NEGRA BLACK NOIR

In many latin american countries including Dominican Republic people call Afro descendants "negra" o "negro" in a despective way, but it is also used as a sign of love... depends on the context... for me as a negra, I don't mind anybody calling me negra, that's who I am, a negra, Afro-descendant, is there anything bad with being negra? 

Our culture associate many negative things with black... the black list, a black day, a black whatever...the list go on... 

I would like to know when do we started that trend of associating all black as bad, and all white as good??? I think that tendency has been used - subtlely- and very effectively (by who...I don't know, I don't want to make conjectures) to make us blacks feel bad about our blackness. 

My experience of growing up as a negra at first was confusing... as a child I saw nothing wrong with my skin color, with my hair texture (called bad hair), I did not understand why some children were treated different just because their skin was lighter... I saw nothing wrong with me being black, still suffered discrimination... well to make long story short, I went from confussion, to shame, to pride, to understanding that skin color has nothing to do with the universal right of every human being to search for its happiness... 

U can call me negra, I don't care, if you call me negra in a despective way is Your problem not mine, I am a happy negra... when have you seen a rich person feel offended because you call him/her "rich"? 

Information and Time, valuable commodities

“Information is the most valuable commodity…”

 “Time is the most valuable commodity…”

These are lines said by the character of Gordon Gekko in the movies Wall Street and Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps respectively. Information and time are both valuable things by itself, but I think the combination of time and information increases each other value.

It is a titanic task to stay informed in a timely manner about current news and events with the overflow of information available.

But here there is a list to start and at least keep in touch with important headlines.

U.S. and World News:

• New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/index.html

• The Council on Foreign Relations

http://www.cfr.org/

• The Economist

http://www.economist.com/

Financial News:

• Finance Yahoo!

http://finance.yahoo.com/

• CNBC News

http://www.cnbc.com/

• Financial Times

http://www.ft.com/home/us

• The Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/home-page

U.S. Public Companies:

• The New York Stock Exchange

http://www.nyse.com/home.html

• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

http://www.sec.gov