Commentary by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
We have come to an end of another great year here at Black Kos. Unfortunately we have come to the time when we the editors take our annual holiday season break, we won't be returning until Tuesday January 6th, 2014. I would like to once again thank everyone who reads and participates in Black Kos for continuing to support us.
Putting these diaries together takes a lot of group work and effort. It is really a blessing that they are so well received. But also don't be surprised if some of us editors use this "break time" to publish some of our own diaries. Black Kos maybe on break, but speaking for myself this is one of the few times of the year I have the the time to do some of my own writing.
2014 was also the year we got to welcome our two newest Black Kos editors, ChitownKev and JoanMar, but we also unfortunately said goodbye to one of our original Black Kos editors Robinswing who sadly lost her battle with cancer, may she rest in peace.
We covered a lot of ground on Black Kos this year, from crime to history, law to politics, international stories to poetry, great black scientists to vile right-wing racists (um excuse me I meant, "I'm not a racist BUT....." rightwingers). I always like to spend a little time each year looking back at the great work this team has put together.
Here are some of the highlights from this years edition of Black Kos. So on behalf of sephius1, Deoliver47, Justice Putnam, and our newest editors JoanMar and ChitownKev I would like to say thank you to all our readers. Have a safe Holiday season, and a happy new year. See you all in 2015!
RIP Robinswings and thank you for all you did to help grow the Black Kos community.
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TUE JAN 14, 2014 Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile
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Haiti: The forgotten victims/Les victimes oubliées
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
On Tuesday, January 12, 2010, four years ago, a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti, killing more than 300,000 people and leaving countless numbers of people homeless. Memorial services were held in Haiti this Sunday, in the U.S. (where there is a population of over 830,000 Haitian-Americans) and in other parts of the Haitian diaspora.
Please take a moment of silence in memory, and then be silent no more. Time for screams of outrage.
Amnesty International researcher Chiara Liguori, wrote:
Unsurprisingly, in the aftermath of the earthquake, Haiti was headline news across the globe. Yet four years on, with the cameras gone, the problems and suffering of the people remain.
It is estimated that almost 150,000 people are still living in 271 displacement camps, often in appalling conditions. The lack of access to basic services such as safe water, sanitation and waste disposal leaves them exposed to the risk of cholera and other diseases. Many still live in makeshift shelters, vulnerable to flooding, especially during hurricane season.
It’s unacceptable enough that people are still living like this. But many Haitians living in displacement camps also have to contend with the constant fear of being forcibly evicted. Since 2010, more than 60,000 people have been forced from their makeshift shelters, and it is estimated that almost half of those living in displacement camps face the ongoing threat of forced eviction.
Amnesty International denounced the situation in a report released last April in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital. The country’s authorities reacted promptly and committed themselves to thoroughly investigating the evictions. Yet no perpetrator has, to our knowledge, been brought to justice. And while the evictions stopped for a couple of months, they have continued again since June.
How easy for many of us to ignore what is happening there. We tend to ignore the Caribbean in general, and Haiti gets the shortest shrift.
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FRI JAN 31, Black Kos, Week In Review
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Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Bessie Blount was born on November 24th in 1914, in Hickory, Virginia. Little is known of her family or her childhood but it is known that she had long wanted to work in the medical field. Blount left home and traveled north to New Jersey to become a physical therapist. She studied at both Panzar College of Physical Education and at Union Junior College. Then she moved on to Chicago where she finished her training.
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TUE FEB 11, Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile - Moral March Edition.
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(photo of some of my fellow travelers from the bus)
Mass Moral March on Raleigh
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I traveled down to Raleigh, NC for the Moral March on Saturday Feb. 8th with a bus load (and two vans) of folks, organized by the Kairos Center, Poverty Initiative, at Union Theological Seminary.
We left at around 6:30 AM on Friday for the 10 plus hour drive south. It was a wonderfully diverse group - black, white, brown, red and yellow, young, old, straight and LBGT. There were union organizers, members of Picture the Homeless, Domestic Workers United, Occupy Faith NYC, seminary students, and more.
On the bus we each introduced ourselves and said a little bit about why we were going and who were the people who we felt had lifted us and inspired us to be there that day.
People shared the names of teachers, mentors, movement activists, and their parents.
We sang together.
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Voices and 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.
American Sonnet (35)
boooooooo. spooky ripplings of icy waves. this
umpteenth time she returns--this invisible woman
long on haunting short on ectoplasm
"you're a good man, sistuh," a lover sighed solongago.
"keep your oil slick and your motor running."
wretched stained mirrors within mirrors of
fractured webbings like nests of manic spiders
reflect her ruined mien (rue wiggles remorse
squiggles woe jiggles bestride her). oozy Manes spill
out yonder spooling in night's lofty hour exudes
her gloom and spew in rankling odor of heady dour
as she strives to retrieve flesh to cloak her bones
again to thrive to keep her poisoned id alive
usta be young usta be gifted--still black
-- Wanda Coleman
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TUE FEB 25,
Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile.
