Don’t label me a “person of color”. I’m a Black woman.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I’ve addressed being dubbed “non-white” in the past, in “I am not 'non-white” — a term that centers “whiteness;’ making it clear that I am Black. I also reject being thrown into the catch-all demographic category “poc” (people of color) which defines everyone who doesn’t fit into the “white” classification. I also grit my teeth every time I hear Black people, or Black folks, or the Black community referred to as “the blacks,” which is an echo of the “the niggers” (Yes — I spelled it out).
Before I continue, let me include a note that I have posted in the past:
(Before folks leap into my comments section to insist that “there is no such thing as race,” let me assure you that as a cultural anthropologist, I am well-aware of, and have written about the social construction of race and the history of scientific racism. There is no black or white “race,” However, the construct of race holds up in practice, no matter the bogus science. The myth of race never stopped the reality of lynchings and massacres, and my “black” folks wound up facing white supremacy in spades, day in and day out, for centuries.)
When confronting anti-Black racism, and white supremacy in this country (and around the globe) there is now a tendency in the media, from journalists, reporters, political pundits and academics, to use the catch-all phrase of “poc” or “people of color” as a demographic category which, from my perspective as a cultural anthropologist, essentially has no meaning. It also dilutes the very different cultural experiences and histories of people who have been dubbed “minorities” here in the U.S.— Black, Latino, Native-Indigenous, and Asian peoples.
It also tends to erase and/or occlude the complicity in anti-Black racism of some members of those ethnic groups or national heritages that are included in that catch-all grouping. This is similar to the way the terms Latino/a or Latinx are used to portray what is in actuality a grab bag of cultures, social classes and nationalities that tends to erase “race” as a major distinguishing variable — and a whole host of cultural differences.
When “people of color” began to be used frequently around a decade ago, it was part of an effort to build bridges between and among people’s who suffer varying degrees of oppression here in the U.S based on their race/nationality and/or ethnicity. It often inferred a left-of center, activist stance — a shorthand for a Rainbow Coalition, which obscures the distinctly right wing perspectives of, for example, Trump supporting Puerto Rican Republicans. I’ve had people ask me “How can those pocs in Puerto Rico support Trump?” Simple. They don’t see themselves as “people of color” — they often see themselves as “white” (See Arturo Domínguez’ opinion piece for Latino Rebels, “White Latinos Don’t Exist, Wannabes Do”
Take a look at the two Republiklan candidates, Nimarata Nikki Haley and Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy, currently running for President who are openly racist and often get a pass on white hosted talk shows because they have been labeled “poc.”
Ramaswamy recently compared anti-racist activist/author Ibram X. Kendi and Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley to KKK grand wizards.
Oh, Hell No!
Don’t put me into any group that they are a part of.
In case you missed it, here’s CNN’s Dana Bash (who doesn’t cut the mustard) interviewing Ramaswamy about his inflammatory remarks:
The Grio’s Michael Harriot eviscerated Haley back in June, on the issue of her support for racism in a Twitter thread, which you can read here via ThreadReaderApp.
It is painfully obvious that these two candidates are “white wannabes” and are useful tools for right-wing white supremacists who are the majority in the GOP to use to pretend they are not pushing a white racist agenda.
For an excellent South Asian perspective, I suggest you read this excellent piece from South Asian lawyer and writer Priti (“Preethee”) Nemani.
Then there is “poc” “Proud Boy” leader Enrique Tarrio, whose racism is out in the open — which I wrote about here in the past in Caribbean Matters: Not all white supremacists are 'white'
Yes — there are Black quislings too, like Tim Scott and Clarence Thomas or the fake-ass members of “Blacks for Trump” however these aberrant Black folks who fall by the wayside are the exception, not the rule, and are only useful to white supremacists in power as long as they in their delusion assist in furthering a white racist agenda. However, too often, to avoid dealing with the harsh realities of white supremacy — the conversation from white folks shifts to pointing out Black miscreants — rather than the main source of the problem — white racists, and the not-Black supporters of said racists.
Deflecting from addressing the main source of the problem ain’t gonna bring about change.
