Soldiers of the 369th (15th N.Y.) who won the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in action, 1919
Left to right. Front row: Pvt. Ed Williams, Herbert Taylor, Pvt. Leon Fraitor,
Pvt. Ralph Hawkins. Back Row: Sgt. H. D. Prinas, Sgt. Dan Strorms,
Pvt. Joe Williams, Pvt. Alfred Hanley, and Cpl. T. W. Taylor.
What to this African American is Veterans Day?
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Chitown Kev
November 11th, Veterans Day (also known as Armistice Day), is widely held to be a day that honors those who have served and are serving in the armed forces. November 11th commemorates the cessation of hostilities in World War I “at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” of 1918. I would like at this time, to thank most (all?) of my male relatives for their service to this country. In fact, I am the only male in the immediate family that I know of who has not served in the armed forces. There are personal and political reasons for my lack of military service. I stand by those reasons to this day but I am proud of service that all of my relatives (male and female) did for our country and I salute them and thank them for their service.
I also have to pause and reflect (as Frederick Douglass did for the Fourth of July) what Armistice Day has meant and, to an extent, still means for African Americans. Even a cursory review of African American history that can be found in books like volume 1 of David Levering Lewis biography of W. E. B. DuBois, Biography of a Race: 1868-1919, Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, and A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States(my personal favorite) reminds us that the First World War was also a time of unprecedented racial terrorism in this country for black folks; a terrorism, through the deployment of the armed forces throughout Europe, was exported to Europe as well. In the late 1910’s, there was a sharp increase in the number of lynchings in the United States, the Great Migration of blacks from the South to Northern cities increased white-black tensions as whites and black began to compete for jobs (a pattern that was repeated in World War II).
Probably the most notable of these riots were the 1917 race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois on July 2-3 of 1917; there were riots in Pennsylvania and in Houston, Texas as well.
And, of course, in the summer of 1919, the year after “peace” was declared and black soldiers began to return “home,” the increasing competition for jobs and the fact that African Americans were fighting for a freedom that was denied to them at “home” (be it the North or the South) there was the Red Summer, a summer of unprecedented racial violence that occurred throughout the country, North and South.
And all of this occurred under the administration of the “progressive” Woodrow Wilson, whose executive actions (i.e. viewing D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation in the White House upon its’ release, instituting segregation in the Washington D.C. civil service where it had not been practiced before) contributed significantly to the increased racial tensions in the United States.
So…I pause and reflect on what Armistice Day means to an African American near-pacifist like myself and I must remember that, in many ways, the “peace” of “the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” of 1918 was elusive to my ancestors.
True enough, due to the efforts of so many (known and unknown), there has been great progress in race relations over the past 100 years. Those my generation (Generation X) are the beneficiaries of that progress. But I also have to remember that despite this being the Age of Obama, a so-called “post-racial” era, “peace” remains elusive for far too many African Americans (at home and abroad) at this very hour of this very day, November 11, 2014.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Lawrence Otis Graham writes that he thought an "elite" upbringing would shield his children from discrimination. The Washington Post: Being Upper-Class Doesn't Protect You From Racism.
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Even though the idea wasn’t fully formed, I somehow assumed that privilege would insulate a person from discrimination. This was years before I would learn of the research by Peggy McIntosh, the Wellesley College professor who coined the phrase “White male privilege,” to describe the inherent advantages one group in our society has over others in terms of freedom from discriminatory stops, profiling and arrests. As a teenager, I didn’t have such a sophisticated view, other than to wish I were privileged enough to escape the bias I encountered.
And that was the goal we had in mind as my wife and I raised our kids. We both had careers in White firms that represented the best in law, banking and consulting; we attended schools and shared dorm rooms with White friends and had strong ties to our community (including my service, for the last 12 years, as chairman of the county police board). I was certain that my Princeton and Harvard Law degrees and economic privilege not only would empower me to navigate the mostly White neighborhoods and institutions that my kids inhabited, but would provide a cocoon to protect them from the bias I had encountered growing up. My wife and I used our knowledge of White upper-class life to envelop our sons and daughter in a social armor that we felt would repel discriminatory attacks. We outfitted them in uniforms that we hoped would help them escape profiling in stores and public areas: pastel-colored, non-hooded sweatshirts; cleanly pressed, belted, non-baggy khaki pants; tightly-laced white tennis sneakers; Top-Sider shoes; conservative blazers; rep ties; closely cropped hair; and no sunglasses. Never any sunglasses.
Lawrence Otis Graham (center) and his family
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When coalitions fall apart. The New Republic: The Death of the Southern White Democrat Hurts African-Americans the Most.
