"Racism got me messed up, son"
Commentary by Black Kos Editor JoanMar
So declared my daughter as she walked into my bedroom. "Have you seen the Jimmy Kimmel video about Cecil the lion?" I hadn't seen it, so we looked it up and watched it together. "I see what you mean," I told her. "I agreed with everything he said. I teared up when he teared up; but still I have not heard of any tv personality crying over Sandra, or Tamir, or Sam Dubose, or Eric Garner..."
Yes, racism got me messed up, too.
In terms of mental health, racism costs people their sanity. One Dutch study of 4,074 people found that those who felt victimized by discrimination and forms of racism were twice as likely to develop psychotic episodes in the following three years. Being on the receiving end of racism creates intense and constant stress which boosts the risk of depression, anxiety and anger.
TV personalities report the continued extrajudicial killings of unarmed black people in a calm professional manner. When there's enough outrage and the potential exists for increased ratings they will invite "experts" to discuss the circumstances surrounding "the killing." The discussion will follow the format used for adversarial debates, one expert for the defense and the other representing the prosecution, with the anchor as the objective moderator. For years now I have been asking, "Where's the outrage?" Where's the outrage from media outlets and their personalities when black people are killed day in, day out? Who will shed a tear for us? Just once, one time! I would love to see an anchor say, "G-d dammit! I am sick and tired of having to report that another unarmed black man, woman, or child has been killed by law enforcement officers! We demand a stop to this slaughter!" Or words to that effect.
"Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people. More unarmed black people were killed by police than unarmed white people last year. And that's taking into account the fact that black people are only 14% of the population here."
People are insisting that the issues of the killing of Cecil the lion and the continued war against black and brown people should not be conflated. That they are two separate issues with one having absolutely nothing to do with the other. The reaction of the majority community connects the two issues. It would be interesting to see, for example, who among those who were outraged at the BlackLivesMatter protest at NN is now outraged about Cecil's killing.
I asked my daughter if she'd like to write a diary about her feelings. About what it means to be "messed up by racism." No, she didn't want to do a diary, but she could share a little of her inner turmoil.
From JoanMar's daughter:
A White man forced himself into a space that was not his, where he did not identify with or understand the locals, and murdered one of their own. After the murder he rejoiced, having asserted his Whiteness and his Maleness yet again, the devastation of his actions minuscule compared to the thrill of his victory. This is the reality every single time a person of color is murdered by the police, but it has never seemed to warrant the outrage that has come in droves since Cecil the lion was killed. This is what my Blackness feels like lately - fully feeling and comprehending the tragedy of a lion's death while negotiating if I can give it any energy at all. Negotiating if I am okay with joining so, so many as they grieve over a lion and ignore the systemic hunting of people who look just like me.
I teared up with Jimmy Kimmel over the obscene and unnecessary killing of a beautiful, majestic animal. But yes, I'm still looking side eye at you if you cried about Cecil but didn't shed a tear for Tamir; even more so if you are outraged about the lion but condemned the #BlackLivesMatter warriors for daring to interrupt a politician's speech.
Some people may need to check themselves and their priorities.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The camera is more powerful than the thin blue line. Slate: The Sam Dubose Police Report Is Full of Falsehoods From Ray Tensing’s Fellow Officers.
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After University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing was charged with murdering Sam Dubose, an unarmed black man who had been pulled over on a traffic stop, it was clear that the police body cam video of the shooting played an enormous role in the indictment.
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said a prosecution became urgent “especially after we saw the tape.” “I think it’s a good idea for police to wear them,” Deters said when he was asked if there would have been a prosecution without the video. “Because nine times out of 10 it clears them of wrongdoing. And in this case, it obviously led to an indictment for murder.”
Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley added that “this case is going to help the cause of body cameras across the country.”
Mark O’Mara, a lawyer representing Dubose’s family, was even more forceful. “If we didn’t have a video, I do not believe we would have had an indictment,” he said.
In a press conference Dubose’s sister, Terina Allen, gave the most emotionally powerful argument about the importance of having the recording from Tensing’s body camera. "If it were not for that video camera, Sam would be no different than all of the other [unindicted police shootings of black men], because the second officer was ready to corroborate every lie that the first officer said in the report,” Allen said.
Allen raised the important point that Tensing’s story that he was dragged by the car before shooting—which Deters roundly rejected and cannot be seen anywhere in the video—was backed up by his fellow officers.
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Oil has gone from savior to curse for Ghana. Bloomberg: Oil Curse Hits Ghana as Tide Goes Out on West African Boom Times.
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When the West African nation shipped its first barrels of crude oil in 2010, then-president John Atta Mills pledged to build new roads and a deep-sea port, expand the power grid and create an aluminum industry.
Five years later and Ghana’s economy is sinking. The government was forced to seek an emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund of almost $1 billion, the currency was the worst performer in Africa against the dollar in the first half of the year and power cuts of 24 hours at a time are crippling businesses.