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Stop using the "black on black crime" meme
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I'm sick and tired of reading comments loaded with right-wing memes and myths.
Every time we try to deal with discussing racist murderers, whether its Micheal Dunn or George Zimmerman, and his defenders, someone steps into the conversation and brings up the tired trope of "black-on-black crime" as a tried and true method of derailing the conversation away from racism, Stand Your Ground laws as they affect black people, and racially biased jurors and prosecutors who don't deliver justice—for us.
I see these unrelated stats thrown around willy-nilly, and not just on Fox.
This stuff is to be expected from Faux News, or folks over at Breitbart's site.
Liberal/left/progressives need to stop.
Dopper made a comment:
That is why I try to get progressive to drop the (53+ / 0-)
Recommended by:
doroma, a2nite, kingfishstew, 2thanks, SneakySnu, moviemeister76, Chi, Matt Z, Gooserock, Amber6541, science nerd, TomP, Arianna Editrix, Louisiana 1976, JayC, tuesdayschilde, eru, VPofKarma, FindingMyVoice, Ian Reifowitz, Voodoo king, shanikka, Denise Oliver Velez, twigg, BentLiberal, AaronInSanDiego, mungley, Ahianne, wader, rubyr, nomandates, Diogenes2008, thanatokephaloides, Yasuragi, Tortmaster, Jeff Y, jts327, caul, Rogneid, JaxDem, HCKAD, democracy inaction, urnumbersix, mikejay611, etherealfire, consciousempress, DanielMorgan, sethtriggs, Brooke In Seattle, tommyfocus2003, Zaq, blackjackal, topherp
term "black on black crime". The only major racial/ethnic group where the majority of crime committed against them are from people of a different ethnic/racial group are Native Americans. That's it!
The term feeds a rightwing meme.
He made it in a
diary about 'fear of blacks' on Sunday, but that hasn't stopped people from continuing to do apples and oranges.
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FRI FEB 28, Black Kos, Week In Review.
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--- The Ashanti Empire --
dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
The Ashanti Empire also known as the Ashanti Confederacy or Asanteman (independent from 1701-1896), was a pre-colonial West African state created by the Akan people of what is now the Ashanti Region in Ghana. Their empire stretched from central Ghana to present day Togo and Côte d'Ivoire. Today, the Ashanti monarchy continues as one of the constitutionally protected, sub-national traditional states within the Republic of Ghana.
The political, military, and spiritual foundations of the Ashanti nation date to the first Ashanti king, Osei Tutu. He forged the Ashanti Union by bringing together several subgroups from roughly 1670 to the 1690s. He also built a capital, Kumasi; created the legend of the Golden Stool to legitimize his rule; and began celebrating the Odwira, or yam festival, as a symbol of national unity. From 1698 to 1701, the united Ashanti army defeated the Denkyira people, who had conquered the Ashanti in the early 17th century. Over the course of the 18th century, the Ashanti conquered most of the surrounding peoples, including the Dagomba.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
The Song which is America is harmonized by many diverse voices. Some of those voices sing America from an unbridled joy deep within them; while others sing America from the constant anguish brought by generation after generation suffering under the manacle and the lash; a sad refrain sung from that inner pain brought from the loss of ancestry and Home. The melodies of both interweave and play a coda on the landscape and the Soul of America.
It is on that landscape that the first faint strains of the Song that is America became the forceful tacet on an American Exceptionalism; a certainty of purpose and an almost religious devotion to save those not touched by our benevolence. It is the chorus singing that they must be saved and it's for their own good. As when...
A Missionary Brings a Young Native to America
All day she heard the mad stampede of feet
Push by her in a thick unbroken haste.
A thousand unknown terrors of the street
Caught at her timid heart, and she could taste
The city of grit upon her tongue. She felt
A steel-spiked wave of brick and light submerge
Her mind in cold immensity. A belt
Of alien tenets choked the songs that surged
Within her when alone each night she knelt
At prayer. And as the moon grew large and white
Above the roof, afraid that she would scream
Aloud her young abandon to the night,
She mumbled Latin litanies and dream
Unholy dreams while waiting for the light.
-- Helene Johnson
Portrait representing Henry Ward Beecher and Pinky, one of the most famous slave girls whom he auctioned at Plymouth Church, c.1860
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TUE APR 22, Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile
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Thoughts on young black men
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Yesterday I was reading Kwik's "Black Male Teen Unemployment Astronomical; Indicator Of How Society Stigmatizes, Rejects Them" which opened with:
My son is 19 and has been trying to get a job for three years...but nobody will hire him. I don't want to believe it's because he's black, but...
When my son hit 16 in March of 2011, I told him: "Welcome to the work force!" I took him around to various fast food joints and grocery stores where he put in applications for basically any and every entry level job you can name from dishwasher to bus boy to bagger to stocker to janitor. We both thought it would be a matter of time before he got an interview and then a job. However, here it is over three years later and in spite of our continued efforts to find a job for him, he still hasn't been hired.