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Not long after the polls closed on Tuesday night, Georgia Congressman John Barrow earned his place in history when he lost his reelection campaign to Republican Rick Allen by almost 10 points—a peculiar place he undoubtedly didn’t want. Barrow, a five-term Democratic incumbent with a conservative voting record that earned him endorsements from both the National Rifle Association and the Chamber of Commerce, was the last white Democrat in Congress from the Deep South.
This fact has occasioned some eloquent obituaries for that most endangered of political species, which is on the verge of extinction. Not only will there be no white Southern Democrats left in the House come January, but it’s a good bet there won’t be any white Southern Democrats in the Senate either (Mary Landrieu is likely to lose in the Louisiana run-off next month). Throw in the election of South Carolina’s Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate and, as The New Yorker’s Nicholas Thompson pointed out on Twitter, “there are now more black Republicans than white Democrats from the Deep South.”
Much as this is a problem for white southern Democrats, it's a crisis for black ones. That’s because blacks in the South—who, notwithstanding the very compelling counter-example of Tim Scott, are almost invariably Democrats—have for decades relied on coalitions with white Democrats to increase their political power. Lacking white politicians with whom they can build coalitions, black politicians are increasingly rendered powerless. (See my article in August about what this has meant for black people in Alabama.) The situation for southern black Democrats has only grown more dire after Tuesday’s midterms. To truly grasp the severity of the crisis, it’s instructive to look not at Congress and Barrow, but at state legislatures and a Democratic state senator from Alabama named Roger Bedford.
Bedford, a lawyer from the northern Alabama city of Russellville, was first elected to the state Senate in 1982. Over the next three decades, he became a fixture in Montgomery—surviving a broken neck; cancer; an infection suffered during a church mission trip that left him blind in one eye; an extortion indictment; and above all else, the state’s rising Republican tide. A conservative Democrat who was pro-gun and anti-abortion, Bedford for many years chaired one of the Senate’s budget committees—a perch he used to lavish obscene sums of government money on his district. The combination of his positions and his pork allowed him to escape the fate that befell so many of his fellow white Democrats in the state legislature as Republicans made gains and ultimately took control of it in 2010. Bedford, the Birmingham News’s Kyle Whitmire writes, had “the reputation of being bulletproof,” which made him “the Democrat that Republicans throughout the state loved to hate.”
On Tuesday, the Republicans finally got him. Bedford lost by 60 votes—out of more than 35,000 cast—to his GOP opponent. (The race is headed toward an automatic recount, but Bedford doesn’t sound like a guy who thinks he’s going to win.) As recently as four years ago, Bedford was one of 13 white Democrats in the Alabama Senate. After the Republican route in the 2010 elections, that number was slashed to four. Aggressive redistricting by the new Republican supermajority—which made white districts whiter and black districts blacker; and which led to a civil rights lawsuit that will be argued in the U.S. Supreme Court next week—caused two of those four white Democrats not to seek reelection this year. That meant that this past Tuesday, the only two white Democratic Senators on the ballot in Alabama were Bedford and Billy Beasley, the latter of whom represents a majority-black district. Assuming the results hold, Bedford’s defeat means the Alabama Senate has now lost its last white Democrat from a non-majority-minority district.
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Meet Loretta Lynch. Talking Point Memo: Obama's Nominee For Attorney General.
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Loretta Lynch was a federal prosecutor in New York when she encountered an astonishing case of police brutality: the broomstick sodomy of a Haitian immigrant in a precinct bathroom.
The 1997 assault on Abner Louima set off street protests, frayed race relations and led to one of the most important federal civil rights cases of the past two decades — with Lynch a key part of the team that prosecuted officers accused in the beating or of covering it up.
President Barack Obama's nomination of Lynch to be attorney general comes as the department she would take over continues to investigate the police shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri and seems partly intended to convey the message that police misconduct and civil rights will remain a principal focus even after the departure of Eric Holder.
If confirmed by the Senate, Lynch would be the first black woman in the job and would follow the first black attorney general.
Lynch has overseen corruption, terrorism and gang cases in her years as a federal prosecutor. But it's her involvement some 15 years ago in the Louima prosecution that gave her high-profile experience in step with a core priority of the Justice Department.
"It is certainly significant that she has a personal history of involvement in prosecuting police misconduct," said Samuel Bagenstos, the former No. 2 official in the department's civil rights division. "Obviously that will be helpful, and probably suggests that police misconduct cases will continue to be a priority of the Lynch Justice Department just as they were with the Holder Justice Department.
US Attorney Loretta Lynch pauses as she speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Saturday, Nov. 8, 2014, where President Barack Obama announced that he will nominate her to replace Eric Holder as attorney general. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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He is the first black senator elected from the Deep South since Reconstruction. Why? Because he doesn’t represent black voters. Slate: Tim Scott Will Rise Again.
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Which raises a question: If Tim Scott speaks in terms of a distinctly black conservatism, then why is he unpopular with actual black voters, who overwhelmingly voted against him in last Tuesday’s election?