The promise of an oil windfall led Ghana on a borrowing spree. Feted by donors for its stable democracy in a region known for coups and civil conflict, the West African nation attracted investors hunting for high yields. Spending controls weakened at the same time as gold and cocoa prices fell. Soon Ghana went from being almost debt-free to being downgraded by credit-rating companies.
“It’s clear that Ghana did fall prey to the oil curse in the sense of the expectation that oil money was going to solve all its problems,” Philippe de Pontet, Africa director at Eurasia Group, said from Washington. “That had a perverse impact on government planning, spending and behaviors.”
After posting the fastest economic growth in Africa in 2011, Ghana’s expansion of 4 percent in 2014 was the slowest in 20 years. This month it raised its 2015 deficit target to 7.3 percent of gross domestic product to account for lower-than-expected revenue from oil.
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A Ghanaian entrepreneur thinks he has the answer to Africa’s fake medicine problem. BusinessWeek: The African Startup Using Phones to Spot Counterfeit Drugs.
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Drug Lane runs through a market in the heart of Accra, Ghana. It’s past the office towers going up to the east of the central business district, past the pushy vendors with fake Louis Vuitton luggage, and past the women selling trays of raw beef under the midday sun. The alley bristles with signboards for pills, powders, and other substances. One store is packed to the rafters with boxes of painkillers and antibiotics. On the wall are two posters: One is for Coartem, a malaria treatment made by the Swiss drug company Novartis, and the other advertises something called Recharger, supposedly made from the male silkworm moth. The notice is vague about specific uses, but it does advise using condoms.
The man behind the counter, Yaw Frempong, can’t recommend either drug—at least not formally. Like 85 percent of the people selling medicine in Ghana, he isn’t a pharmacist. Most of his stock comes from China, India, and Malaysia, imported by Ghanaian distributors who supply everyone from “licensed chemical sellers” like him to actual pharmacies and hospitals. It’s a system so porous that as many as one in three medicines sold on Drug Lane could be counterfeit, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared with about 1 percent in the U.S. and Europe. The fake drugs often have no active ingredient at all, or just enough to pass quality-control tests, and visually they can be indistinguishable from the real thing. One study, published by the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, found that in just one year, fake and poorly made malaria drugs contributed to the deaths of more than 100,000 children across Africa.
Nongovernmental organizations, international agencies, and other groups have tried to address the problem. A Ghanaian entrepreneur thinks he has an answer. Bright Simons announced the creation of his company, MPedigree Network, at a news conference on Drug Lane in 2007. MPedigree sells software that manufacturers use to label individual packs of medication with a random 12-digit code hidden under a scratch-off panel on the packaging. When a person buys medicine, she can text the code to MPedigree for free and get an instant reply telling her whether the product is authentic. Today, MPedigree says it has labels on more than 500 million drug packets. Clients include the drug companies AstraZeneca, Roche, and Sanofi.
As it’s grown, MPedigree has kept its identity fluid—adopting the startup label to attract attention and court investment, and other times emphasizing that it’s a social enterprise, the better to work with large multinationals with corporate responsibility mandates. The data MPedigree is collecting on African consumers has opened business possibilities that are strictly for-profit. Today the company authenticates a variety of commonly faked goods, from makeup to electrical cable.
Many Ghanaians shop for pills in open-air markets, where the fake may be indistinguishable from the real.
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Congressional Black Caucus to meet executives of Google, Apple and other tech companies with poor track records of hiring African American employees. The Guardian: Black politicians to push Silicon Valley giants on 'appalling' lack of diversity.
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The most powerful African American politicians in the US will next week demand that Silicon Valley companies hire more black people after official figures revealed that many of the world’s most prominent tech companies’ workforces are just 2% black.
GK Butterfield, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), will meet with executives at Apple and Google in Silicon Valley on Monday and Tuesday to tell them to “implement a diversity plan that will place more African Americans in the tech pipeline”.
Butterfield, who will be joined by all members of the CBC Diversity Task Force, has described diversity at Silicon Valley companies track records on diversity as “appalling” and their bosses as “not inclusive”.
The taskforce will meet with executives at Apple, Google, Bloomberg, Intel, Kapor, Pandora and SAP – but not Facebook, Twitter or Yahoo, companies with the lowest proportion of black employees.
African Americans represent less than 1.5% of Facebook’s 5,479 US employees. Mark Zuckerberg’s company hired 36 black employees last year out of a total headcount increase of 1,216. In 2013, Facebook hired just seven additional black people, including just one black woman. Twitter employs just 49 black people out of a total US workforce of 2,910. The tiny number of African American staff – 35 men and 14 women – represents just 1.7% of Twitter’s US staff. Yahoo and Google US employees are also just 2% black. Apple fares better with African Americans making up 7% of its workforce.
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