My son is a great young man. He graduated from high school last year, made good grades and never got into trouble. Right now, he's attending the local community college, where he continues to do well. To put it bluntly, he's a model citizen.
One thing that really exasperates me is that one of his best friends of the Caucasion persuasion who I know well because he lives down the street from us and is roughly the same age, has already been hired at three different nearby places. All of which are places where my son also applied, including the place with the golden arches, which generally hires almost anyone white that walks in without a prison record. That young man from down the street is not nearly as intelligent, responsible, well-mannered, well-groomed or well-spoken as my son. Not even close. Yet, he gets hired repeatedly? And by the way, the reason he's had at least three jobs is because he keeps getting fired.
We all are aware of the
school-to-prison-pipeline,
for profit prisons, the targeting of young males of color in police programs like Stop and Frisk...and the death statistics for far too many of our youth cut down by gun violence and police. We also know that this nation has a long history of
stereotyping black males into the roles of animals, and
'wilding' rapists, and thugs.
Wherever there is a narrative, there are also efforts to build counter narratives. These young brothers have a video they would like you to see.
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FRI MAY 09, Black Kos, Week In Review.
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Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Herman Russell Branson (August 14, 1914 – June 7, 1995) was an African American physicist, best known for his research on the alpha helix protein structure. He was also the president of two colleges.
Branson received his B.S. from Virginia State College in 1936, and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cincinnati, under the direction of Boris Padowski, in 1939. After a stint at Dillard University, he joined Howard University in 1941 as an assistant professor of physics and chemistry. He remained at Howard for 27 years, achieving increasingly important positions, eventually becoming head of the physics department, director of a program in experimental science and mathematics, and working on the Office of Naval Research and Atomic Energy Commission Projects in Physics at Howard University.
In 1948, Branson took a leave and spent time at the California Institute of Technology, in the laboratory of the chemist Linus Pauling. There he was assigned work on the structure of proteins, specifically to use his mathematical abilities to determine possible helical structures that would fit both the available x-ray crystallography data and a set of chemical restrictions outlined by Pauling. After some months of work, Branson handed in a report narrowing the possible structures to two helixes, a tighter coil Pauling termed "alpha," and a looser helix called "gamma." Branson then returned to Howard to work on other projects.
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TUE MAY 13, Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile.
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Poster illustrating Derailment Bingo
Derailing discussions about racism and other "isms".
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver Velez.
It wasn't very long ago that I wrote about "microagressions", aka "The stuff that piles up and wears you down". After spending Mother's Day dealing with a few wrong-headed micro-agressors who expended a lot of keyboard energy trying to derail discussion of the racial component in the coverage of the kidnappings in Nigeria, and media coverage of African countries—period—and then logging in yesterday to look at "youthful campus racism" against Native Americans, documented by Meteor Blades, which isn't coming from "old people" or from "the South", I thought it might be a good idea to dust off the Derailing for Dummies playbook for review.
You can download it here.
We have a few more years to go with the sludge and slime of racial attacks against our President and his family, and though we haven't even come near to the 2016 primary season, the sexism sewer is already bubbling.
We already know that the right wing in this country is racist, sexist, homophobic, ageist, classist, ethnocentrist...what is more difficult to wrassle with is when elements of "isms" crop up within spaces we expect to embrace values that are the antithesis of wingnuttery.
Some of it is rooted in denial. Some in ignorance. It doesn't make it any more comfortable to deal with. From my perspective it's more difficult for us, since the effective building of political coalitions we need to effect change on issues of great import, are impeded by covert, and sometimes overt expressions of "isms" and the wearying process of continually having to wage struggle on multiple fronts.
While dealing with it myself, on Sunday, I was relieved to have a commenter do an effective job of summing up the derailment of a discussion of racism that was taking place in this comment she made.
So if you are faced with derailing and denial from purported allies and friends, on a blog or on facebook, or in face-to-face discussions, as aggravating as it can be, or get caught up in it without even recognizing what is taking place, here are some handy tips, links and examples you might want to bookmark for future use.
Abagond has a good piece based on derailing for dummies, and goes into a deeper discussion of how to figure out who you might be dealing with on the anonymous internet. Though not all racists black folks or other people of color are confronted by are white, and though white folks get called racist too (we have plenty examples of people from the Black Kos Community who are white, getting confronted with the same b.s. because of their active anti-racism), and yes, poc's can be bigots too (though they don't control systemic racism) much of the racist spewing does come from unenlightened white folks. He has a list of clues, which includes:
They bring up purple people: they say it does not matter to them if you are black, white, green or purple.
They bring up the Arab slave trade.
They point out that Africans sold and owned slaves.
They say their family never owned slaves.
They talk down to you like they know everything and you know nothing, like you are just imagining things.
They point out that Obama is half white.
They say that most crimes are committed by blacks.
They say they never got any help but made it on their own
Sigh. Cannot even begin to tell you how frequently I've had to read and reply to some of the things he's listed.