I’ll stop my Black rant here, for now. I had promised to highlight more white anti-racists in a previous edition of Black Kos: “Black Kos: White kids need to learn about white anti-racist activists”
I will do so in my next commentary.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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After the U.S. Gymnastics Championships last weekend, many of the headlines focused on Simone Biles, who had just won a record eighth title.
But looking at the top finishers more broadly, it's clear that elite women's gymnastics is changing in some big ways — in terms of race, age and collegiate competition — and moving the sport forward.
The top six women at the meet were Black or Asian American. On the men's side, too, the top three were Black or Asian American.
It's a far cry from the 1980s and '90s, say Betty Okino and Dominique Dawes. They were the first African American Olympic gymnastics medalists, as part of the bronze-winning 1992 team in Barcelona.
"Back in the '90s and '80s when I was competing, there were not a lot of women of color in the sport of gymnastics," Dawes, now 46, tells NPR. "And I know whenever I would go to competitions and represent the U.S., I was one of very few African Americans that were competing or even women of color."
But that's been changing, especially in recent years.
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A relatively unremarkable, seemingly progressive-leaning immigration policy group launched last week in D.C. called Black America for Immigration Reform.
The man who launched it is white. He has a history of inflammatory posts about matters of race. And his vision for reforming immigration is restricting it.
William W. Chip, who served as the senior counselor at the Department of Homeland Security Secretary during the Trump administration, is the only agent listed for Black America for Immigration Reform. In fact, the registration address he put on the group’s form appears to be his D.C. home. A tax attorney for decades, Chip is a contributor to the Center for Immigration Studies — one of the leading think tanks that advocates for restricting immigration — where he has routinely written about how more immigration could harm Black Americans.
The nonprofit he has helped launch is an attempt to further mainstream that idea, one critics of the argument say is merely an underhanded, if not misleading attempt to try and derail comprehensive reform efforts. In an interview, Chip said that he was merely organizing the group for two Black colleagues on the Center for Immigration Studies board of directors: T. Willard Fair and Frank Morris. Chip won’t be on the board for Black America for Immigration Reform, he said, but alongside Fair and Morris, three other people will be a part of the group.
“Anytime you have research that suggests you should reduce immigration, you’re immediately attacked by the mainstream media and the left and all the politically correct people — that oh, you’re just a bunch of white racists who want to keep America white,” Chip said in an interview. “And so the feeling was, if we had a legitimate, African American organization, whose board consisted of prominent African Americans, they might get more credibility.”
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One week after three Black people were murdered by a self-proclaimed white supremacist at a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida, fear of hate crime has risen in the United States, where the issue of race has reached fever-pitch and intensified political divisions.
Yet again, the nation is forced to confront the threat of racial violence in America.
“What we have yet to fully acknowledge and recognize is that white domestic terrorism has always been our biggest threat to this country and the safety of this country,” Christina M. Greer, associate professor of political science at Fordham University, told theGrio. “It’s always been sort of this poison in our soil, in our air, in our water that we’ve never, ever wanted to confront.”
In the aftermath of the Jacksonville shooting, community leaders and policy experts are urging more action from the Biden-Harris administration while also acknowledging the efforts it has already taken to combat hate and white domestic terrorism.
Days after the Aug. 26 racist attack, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, during a meeting with civil rights leaders, noted that it was one example of an ongoing threat of hate and discrimination.
“We can’t let hate prevail,” Biden said while seated at a roundtable that included Black advocates such as Rev. Al Sharpton, former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young and children of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III. “We’re not going to remain silent.”
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An apartment fire in the South African city of Johannesburg has killed at least 76 people, including 12 children, and highlighted the city’s housing crisis, which has led to terrible conditions in unregulated dwellings run by criminal gangs.
The fire — the worst in South Africa’s history — broke out Thursday night, quickly engulfing the five-story building in Johannesburg’s central business district. Around 600 people were estimated to be living in the building, although officials couldn’t say how many were present when the fire started. People desperate to escape the fire threw their children out of windows or jumped themselves, since the building did not have proper escape routes.
“This has given us a wake-up call, and I have said that our cities and municipalities must now pay attention to how people live,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Saturday at an event for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party. As Ramaphosa indicated, the lack of enforcement of existing laws against such dangerous and exploitative living situations certainly led to Thursday’s fire, but there are deeper social problems underlying the housing crisis.
