Searching for Teleka, and Stephen A. Smith defends black conservatives.

I would like to start this post by bringing some attention to a missing young lady from Michigan.

"The parents of missing Kalamazoo medical resident Teleka Patrick issued a statement Saturday that shares both their grief and their hopes for finding their daughter.

Mattahais and Irene Patrick, of Florida, hope the statement touches a chord with someone who knows where their daughter may be. It was accompanied by a poster by the Indiana State Police, also asking for help in locating the young woman.

Teleka Patrick, originally from Queens, N.Y., is a first-year medical resident in psychiatry with the Western Michigan University School of Medicine who has been missing since Dec. 5. She was dropped off at her car – a gold 1997 Lexus ES300 – in the parking lot of Borgess Medical Center on Gull Road, according to the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office.
The car was found that night in a ditch off westbound I-94 near Portage, Ind. It was found by an Indiana State Police trooper who responded to a report of an unknown accident.

On Friday, Irene Patrick told Kalamazoo Gazette reporter Rex Hall Jr. that she last spoke with her daughter Nov. 28, although the two usually talk by phone every Sunday. She said Teleka spoke with her by telephone as she was driving back to Kalamazoo from a cousin’s house in Chicago, where she spent Thanksgiving.

The Patricks traveled to Kalamazoo earlier this week to comb the area for their daughter.

Investigators said earlier this week that police found nothing suspicious in Teleka’s car the night of Dec. 5 and they don’t suspect foul play in her disappearance. But that has not calmed her family's fears.
Following is the Patrick's statement:
It's been seven days, and we still can't find our daughter. Teleka Cassandra Patrick is our eldest and has always been the light of our lives. The dark unanswered questions: Where is she? Who is she with? Is she OK? Is she alive? The questions claw at us, tearing us to shreds. It takes all of our energy not to fall to the floor and scream our hearts out because it's cold outside and she is just a girl.

(She is) the sweetest, kindest and most hopeful girl you could ever meet, who was never too shy to show every single last one of her teeth when she smiled. Never too shy to help someone in need and never too shy to laugh out loud at her own sarcastic corny jokes (she thought she was hilarious). And oh, do we need to see her smile again." [Source] 

I hope that this story will have a happy ending and that the Patrick family will find their daughter.

Finally, I see that my boy Screaming Stephen A. Smith has jumped into the debate between Kobe and Jim Brown.

Jim Brown seems to think that Kobe is somewhat of a sellout because he doesn't see him as the type of Negro who would use his fame to advance a social or political cause like some iconic black athletes back in the day.

Kobe, of course, fired back. And he basically let it be known that just because he was not raised as an African American that does not mean that he does not understand the struggle they went through, or that he is any less black than Brown.

This is where Stephen Smith comes in to declare that Kobe is a victim of anti- conservative sentiments within the black community.  Frankly, it's a screed that was totally out of left field.

"On Friday, Stephen Smith told First Take co-host Skip Bayless that he spoke with Kobe before that tweet was sent, and that Bryant told him that this is “not a conversation that he’s running from. He welcomes the opportunity to have that conversation.”

Smith then used the Brown/Bryant flap to illustrate what he sees as a partisan political dynamic within the black community (transcript via TRS):

When it comes to the African-American community, you have a plethora of individuals. For example, the black population hasn’t given the Republican Party more than 15% of its vote since 1964. And anybody who is deemed a black conservative, I am not one of them — I’m a registered Independent, just to get that out of the way — but those that I know who are black conservatives are considered pariahs and are ostracized in our communities and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. 

But this is how — this is a problem that exists within our community. Because you are from our community, everybody believes that everybody is supposed to be identical to one another and we can’t display or exercise any kind of versatility, alright, or range in our thinking. It’s a problem that we have to deal with. It’s an internal problem that exists and we’re going to have to handle it because if we don’t we’re gonna see more Jim Brown’s speaking out against more Kobe Bryant’s and we’re gonna see more Kobe Bryant’s retaliating against the likes of Jim Brown. [Source]

Why is this a problem that we have to deal with? Maybe conservatives should deal with their own problems when it comes to black folks.

When they do that, get back to me and we can talk. Until then, I would say that  15% of black folks giving them a vote is 15% too many.