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TUE JUN 03, A forum on "The Case for Reparations".
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By now, many of you have read "The Case for Reparations" by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic. If you haven't read it yet, please do so before joining the discussion in comments.
We thought it would be very important to have a discussion of not only the piece itself, but of what the views are on the issue from the Daily Kos community.
There have already been several thoughtful diaries posted here:
On Racism, Reparations, Restoration and Reconciliation (Vyan)
Dear White Folks, Reparations for Black Americans are Not a 'Lottery' (chaunceydevega)
Moyers w/ Ta-Nehisi Coates: “Facing the Truth: The Case for Reparations” (Full Show +) (bobswern)
The Case for Reparations (randyhauser)
'When Affirmative Action Was White': Uncivil Rights (Eric Nelson)
Reparations and talking about race (Armando)
Greg Dworkin provided a link to both Coates and a response at Demos
We have also had discussions about the piece in Black Kos.
The piece has attracted an extraordinary amount of news coverage— with predictable negative responses from the right-wing.
A very thoughtful response was just posted in The New Yorker:
What We Talk About When We Talk About Reparations, by Jelani Cobb
He concluded:
We are discussing reparations at this moment because in two years Barack Obama will leave the White House, having repaired the economic collapse that greeted his inauguration, but with African-Americans still unemployed at a rate twice that of whites, and struggling to see how this world differs from the status quo ante. Those who saw Obama’s election as redemption for slavery were off by fourteen decades: his election was supposed to expiate sins much closer to the surface, and therefore far more difficult, and far too expensive, to confront.
The point of Coates’s essay—and, ultimately, the point of this conversation, despite the political impossibility of enacting reparations—is a broader understanding of black poverty as the product of public policy and private theft facilitated by racism. The belief that blacks have been given too much is made possible by the refusal to countenance how much was actually taken away in the first place.
We decided to wait and give more members of this community a chance to read it, read it again and reflect on a response before hosting this forum.
Black Kos Editors have opinions, which you can read in our individual statements below.
We've also invited guests to join us today.
We look forward to hearing from you all.
Black Kos
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
João da Cruz e Sousa was the son of freed slaves, born on the island side of what is now Florianopolis, in Southern Brazil. A pioneer of Symbolism in Afro-Brazilian literature, he was nonetheless shunned by his late 19th century peers. Fluent in French, Greek and Latin; and also a graduate of Math and Science taught by Fritz Mueller; Cruz e Sousa's intellectual contemporaries did not understand him and he held their work with contempt and disdain.
A racist mediocrity and the Parnassian Criticism that was currently en vogue, elicited the following anonymous "poetic review" of two collections he released in 1893, "Missal" and "Shields":
"A spiritualizing,
half-wit dunce
brought up
in distant Mozambique
has picked at true Art
with his beak
Swaying sickly,
with sonorous grunts.
And all the blacks from Senegal
do a buck-and-wing
as they caterwaul
and hail him
with rockets exploding in the air."
It's not hard to wonder why then, this little-studied Modern Renaissance Man, this Abolitionist Man of Letters harbored a...
Sacred Hate
I bore,
like corpses lashed
lashed to my back
and incessantly
and interminably rotting,
all the empiricisms of prejudice,
the unknown layers
of long-dead strata,
of curious
and desolate
African races
that Physiology
had doomed forever
to nullify with the mocking papal
laughter of Haeckel!
All the doors and passage-ways
along the road of life are closed to me,
a poor Aryan artist-yes,
Aryan,
because I acquired,
by systematic study,
all the qualities of that great race.
To what end?
A sad black man,
detested by those with culture,
beaten down by society,
always humiliated,
cast out of every bed,
spat upon in every household
like some evil leper!
But how?
To be an artist and black?
O my hatred,
my majestic malice
my sacred,
pure and benign
malevolence
anoint my forehead
with your pure kiss
so that I may be both
proud and humble
Humble and generous
to the meek
but haughty to those lacking Desire,
lacking in Goodness and faith,
who know not the lamp of the gentle,
fecund sun.
O my hatred,
my blessed emblem
which flaps in the wind
of my soul's infinity
while the others' banners
droop Hearty,
benign hatred be my shield!
against those villains of love,
whose infamy resounds from the
Seven Towers of Mortal Sin.
-- João da Cruz e Sousa
Celso Machado
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TUE JUN 24, Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile.
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Articulate
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I was thinking this week about some of the things I am often told, in a purportedly complimentary mode, about my speech, and writing ability. Have heard these things since I was a child, and after a while it gets tedious. If I had a dollar for every time I've been told I'm "articulate", "well-spoken" or simply "you write so well" from teachers, acquaintances, employers and strangers I'd be rich. I get it tossed at me in two modes— folks who assume cause I'm black that my speaking and writing American Standard English is some major achievement—and for those who have mistakenly assumed I'm Puerto Rican that somehow I've managed to transcend Spanglish/broken English as my primary language. I used to snap back and say "what do you expect from the daughter of a PhD in English Literature and Drama?", adding, "I speak Middle English too" and then spout Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Prologue..."Whan that aprill with his shoures soote, the droghte of march hath perced to the roote, and bathed every veyne in swich licour ". I don't bother any more. I just lift an eyebrow.
