Haiti we stand with you. Text "Haiti" to 90999 to send $10 through the Red Cross or Text "Yele" to 501501 to send $5 through Wycleff John's charity.
Commentary
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
One of the things that really urkes me is that we will never truly know all the inventions by blacks who couldn't protect there work because patents were not given out, and in some cases the inventions were stolen by whites that the black people worked for. This has so many ramifications since innovation leads to entreprenuership and wealth building. However some freed blacks were able to punch some holes in the system. One such man is Thomas Jennings
Thomas Jennings stands in history as a noteworthy figure for being the first Black person to ever receive a patent, but his life should serve as an example of what was, and what could have been, for Black people in the earliest years of the United States.
(con't.)
Thomas Jennings was born in 1891 and worked in a number of jobs before focusing on what would become his chosen career... as a tailor. Jennings' skills were so admired that people near and far came to him to alter or custom-tailor items of clothing for them. Eventually, Jennings reputation grew such that he was able to open his own store on Church street which grew into one of the largest clothing stores in New York City.
Jennings, of course, found that many of his customers were dismayed when their clothing became soiled, and because of the material used, were unable to use conventional means to clean them. Conventional methods would often ruin the fabric, leaving the person to either continue wearing the items in their soiled condition or to simply discard them. While this would have provided a boon to his business through increased sales, Jennings also hated to see the items, which he worked so hard to create, thrown away. He thus set out experimenting with different solutions and cleaning agents, testing them on various fabrics until he found the right combination to effectively treat and clean them. He called his method "dry-scouring" and it is the process that we now refer to as dry-cleaning.
In 1820, Jennings applied for a patent for his dry-scouring process. In light of the times, he was fortunate that he was a free man....Read More >>
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This weeks news by Amazinggrace and dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Do we want a post Great Recession economy to look similar to a pre recession world? Race Talk: What if there is no recovery?
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For years, economists and others have tried to avoid the question of what a just and fair distribution of wealth would look like by holding tight to the tacit assumption of unlimited exponential growth of both the US economy and the global economy. This is not only the worldview of trickle-down economics or of the American Right. It is also the worldview of poverty alleviation strategies (from the individual to international development) that rely on theories of change that move people up the existing economic ladder – as if, with the right combination of asset-building, credit, and education, all people can eventually become middle-class, or, with a little fiscal austerity and the right public policies, all countries can eventually consume as much per capita as the United States.
Even those strenuously arguing that we must change how we are cutting the pie slices rarely question the need for (or the ability of) the overall pie to grow. Yet the protracted global economic downturn must give us pause to at least ask, "What happens if the pie cannot grow? What happens if the pie must shrink?" What would justice and equity look like in a global economy that must go through a long and deep contraction? What if that contraction, in fact, is permanent?
Most of the debate around the recovery has been about what it will look like – V shaped or W-shaped, quick or slow, jobless or not. We have had discussions (but not enough) about what we must do to make sure that the various stimulus plans lessen racial disparities rather than exacerbate them. However, the presence of something called "recovery" has not been questioned. Instead, it has been taken for granted that this downtown is the result of the unwinding of a speculative bubble centered in real-estate and that it would eventually hit bottom and turn around. read more here -->
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The Democratic meta war on the blogs distilled. The Black Snob: The Overwhelmingly Unreasonable Expectations of Great Expectations (Rants)
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The Great Hopemonger isn't moving fast enough. We aren't getting it like we want it when we want it and we want it right now -- Veruca Salt-style. We want the world. We want the whole world. We want today and we want tomorrow. We want it now. Health care? Gimmie that shit. Ending "Don't Ask Don't Tell?" What's the hold up? Gitmo? You're ruining my personal life while keeping me professionally in bidness, dawg. The economy? It's all kinds of effed up. Two wars and you got the Nobel Prize, son? Folks are confused. And everyone all day, every day, "What happened to that hope with a side o' change I ordered?" "He's drifting towards Bush!"
Um. Can we hit rewind repeat on that?
