I would like to give a hearty welcome to our two newest Black Kos editors. Joan Mar and Chitown Kev. As long time members of both Black Kos and Daily Kos, they will be a strong addition to our team.
Chitown Kev will be splitting Tuesday duties with Denise and Justice, while Joan Mar will be splitting Fridays with sephius1.
We extended the offer to Joan Mar and Chitown Kev to join us because of; the quality of their writing, their involvement in Black Kos, as well as strong connections to other communities and issue both on Daily Kos and offline. We strongly feel that these individuals will be valued contributors to the team. Adding more voices and perspectives will allow us to continue to give you the top rate, quality content that you expect from Black Kos, while still providing you with the "familiar voices" that you have been reading over the years.
On behalf of Deoliver47, Justice Putnam, and sephius1, and all our Black Kos members, I would like to extend a hearty welcome (as well as a thank you) to both Joan Mar and Chitown Kev. We look forward to reading, working, and interacting, with you two for years to come. Once again welcome and thank you.
- dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Despite stereotypes most of the places on this list are not in the racially regressive South. The Root: The 5 Worst States for Black People.
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Progress, the story of black America.
We started from the most bottom of bottoms (not having personhood) and worked our way up to the age of Obama, where we are leaps and bounds better than we were (hey, we have personhood now!) but are still struggling to make it to the middle, let alone to the top, of society’s heap. A lot of things are working against us, and a lot of it boils down to where we live.
Let’s face it. Some places are worse to be black in than others, and I’m not just talking historically racial quagmires like Mississippi. Racism and a weakened social safety net know no region. Wisconsin, Ohio and others have their bad points, which go beyond their lack of NBA championships.
Taking into account stats on education, health, incarceration rate, economics and general misery, these are some of the worst states for black people.
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China has long been accused of fueling the illegal ivory trade in Africa. Slate: Chinese Delegation Reportedly Bought So Much Illegal Ivory on Africa Trip the Price Doubled.
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A new report out this week from London-based NGO Environmental Investigation Agency says the illicit trade implicates even the highest levels of the Chinese government. The organization’s report focuses on Tanzania, the epicenter of the illicit ivory trade, where the elephant population has been decimated with some 10,000 elephants killed for their tusks last year alone.
In March 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping made a visit to the country on state business. The presidential visit, as the New York Times reports, kicked off a shopping spree for illegal ivory by the Chinese delegation that caused the price of the smuggled goods to double. Here’s more on what happened from the Times:
[President Xi Jinping] was joined by a large entourage of Chinese government officials and business leaders, officially there to promote a mutually beneficial relationship between the two countries. But according to a new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nongovernmental organization based in London, members of the delegation used Mr. Xi’s visit as an opportunity to procure so much illegal ivory that local prices doubled to $70,000 per kilogram, or about $31,800 per pound. In fact, two weeks before Mr. Xi arrived, Chinese buyers went on a shopping spree for illegal ivory, purchasing thousands of pounds of poached tusks, which were “later sent to China in diplomatic bags on the presidential plane,” says the report, “Vanishing Point: Criminality, Corruption and the Devastation of Tanzania’s Elephants,” which was released on Thursday…
Ivory recovered from smugglers in Gabon.
Photo by WILS YANICK MANIENGUI/AFP/GettyImages
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It's hard not to "face-palm" after a SC exit poll asked a series of questions about race and slavery. Raw Story: South Carolina exit polls ask voters whether blacks are getting too uppity about equality.
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n exit poll in South Carolina being criticized after voters in Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, and Spartanburg were asked a series of questions about race and slavery, WSPA reports.
Voters were asked whether “blacks are getting too demanding in their push for equal rights”. The poll was conducted by a political scientist from Clemson University, David Woodard, who insisted that it was not meant to be provocative.
“It was designed to take advantage of a political moment of Senator Tim Scott’s election as the first African-American from a southern state since reconstruction,” he told WSPA.
But many voters were, in fact, provoked by questions that asked them to “agree” or “disagree” with statements like, “it’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder, they could be as well as whites.”
The political scientist who asked them to do so said the questions have been used by pollsters for decades — and they are taken, word-for-word, from the Modern Racism Scale, an analytic tool used to gauge an individual’s non-conscious biases.
This exit poll is not, however, the first time Woodard has stirred up a racially based controversy.
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We won't agree with them on almost all policy fronts but we still have to acknowledge their accomplishments. The Grio: Black Republicans make history.
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Utah’s Mia Love and South Carolina’s Tim Scott certainly had a lot to celebrate last night as the results came in. The two black Republicans made U.S. history with their election victories.
Last election season, Love was only narrowly defeated by the incumbent, Democratic Rep. Jim Mattheson, by less than 800 votes — total. Despite her loss, she was an instant hit with the Republican party — she even gave a speech at the Republican National Convention! This time around, Love won a seat at the House, making her the first black Republican woman in Congress but also the first ever Haitian-American ever in Congress.
Scott was already in the Senate when he ran this year, but he hadn’t been elected. Governor Nikki Haley appointed him after Senator Jim DeMint resigned in November 2012, so this year’s race against Democratic challenger Joyce Dickerson was about finishing out the rest of DeMint’s six-year term. Scott will have to run for re-election in 2016 to earn a full six-year term himself. But he has already made history nonetheless — his win marks the first time an African-American has been elected in the South to the Senate since Reconstruction. The win also makes him the first ever African-American to serve in both the House and Senate.
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Welcome to the Black Kos Community Front Porch!
Pull up a chair and sit down a while and enjoy the company.