Why I don’t “celebrate” Halloween
Commentary by Chitown Kev
You’d think that given the lifelong attraction that I’ve had for the macabre and the grotesque that I’d get into a holiday like Halloween more than I do.
I do like the concept of Halloween costumes because it is fun and interesting (and instructive) to see the personas that people choose to project. But I have never worn a costume specifically for the occasion. Who doesn’t love a good party? But I can’t ever recall going specifically to a Halloween party. I like playing the occasional prank or even, occasionally, being the victim of a well-executed and playful prank.
I suspect that part of the answer involves my younger years growing up in a devout Christian household with my aunt and uncle. But unlike some highly devout families, I don’t remember any specific admonitions or lectures against Halloween that my aunt and uncle laid down nor do I recall any sermon at my church about the evils of Halloween.
We usually did have candy for the occasion placed around the house and I, my brother, and cousins would watch scary movies (which would often make me laugh more than anything else). I remember going out trick-and-treating a couple of times only to go through rigorous checks of the candy that we collected.
Growing up in Detroit, though, I suspect that a fear of more mayhem in the streets the day after Devil’s Night.
Devil's Night made its way to Detroit in the 1930s and 1940s. Traditionally, city youths engaged in a night of mischievous or petty criminal behavior, usually consisting of minor pranks or acts of mild vandalism (such as egging, soaping or waxing windows and doors, leaving rotten vegetables or flaming bags of canine feces on stoops, or toilet papering trees and shrubs) which caused little or no property damage. By the 1970s, the concept of Devil's Night as a phenomenon of a night of mischief and vandalism had spread, in a limited way, to cities around the state of Michigan, around the Midwest, and, in some instances, a few other cities around the country.
However, in Detroit in the early 1970s, the vandalism escalated to more destructive acts such as arson. This primarily took place in the inner city, but surrounding suburbs were often affected as well.
The crimes became more destructive in Detroit's inner-city neighborhoods, and included hundreds of acts of arson and vandalism every year. The destruction was worst in the mid- to late-1980s, with more than 800 fires set in 1984, and a number in the hundreds for each subsequent year until 2011. The damage was exacerbated by the severe population decline and widespread abandonment of buildings that occurred in Detroit during the 1970s and 1980s.
Of course, the 1984 Devil’s Night fires were on top of the fires that were started as a result of Detroit’s win in the 1984 World Series.
Elexus Jionde of the YouTube channel Interlexual Media Has a wonderful video titled “A Black People’s History of Halloween.” The entire video is worth the full 24 minute watch and I will refer back to a portion of it but I want to focus here on the history of Devil’s Night.
One thing that I didn’t know was that Devil’s Night was celebrated in a lot of locales outside of the Midwest (or, to be more specific, southeastern Michigan and northwestern Ohio; for example, I am not aware of a history of Devil’s Night mischief in Chicago). I am, of course, aware of the lurid spectacle that Devil’s Night became for nosy media worldwide. I grew to despise Devil’s Night and, to a lesser extent, Halloween because of that, I think.
Of course, during the Jim Crow era (and even post-Jim Crow) and especially in the South, Halloween is associated with permission for white people to wear Blackface and even commit violence against Black people. Ms. Jionde explains some of that, too.
Honestly though, while I enjoyed this brief romp through a Black history of Halloween, I think that the ultimate reasons I’m ambivalent about Halloween (I don’t hate the holiday anymore) are even more basic.
I’m more inclined to see and be attracted to the macabre and the grotesque of everyday life (even my own life and especially my dreams!) and to notice when and what things seem slightly...askew, off-center or (to use psychiatrist Sigmund Freud’s word for it) uncanny. I’ve never had any need for monsters and costumes and revelry; regular human beings doing highly irregular things is enough for me.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Somewhere during my career journey, I forgot to rest. I can easily blame capitalism, and perfectionism. Both are plagues that disproportionately affect Black women (insert impressive “looks good on paper” list of accomplishments here). I thought that because my work was mission-driven, purpose-centered and urgent, there was no time for rest.
While this piece is in response to the recent exodus of Black women in diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion (DEAI) roles in Hollywood, it is important to preface my commentary with this personal anecdote because my decision to leave my role was personal as much as circumstantial. Coincidentally, our departures made headlines following a disappointing Supreme Court decision on affirmative action that elevated a slew of concerns on the future of diversity commitments in entertainment.
I will be the first to acknowledge the importance of trends. They can provide a bird’s-eye view that directs attention to necessary topics. But I have concerns when a broad, sweeping narrative is applied to trends without thoughtful investigation of the details. While clinging to the headlines, we can miss important information, and essential calls to action that are critical to the movements looking to disrupt long-standing systems. This specific lens is needed when examining the state of the entertainment industry today.
I’d like to share with you the micro view of my what, my why and my observations on where we go from here, with the goal of prompting collective action to ensure a more diverse, inclusive and accessible entertainment industry.
Although my career began in the “diversity” space, that’s not where I intended it to go. In college, I majored in industrial and labor relations with a minor in visual studies. This is where I developed a deep affection for labor rights, a critical eye toward capitalism and a desire to work in the arts. I have dipped in and out of pure diversity roles; often, I was more influential when diversity was not a part of my job title. However, accepting my role at the academy to lead its representation, inclusion, accessibility and equity efforts in 2020 was intentional. It offered an opportunity to listen, to learn and to assess where the industry was in relation to this work, while informing my view of the path forward.