Let's face it, 2009 was a weird, sucky year. But, best believe it, it was a weird, sucky year for the President too. All he did was inherit a nightmare, put his name on it, claim it and say "I got this," then watch the world burn. And he could sing "We Didn't Start the Fire" and bang on that piano as much as he'd like, but his poll numbers reflected those acres of hope ablaze as people watched their livelihoods turn ascinder.
Now before we begin impeachment proceedings I have two words for you: President McCain.
Yeah. OK. I'll be honest. I'm disappointed. I wanted someone to exact some vengence for the last eight years of fucked-upped-ness. I wanted a warrior king or queen to wreck shop, toss folks around, kill 'em all (politically) and let God sort them out. But I didn't elect Hillary Clinton, the second most vindicitive person in politics to be president. I voted for Barack Obama -- The Great Hopemongerer, Mister Go Along to Get Along Bipartisanship, let's be level-headed about this shit and rational. I voted for the grown-up. The diplomat. Mr. Maturity. I voted for someone who wasn't ruled by their ego and would legislate with a level head. And let's face it, it's not like Congress, despite being a so-called "Democratic Majority" has been extra helpful in getting Obama to meet his lofty goals. read more here -->
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The conservative pundit’s recent slip says a lot about the way some Americans see other races. The Root: Tell Me, Peggy Noonan, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin: What Does an American Look Like, Anyway?
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"He’s a sort of new sort of Republican. Old style was a Boston Brahmin liberal Republican.... What followed that was the scrappy Reagan Democrats, ethnic and working class. This is something new now, regular guy, looks like an American..."
—Wall Street Journal Columnist Peggy Noonan on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe."
This is the kind of thing that I’ve come to expect when traveling abroad: Like the time I was waiting in line at the Islamabad Airport, and the Customs official, apparently disregarding my U.S. passport, asked me if I’m Pakistani. Or the Mayan Indian kid in Guatemala, who told me that there’s no way that I could be American. Gesturing at his brown arm, and then mine, he said, "You’re black, like me!" Americans, he told me with all seriousness, are blonde. And male. And loud.
So if you’re hitting up various ports of call, and you don’t look like Brad Pitt—or Michael Jordan, for that matter—you take the don’t-look-like-an-American thing in stride. But when you’re on your home turf, you expect other Americans to know what American looks like. After all, since elementary school, we’ve all been fed the line about that great melting pot. We all got the memo: Anyone can be American! read more here -->
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One lesson from Katrina is to make sure that those who want to help Haiti have the right motives. We all know what the road to Hell is paved with. The Root: Haiti Should Beware the Well-Intentioned.
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While comparisons of the devastation in Haiti to New Orleans may seem obvious at this point, serious reflection is still needed. As the world mobilizes to help reconstruct Haiti, we must analyze carefully how today’s actions will impact the long-term survival of Haitian institutions, its future growth and its ultimate positioning on the world stage.
With world attention focused on them now, Haitians may have only one chance to rebuild sensibly. This country, already on the brink of disaster even before the quake, is vulnerable to more earthquakes and potential disasters.
From MIT’s New Orleans experience, where students and faculty worked with community groups, the city and labor unions in a myriad of projects, we learned a few lessons that should apply to Haiti:
* Well-meaning outsiders cannot be allowed to strip the country
of its local capacity or ignore local knowledge.
* Local assets must be preserved, and
* Paternalistic foreign donor attitudes are best left at home.
Many responding to the Katrina crisis were determined to work "on" New Orleans rather than to work "for" New Orleans. To avoid this in Haiti, we must look closely at the motivation of aid efforts and those who fund them. read more here -->
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The international donor community. New York Times: Agreement on Effort to Help Haiti Rebuild.
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Concerned about corruption and wobbly Haitian leadership, international donors agreed Monday during a meeting in Montreal on a 10-year rebuilding effort for earthquake-damaged Haiti, one that would create an even better capital city and that the government said would cost $3 billion.
Given Haiti’s long history of mismanagement of funds, international donors were hesitant to write a blank check. And foreign governments had concerns as well about the government’s ability to direct a large reconstruction project after most government buildings were flattened or severely damaged in the Jan. 12 quake.
