Black Horizons; 2344; Black Data

Hello and welcome to Black Horizons, I'm Chris Moore. Coming up on this season's greetings edition, Happy Kwanzaa and Happy New Year and all that to you, coming up on this season's greetings edition of Black Horizons, a very abbreviated Tanner calendar, that's our arts calendar and guess what, the publisher of Shooting Star Review will be here and we're going to take a look at the new format of the magazine. But before we do any of that, let me introduce you to two people who are here from Black Data Processing Associate. They are Andre, Andre Young, sincerely yours, welcome to our program in Tanya Ross, here of Black Data Processing Associates, welcome to our program to both of you. You all have an event that's coming up in the brand new year time, you can tell us a little

bit about it. Yes, Black Data Processing Associates is bringing Earl Graves to Pittsburgh on January 8th and we're having a reception and lecture. A VIP reception, that's where you have Andre because he's a VIP, we'll talk a little bit more about that later, but tell us a little bit more. Well, the purpose of bringing Mr. Graves to Pittsburgh is to help raise funds for our current project and that is to have a community computer center in one of the minority neighborhoods here in Pittsburgh. Is this to increase computer literacy among our kids or among the population? If it's to increase computer literacy and awareness among our Afro-Americans or anyone who's interested in enhancing their computer skills.

How does Black Data Processing Associates view this center as being used overall? It sounds like adults could use it, kids could use it. Kids can use it, children can use it, high school students, college students, the elderly, anyone who's interested in enhancing their computer skills. Hopefully, once people start learning and becoming more familiar with computers, then they will help other people learn as well. So it's kind of like a train, the trainer kind of thing, hopefully, because we want volunteers to help us. Okay. Andre Young seems like you were just here, man. It was just a few minutes ago, a couple of weeks ago, at the least, welcome back. Thank you. A couple of weeks ago, part of a sincerely yours is ongoing programs would be to sponsor events such as this so that we can have... We noticed that there are a lot of alternatives in the business arena in the business world.

And we want the community to be able to recognize those alternatives and be able to utilize them. Speakers like Earl Graves are definitely an inspiration to me and an inspiration to many other people. He's a gentleman that graduated from Morgan State, a Black college, and he has gone on to do a lot of other things, including being appointed to the President's Committee on Small Businesses. He is a dynamic speaker. He has a lot to say. He has experienced the business arena. He has been in business. He's in business with Magic Johnson. He is also president of Black Enterprise Magazine, and he has a lot to offer to the Pittsburgh community. It sounds like one of your heroes, you know, is old bio, huh? Well, he has inspired me simply because I am a graduate of a Black Langerine College,

West Virginia State, and he is also a graduate of Morgan State. And he has inspired me as we have gone along. I have watched a great portion of his career. He's a dynamic person, and he's someone that we should listen to taking advice from our elders. Okay. Speaking of elders and heroes, you want to mind. And how does it feel to finally be in a position with sincerely yours that you could become a corporate sponsor and the company that became light and others of this kind of event? Because I know you're actually putting your money where your mouth is and your mind is. It feels great. It is something that I always wanted to do. I always wanted to be able to have a business that could contribute back to the people who have contributed to us. And sincerely yours has been blessed by the people, both African-American people and also other ethnic groups in this particular community. And now it's our turn to say thank you for helping us by sponsoring events such as Earl

Graves and other organizations that are doing positive things in the community. What other mission statements does Black Data Processing Associate say? I know you told us about bringing people like Earl Graves in and the computer center that you hope to establish. There's certainly other things that certainly could be accomplished. Well, through the organization, there's a job network bank. There's the opportunity for professional development workshops and other joint ventures with corporate sponsors like Sincerely Yours and Duquesne Light to bring into the city. Other speakers or projects that would enhance people's capabilities as far as computer literacy is concerned. There certainly seems to be a need for that. But one of the things, and I talked to alluded to this earlier with Andre, the one of the things

you seem to be doing is not only just relying on white owned companies, but Black owned companies for your corporate support. We've come that far in this day and age and there's some people out there and you're looking for them and you need their support as well. Yes, we need their support because minorities have started to establish their own businesses after a long, long time of not having done that. And we want them to be able to use these minorities who have their own businesses as mentors to help them to see that they can have their own businesses like they used to. Andre, I guess there's a great opportunity for networking at an event like this reception where all grades is going to speak. But yes, there is a great opportunity. I think that the networking will come from several different avenues.

