Tiger Woods to break his silence

I have not written about the debacle surrounding the serious sex addiction and subsequent media frenzy that followed the great golfer earlier this year.

As someone who suffers from a brain disorder and has spent her share of time in and out of treatment facilities in order to be stable, I know what it is like to have the "public" and "friends" turn on you.

I break my silence today, because Tiger is going to finally speak about his addiction and possible return to golf. I find golf to be quite tedious and boring in general, but when Tiger plays, something happens to me - I feel transformed into another place and find myself rooting for him to make it to yet another championship.

Tiger has lost his center - I do not wish to speculate on how long he has struggled with addiction, but venture to say that had his father not passed away, he would not have found himself in quite the predicament. Earl had a grounding effect on his son - Tiger and he were very close - he would not have seen his son destroy his sponsorship deals, family and potentially his career - over a scandal such as this. He would have taken charge and seen to it that Tiger got the help he needed and likely sans the public spectacle that we have seen with women coming from all over to claim dalliances with the famous golfer.

I wish Tiger and his family well - I hope they make it - it is a good sign that he is still in treatment and will return after his public announcement today.

Let us give him time and space and allow him the time he needs to reconnect with his wife, family, and most of all, himself.

Has change really come to America?

I rode with my mother through Westchester County today - the condos and homes all beautifully kept as we wove through the streets towards the Bronx where my cousin lives in a beautiful home with his wife and two daughters who attend private school in New York City.

When I first came to New York over a year ago, I was amazed at the countenance of the buildings that are owned by the New York Housing Authority. My feeling is that the buildings should be power washed to remove grime regularly. Flowers should be planted in boxes outside of windows and EVERY project or subsidized housing complex should be home to at least one community garden and park.

We are at a historic time in America. We have the first African American President - he is half black and half white, but he looks black, so we content ourselves (not me personally, as my children are also mulatto and I would not deign to have them deny their Caucasian parentage on their father's side).......another story for another entry.

President Obama and his wife embody the American Dream for all of us - black, white, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Native American and all shades and hues of God's people and religions inbetween. They both worked hard to pursue Ivy League educations and only recently paid off their student loans.

Obama is the product of a single mother - the Ann Coulters of the world would have us all believe that single mothers are the bane of the world and that our children are responsible for all societal ills - please note that in her new book, she does not include divorcees such as myself and Obama's mother as single mothers. She is, instead focusing on those mothers who live in public housing, bearing numerous children with numerous men as fathers, subsisting on government subsidies.

It is time for more comprehensive welfare reform - if one has never paid into the system and becomes pregnant at age 17, then one cannot receive public housing or welfare payments - one can have the medicaid that will entitle one to receive appropriate and adequate healthcare and one can live doubled up with a family member while availing themselves of WIA (workforce investment act) funds and other government subsidies designed to help get women off welfare and into the workforce - it worked in Michigan while I was working for Governor Engler's welfare-to-work program - it is one of the most successful programs in the country. One can have access to WIC - the Women and Infant Children Program that provides fresh fruit, legumes, protein and milk, fomula and cereal to mothers and children under age 5. One can have access to a community garden, instead of food stamps, so that one can connect with nature and have a notion of where one's food comes from, instead of lining up at a grocey store with food stamps, purchasing (not in all cases, but in many that I have seen over the years) unhealthy foods to feed ones family.

It is a beautiful thing to see a black and brown couple as the first family - Sasha and Malia are the quintessential fashion plates, with charm, great manners and their parents' good looks. What an amazing role model we have for all Americans.

Unfortunately, if a person wants to be a 5th generation welfare mother or father, that is what that person will aspire to, no matter who is in the White House - Bill Cosby, Sojourner Truth, Fredrick Douglass, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Michael Jordan, Venus and Serena Williams, Tiger Woods - all of these individuals have blazed a trail for African Americans to follow.

We did not need to see one of "us" in the White House in order to realize that living in the projects is not an acceptable permanent lifestyle.

I ask the question again - has change really come to America?

Are we willing to make the changes from within in order to see this happen?

He's not black - he's also half white - what we can learn from our new "brown" president elect

President Elect Barack Obama is making some remarkable choices for his new cabinet. Most notable is his choice for Secretary of State - the honourable Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Skeptics might look upon this and muse that this is merely a case of Obama keeping his friends close and his enemies closer. Harvard MBA graduates might recognize it for what it is - a stroke of genius and brilliant strategy and logic.

The race to the White House on the Democratic side was not expected to be between these two rivals, Clinton and Obama - both senators - neither of whom had served as a governor (though, I digress here when I note that Ms. Sarah Palin is a governor and leaves much to be desired when it comes to intelligence and the ability to lead her country). Obama was the dark horse in more ways than one. Indeed, Bill Clinton got extremely testy during the final stages of the campaign - he wanted the White House badly for Hillary - really badly - I am not convinced that the country was ready to have him in it again, shenanigans and all.

What can we learn from President Elect Obama as he has made this amazing choice? The first former First Lady to be elected Senator and now she will be Madame Secretary - right up there with Madeleine Albright, (who was, incidentally, confirmed by President Bill Clinton) and Condoleeza Rice. We can learn that Obama is determined to pick the best and brightest for his administration - bright people tend to surround themselves with intellectual individuals. I recently heard him speak of being one who welcomes strong personalities when asked if he thought the cabinet was too full of strong-minded individuals.

What we should take away from this lesson is that Obama is reaching across aisles, gathering former foes, bright minds and shining stars to begin to fix this mess that we are in in our beloved United States of America. Let us all pray for him and his emerging cabinet.

On another note, I am enjoying immensely, his memoir "Dreams from my father" - I highly recommend it - great reading, thoughtful, intellectually stimulating, and above all - he addresses race in a way that is long overdue.

The headline of this post comes from a story in yesterday's Washington Post. The article details issues surrounding the parentage of bi-racial persons in this country. It is particularly germane to my family, as I am the proud mother of 4 bi-racial (half black and half white) sons. Two of them have come to me on more than one occasion to explain what it was like for them to be growing up, trying to be brown, when others wanted them to pick just one race with which to identify (that one drop rule clearly still applies). Think of Halle Berry, recently named sexiest woman alive, Alicia Keyes, Grammy award winner, phenomenal singer Mariah Carey and the amazingly gifted golfer Tiger Woods and others who are of mixed parentage - prior to Loving vs. Virginia, their parents would not have been able to marry, and even if married, would not have been able to share the same bed to procreate - we sure have come a long way.

It is my dream and hope that with the ushering in of our remarkable new President Elect Obama, that my children and countless others in this country will not have to check one box, or renounce one race, rather that they can embrace their parentage on both sides.