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, addressing representatives from 14 countries and the European Union, tried to head off such fears. "The Haitian government is working in precarious conditions," he said at the opening of the conference, "but it can provide the leadership that people expect."
To show he was still running the country, President René Préval, whose office at the National Palace was destroyed, sent aides to the palace grounds to begin the process of building temporary offices and lodging for him there. His private home was also destroyed in the quake, and he has been running the government out of a police station, with his ministers addressing the news media under a mango tree. read more here -->
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President Sirleaf is Africa's first duly elected female leader. Voice of America: Liberia's President Sirleaf Announces She Will Seek a Second Term in 2011.
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Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected woman president, has announced she will run for a second term, despite promising during her first campaign to limit herself to one term.
President Sirleaf made the announcement Monday in an annual speech to the national legislature.
Press Secretary Cyrus Badio said the president cited her successes in governing the country as reasons for her decision to seek re-election.
"The president did catalogue the number of achievements that have been made, including peace and security...the country now enjoys economic revitalization, including infrastructure, the current image that our country has built, but more importantly there is now hope in the future of this country. She spoke of the challenges but said now it is time to confront those challenges and who is best to lead the fight against those challenges but someone who has put in place the vision for the country to follow," he said. read more here -->
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Maybe "THE" question. The Atlantic: What Makes a Great Teacher?
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On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math.
One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor’s math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked.
The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so.
At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools—not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it’s worth noting, not a very hard one).
After a year in Mr. Taylor’s class, the first little boy’s scores went up—way up. He had started below grade level and finished above. On average, his classmates’ scores rose about 13 points—which is almost 10 points more than fifth-graders with similar incoming test scores achieved in other low-income D.C. schools that year. On that first day of school, only 40 percent of Mr. Taylor’s students were doing math at grade level. By the end of the year, 90 percent were at or above grade level.
As for the other boy? Well, he ended the year the same way he’d started it—below grade level. In fact, only a quarter of the fifth-graders at Plummer finished the year at grade level in math—despite having started off at about the same level as Mr. Taylor’s class down the road. read more here -->
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Herskovits’ indifferent attitude towards politics led him to secretly sabotage the work of ostensible cohorts like W.E.B. DuBois, one of the few Black scholars tolerated by whites at the time. Jewish Week: Jewish Professor, Black Culture.
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About five years ago, Vincent Brown, a historian at Harvard, had to teach a seminar on the birth of black studies. Though the discipline has flourished since the 1960s, its origins were not well known, so Brown, an iPod-generation professor, thought a documentary on the topic might help. He was an amateur filmmaker himself, deft with a Camcorder, and figured he might try to make one on his own.
He knew he had some good material: in the 1920s, a young Jewish anthropologist named Melville Herskovits embarks on an expedition to Africa and finds striking similarities between the black cultures there and in America. The book he ends up writing, "The Myth of the Negro Past," published in 1941, becomes legend, rocketing him to the peak of academic success, all the while debunking the long-held belief that black Americans had no ties to their ancestral past.
Herskovits "was one of the most important people you’ve never heard of," Brown said in an interview from Cambridge, Mass. "But when it comes to the topic of African-American cultural history, he’s at the center of the debate."
Herskovits’ idea — that African culture was not lost when blacks were taken as slaves to America — would have profound ramifications. Some leading black scholars in the 1930s and ’40s feared that the idea would be used to justify segregation. After all, it could be viewed as fodder for the segregationist claim that black culture was hopelessly at odds with white mores, thus necessitating a barrier.
Moreover, Herskovits’ students at Northwestern, where he taught for nearly four decades and established its African Studies Center, the first at a major American university, were often suspicious. "Professor Herskovits seemed to think sometimes that he owned Africa," Johnnetta Cole, a former student of Herskovits, says in a new documentary about Herskovits. Titled "Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness," the film will have its premiere on PBS on Feb. 2, at 10:30 p.m.
read more here -->
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Black History month highlights the need for donors of color. PR Newswire: African-American Organ and Tissue Donors Changing History.
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As the accomplishments and sacrifices of African Americans in Pennsylvania are celebrated during Black History Month, more than 2,550 individuals from the African-American community in need of organ or tissue transplantation face an uncertain future.