I was reminded of this when listening/watching Jamila Lyiscott's Ted Talk this week.
Jamila Lyiscott is a “tri-tongued orator;” in her powerful spoken-word essay “Broken English,” she celebrates — and challenges — the three distinct flavors of English she speaks with her friends, in the classroom and with her parents. As she explores the complicated history and present-day identity that each language represents, she unpacks what it means to be “articulate.”
Lyiscott
describes herself as "an academic activist, spoken word artist, and educator and is currently a doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University where her work focuses on the education of the African Diaspora. She also serves as the Program Associate at Urban Word NYC, a community based after school organization that works to champion youth literacy, development, and voice through hip-hop, spoken word, literature, and social justice pedagogy."
Take a listen.
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TUE JUL 01, Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile
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NPR might as well be called "No People of color Radio"
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Well they have done it again. By "they" I mean the mostly white male honchos at National Public Radio. You may not have heard about it, yet. This is par for the course for NPR. Back in 2008 I wrote "NPR cutting black journalist Farai Chideya". More about the history of all this in a bit—but first, the latest.
NPR's "Tell Me More" which is hosted by Michel Martin, will be no more as of Aug 1. It is the only NPR program specifically targeted at a "diverse audience" as they put it, meaning African Americans.
Lots of times we don't put faces to the voices we hear on the radio. So you may not know who Michel Martin is.
A brief bio:
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FRI JUL 04, Black Kos, Week In Review
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Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Michael Croslin holds more than 40 patents for medical inventions and has established his own company, Medtek Corporation. His inventions include a computerized, digital blood pressure measurement device; a refractometer (used to measure the index of refraction of a substance) that measures levels of urinary sugar and pro-tein; and a pump that measures and dispenses intravenous medications.
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TUE JUL 15, Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile.
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Eric Holder - on race, Palin and the DC football team
Commentary by Black Kos editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Wingnuts are at it again—frothing at the mouth about Attorney General Eric Holder. Not that they have stopped since he was confirmed by the Senate on February 2, 2009. But the escalation of their hate has moved from contempt of Congress to cries of "impeach...impeach!"
I refuse to link to right wing sites—take my word for it, the attacks are vile. The comment sections are even worse. I think he is the "2nd most hated by racists" black man in America—after the POTUS.
He knows it. It doesn't stop him from speaking out—which he did in depth in an interview with ABC News' Senior Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas, which has escalated the calls for his removal.
I was pleased to hear him go on record about DC's football team, and the drive to change its racist name. He, like many of us, believes that a name change is "obviously right".
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FRI JUL 25, Black Kos, Week In Review.
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Why we just can't go to Netroots '15 in Arizona......
Commentary by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Netroots Nation has always been an event that we at Black Kos have looked forward to attending. As both an attendee and a panel host/sponsor Black Kos has for several years been a part of Netroots Nation. Individually our editors and feature writers have been active participants. But unfortunately in 2015 as Black Kos managing editor I can't in good conscience attend or participate in an event held in Arizona. Black Kos has always tried to represent both the larger African/black diaspora, as well as being a strong anti-racist force, attending an event held in Maricopa County, Arizona would in my opinion undermine our credibility on these issues. By the representing the larger African diaspora that includes, black immigrants.
1 out of every 12 blacks in America are of foreign descent, black immigrants account for more than one-quarter of the black population in New York, Boston, and Miami. Including 2nd generation immigrants that number rises to 1 out of 8 blacks in America. Ignoring an issue, such as immigration that directly effects 1 out of every 8 people our group is supposed to represent isn't something I can do in good conscience.
Secondly Maricopa County Arizona is infamous for its use of racial profiling. Driving while brown is no different than driving while black (they even share the same acronym DWB). As a strong supporter of anti-racist policies, I once again can't in good conscience participate in an event in Maricopa County Arizona.
I understand people in good conscience can disagree about the symbolic power of holding an event in the heart of the "opposition's territory", that position does hold some merit. Furthermore both personally and the editorial policy of Black Kos, has been to avoid meta-wars in the sake of unity. But on this issue, I feel too strongly to stay silent.
I have been a frequent victim of both police profiling and anti-immigrant rhetoric over the years. When confronted with a situation like this, I simply have to hold to my position. I hope those going enjoy themselves, build strong networks, organize, and help to fire up the base. I would love to see a "blue wave" strike Arizona in November and remove many of the worst of the anti-immigrant forces. But even with that, I would have an issue with the convention being awarded to Arizona because it was done under the current political climate.
This was a very difficult decisions, but in closing I just can't participate in Netroots 2015.