Part of the answer is partisanship. Black Americans tend to hold more liberal views on government and are inclined to support Democrats, even if Republicans have a black candidate. Barring an extraordinary turn in South Carolina politics, there’s little chance Scott will ever win a substantial number of black voters.
But like any other group, black voters respond to rhetoric as much as ideology, and there, Scott has a problem. Scott doesn’t just echo Booker T. Washington in his language, he echoes him in his hands-off approach to racial injustice. The black conservatism of Washington doesn’t have a critique of white society—it focuses inward on the concerns of the community.
In the same way, Scott has said little on the racial controversies and civil rights issues of the last four years, from the killings of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis to the death of Michael Brown and the explosion of anger and rage in Ferguson, Mo. It’s possible these omissions have harmed him with black South Carolinians, who might agree with him on an issue like education, but aren’t sure that he’ll represent their particular interests as black Americans.
But while this silence might hurt Scott with blacks, there’s a good chance it helps him with whites. It’s rare for black politicans to win statewide office, and it’s obviously rarer for them to win seats to the U.S. Senate; since Emancipation, only five blacks (including Scott) have been elected to the upper chamber of Congress
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Uganda drafts new anti-gay laws. The Guardian: Politicians want seven-year prison term for ‘promotion’ of homosexuality, according to leaked copy.
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The Ugandan government could introduce new wide-reaching anti-gay laws before the end of the year, which could see people jailed for up to seven years for “promoting homosexuality”, activists warned on Saturday.
The move comes nearly a year after Ugandan politicians passed legislation that could have imposed life sentences on gays. The bill was struck down by the constitutional court on a technicality.
According to a leaked copy of the new draft law, MPs have instead focused on outlawing the “promotion” of homosexuality – a potentially far more repressive and wide-reaching measure.
Frank Mugisha, a gay-rights activist, said: “People don’t realise that the ‘promotion’ part of it will affect everybody. If newspapers report about homosexuality it could be seen as promotion. My Twitter account could be seen as promotion. All human rights groups that include LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] rights defence in their activities could be accused of promotion.”
According to the draft, anyone convicted of “promoting” homosexuality would be liable to seven years in prison. “We have confirmed that the draft comes from the cabinet. Their plan is to present it to parliament as soon as possible, before the end of the year,” Mugisha said.
Ugandan men hold a rainbow flag at the annual gay pride festival in Entebbe, Uganda. Photograph: Isaac Kasamani/AFP/Getty Images
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
In the Dogon cosmology, the Andoumboulou are a failed, earlier form of Human Being, who live underground inhabiting holes in the Earth. The voice of the Andoumboulou is merely their breath; it is the music of the wind. Nathaniel Mackey takes that breath and embodies it in text; a reification of language to body, the ink on the page being as real as the skin that chatters for the Andoumboulou. He chronicles the journey of that voice, that music of the wind, as it courses over the land and time.
There is an explosion of stammers in the Andoumboulou's flawed world of abortive language. Though imperfect and flawed, meaning emerges in the errors. That meaning is beyond words; it is lost in human utterance; it is something to be determined as but a whisper from a human existence we can only speculate about, that we can only feel. A feeling like the wind on our cheeks; and grains of sand blown from our hands.
Song of the Andoumboulou: 55
Carnival morning they
were Greeks in Brazil,
Africans in Greek
disguise. Said of herself
she
was born in a house in
heaven. He said he was
born in the house next
door... They were in hell.
In Brazil they were
lovebait.
To abide by hearing was
what love was... To
love was to hear without
looking. Sound was the
beloved’s
mummy cloth... All to say,
said the exegete, love in
hell was a voice, to be spoken
to from behind, not be able
to turn and look... It
wasn’t Greece where they
were,
nor was it Benin... Carnival
morning in made-up hell, bodies
bathed in loquat light, would-be
song’s all the more would-be
title, “Sound and Cerement,”
voice
wound in bandages
raveling
lapse
Up all night, slept well
past noon. Awoke restless
having dreamt she awoke on
Lone Coast, wondering
afterwards what it came
to,
glimpsed interstice,
crevice,
crack... Saw her
dead mother and brother
pull up in a car, her brother
at the wheel not having driven
while alive, newly taught
by
death it appeared. A fancy car,
bigger
than any her mother had had while
alive, she too better off it
appeared... A wishful read, “it
appeared” notwithstanding, the
exegete impossibly benign. Dreamt
a dream
of dream’s end, anxious, unannounced,
Eronel’s nevermore namesake, Monk’s
anagrammatic Lenore... That the
dead return in luxury cars made
us
weep, pathetic its tin elegance,
pitiable,
sweet read misread,
would-be
sweet
-- Nathaniel Mackey
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