another step in JPC’s corporate strategy to advance its business plan and serve the current needs of the company.


“I am so proud that this wonderful building, which has served Johnson Publishing so well since 1971, will continue to have a rich legacy under the stewardship of Columbia College Chicago,” said Linda Johnson Rice, Chairman, JPC. “When we learned of Columbia’s interest in preserving the building and using it to expand opportunities for young people to study visual, performing, media and communication arts, we knew this was an opportunity that we should pursue.”


Columbia College Chicago Board of Trustees Chairman Allen Turner said, “The purchase of the Johnson Building offered us a rare opportunity for much needed expansion, especially given that the space is central to our South Loop campus. Just as important, we will have a part in preserving the legacy of the Johnson Building and its legendary significance to all Chicagoans.”


JPC said that it currently utilizes only about 40 percent of the building and moving its headquarters is part of the overall strategy to reduce costs as it refocuses on the core functions of its publishing and cosmetics businesses. JPC has had four company headquarters in Chicago since its founding in 1942.


“The sale of 820 S. Michigan is part of the continuing evolution of the company that my father and mother started in the early 1942s,” said Rice. “Just as when JPC moved to this location in 1972, my father would be the first to say it makes good business sense to relocate to space that serves the current needs of the company.”


The 11-story, 110,000 square-foot historic building, which has been home to EBONY and JET magazines as well as Fashion Fair Cosmetics for almost 40 years, was completed in 1972 as the first major downtown Chicago building designed by an African-American since Jean Baptiste Point DuSable’s trading post, built two centuries earlier.


Terms call for JPC to continue to occupy the building under an 18-month lease. The company will appoint a building committee to help determine where to relocate its worldwide headquarters. The JPC building’s sale closed today. Financial terms were not disclosed.

S.C. Children Laid To Rest

COLUMBIA, S.C.- Sorrow, shock and sadness filled the sanctuary of St. Paul Baptist Church in Orangeburg, S.C., where a combined funeral was held recently for two-year-old Devean Duley and his 18-month-old brother Ja'Van. Alarm and anger gripped the state when news broke about the murder of the two toddlers allegedly at the hands of their own mother.



Shaquan Duley, 29, an unemployed single mom stands accused of suffocating the boys to death in room 31 of a cheap motel, then driving to a docking bay where she allegedly pushed the car with the toddlers into the Edisto River.


According to Orangeburg County Sheriff Larry Williams, Ms. Duley flagged a passing car for help, pleading that her car with her children inside was in the water resulting from an accident—a story investigators say didn't add up.




Sheriff Williams said there was no physical evidence as far as any vehicle leaving the road or any skid marks or anything of that nature that would be relevant to an automobile accident. Deputy sheriffs further observed that Ms. Duley was completely dry casting doubt on her initial account of what happened.


“It was our early determination that this vehicle was in the Edisto River by either being intentionally placed there or rolling from the secondary highway down to the river,” Sheriff Williams said, in a press conference.


According to the sheriff, Ms. Duley was first arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident. He said, however, she later confessed to committing the murders after a heated argument with her mother about the care of her children. Her five-year-old daughter wasn't taken with the brothers the night of their deaths.


Public reaction to the deaths was stinging against Ms. Duley with expressions of disbelief and bewilderment that a mother could possibly kill her own children. The funeral for the boys was held Aug. 20.


A Facebook.com page dedicated to condemning Ms. Duley posted comments ranging from the sympathetic “put it in God's hands” to total calls to “give her the electric chair” for what she has allegedly done.


“Despicable,” wrote Jamilah Gibbs on the social networking site. “We all have been stressed at one time or another, it doesn't mean that we kill our children, the ones that we carried in our stomach for 40 weeks, the ones that we are supposed to love, nurture, protect,” wrote Ms. Gibbs, a mother of four.


However, a call for public restraint was issued regarding the the young mother. In a television interview, her mother, Helen Duley, described her daughter as a “sweet, loving person” who became overwhelmed. She hopes the misfortune can be a lesson for people in crises and getting help.


"There is a deep hurt. This is a very dark time in our lives,” the elder Duley told WLTX-TV in Columbia.


“I'm asking people not to judge her for what she's done but to understand that we all have problems and we never know when things might get out of hand. That's why it's important not to keep things bottled up in you, but to let somebody know.”


