Don’t forget how many decades white America allowed Jim Crow — our very own racial fascism.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Reading the vile and racist comments from Republican Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa), who wants a monochrome white America—remarks applauded by David Duke, and a slew of white Trump voters—got me to thinking. Reading the outcry about his remarks, from the white left and white liberals made me think even harder. Why are people acting like this is something new? King’s comment,“If you go down the road a few generations or maybe centuries with the intermarriage, I’d like to see an America that's just so homogeneous that we look a lot the same,” comes out of a history — founded on racism — which dragged black people here to labor in chains and after finally freed to be kept separate and othered via the institution of Jim Crow laws after Reconstruction was defeated.
While folks point fingers at King for being the bigot he is, from my pov it is more important to point fingers at the people who have been electing him to Congress since 1997. His congressional district doesn’t look like the U.S. I know. Look at the demographics of his district
Distribution: 50.58% urban 49.42% rural
Population (2000) 585,305
Median income 38,242
Ethnicity
95.8% White
0.8% Black
1.1% Asian
2.5% Hispanic
0.2% Native American
Until places overloaded with white Americans who accept racism no longer hold electoral sway — we will continue to have Trumps and Ryans and Kings in office, Since black folks are only 13% of the U.S. population, and over 2 million black folks are still disenfranchised we can’t change this by our damnselves.
More convicted felons will be barred from participating in the 2016 election than any other election in U.S. history, and a wildly disproportionate number of them are African American, according to a study released on Thursday.
In all, there are about 6.1 million U.S. citizens who will not be able to vote due to a felony conviction, according to data from The Sentencing Project, a non-profit advocacy organization aimed at reforming the criminal justice system. That’s a huge bump from to the 1.17 million disenfranchised felons in 1976, as the so-called “War on Drugs” began its blitzkrieg on low-level addicts, many of whom were African American.
Of those 6.1 million ineligible to vote in the 2016 election, more then 2.2 million are African American, according to the data.
Anti-racist white folks are going to have to step up to the plate. The white left has to stop avoiding the problem that is as plain as day — this embrace of Trump, Ryan and King ain’t about “economic insecurity.” Segregation and Jim Crow had nada to do with economic insecurity. It branded “us” of a darker hue not to be allowed in accommodations, not to be able to buy homes in certain neighborhoods, not to go to certain schools, walk on certain sidewalks, use certain bathrooms, drink from certain fountains and not to be able to marry outside of our own “race.” Oh yeah — and to live under lynching terrorism to keep us in line.
Think about this:
Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens. Jim Crow represented the legitimization of anti-black racism.
We are talking about 90 friggin’ years. Extend those decades into today with all of our racial ills and disparities we are talkin’ bout 140 years.
Sure — we fight, we march, we organize, we vote, and will keep on doing it. Sadly — until a slew of white folks wake up and see how racism hurts them — it will be the same ole story. Until people of good will go after their co-workers, family members and friends and brand racism unacceptable — we, the people of a darker hue will remain “not really Americans,” though we’ve been here far longer than most.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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1. “Pipeline issues” ignore the 6,000 black STEM graduates, from bachelor degrees to Ph.D.s, and 200,000 black college graduates annually.
The problem is tech’s belief that it is a meritocratic industry. It is an oligarchy, rife with privilege, with heaping sides of favoritism and nepotism. It isn’t about who you know, it’s who knows you. Roughly 52 percent of tech employees are referred by employees. The average tech employee is a cookie-cutter version of the person who referred him or her, promoting homogeny of ethnic backgrounds, class, age and hobbies. This model ensures “fit,” which can be a candidate barrier in itself, even with stellar qualifications. You’re a black engineer with Harvard and Stanford degrees? No matter, because you don’t enjoy artisan candles, Burning Man, microbreweries and the DNCE album.
The black tech employee isn’t immune. She or he is a Carlton Banks composite: usually a graduate of Stanford, Berkeley or an Ivy League school (including graduate degree), raised in a middle- to upper-class family, who wears the finest of J. Crew fashions. To be truly diverse, include diversity within the Diaspora.
What tech can do: Tech companies must expand recruitment activities to schools outside their comfort zones. While Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, Hampton and Florida A&M have some name recognition in mainstream circles, what about North Carolina A&T? Your loss, tech. The school leads the nation in the number of undergraduate engineering degrees awarded to blacks, according to Diverse Issues in Higher Education magazine, and holds the No. 3 spot for doctoral degrees awarded to blacks in engineering. Other schools with great engineering programs include Tuskegee, Southern and Morgan State.
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Just a few days after the election of President Donald Trump, Marissa Jenae Johnson and Leslie Mac were on vacation in Jamaica, but learned about the trend of White Americans wearing safety pins to show solidarity with people of color. Johnson remembers being disturbed by expensive safety pin jewelry being sold on Etsy. "It’s been completely commercialized," she recounts saying to Mac. "And the only people benefiting are privileged White people." Johnson joked that what White allies really needed to do is pay reparations and do tasks to address their complicity with White supremacy. "We could even put it in a box," she said.
What started as a poolside joke, a way to let out the snark about what they saw as an empty show of White solidarity, quickly became an actual business. Mac purchased the Safety Pin Box URL and within a week of returning to the States, the duo launched their new project. By the end of 2016, they had 500 subscribers, a number that has grown to over 800 as they prepare to send out their third box in March.
Johnson and Mac had known each other through national Black Lives Matter organizing, but this was their first business collaboration. The business plan is straightfoward: White people pay a monthly subscription, starting at $25 per month, to receive materials from Safety Pin Box (SPB) geared toward education and action. There are online communities to support the subscribers' education including a closed Facebook group moderated by White volunteers and Twitter and Facebook chats hosted by Johnson and Mac.
