Street Life, race and prostitution
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I grew up with what was known as "street life." My immediate family was not involved, but that didn't mean there were not times when the middle class black existence of my childhood didn't intersect with a subculture that often overlapped with the world of actors, artists and musicians. A world of grifters, hustlers, numbers bankers, pimps and players, their "ladies" and drug dealers. When I was in my twenties I worked in various bars and after-hours joints and got to know many of the inhabitants of the "illegitimate" or "underground" economy pretty well, and in later years I worked out in the field doing HIV/AIDS interventions with the women and young gay men who walked the streets, trading sex for money or for drugs. They were all black and latino. Many were under 18, some as young as 13 and 14.
The lyrics of a tune popular in the late 70's, early 80's is the refrain I hear in my head when I think about those times.
I play the streetlife, because there's no place I can go
Streetlife – it's the only life I know
Streetlife – and there's a thousand parts to play
Streetlife – until you play your life away
You let the people see, just who you wanna be
And every night you shine, just like a super star
That's how the life is played a temptin masquerade
You dress, you walk, you talk
You're who you think you are
Streetlife – you can run away from time
Streetlife – for a nickel or a dime
Streetlife – but you better not get old
Streetlife – or you're gonna feel the cold
There's always love for sale a grown-up fairytale
Prince charming always smiles behind a silver spoon
And if you keep it young your song is always sung
Your love will pay your way beneath the silver moon
1979 The Crusaders "
Street Life"
The 70's was a time of blaxploitation films, like Super Fly, and the glamorizing of pimps and players became a text that was to influence later cultural developments like hip-hop and rap.
It never once occurred to me during those earlier days that much of what I knew and saw, up close and personal, was human trafficking - or sex trafficking, even as I witnessed violence and abuse. The faux glamor of the pimp balls and the macho bravado of the men served to mask the acute harm being done to those caught up in the coils of "the life".
Donna M. Hughes, Professor & Carlson Endowed Chair from the Women’s Studies Program
at the University of Rhode Island, speaks to this in "Race and Prostitution in the United States."
Women and girls from racial minorities in the U.S. are disproportionately targeted and used by sex traffickers operating inside the U.S. Service providers that assist women and girls to escape prostitution in cities throughout the U.S. report that their client population has proportionately more racial minorities than their city’s population.
A demographic survey of sex trafficking and commercial sex acts has never been done in the U.S. so exact figures and statistics are not known. This short report will present a few known statistics that indicate a serious level of victimization of women and girls from racial minorities. They also indicate that victims of commercial sex acts are more likely to be arrested than the perpetrators – the pimps and traffickers. In addition, statistics collected from cities in the U.S. indicate that women and girls are more often arrested for soliciting sex acts than the men involved.
Ebony, did a series on this, ending with
Dirty Secret: Online Sex Trafficking of Black Girls [EBONY Special Report]
Four years ago, Shayna* skipped school with a classmate who promised that if they headed to a local barbershop, she would show her how easy it was to make fast money. “I had no idea what that would be until we got there, and I didn’t realize that she was recruiting me for a pimp,” says Shayna, who accepted a drink from the man upon meeting him. “He began telling me, not asking me, everything I was going to do from that day on. I was scared but interested, because he made it seem like it was the perfect situation. But I didn’t really understand the depth of what he was saying—or what it really meant I would be doing—until he brought in the first guy who bought and violated me. I was only 14 years old.”
Shayna, now 18, was trapped in that life for three years, part of the time in metro Atlanta, before she escaped. “I feared for my life through all the sexual assaults, gang rapes, beatings and weapons used by the pimp to keep me in line and generate money,” she recounts through an interview facilitated by Lisa Williams, founder of Living Water for Girls, a treatment facility that helps to restore the lives of girls who have been trafficked. Shayna didn’t even know that her pimp had sold her on the Internet, a common practice in the sex-trafficking world.
According to a recent federally funded study on the sex trade, in Atlanta, some pimps make nearly $33,000 a week. Much of this income comes from selling young girls by promoting their business online.