“This isn't a hardened criminal. ... This is a young lady who was in trouble,” Sheriff Williams said. “She didn't know where to turn ... the responsibility of being a mom was a bit much for her.”


The elder Duley added, “You don't know what is in the minds of people.” She asked people to look for indicators of something wrong or different with their loved ones.


But what could cause a mother to snap and kill her children? What are the signs to look for? Where is the help for women in crises, overwhelmed with the weight of motherhood?


“I'm a single parent myself and know firsthand, while I deal with other women who are single mothers, I know what it is to have that experience,” said Zekita Tucker, chairwoman and CEO of the League of African-American Women in St. Louis.


“The pressures are very tough, nobody can understand it unless you are walking in those shoes,” Ms. Tucker said.


The abuse of children can never be condoned, and often it's external pressures bearing on the frustration of being the only caretaker without any help, she explained. There are relationship issues—especially where abuse exists—and the mother may act out “passive aggressive reactions,” where her children become recipients of the pain the mother feels powerless to heap on her abuser, said Ms. Tucker.


According to Parenting Partners, a South Carolina advocacy group, child abuse and neglect cuts across socio-economic, religious, racial and ethnic lines. A child is abused or neglected in South Carolina every 49 minutes.In the Midlands region of the state, every year some 11,000 children are verified as abused and neglected. In 2007, 850 cases of abuse were found involving over 1,100 children. The group estimates three times that number remains unreported.


Studies have shown that “Black people will commit homicide” most times in a moment of passion, motivated by a perception of blame on the victim, according to author and psychologist Dr. Nathaniel Hare.


“They can become more argumentative, easily angered or they can be brooding much, not saying much,” Dr. Hare said, describing some signs of changes in personality. It is hard to predict who will snap because the average person is not looking for anything out of the ordinary, he said.


South Carolina ranks 34th among states in the percent of children who are living in extreme poverty. Children in families with less than $15,000 annual income are 22 times more likely to be abused or neglected than children from families with income of $30,000 or more.


“In 20/20, when you look back there were so many signs of her (Shaquan Duley) reaching out that we missed,” said Troy Strother, executive director of Parents Anonymous. “There had to be some signs somewhere, somehow.”


The support group is designed for troubled parents to network with others going through similar problems. Mr. Strother said there has been an increase in calls to his agency because of hard times facing women and men looking for answers.


There is help available in South Carolina through agencies and organizations like Parents Anonymous, Prevent Child Abuse South Carolina and religious organizations around the state.

In Memoriam: Bishop Walter Hawkins (1949-2010)

RIPON, Calif. (AP) — Walter Hawkins, a Grammy Award-winning gospel singer, composer and pastor from Oakland, died Sunday. He was 61.



Hawkins, who was battling pancreatic cancer, passed away at his home in Ripon, Calif., his older brother Edwin Hawkins said.


"Today, I lost my brother, my pastor, and my best friend," said Edwin Hawkins. "Bishop Hawkins suffered bravely but now he will suffer no more and he will be greatly missed."


Born in Oakland, Hawkins studied for his divinity degree at the University of California, Berkeley.


While at the university, he recorded his first album titled "Do Your Best" in 1972.


The next year, Hawkins became a pastor and founded the Love Center Church in Oakland, where he also formed a choir.


In the 1980s, Hawkins recorded a number of albums and earned nine Grammy Award nominations, according to friend and family representative, Bill Carpenter.


His "The Lord's Prayer" won a Grammy in 1980 and he also performed on the televised Grammy Awards ceremony that year.


In 1990, Hawkins released "Love Alive III" which spent 34 weeks at the top on the Billboard gospel album sales chart, while going on to sell more than a million copies, according to Carpenter.


In 1993 his next album, "Love Alive IV," also hit the top spot on the album sales chart. Between work on the two albums, Hawkins was ordained a bishop in October 1992.


At the time of his death, Hawkins was planning a new "Love Alive" CD concert recording for this fall.


Besides his brother Walter, Hawkins is survived by two children, two grandchildren and a number of nieces and nephews.


Funeral arrangements were pending.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu Announces New Police Superintendent To Head Disgraced Police Force

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu today announced the selection of a new superintendent to head the city’s troubled police force.

