Poll discussion, roll call and lurkers: Black Kos demographics
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Welcome to the Black Kos Front Porch-newcomers, and oldtimers.
Yesterday I posted a diary about Black Kos-if you haven't had a chance to see it please take a gander and take the poll that is attached.
A Question for Kossaks (with poll)
The results of the poll were interesting (though it isn't particularly scientific), and what interested me more were the comments.
As I suspected (before posting) some people who read Daily Kos don't read Black Kos for a variety of reasons-but more important for us as a bridge building community, there are people who lurk, but have never commented simply because they are not black and assumed this was a diary series for folks with african ancestry only, or they feel like we are such a tight knit group that they are shy about commenting, or feel they just want to read and learn but have nothing to add to the discussion here.
I haven't finished reading/responding there-fell asleep and now have to get ready for work (am writing this around 6:30 AM) but from what I've seen so far I think it might be time for some of us who have been here since the beginning or who have joined along the way to re-introdice ourselves, and for the folks who are just joining to do a "demographics welcome wagon roll call".
The tip jar today will begin the roll call thread so that it doesn't interfere with our normal porch chatting-would appreciate it if folks would respond.
Since this is a blog that gives some of us relative anonymity (though most regular readers here have shared a lot about each other) there's no requirement to do this. But for the sake of community building and getting to know each other-old friends and new, I hope you will participate.
In the subject line for the roll call - please state your "race", ethnicity and/or nationality and gender.
In the body of your comment if you want to share more-what you do, what region, state, or country you live in, what you think about Black Kos, feel free. You might want to also tell us what your favorite cookies are -- since we have several busy cyber bakers on the porch. :)
If you are one of the people who said you don't feel like you have anything to contribute let me state strongly - that's just not true.
You can simply tip and rec-but more important you can say hello or Happy Tuesday (or Friday).
You can't build a community without people.
If you feel more daring - just offer up some cyber food for us - we eat a lot of sweets here. Proved to be non-fattening.
In return - you get mojo!
Mojo Friday folks - hope you realize that mojo is a African-American term derived from hoodoo, New Orleans voodoun, and "root work". Derivation unclear - we have anthropological linguistics debates about it - it is either from the Bantu Congo, or other West African language groups or a short version of Yoruba mojuba (word for asking for blessings) or derived from Fula moco'o "medicine man" or "magic maker" in Louisiana Creole French or Gullah)
You get to meet new people, and make friends.
We all get a chance to share cultural perspectives - and participate in bridge building.
So lurkers please de-lurk, and old-timers get the broom and dust off the welcome mat.
Grab a seat and listen to some music.
FYI: Tuesday's Chile derives its name from "Tuesday's Child is full of grace..."
"Chile" is our southern way of pronouncing "child". This is not a diary series about the country of Chile, nor of recipes for chili con carne though if you have a good one, feel free to post it.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Nigeria's first house built from discarded plastic bottles is proving a tourist attraction in the village of Yelwa. BBC: Nigeria's plastic bottle house
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Hundreds of people - including government officials and traditional leaders - have been coming to see how the walls are built in the round architectural shape popular in northern Nigeria.
The bottles, packed with sand, are placed on their side, one on top of the other and bound together with mud.
The whole world should come and look at it”
"I wanted to see this building for myself as I was surprised to hear it was built from plastic bottles," said Nuhu Dangote, a trader who travelled from the state capital, Kaduna, to see the house.
"They were saying it in the market that it looks like magic, that you will be amazed when you see it, that is why I have come here to feed my eyes.
"The whole world should come and look at it."
The real beauty of the house is its outside wall as the round bottoms of the exposed bottles produce a lovely design.
But for those behind the project, its environmental benefits are what are most important.