Computers, high technology is a very important part of our community. And in order to move forward, we have to interact with others. Accountants can interact with lawyers and people that are involved in the computer field can interact with one another to see how their particular aspect of the business arena can tie together with someone else's. And it helps enhance your business as well as give you different outlooks upon the different arenas. When you started talking about accountants and lawyers, you said that with the right sense of irony or something, as though a businessman who's dealt with some of these people and tried to get them to communicate before. Well, it's kind of tough to get lawyers and accountants and people that are involved in high tech and small manufacturing people together to talk on one level playing field. But in fact, we should be doing more of that kind of thing, right? Yes, we should.

And we must because a great deal of my business depends on other people. I utilize legal services all the time. I also have people suing you for that last card to gather some. But not only that, I have an effective greeting card. Not only that. And in the card business, I review a lot of leases. And oftentimes, I do not have the opportunity to review on myself. So I hire somebody to do that for me. I have a lot of tax requirements. I have a store in Maryland as well as five of them here in the state of Pennsylvania has a lot of laws. Absolutely. And then I utilize computers in order to keep track of the money that is generated in Maryland as well as the money that is generated here. Facts machines are a whole lot of different areas in the high technology field which this organization has individuals that have expertise in that particular area. I heard Bill Cosby always advise young black people who have been coming to sign their

own checks. You sound like a guy who is doing that. I attempt to. And in the process. The comment is not balancing all your books. You are looking into that. I do that myself. But in the process, we as business people owe something back to the community to teach other people how to sign your own checks so to speak and to be able to fish for themselves. Instead of having someone give them a fish. This is the time. This is the age for people to invest in themselves. And by having Earl Graves here, this will be a perfect opportunity to have a gentleman talk to us about how he is invested in himself and give us an opportunity to take a page from his book. I guess taking a page from his book is one of the things that this is all about. Yes, it is, and not only can people network at the Earl Graves affair, but they can also

network by joining BDPA. Who are you looking for as members? Need I be so computer literate that I use a computer every day and I'm familiar with all the intricacies of it or are usually looking for people who are home users, game users, word processors, what? All over the above, including the lawyers and the accountants, some of the members that we have now have varied backgrounds, one member owns his own transportation business. So he uses computers to keep track of his business sign, his own checks, and by coming to the meetings on the second Thursday of every month, he can network with other people who may be interested in working for him, you know, entering all that information into the computers for him, keeping everything on track and up to date. Andre, will this be your first time at one of the BPED meetings?

This will be my first time. I am not a member at this particular point, but this will be my first time. This is a more responsive area to get you a member here. There are corporate memberships. There are corporate memberships. And for the price of a corporate membership, he can have five members of his corporation join. Oh, that sounds like a good idea. Yeah. Well, it seems like it's all coming together, and you're putting your money where your mouth is and the work that you're doing with black data processing associates seems to be working very well, and I hope people will come out and enjoy the event. Thank you. Well, thanks for being here with us, and I want to remind those of you at home right now that on January 8th, 1992, the VIP reception and lecture featuring Earl Graves, the publisher of Black and Apprised magazine, will happen at the Forbes Quad in the University of Pittsburgh, and the phone number to call for more information is 441-3380, the number again, 441-3380.

Well, it's time now for our Tanner calendar. It's a weekly listing of arts events that you certainly will want to take part of, and there's not a lot happening because I guess everybody is home for the holidays, but there is something happening, and here it is. On January 20th, talk that talk will be happening at the Fulton Theatre. It's coming, and I'm sure that you will enjoy it. It's called Talk That Talk. It's at the Fulton Theatre, and if you want more information, simply dial 456-6666, that number again, 456-6666. Well, joining me now is my good friend, Sandra, oh, I forgot, Black Horizons, WQD-13, if you want to send us anything that you have going on for the Tanner calendar, the address is 480-25th Avenue, Pittsburgh P.A., 152-13, now joining me is my good friend, Sandra, Ford, Nigool, and that's a private joke I shouldn't be saying between the two of us,

but Sandra Ford, welcome to Black Horizons, once again, the publisher of Shooting Star Review. I got all these moguls and magnets, here's a media baron here now, and you've done a lot to change Shooting Star Review in the last few months. What's going on? What's in the works? Tell me about it. Well, when Shooting Star started out in 1987, and I brought the original issue. Oh, five years, yes, okay. This is what it looked like, and we've been in this size eight and a half by eleven for five years, and I thought it was time that we changed, trying something different, trying to do something that's sparkling and sort of exciting, and just sort of maybe surprise some of our readers, which we did. So now it's thicker but thinner, is that right? Yes, shorter. Okay. So, the response has been wonderful from our readers in terms of they're writing in, and