Ronal Serpas will leave his post as chief of the Nashville police to take the reins from Warren Riley, a veteran New Orleans Police Department figure who has led the force since shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005.

A string of controversies—some of them stretching back to the Katrina time period—buffeted the department during Riley’s tenure, drawing the scrutiny of both the national media and the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Justice has confirmed there are at least eight ongoing civil rights investigations focused on the police force. Federal investigators are examining a series of incidents in which police officers shot civilians in the aftermath of the hurricane, and have already garnered guilty pleas from four ex-cops in connection to shootings on the Danziger Bridge that left two dead and four wounded.

Collaborating with other media organizations including the New Orleans Times-Picayune and PBS Frontline, ProPublica helped to expose several of the cases now under investigation, including the shootings of Keenon McCann, Henry Glover and Matthew McDonald.

Yesterday, Landrieu invited the Justice Department to deepen its scrutiny of the police force, asking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for an “independent investigation” that will improve the police department’s disciplinary systems and “introduce best practices for public safety.”

The invitation from Landrieu appears to set the stage for the Justice Department to seek thorough reforms of the police force using the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act. The law provides Justice Department attorneys with an array of legal tools—including long-term monitoring by federal judges—aimed at revamping police departments deemed to have a “pattern or practice” of violating people’s civil rights.

Since 1997, Justice Department lawyers have used the act to restructure 21 law enforcement agencies, according to a 2009 study by criminologist Sam Walker and attorney Morgan MacDonald published in the George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal.

In those cases, Walker and MacDonald wrote, Justice Department attorneys sought to institute systems to flag problem cops, improve officer training and rewrite rules for using force.

Third And Fourth Cops Indicted In New Orleans Police Coverup Case

Federal prosecutors yesterday indicted New Orleans police officer Michael Hunter for his role in the Danziger Bridge incident, during which officers shot six citizens, killing two, days after Hurricane Katrina.
The indictment, on charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice and providing false information about a felony, makes Hunter the third New Orleans Police Department figure to be charged. In recent weeks, two ex-cops have pleaded guilty to similar offenses.
Hunter is the first officer who was actually on the bridge on Sept. 4, 2005, and fired shots to face charges. The other two, who have already entered guilty pleas, were involved only in the police department’s investigation of the shooting incident.
It remains to be seen if the Justice Department will ever charge officers for the killings of Ronald Madison and James Brissette, or for wounding four other people, rather than for their roles in the cover-up that followed. Given the volume of bullets flying that day, the number of victims and the missing evidence—ex-cop Jeffrey Lehrmann admitted to watching another officer kick shell casings off the bridge—figuring out exactly who shot whom may pose an epic challenge for federal investigators.
In concert with our friends at PBS “Frontline” and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, ProPublica has been scrutinizing the Danziger bridge incident, as well as the shootings of Matthew McDonald, Danny Brumfield, Henry Glover and Keenon McCann, all of which transpired in the week after Katrina made landfall. Our reporting found the NOPD conducted a series of deeply flawed investigations into these violent encounters between cops and civilians, failing to interview witnesses, collect key evidence or thoroughly question the officers involved. 

Federal investigators charged another New Orleans police officer in connection to the Danziger Bridge shootings, in which two civilians were killed and four were wounded in the days after Hurricane Katrina. The Danziger Bridge shootings are among a string of violent post-Katrina police encounters we’ve investigated in collaboration with PBS “Frontline” and the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Officer Robert Barrios, who was charged with conspiring to obstruct justice, became the fourth police officer charged in the case, and the fifth person overall. Three former officers have already pleaded guilty to charges related to the shooting. Barrios reportedly resigned from the force shortly after being charged.
Marion David Ryder, a civilian who impersonated a police officer the day of the shooting, also was indicted this month on charges of lying to federal agents and unlawful possession of a handgun.
The charge against Barrios came in a bill of information, which is only allowed in cases where the defendant has waived the requirement that a grand jury issue charges. That usually indicates the defendant is cooperating with the case.
The Times-Picayune reports that Barrios was in the back of a vehicle with four other officers when they responded to a report that officers were shot while on Interstate 10, which is parallel with the Danziger Bridge.