BBC
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Americans can barely be bothered to vote in our own elections, so why should we care enough about anyone else's to watch the gripping examination of Ghana's 2008 presidential contest on display in "An African Election"? LA Times: 'An African Election' review: Crucial vote for Ghana, democracy
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That reservation was frankly shared by director Jarreth Merz, who went to Ghana to make a much more personal film and ended up documenting this landmark election because it turned out to be too compelling to turn away from, a judgment viewers are likely to agree with.
Though he was born in Switzerland, Merz has deep Ghanaian roots on his grandmother's side and spent seven years of his boyhood living in the country. That makes him a perfect combination of insider and outsider, comfortable and well-connected there while retaining the perspective of someone who has made his life elsewhere.
Merz was also in a position to understand why this election was so crucial not only to Ghana but also to the future of representative democracy in Africa and the rest of the former colonial world.
Ghana was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa (in 1957 under Kwame Nkrumah's leadership) to gain its independence. It was also a country where that promise of freedom dissipated as Nkrumah went to one-party rule and ended up overthrown in a coup.
The 2008 presidential contest turned out to be the fifth since multi-party democracy was reintroduced in 1992 after a series of military regimes, an election between the two parties that had taken turns holding that office.
On one side was the New Patriotic Party, the NPP, the organization then in power but represented by a new candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo. Opposing him was professor John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress, the NDC, the party of former ruler Jerry Rawlings, still very popular in the country.
Adding extra importance to the Ghana election was the fact that it took place at a crucial time for Africa, after political turmoil characterized by violence and sectarian strife erupted in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mauritania and Guinea, among other countries.
No one in Ghana questioned that the best way forward for the country economically was to have a stable, honestly elected government. Still, it was unclear whether Western-style democracy had a future on the African continent.
Urban Republic
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What's next for Rachel Wheeler? Building a school in the earthquake-ravaged country. MSNBC:American girl, just 12, builds 27 homes in Haiti
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If there really is something called "helper’s high" - that feel-good sensation that comes from extending a helping hand to others - Rachel Wheeler is soaring.
The 12-year-old Florida resident has done more to aid others than many grown-ups do in a lifetime.
Three years ago, when she was only nine, Rachel tagged along with her mother to a very adult meeting about charity work in Haiti. She listened as Robin Mahfood, from the aid agency Food For The Poor, describe children so hungry that they eat cookies made of mud, so poor that they sleep in houses made of cardboard.
At the time, Julie Wheeler wasn’t even sure her young daughter understood much of what was being discussed— "until Rachel stood on a chair in front of all those adults and pledged to help Food For The Poor," Wheeler said.
Then a fourth grader, Rachel promised to raise money to build a dozen homes in Haiti.
"Rachel didn’t just want to help," her mother remembers, "but she said she had to help."
Rachel ran bake sales, passed the can at homecoming games and sold homemade potholders at her Zion Lutheran School in Deerfield Beach, Fla. She mailed fundraising appeals to the parents of her friends and the people she knew from church. In her hometown, the Lighthouse Point Chamber of Commerce cut two sizeable checks.
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Dennis Anderson never thought that he would be unemployed and then homeless after college. But that's exactly what happened to him after he graduated in 2005 from Massasoit Community College in Massachusetts. CNN Money: Once-homeless man cleans up with soap business
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The only jobs he could find were meager-paying retail ones. And it didn't look like his employment options were going to get any better. So on a whim, he took his last savings, packed up his car and drove cross country to the West Coast.
When he arrived, he had no job, home, family or friends. He did have ambition, which helped him launch and build Oregon-based Anderson Soap Company, which manufactures whipped soaps, and lip balms and other cosmetics.
He now has a home, a family, and dreams for an even better future. Anderson recently spoke about his change of fortune -- including how Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and different kinds of foods figure into his success -- with Steven Greenberg, CBS radio expert for jobs and host of the nationally syndicated radio program, "Your Next Job."
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Had you ever started any business of your own before?
No, this was my first business. I took my last remaining $20 and bought a few supplies to make a few soap bars, and I used my cheap camera to take bad photos of them. Amazingly, I sold the soaps right away, it was very exciting. Over the next few months all the money I made went back into the business.