The Ebony report included some of the ugly, and very real statistics.
According to the Urban Institute, which conducts economic and social policy research, Atlanta is the sex-trafficking capital of the United States, with more than $290 million spent in the metro area in 2007 alone.“We have the world’s busiest airport, so travel in and out is very easy for those who want to purchase our children,” notes DeKalb County Assistant District Attorney Dalia Racine. In a state that also ranks tenth in the nation for interstate superhighways, Atlanta draws tens of millions annually to conventions and major events. Local pimps staff up, out-of-town exploiters bring their sex slaves and “johns”—the term used to describe the men who pay for sex—flock to the city for high-profile occasions.
Every month, approximately 7,200 men in Georgia purchase more than 200 girls averaging between ages 12 and 14 for sex, according to youthSpark, an organization that works to end sex trafficking. In Atlanta, 42 percent of those johns live north of the city’s perimeter, which means they’re likely White. But Jennifer Swain, youthSpark’s program director, believes that the true criminals responsible for luring these Black girls are usually much closer. “Most of the girls I deal with in my group are being sexually exploited in their own communities,” says Swain. “It’s the people in your ’hood—that older man who’s known you and your cousins, and now he’s wanting to have sex with you.”
In 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice reported that 40 percent of all sex trafficking victims were Black. Racine says the majority of cases she handles in DeKalb County, which has an African-American population of nearly 55 percent, involve Black children. But interestingly enough, being Black doesn’t make you any more valuable to a pimp.
“Even within the world of exploitation, you are considered more elevated in the game if you are able to recruit White girls,” explains Racine. “Black females are called ducks and White females are called swans; you will always be able to make more money with a White child.”
Marian Hatcher, recently wrote
'Pretty Woman' and the Ugly Truth About Prostitution, for HuffPo. She concludes:
Forty years ago people thought nothing could be done to prevent rape or domestic violence. Today, we think of these as terrible crimes. The same can happen with sex-trafficking. Men are starting to step up and tell other guys that buying someone's body for their pleasure isn't okay. Boys I'm around can grow up knowing that respecting girls means knowing they're not a commodity. They're not for sale.
This year, law enforcement agencies and other partners in 11 American cities established a network called CEASE (Cities Empowered Against Sexual Exploitation) to expand on what my colleagues and I in the Cook County Sheriff's Office are pushing for. There's a whole network of victims like me (we call ourselves "survivors") who are at the core of this network. We're all reaching across the country, and we're seeing a sea change.
This isn't for the faint of heart -- lots of the industry is fueled by organized crime. But stings are being set up to arrest and prosecute the buyers, not the victims, and the momentum is picking up. It's not all about punishment. Educational programs are being put in place so that johns can face the truth about the trauma they've been inflicting on the girls and women they buy online or on the streets.
Maybe someday Hollywood will produce that dark cautionary tale with the ugly story of prostitution, but with a different happy ending: a dramatic decrease in what's now a national scourge. No buyers means no business. Prostitution isn't the world's oldest profession. It's the world's oldest oppression.
I should know.
Hatcher is a Project manager for women’s justice programs and a human-trafficking coordinator for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office. She is also a survivor, and can be seen in this video.
Efforts being made by the President and sane members of Congress to end human trafficking, and to provide better services to victims are being stymied by Senate Republicans, who attached an abortion amendment to the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act.
Women of color are still living in a world created by genocidal practices and slavery, in which their bodies were used, to breed and for sexual gratification. The double whammy of abuse from both within and without our communities must be addressed.
Ain't no glamor in any of this.
Time to end the ugly.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Hollywood continues to have this issue even as things improve. Black men survive the zombie apocalypse just long enough for their deaths to matter—to their white counterparts. The Root: ‘T-Dogging’ Through The Walking Dead Season 5 Finale.
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The Walking Dead has never had a diversity problem, like other genre shows, and in the last two seasons there has been an explosion of African-American characters—enough to make Deadline squirm—leading some of the show’s black fanbase to debate whether or not The Walking Dead qualifies as a “black show.”