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For much of her early 20s, Caster Semenya felt physically sick. The South African runner had risen to sudden global acclaim in 2009, when she won gold in the 800m at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin at the age of just 18. It was her first major world competition. But her win was marred by questions of her sex and gender. Given her speed, muscular build and husky voice, some quietly asked whether she was a man. The sport’s governing body, the IAAF (known since 2019 as World Athletics), had required Semenya to take gender verification tests the day before the race, with a spokesperson telling the press “the rumours, the gossip was starting to build up”, and needed investigating.
Semenya’s subsequent victory would mark the start of a decade-long story, full of twists and turns that would take her from the top of the world championships podium to the European court of human rights – and would lead to a career-defining battle between the runner and World Athletics about her right to compete, as well as a monitored medical treatment plan that would leave her feeling, as she tells me today, “like the walking dead”.
Two sets of test results were leaked in the months that followed the Berlin championships: blood tests reportedly showed Semenya had three times more testosterone in her system than the average woman. Then the results of her medical examinations were published by Australian papers, suggesting Semenya was a “hermaphrodite” with internal testes and no womb. After 11 months of uncertainty, the IAAF announced in July 2010 that they had agreed on a “process” with Semenya, to allow her to compete at elite level (she hadn’t been able to run a race since August 2009 but had kept her first gold medal).
The process was a course of hormonal contraceptives, which neither she nor the IAAF made public. Instead, Semenya says that she had to secretly start taking the hormones at the end of 2009 to bring her naturally high testosterone levels down to a concentration accepted by the IAAF. And it didn’t go well. “I’d describe [the medication’s effects] like this: you’re living every day with a sore body. Your stomach is burning, you’re having panic attacks, you’re sweating. It … it was crazy.” Semenya first used a gel, before switching to a contraceptive pill.
She tells me this over Zoom, where she can be seen sitting outside on a shaded patio in Johannesburg. In a simple gold chain hanging over a white T-shirt and with her hair braided in her signature cornrows, she looks and sounds relaxed. But she also speaks passionately about what she had to endure early on in her career, shifting quickly from niceties about the photoshoot for this interview to torrents of profanity.
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Seed work was first practised by enslaved African women in Antigua and Barbuda. With few artisans left, efforts are under way to preserve it in a way that empowers younger generations. The Guardian: Seeds of potential: the Caribbean women reviving a dying art
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For a little more than 50 years, Louise Edwards has been collecting tamarind seeds that grow wild on the Caribbean island of Antiguato create earrings, mats and belts.
Edwards grew up surrounded by women stitching the seeds, but today she is one of only five remaining master artisans on the island, all are in their 70s.
“It’s a dying art,” she says. “We will soon give it up when we can’t see.”
Practised for centuries in the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, home to about 100,000 people, seed work began among enslaved African women forcibly brought to the islands and post emancipation it became a source of income.
With so few craftspeople left, this unique part of Caribbean culture risks being lost.
Anne Jonas, secretary to the governor general of Antigua and Barbuda, with the help of Barbara Paca, the country’s cultural envoy, have applied for funding to expand free workshops to teach seed art.
In 2017, Jonas founded Botaniqué Studios, dedicated to revitalising the practice. “This is extremely transformative in terms of my appreciation for what we consider to be uniquely Antiguan and Barbudan heritage artisanship,” says Jonas. “It tells a powerful story of how we have overcome our challenges and are now at a place where we are developing our nation … and creating economic opportunities for women.”
Seed work is laborious. Wild tamarind (Leucaena leucocephala) is one of the world’s 100 most invasive species; it grows everywhere, and collecting seeds causes no environmental damage.
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The only cure for painful sickle cell disease today is a bone marrow transplant. But soon there may be a new cure that attacks the disorder at its genetic source.
On Tuesday, advisers to the Food and Drug Administration will review a gene therapy for the inherited blood disorder, which in the U.S. mostly affects Black people. Issues they will consider include whether more research is needed into possible unintended consequences of the treatment.
If approved by the FDA, it would be the first gene therapy on the U.S. market based on CRISPR, the gene editing tool that won its inventors the Nobel Prize in 2020.
The agency is expected to decide on the treatment in early December, before taking up a different sickle cell gene therapy later that month.
Dr. Allison King, who cares for children and young adults with sickle cell disease, said she’s enthusiastic about the possibility of new treatments.
“Anything that can help relieve somebody with this condition of the pain and the multiple health complications is amazing,” said King, a professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “It’s horribly painful. Some people will say it’s like being stabbed all over.”
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A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that was a focal point of a deadly white nationalist protest in 2017 has been melted down and will be repurposed into new works of art.
The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, a Charlottesville-based Black history museum, said Thursday that the statue had been destroyed.
The Charlottesville City Council voted in 2021 to donate the statue to the heritage center, after it proposed a Swords into Plowshares project that would melt the statue and repurpose it into “public art that expresses the City’s values of inclusivity and racial justice,” according to the proposal submitted to the city.
The statue was taken down in 2021 after years of debate and delay.
Protests over the plan to remove the statue morphed into the violent “Unite the Right” rally in 2017. It was during that rally that James Alex Fields Jr., an avowed Hitler admirer, intentionally drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. Fields is serving a life sentence.
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