The key was when I was able to invest in a much better camera. Quality photos led to a huge jump in sales. I couldn't believe it. I was suddenly staying up to 1 a.m., filling orders. I quit my temp job to keep up.
People love my soaps because they are handmade and are completely vegan. I never use animal fat, and our customers love that. And since they are all handmade, we can do some fun and different things.
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Fewer than 2 percent of the 47,000 members of the United States Chess Federation are masters — and just 13 of them are under the age of 14. New York Times: Masters of the Game and Leaders by Example
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Among that select group of prodigies are three black players from the New York City area — Justus Williams, Joshua Colas and James Black Jr. — who each became masters before their 13th birthdays.
“Masters don’t happen every day, and African-American masters who are 12 never happen,” said Maurice Ashley, 45, the only African-American to earn the top title of grandmaster. “To have three young players do what they have done is something of an amazing curiosity. You normally wouldn’t get something like that in any city of any race.”
The chess federation, the game’s governing body, does not keep records on the ethnicity of its members. But a Web site called the Chess Drum — which chronicles the achievements of black chess players and is run by Daaim Shabazz, an associate professor of business at Florida A&M University — lists 85 African-American masters. Shabazz said many of them no longer compete regularly.
Richard Perry/The New York Times
From left, James Black Jr., Justus Williams and Joshua Colas competing in Manhattan last month. Their success is a “phenomenon,” one veteran player said.
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Many say the 1965 report predicted the implosion of the black family. Dr. Herbert Gans disagrees. The Root: Remember The Moynihan Report?
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The oft-repeated tropes about the breakdown of the black family can be traced, in large part, to a 1965 Department of Labor report called The Negro Family: A Case for National Action, also known as The Moynihan Report. With then-Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan as the principal author, the report tied the decline of the nuclear family within the black community social pathology, increasing welfare dependency and chronic poverty. Sociologist Herbert Gans offers a critique of The Moynihan Report in the Fall 2011 issue of the Du Bois Review.
According to the abstract, "The Moynihan Report of 1965 will soon be fifty years old, and some social scientists now venerate it as a sterling application of social science data and analysis by the federal government. This author, who was directly involved in events connected with the release of the Report, does not agree; this article examines the shortcomings of the Report."
Black mother and child circa 1965 (Lambert/Getty Images)
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
It might be in the City of Angels, or that Emerald City of the Western North; it might be somewhere in the hilly city named after Saint Francis, or along the deep canyons of the Big Apple; you will see her there. She's hiding a secret that everyone knows. Her bearing may be steadfast, but her eyes confess the pain and the slight, but constant hunger that bites and grumbles deep inside her. Her shoes are a little too worn for the company she keeps. Her dress a little too frayed. She carries a small meal in her purse, she eats in a secret place and in silence.
But I hear the crescendo of her sadness, like the rush of a thousand waterfalls, or the static from a million stars.
At the Office Holiday Party
I can now confirm that I am not just fatter
than everyone I work with, but I’m also fatter
than all their spouses. Even the heavily bearded
bear in accounting has a little otter-like boyfriend.
When my co-workers brightly introduce me
as “the funny one in the office,” their spouses
give them a look which translates to, Well, duh,
then they both wait for me to say something funny.
A gaggle of models comes shrieking into the bar
to further punctuate why I sometimes hate living
in this city. They glitter, a shiny gang of scissors.
I don’t know how to look like I’m not struggling.
Sometimes on the subway back to Queens,
I can tell who’s staying on past the Lexington stop
because I have bought their shoes before at Payless.
They are shoes that fool absolutely no one.
Everyone wore their special holiday party outfits.
It wasn’t until I arrived at the bar that I realized
my special holiday party outfit was exactly the same
as the outfits worn by the restaurant’s busboys.
While I’m standing in line for the bathroom,
another patron asks if I’m there to clean it.
-- Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
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