But underneath all this, there has always been a “T-Dogging” problem, starting with the show’s original lone African-American character. The horribly named, conspicuously pointless character Theodore “T-Dog” Douglas (played by Irone Singleton) was basically the Tim Meadows of The Walking Dead.
T-Dog never had a storyline, his background was never really explored, and he didn’t have a love interest, major kill or anything of substance throughout his run on the show. Somewhere in the backs of the writers’ minds, they must have been aware of this, so T-Dog was given depth, substance and even a shining moment on the show—just before he dies.
T-Dog’s curse was that the minute he was no longer a shuffling stereotype, his services were no longer needed. This has also become the curse of nearly every African-American male character who has appeared on The Walking Dead since T-Dog’s death.
*
T-Dogging—the act of taking a black character, making that character a critical part of the group, and then killing him or her the minute the character proves his or her mettle—is actually part of a much larger trend of the last 10 years, in which writers, looking to subvert old racist tropes (like the “magical Negro” or “black guy dies first”), have created a new one that has the same mortality rate.
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Latinos is America confront the race. Miami Herald: New debate on race among Latinos.
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On a live segment of the show El Gordo y La Flaca, Figueroa was commenting on a video showing how a makeup artist transformed himself into various celebrities, among them the First Lady. Then Figueroa said, “Michelle Obama, you know, looks like she was part of the cast of the movie Planet of the Apes.”
The comment offended many viewers and led Univision to fire Figueroa and issue a news release condemning his remarks. Shortly after, the anchor wrote an open letter to the First Lady apologizing for his lack of judgment and saying that he did not mean to discriminate.
Some people were not surprised by the incident and saw it as a public eruption of a common practice, particularly in Latin American countries, where the perception of race is different than in the United States.
“In the United States, the idea of race is very black and white. The problem with that is that many Latinos are mixed race and the reality of race is much more complex in Latin American countries,” said Michelle González Maldonado, a professor in the University of Miami’s Department of Religious Studies. “That does not mean that there is no racism. There is. But it’s a type of hierarchy of color. I call it a pigmentocracy.”
In Latin America, the sentiments are manifested in popular but racist expressions when referring to people of African or indigenous origin. In some countries, curly hair is called “bad hair” and the word “Indian” is a synonym for “fool.” They also use phrases such as “to whiten” or “improve the race.”
González, who has researched race in Latin American countries and teaches about the relationship between race and religion, said that the hierarchy of races has existed since the Spanish colonization period.
“The Spaniards had some 20 or 25 categories to define races of the people they met,” González said. “This fluidity makes it also easier in Latin America to hide your race.”
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Nigeria has extended voting to Sunday after problems occurred as millions turned out Saturday to vote in a presidential election that analysts say is too close to call. Huffinton Post: Nigerians Turn Out to Vote in Presidential Election Amid Boko Haram Violence.
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Nigeria has extended voting to Sunday after problems occurred as millions turned out Saturday to vote in a presidential election that analysts say is too close to call between President Goodluck Jonathan and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari.
The polling will continue Sunday in some areas where new machines were not reading voters' biometric cards, said Kayode Idowu, spokesman of the Independent National Electoral Commission. The areas where voting will be extended include Lagos, Nigeria's largest city on the Atlantic coast.
In other areas, vote counting has already begun, he said.
Nearly 60 million people have cards to vote and determine the outcome of the first election in Nigeria's history where an opposition candidate has a realistic chance of defeating a sitting president. The vote takes place amid an Islamic insurgency in Nigeria's northeast in which thousands have been killed.
Boko Haram extremists waving guns forced voters to abandon polling stations in three villages of northeastern Gombe state, witnesses said. The militants have vowed to disrupt elections, calling democracy a corrupt Western concept.
Women show their new electoral cards while in line at a accreditation center in Abuja on March 28, 2015. (AFP PHOTO / STRINGER )
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Miami Herald: An evolving relationship between President Obama and Caribbean leaders.
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Last month, as Antigua Prime Minister Gaston Browne welcomed his fellow Caribbean leaders to a two-day summit, he looked out into the audience and thanked Venezuela, China and Taiwan for their support.