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TUE AUG 05, Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile
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U.S. Africa Leaders Summit
Commentary by Black Kos editor Denise Oliver-Velez
An historic event is taking place in Washington DC this week—the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit
August 4-6
“I do not see the countries and peoples of Africa as a world apart; I see Africa as a fundamental part of our interconnected world – partners with America on behalf of the future we want for all of our children. That partnership must be grounded in mutual responsibility and mutual respect.”
President Obama
President Obama in August will welcome leaders from across the African continent to the Nation’s Capital for a three-day U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, the first such event of its kind. This Summit, the largest event any U.S. President has held with African heads of state and government, will build on the President’s trip to Africa in the summer of 2013 and it will strengthen ties between the United States and one of the world’s most dynamic and fastest growing regions. Specifically, the August 4-6 Summit will advance the Administration’s focus on trade and investment in Africa and highlight America’s commitment to Africa’s security, its democratic development, and its people. At the same time, it will highlight the depth and breadth of the United States’ commitment to the African continent, advance our shared priorities and enable discussion of concrete ideas to deepen the partnership. At its core, this Summit is about fostering stronger ties between the United States and Africa.
The theme of the Summit is "Investing in the Next Generation." Focusing on the next generation is at the core of a government’s responsibility and work, and this Summit is an opportunity to discuss ways of stimulating growth, unlocking opportunities, and creating an enabling environment for the next generation.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
In July of 2010, I posted a little seen diary on dKos and also on my blog entitled, On Oscar Grant, Martyrdom and The Digital Age. I juxtaposed the self immolation in 1963 of the Buddhist Monk, Tich Quang Duc with that of the alternative musician in 2006, Malachi Ritscher; and the murders by police of supposed North Viet Namese sympathizer Nguyen Van Lem in 1968 and of Oscar Grant the morning of 1 January 2009.
In the early morning hours of 1 January 2009, Oscar Grant loosely fit the description of a young black man in America; a supposed sympathizer to the Thug Life and a threat to the community, the nation and the world; and so Oscar Grant was shot in the back by Police in those early morning hours, while laying face down on the Fruitvale BART station platform...
I wrote,
... Oscar Grant was murdered by long-held fear and animosity, murdered during a war on brown people domestic and abroad; by a policeman whose only defense was that he meant to torture Grant with 50,000 volts instead. There was no trial for Oscar Grant, only an apprehension and a gunshot in the back.
As I write this, crowds are still gathering in Ferguson, Missouri, mourning the senseless murder of yet another child by yet another trigger-happy steroid addled authoritarian.
In response, a militarized police force is mustered with tanks and gas and dogs.
It is often stated that the US should be renamed, Prison America. I don't disagree with that assessment. It's almost as if we live a daily Stanford Experiment; some of us are guards, most of us are prisoners; but all of us, guards and prisoners alike, are housed within the confines of a concrete block-walled, razor-wired, guard-shack land.
There Are Black
There are black guards slamming cell gates
on black men,
And brown guards saying hello to brown men
with numbers on their backs,
And white guards laughing with white cons,
and red guards, few, say nothing
to red inmates as they walk by to chow and cells.
There you have it, the little antpile . . .
convicts marching in straight lines, guards flying
on badged wings, permits to sting, to glut themselves
at the cost of secluding themselves from their people . .
Turning off their minds like watertaps
wrapped in gunnysacks that insulate the pipes
carrying the pale weak water to their hearts.
It gets bad when you see these same guards
carrying buckets of blood out of cells,
see them puking at the smell, the people,
their own people slashing their wrists,
hanging themselves with belts from light outlets;
it gets bad to see them clean up the mess,
carry the blue cold body out under sheets,
and then retake their places in guard cages,
watching their people maul and mangle themselves,
And over this blood-rutted land,
the sun shines, the guards talk of horses and guns,
go to the store and buy new boots,
and the longer they work here the more powerful they become,
taking on the presence of some ancient mummy,
down in the dungeons of prison, a mummy
that will not listen, but has a strange power
in this dark world, to be so utterly disgusting in ignorance,
and yet so proudly command so many men. . . .
And the convicts themselves, at the mummy’s
feet, blood-splattered leather, at this one’s feet,
they become cobras sucking life out of their brothers,
they fight for rings and money and drugs,
in this pit of pain their teeth bare fangs,
to fight for what morsels they can. . . .
And the other convicts, guilty
of nothing but their born color, guilty of being innocent,
they slowly turn to dust in the nightly winds here,
flying in the wind back to their farms and cities.
From the gash in their hearts, sand flies up spraying
over houses and through trees,
look at the sand blow over this deserted place,
you are looking at them
-- Jimmy Santiago Baca
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TUE AUG 26,
Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile
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Michael Brown Jr. b. May 20, 1996. d. August 9, 2014
Yesterday, funeral services were held for Michael Brown, at the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, in St. Louis. The funeral is not the end of Mike's journey, though his life was cut short on August, 9, 2014. His family, and supporters are continuing the battle for justice. Please help by contributing to the Michael Brown Memorial Fund.