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Raphael Bostic was named president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve, becoming the first African-American regional president in the central bank's history. Bostic, a former policymaker in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is a professor at the University of Southern California.
He will become the Atlanta Fed's 15th president and takes office June 5. He will be on the Fed's powerful committee that determines interest rates. Bostic will have a vote on the Fed's rotating committee in 2018.
Bostic was hired by the board of the Atlanta Federal Reserve. It's unclear how much influence Fed Chair Janet Yellen, who leads the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, had in the hiring process.
His appointment comes after Yellen was heavily criticized by congressional leaders last year for the central bank's lack of diversity.
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Bert and Maureen Grogan moved to Uniondale, N.Y., in the 1970s from Guyana. Back then, they were one of the Long Island town's few immigrant families. They left to California in 1988, returned to Uniondale in 1999 and realized that the town had undergone a radical demographic makeover since they'd been away.
“When we came back from California, we were quite surprised to see the big change,” says Maureen, 69. What had once been a predominantly White suburb was now 48.5 percent Black and 38.8 percent Latinx. Forty-one percent of residents were foreign-born.
Uniondale is undergoing another major change, one that the Grogans were quick to hop on. And that's solar panels.
The town of nearly 25,000 has seen a dramatic increase in residential solar installations. In 2013, there were only five solar installations, which the state partially pays for to help reduce costs for installers and to encourage residents to take on such energy sources. Fast forward to 2016, and that number spiked to 70. That's a 1,300 percent increase.
Perhaps that's not suprising given that Long Island is the state’s largest residential solar market, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in September 2016. But Uniondale is not the stereotypical image of Long Island, a predominantly White affluent region with a median income hovering around $94,000.
Restaurants on main roads reflect the town's various ethnicities with Salvadorean pupuserias dotting many corners, as well as Jamaican jerk chicken joints. Dominican-run bodegas are abundant with their bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches a staple for any Uniondale-raised kid's breakfast diet.
Tucked away from the bustling commercial areas of Uniondale are its suburban-style neighborhoods. Walk around different blocks, and you're bound to see at least a couple homes with the glossy, futuristic infrastructure on their roofs. On one block, Leslie Lane, three solar-powered homes sit side by side. Still, as modern as the panels may help the community appear, they can't distract from the boarded-up trap house that sits abandoned on the same block as a gorgeous three-story home.
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When you think of the all-American-girl type of woman, you probably think of a sun-kissed, blond-haired woman, wearing a size 6 dress and either “leaning in” or happily being a doting, work-from-home mom.
Sure, some may say there’s nothing wrong with either of these representations, but there are other types of American women who are not getting recognized or the shine they deserve. And that’s why Sarah Huny Young’s AMERICAN WOMAN Project is much needed right about now.
The project is a portrait-and-documentary series created with the aim of reframing what we think of when we hear the descriptor “American woman.” But the series is not only reframing that concept—it’s also presenting black women, both cis and trans, as the new face of the American woman.
Young, an award-winning creative director and 17-year veteran of the web design industry, wasn’t always a photographer or documentarian. Currently she’s running her own start-up agency Supreme Clientele, as well as the co-founder and CPO of Noirbnb, a home-sharing platform launching in the coming weeks. Previously she’s held senior and directorial positions at BET/Viacom, Vibe magazine and UltraStar (founded by the late, great David Bowie). But Young’s yearning to show the world just how magical black women are was the inspiration behind the project.
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Voices and Soul
by
Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
When Simone Manuel made history last summer, by winning the Gold Medal at the Olympics, she not only became an inspiration for black boys and girls everywhere, she also tore apart that racist trope that blacks can’t swim. Numbers are alarming, though. A 2010 study conducted by the University of Memphis and commissioned by USA Swimming revealed that nearly 68.9 percent of African-American children had “low or no swim ability.” Black children also die from accidental drownings at 5 1/2 times the rate of white children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Manuel’s victory was also a harrowing reminder of a Jim Crow South that forcibly kept black people from enjoying public swimming pools and beaches. Jackie Robinson was once held at gunpoint for swimming across a reservoir. Turner Classic Movies even reported that a hotel drained its pool over fear that Dorthy Dandridge might use it when she stayed there.
These racial incidents were not just relegated to a distant time in a distant South, but in Northern enclaves, as well. In 2009 for example, 65 Black and Latino campers from the Creative Steps day camp in North Philadelphia showed up to the suburban Valley Swim Club in Montgomery County. Camp director Althea Wright had already paid the private club $1,950 to use the facility, but a few days later the lease was terminated. When asked why, the club president explained that, “there was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion, and the atmosphere of the club.”
Indeed, Simone Manuel has changed the complexion and atmosphere of US Swimming. In time, even long held bigotries are incapable of treading water.
We piled planks, sheets of tin,
& sandbags across the creek
till the bright water rose
& splayed both sides,
swelling into our hoorah.
Our hard work brought July
thrashers & fat June bugs
in decades of dead leaves.
Water moccasins hid in holes
at the brim of the clay bank
as the creek eased up pelvic
bones, hips, navel, & chest,
to eye level. When the boys
dove into our swim hole
we pumped our balled fists
to fire up their rebel yells.
The Jim Crow birds sang
of persimmon & mayhaw
after a 12-gauge shotgun
sounded in the deep woods.
If we ruled the day an hour
the boys would call girl cousins
& sisters, & they came running
half-naked into a white splash,
but we could outrun the sunset
through sage & rabbit tobacco,
born to hide each other’s alibis
beneath the drowned sky.
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY’S PORCH