they're saying they love the new size, they love the new format, they love what they're reading in the new Shooting Star. Well, I'm sure they've always loved what they've read, but what is it about the size that, I mean, can it go in a pocket book, or something like that, is it's easy to take with you as you travel on the plane, the bus, the train, wherever. That's right. I wanted it to be a very portable magazine, something that could be... So, I can read it while I drive home, is it? Yes, somebody driving you. Oh, oh, details, details, okay. Well, my goal was to hopefully get on the bus, or a plane, or a train somewhere, and find somebody else reading a Shooting Star review. Is it happening? Not yet. I'm waiting. I'm searching. You know, five years is a long time. The average magazine folds when they start about a year or two after they start, don't they? They do. Uh-huh. It's really scary when we first started Shooting Star. We were told that if we made it through three issues, that that was a benchmark.

That was something that we had to survive, and I have to admit, that third issue... It was really tough. It was tough. And then we had three years, well, most, a lot of them folded the three-year point, and I said, well, we're going to get through three years. I don't care what it takes, you know. And we did, and that third year was really rough, you know. So now I understand that... So now everything is strawberries and cream, right? I know. Got by a long shot, but it's fun. And I think changing the magazine and bringing new elements into it and inviting new people in with more ideas. What are some of the new elements? Well, we've added something called StarSpeak to Shooting Star. What StarSpeak is, it's an opportunity for our readers, and we have readers all around the world now who are to write in and voice their opinion on a subject. And the first question that we asked was about the use of the work, when the word T, as a way of describing black people, and we had some responses from some of our readers on that.

Give us just a little bit of that, please. What was the response like? Because I hear varying opinions in the places that I go as to whether that's appropriate now. Well, it's... And who is a minority? That's true. You have... You have... There's an awful lot to it, but certainly most of the people that I've talked to, and certainly the people who've responded for this segment really couldn't support that use as a description for us. It's a... You know, it's a negative. It's a negative value to it. So... I guess the language is always changing in, and certainly literary reviews, such as yours, are one of the things that contribute to changing language. And more people read this, the more they understand why people have sensible objections to the way some terms are applied, particularly to a race or an ethnic group. Well, you know, literature is about words, and what words mean. And people who are involved in that are looking beyond the superficial of the surface.

We're looking down deep, or we should be, you know, what are the roots of this? What are the roots of it mean? And... I'm interested to know what are the roots of your affection and love of, I guess, any literary undertaking to do something like this and to keep it going. For you, it must be a real fun. It must be beyond fun, it must be a deep caring and a respect for words. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Well, it's more than words, it's cultural. It's really a caring about black culture, is what motivates me. You see, the Shooting Star Review is published by an organization that's called Shooting Star Productions. And Shooting Star Productions is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to use the arts to build appreciation for black culture. Now that's the motivation, and Shooting Star Review, the magazine, is a product of that mission. It's one product of that mission. We have other things that we're doing that help us build appreciation for black culture

through the arts. And so that's what excites me, and that's what gives me so much pleasure as I work with this, and sort of sustains me through me and the other people who help through the tough time. It keeps coming up. Do you envision that it will become any smoother in the next couple of years? Things must be getting better after a five-year trek record you've gone from, or what everybody thought might be a regional publication to a national, and now you say international politics. Yes, it is. The Star Speed question in this issue is asking our readers to respond to the use of the word black to describe us versus African-American. What is your preference and why? And we've already heard from one of our Japanese readers in Japan, you know, they've sent in a response to what they feel, how they feel. This is a black reader in Japan, you know, so it's kind of exciting, the opportunity that we have to create dialogue, not just in this region or in this country, but across the

world. And it was really exciting a couple of years ago when we heard from an Aboriginal poet an artist, you know, who sent us some work for our justice issue, and some of their art, which is, it's unique, you don't see anything like that anywhere else in the world. So it's been an exciting opportunity, it's allowed me a lot of growth and a lot of fun, and I think of other people who've been involved with the organization, about the same. One of the things, one of the ways that you've grown is with your black writers conference, which you held for the first time last year. Tell us a little bit about that, who was there, what happened, what kind of event it was, and plans for next year. Okay. My first black writers conference was a wonderful collaboration between shooting star productions and the Kuntu Writers Workshop and Three Rivers Arts Festival and the University of Pittsburgh coming together and building an opportunity to bring wonderful black writing talent into Pittsburgh and let Pittsburghers and people from this, the Mid-Atlantic region come