If you did not get a chance to see or listen to the funeral address, “The World View,” delivered by Rev. Al Sharpton, take time to do so.
Sadly, there is no transcript yet, though TomP reported some of his powerful words in his diary yesterday.
Thank you Tom.
We offer our condolences to the family, to Michael's relatives and friends, and to the members of the Ferguson community.
We here at Black Kos are also a part of the community, no matter the geographic location.
No Justice. No Peace.
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FRI SEP 12, Black Kos, Week In Review.
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Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Samuel Massie Jr. (1919-2005) overcame racial barriers to become one of America’s greatest chemists in research and teaching. As a doctoral candidate during World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project with Henry Gilman at Iowa State University in the development of uranium isotopes for the atomic bomb. In 1966, the U.S. Naval Academy appointed him as its first black faculty member. Massie’s research over fifty years led to the development of drugs to treat mental illness, malaria, meningitis, gonorrhea, herpes, and cancer. Chemical and Engineering News in 1998 named him one of the top seventy-five chemists of all time, along with Marie Curie, Linus Pauling, George Washington Carver, and DNA pioneers James Watson and Francis Crick.
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TUE SEP 23, Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile.
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Dear White People...
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I haven't forgotten Spike Lee's School Daze, made in 1988, which took a look at the doings of black students on an HBCU campus during homecoming weekend. Coming to a theater near you on October 17, is a new film, also looking at black college students, but this time on a white campus.
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TUE OCT 14, 2014 Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile
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The battle against poll taxes and voter repression.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Though many people think of Jim Crow as something in our past, along with poll taxes put in place to be a "skin-color" tax to prevent people of a darker hue from voting, it isn't history. It's alive and well and being perpetrated across the U.S. and not just in the south.
I was a senior in High School the year that the 24th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was finally ratified. Here we are, 50 years later and the struggle continues.
The 24th Amendment:
The Twenty-fourth Amendment (Amendment XXIV) of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962, and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964.
Poll taxes appeared in southern states after Reconstruction as a measure to prevent African Americans from voting, and had been held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1937 decision Breedlove v. Suttles. At the time of this amendment's passage, five states still retained a poll tax: Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi. The amendment made the poll tax unconstitutional in regard to federal elections. However, it was not until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) that poll taxes for state elections were unconstitutional because they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
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FRI OCT 17, 2014 Black Kos, Week In Review
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Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Herman Russell Branson (August 14, 1914 – June 7, 1995) was an African American physicist, best known for his research on the alpha helix protein structure. He was also the president of two colleges.
Branson received his B.S. from Virginia State College in 1936, and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cincinnati, under the direction of Boris Padowski, in 1939. After a stint at Dillard University, he joined Howard University in 1941 as an assistant professor of physics and chemistry. He remained at Howard for 27 years, achieving increasingly important positions, eventually becoming head of the physics department, director of a program in experimental science and mathematics, and working on the Office of Naval Research and Atomic Energy Commission Projects in Physics at Howard University.
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TUE OCT 28, 2014 Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile.
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Getting souls to the polls
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Contrary to much of the negativity being spread by some traditional media sources, and blather from black Republican tokens, black American Democrats continue our relentless pursuit of the ballot box, with efforts to turn out our voters across the nation. Souls to the Polls operations are still underway: from Minnesota, to Ohio and Illinois, to Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and more.
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FRI NOV 07, 2014 Black Kos, Week In Review.
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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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TUE NOV 11, 2014 Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile
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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).
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FRI NOV 14, 2014 Black Kos, Week In Review.
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Finding Our Missing
Commentary by Black Kos Editor JoanMar
One Monday morning last month, I turned my television on to find that all three cable news channels (CNN, MSNBC, and Fox) were talking about Hannah Graham. Graham, a University of Virginia student, had gone missing and was last seen on video surveillance being trailed by a suspicious-looking character. That evening, Anderson Cooper's (CNN) lead story on his 9 pm show - accompanied with breaking news banner - was about Hannah. "Great!" I thought. "The more exposure, the better."
Sadly, young Hannah was later found dead. May she rest in peace, and may her family get the justice they seek.
I do not begrudge the attention paid to missing young white women. My goodness, I can only imagine the nightmare parents live through when their children go missing. What absolutely infuriates me, is how little attention the media pays to missing minorities, especially black men and women. Can they spare a minute to help us find ours?
Minority, Missing, and Ignored
As the website Black and Missing Foundation points out, figures taken from the FBI database shows that even though African Americans are only 13% of the population, they make up a whopping 33% of the missing. Further, in 2013 some 627,911 people went missing here at home; of that figure, 240,411 were classified as minorities.
“When we hear the term ‘missing persons,’ most people conjure up images of Chandra Levy, Caylee Anthony or Natalee Holloway,” Wilson said. “As a result, the public is misled in believing that victims of abductions and kidnappings are [all]blond, blue-eyed and female.”
Take the case of Ataui Deng.