“The governments extended a hand,” the outgoing chairman of the 15-member Caribbean Community regional grouping known as Caricom said to a backdrop of thunderous applause. “We will not forget.”
Browne’s admission was as much an acknowledgment of the three nations’ new role in a region once dominated by the United States, as much as it was a statement about Caribbean leaders’ feelings about being neglected by their most important security and trading partner.
Now, however, the interest seems to be reawakening, with the White House announcing last week that President Barack Obama will visit Jamaica next month to meet with Caribbean leaders before heading to Panama for the seventh Summit of the Americas on April 10-11.
As a Uruguayan is poised to head the OAS, questions swirl about Venezuela
“Cordial relations between the Caribbean and the United States are important to economic growth, stability as well as security,” Guyana opposition presidential candidate and retired army brigadier David Granger said during a recent fundraising visit to Miami. “The two engagements by President Obama, first in Trinidad and now in Jamaica, will deepen that relationship.”
Six years in the making, the meeting between Obama and Caricom leaders comes as the Caribbean finds itself with no shortage of issues to tackle — from the need for development, financing and competitiveness, to crime and energy security, to the changes in Venezuela and Cuba.
President Barack Obama gets some batting tips from cricket star and Trinidad native Brian Lara in Port of Spain, Trinidad, during the Summit of the Americas on April 19, 2009. PETE SOUZA FILE PHOTO, COURTESY OF THE WHITE HOUSE
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Renewable energy doesn’t have to be a luxury purchase. Here’s how one company makes it a cost-saver for the working class. Slate: Blue-Collar Solar.
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Green, energy-saving technologies are essentially luxury products. Solar rigs and energy-efficiency upgrades require big upfront investments in equipment that may not pay off for many years. Spend $40,000 on solar panels for your roof, and you won’t get your money back in lower electricity bills for a dozen years or more. You’d have to drive a hybrid car tens of thousands of miles to recapture the extra costs in the form of lower spending on gasoline. As a result, going green has historically only been an option to those who can afford to make conspicuous displays of virtuous consumption—not the 1 percent, perhaps, but certainly the top 25 percent.
But that’s changing, in part because the price of solar panels has plummeted significantly in recent years. And in part because smart companies are developing new business models that appeal to the rest of us.
Take PosiGen, a 4-year-old company based in New Orleans that pairs energy-efficiency upgrades with solar-panel leases—all for no money down and monthly payments of $50 or $60. PosiGen doesn’t target yuppies in Boulder, Colorado. A survey covering one-third of its 6,000-odd customers found that “our average customer is a 56-65-year-old African-American female, who spends at least four hours a week at church,” said Aaron Dirks, the intense 40-year-old West Point grad who founded the company. Three-quarters of its installations have been in census tracts where the area median income is below 120 percent of the national median. Call it blue-collar green.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
The witness of poetry is a powerful force; it not only can describe events, it also can give voice back to those people and things that have been rendered voiceless. Martin Luther King not only fought for civil rights in the U.S., he also fought against war and oppression around the world. He advocated for human rights to the lowest peasant in the most oppressed regions. He encouraged his followers to extend the fight to those so oppressed.
A little more than ten years after Martin Luther King's assassination, Carolyn Forché travelled to Salvador. The witness of her poetry is never more powerful as when she recounts her conversation with...
The Colonel
What you have heard is true. I was in his house.
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar.
His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night.
There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him.
The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house.
On the television was a cop show.
It was in English.
Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace.
On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores.
We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid.
The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread.
I was asked how I enjoyed the country.
There was a brief commercial in Spanish.
His wife took everything away.
There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern.
The parrot said hello on the terrace.
The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table.
My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing.
The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home.
He spilled many human ears on the table.
They were like dried peach halves.
There is no other way to say this.
He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass.
It came alive there.
I am tired of fooling around he said.
As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them-
selves.
He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air.
Something for your poetry, no? he said.
Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice.
Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.
1978
-- Carolyn Forché
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