in and see the city and see what these people had to say. And our keynote speaker was Antosaki Shange, the poet and novelist who's best known for her for colored girls, who've considered suicide, and Mira Baraka was also here, Claude Party, the director, and Eugene Redmond, the poet, and John Henry Redwood, who also had a play in production here, his play the sunbeam. We had people who write novels for children. We had an editor from Essence Magazine and the top black literary agent in the country Marie Brown came in to tell people how you get a literary agent and the editor from Essence was talking about how you go about getting published in a large circulation magazine like Essence. And it was a wonderful opportunity and we're looking to repeat that. This time it will be in late April and it looks as though the conference will be at Carnegie Mellon University this time.

And we're in the process now of polling some of shooting star's editors and people who are involved with the magazine about who they're sending nominations for the writers who will be here. And one addition I'm looking forward to having is screenplay writing. So you get your work into movies and on the television. Well I guess with the recent growth and I do mean recent at cyclical, if you look back to Oscar Micheal and then to the black exploitation movies of the 60s. And now here we are in the 90s, late 80s and the 90s. We've seen another explosion in black film so I guess there would be a great interest because I have young people all the time asking me about that kind of thing. And now I can just tell them go see Sandra Ford and shooting star review and sign up for the writers' workshop. And you learn all about how to get your screenplay on the screen, right? Yes. I think that's important and I think the work that you're doing is important. Do you see any important reason why shooting star review must exist as a cultural phenomenon, as a cultural way of expressing?

And I guess the reason I ask is I have a good friend who's black who always says if he wants to have an affair on his wife or run around, he's in the first place he's going to take the girl to the library because he won't see any of his friends there. And he's intimating that black folks just don't read. And I'd like for you to maybe lay that myth to bed or to sleep forever if you can. Okay well I'd like to say that certainly black people do read but more important than that is that black people are coming out of our culture. We have some wonderful and very varied stories to tell. And it's also interesting because every now and then someone who is not black will send in to shooting star some material. And it's interesting to read how other people perceive and respond to the black experience. We have a more different example of that in the autumn issue here. Which story is it? Oh it's actually the two-parter.

It's co-white. Okay. Why we can't be friends. Be friends and I'll be Bill's friend. Yes and it's up. Okay. That was the one I read. I enjoyed it in the time that I got this from Gale. So that is interesting it is. You know it's kind of like black horizons when I have white folks stop me on the street sometimes saying well you know so and so and so and so and so that's Sandra Ford you had on. I don't know about her and I have to respond to that so this is when you judge how what you're doing by your critics. Go ahead. But I wanted to say that out of our culture there's there's an awful lot of richness and documenting it in a permanent form such as ink on paper is one of the most precious things that we can do. It's what makes a civilization and it's what makes a culture and when people can document their culture in some tangible form that they can pass on from generation to generation and that's what allows those people to be perceived as as a great people. Are you saying that the grilled tradition must die?

I'm not saying that that must die but as long as there's a tangible form that that our stories and that our art and that our our feelings and our knowledge can be passed along and certainly the Grio tradition is valid and wonderful but you know we have things like little statues like the oldest statue in the world the Venus of I'm not sure what it's called. It's a statue of a black woman you know that was found in in Austria I believe it was and it's these kinds of things so these people have a culture that endures and is valuable and precious. Well what do you do for preserving this as a historical record? Are you in libraries? Yes we are. Where else in educational institutions what? We're in shooting star goes by a subscription into a number of educational institutions and school systems and we're also archived in a number of the libraries across this country. Most interestingly Harvard University has acquired the complete edition of shooting star review but I'd like to add in terms of cultural documentation and appreciation of black culture

that we also in addition to the black writers conference shooting star review this summer we'll be inviting Pittsburghers to participate in the first Juneteenth Jubilee celebration. I'm going to have a Juneteenth up here up north you're going to have to say something about Juneteenth. Nobody up here black or white knows what I'm talking about. It was tough researching it up here. It was tough. Oh no we're out of time we can't even talk about it so that means you're going to have to tune in and learn more we'll have Sandra back before this so we can talk about Juneteenth. I definitely help you play that up okay Juneteenth am I excited? It's called shooting star review and how can they get a copy call number? 731-7039. Repeat it very quickly. 731-7039. Okay subscribe to shooting star it's worth wow it's better than jet a lot better 621-5800 whatever that number was thanks for being here with us we appreciate it I'm Chris Moore

thanks and bye you