22-year-old Deng, a Manhattan-based Sudanese model, who also happens to be the niece of the fabulous
Alek Wek, disappeared about a month before Hannah Green, and under roughly similar circumstances. Both young women were last seen leaving nightclubs after midnight. Deng, who is also signed to the very visible Trump Model Management agency (yes, that Trump), was thankfully
found alive in a New York City hospital.
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FRI DEC 12, 2014, Black Kos, Week In Review
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Special tribute by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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This week we lost Robinswing, one of Black Kos' original editors to cancer. Without her writing, Black Kos would never be what it is today. So today, instead of the normal news round up, I thought I would republish the first commentary Robinswing wrote for Black Kos. Rest in peace Robinswing, Earth lost a true champion of social justice, but heaven gained an angel.
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Commentary
Robinswing, Black Kos Editor
It’s been a tough week for a blackwoman. If my sons had not already done so years ago, the media and its relentless harping on Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama would have tap-danced on my very last nerve.
Then I look up today and see this.
Talk about open season on black males, this is the week that was. I love my brothers and this has been a pretty big dose of black as boogie man manic trying to be depressive. It’s been a week of you can do anything you want to my brothers. I’m not having it. Not any of it.
(SistahSpeak con't.)
I’m working real hard not to get mad. And no, I don’t mean angry, I mean mad. A little anger can be the impetus to change. Mad just makes you lose focus. If there is anything that I need right this minute now, it’s focus. My whole life has lead me to the fierce urgency of this moment in time and I intend to be razor sharp moving into tomorrow. Make no mistake, we are moving into tomorrow but not it seems before we have a chance to stroll down memory lane and the glories of yesteryear when we didn’t have the real possibility of having an African American man as the POTUS.
I just need to take a moment and cry foul. Very foul. Foul most.
So I guess Jeremiah is scary because he is not bound to the narrative of the good white man. Looking at the so-called news coverage, I’m having these Roots flashbacks where the language has been updated but the meaning is essentially “Yazza Bahss.” “I’se musta loss my mine whad wid thinkin’ fo mysef.”
You see any other story puts you in the Kunte get your foot cut-off club. Movement must be restrained. At any cost. This week the forces of darkness tried to claim a two-fer. Wright and Obama. Or more accurately, Obama through Wright. The framing has been a subtle house vs. field. The good vs. the angry. Except that the good might as well be the angry since they know each other. Everybody’s getting’ a whipping. I’ve not allowed myself to forget that this original framing of black men and women during slavery was an attempt to offer those offspring of rape a greater legitimacy. It was an effort to separate into even smaller divisions, the divisions of race. A sub race within the black community. All sorts of black folks were trotted out to confirm the suspicions and affirm the fears of white America this week.
How could this man be a friend to such as Wright? Wright they say is angry. Bad black man.
They kept telling us that it was just wrong for Obama to even know him. Obama shoulda this, he shoulda that. For days on end folks been shoulding on Obama like they win points for who can should upon him most often and with the most creativity.
How dare Rev. Wright suggest that America is anything but the most wonderful place on earth? Everything done by this country has been wonderful and the few, very few mistakes (I’m being sarcastic jus’ so you know) ought not be discussed.
Certainly the folks with 1st Amendment rights don’t look like Jeremiah Wright. Pat Robertson can say anything he likes. Ditto Jerry Falwell and Rod Parsley. Jeremiah Wright...not so much. Hell, not at all.
To hear some of the punditz you would think it outrageous for anyone to suggest that the good folks of the U. S. of A. would ever intentionally harm black folks. Not one of the so called intelligentsia while they were savaging Jeremiah Wright, bothered to mention a forty year history of doing just that.
For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama , were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,”1 their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all. The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis—which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.”
It was called the Tuskegee Experiment. It happened.
Too bad no one remembered to bring it up.
I ‘m feeing some Amistad right about now. See myself standing on the shoulders of all my relatives since the beginning of time and together we are all shouting... Give us free! Give us free! This is a moment of fierce energy.
I don’t know how to work roots or cast a spell. Wish I did. I’d love to have a magic wand that I could wave across the faces of those who hate without reason in this season of silly. I would like to think that my fundamental human decency would use my powers for good and I would turn those cowardly, hate-filled mongrel carbon units into sentient, compassionate beings. I would too. Second wave. First time I don’t trust myself not to turn them into the texture of their humanity... Rocks. Not grand glorious mountain rocks, but the kind of pebbles that get in your shoes and annoy you. Small, mean, hard rocks
‘Bout the only thing I know how to invoke is the law of Backatcha. It always works. Whatever you have sent out comes Backatcha.
This law guarantees that planting orange trees does not grow cherry trees. What is sown is reaped.
Backatcha!!! All y’all that mean harm. Your day is done. Leave my brothers alone or prepare to meet thyself a little further down the road. Backatcha! Backatcha! Backatcha!
Ah! A blackwoman feels better. Much better.
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Thank you to the Black Kos Community. The Front Porch is closed for the year, this look back is dedicated to Robinswings.