So-called “hijacked” buildings are not a new phenomenon in Johannesburg; gangs take over abandoned buildings in the city center and charge people with no other options rent to essentially squat there. Though the city is the wealthiest in South Africa, there is a huge gulf between those with resources — many of whom live in the suburbs — and those without.
In this particular building people lived in squalid conditions and even squatted in the below-ground parking garage, according to the Associated Press. Many of the people who lived in the now-destroyed building were not South African citizens, city officials told the AP, and may have been in the country illegally. That could make identifying victims and notifying their families challenging if not impossible.
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Yevgeny prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, is notorious for how he died: his private jet fell from the sky on August 23rd, many presume due to orders from Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Wagner is also notorious for its brutality in Ukraine: the group has been linked to the mass murder of civilians in Bucha.
But Wagner’s worst atrocities have taken place in Africa. Records show that the group has mounted far more attacks on civilians, and killed more ordinary people, in the Central African Republic (car) and Mali than they have in Europe.
The Wagner Group is a loose network of subsidiaries linked to the Russian state. It operates under contracts with foreign governments, providing services ranging from running disinformation campaigns to supplying fighters. It enables the Kremlin to partake in foreign crusades, seeding anti-Western sentiment and looting natural resources, with scant accountability.
Governments in the car and Mali hired Wagner to protect their regimes and quash insurgencies. Although there is no full public record of Wagner’s activities, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (acled), a research group, has sought to catalogue them using a patchwork of news articles, social-media posts and reports from human-rights groups. Since upping their presence in the car in 2020 and Mali in 2021, Wagner forces have been involved in some 35% and 10% of recorded violent events there, respectively.
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A federal court struck down Alabama’s congressional map on Tuesday, after GOP state lawmakers refused the court’s mandate to draw a second majority-Black district.
The three-judge panel wrote that it was “deeply troubled” that the state legislature declined to draw two majority-Black districts. The same court ruled last year that it should draw a second majority-Black district to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court affirmed the ruling from the lower court earlier this year.
An independent court-appointed expert will now draw Alabama’s congressional map for the 2024 election. Republicans in the state are expected to appeal the decision, which could eventually make its way to the Supreme Court again.
“This is a significant step toward equal representation for Black Alabamians,” said Eric Holder, the former Democratic attorney general who now helms the party’s main redistricting organization, which backed the lawsuit. Holder added that the court rejected “the state’s blatant attempt to diminish those rights in defiance of both this court and the Supreme Court of the United States.”
Drawing a second-majority Black district in the state would likely lead to a second Democrat being elected. Currently, the state has a 6-1 delegation, with the only Democrat — Rep. Terri Sewell — coming from the state’s only current majority-Black district.
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Voices & Soul
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Editor
She is a specter, a ghostly presence that we can ignore until we can't. She is pushing a ragged shopping cart, she is stumbling with a cane, she is walking in the slow elegance of the elderly matron, yet we don't see her, even though we move out of her way. She lives next door, down the street, across the river and under a freeway overpass. She is our mother, sister, cousin, aunt and grandmother.
She might have been great once, but we don't see her, we don't hear her. We ignore her, until we can't.
The moon is in its highest seat.
We try to position the telescope.
You insist it’s the Sea of Tranquility. Dust on the lens, I say.
Over our withering tree marigold,
a hummingbird hovers, then winks away.
I think the large blue-white trumpets
are morning glories?
Such silly cabbage moths. Sufi-dancing, they whirl,
and, whirling, they listen and listen and listen.
She has a collection of mussel shells
on her front porch: heelsplitters, fatmuckets,
and threehorn wartybacks.
My brother left us years ago,
refuses now to speak to anyone.
Particulate, splendiferous, skillet, and jubilee.
I truly believe the tallgrasses are beautiful,
the way they daven and lift their seedy panicles.
A ruined art installation releases its plastic cups, mylar,
and cellophane over the reconstructed prairie.
I am not adopted and yet I am
not the same skin color as my mother or my father.
How do they know me? How do they call me daughter?
Rise and bow down. Rise and bow down.
O pilgrims—don’t you feel
the light on your face?
Whatever happened to that garter snake? The one
that left such a lengthy sentence beside the garden hose?
No, I said. Not everything.
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