A shortage of organ and tissue donors means nearly 60 percent of those needing a transplant will wait for more than a year. Many can expect to wait for more than five years. Waiting for matched organs may mean a recipient will be sicker at the time of transplant or, worse, die waiting.
African Americans in Pennsylvania can change the course of history by becoming organ and tissue donors. One organ and tissue donor can give more than 50 people a second chance at life.
"There is a critical need for registered donors from the African-American community in Pennsylvania," says Janice P. Kopelman, Deputy Secretary of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention for the Pennsylvania Department of Health. "People of color suffer disproportionately from health conditions such as heart disease, hypertension and kidney failure. For many, a transplant is a viable medical option." read more here -->
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President Obama has appointed the most progressive EPA chief in history — and she's moving swiftly to clean up the mess left by Bush. Rolling Stones: The Eco-Warrior.
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When it comes to passing major legislation — reforming health care, reining in Wall Street, curbing climate change — the Obama administration is under fire from all sides for bowing to special interests and conducting government business behind closed doors. But there's one agency where the hope and hype of the campaign trail have transitioned seamlessly into effective governance: the Environmental Protection Agency.
With a minimum of fanfare, new EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has established herself as the agency's most progressive chief ever — and one of the most powerful members of Obama's Cabinet. In her first year on the job, Jackson has not only turned the page on the industry-friendly and often illegal policies of the Bush era, but has embarked on an aggressive campaign to clean up the nation's air and drinking water. Under her leadership, the EPA has sought stricter limits on toxic pollutants like mercury, moved to scrub emissions of arsenic and heavy metals from coal-fired plants, and revoked a permit for the nation's largest mountaintop-removal coal mine. "The American people can be outraged when we're not living up to the P part of our name," Jackson says. "The protection part."
Even more striking, Jackson has expanded the EPA's mandate to include sweeping new powers to crack down on climate-warming pollution from cars and industry. The move, which has the full backing of the White House, could prove to be the only viable way to stop Big Oil and Big Coal from overheating the planet — especially after the disastrous collapse of climate talks in Copenhagen in December. "If Congress doesn't pass legislation on climate change," says Carol Browner, Obama's climate czar, "EPA will follow through under the requirements of the Clean Air Act." read more here -->
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Where race and ethnicity cross. Racialicous: Black Latinos, Stand Up!
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Ever have a conversation that seems normal enough and then takes a weird turn? This happened to me not long ago during a discussion about when L.A. Dodger Manny Ramirez would return to baseball.
All of a sudden the person I was speaking to asked, "What is he—black or Latino?"
To me, the answer was obvious. I mean, Manny Ramirez is caramel colored with coarse dreadlocks. He’s clearly black but his Spanish surname made the person I was talking to question this.
In fact, Ramirez was born in the Dominican Republic, the nation where the largest number of black Hispanics in America originate. Cuba, Puerto Rico and Panama round out the top places from where Afro-Latinos in the U.S. hail, according to Census data.
Although there are an estimated 1.7 million black Hispanics in this country, some people seem to have a hard time recognizing the existence of such individuals. Within days of being asked about Manny Ramirez’s ethnicity, I encountered people questioning actress Zoe Saldana’s. Like Ramirez, Saldana is also a black Dominican.
I had my third recent experience with someone clueless about the existence of black Hispanics when I wrote a story featuring a black Puerto Rican character. I received a note from a reader "informing" me that he didn’t think there were black Puerto Ricans, even the "really dark ones." Seriously?
What’s behind the confusion? Why is it difficult for people to grasp the concept that one can be both black and Hispanic? I’m sure much of it stems from the idea that all Hispanics are mestizo, or Spanish and Indian. There’s also ignorance about how slave traders brought Africans all over the Americas and not just to the United States. And because many Latin Americans don’t classify citizens by race and black heritage isn’t exactly coveted in the region, some black Latinos may not openly identify as black despite the evidence in their hair texture and skin color. (Cuban Marianne Pearl is a case in point.) Complicating matters is that in film and television, black Hispanics are often cast as African Americans rather than Afro-Latinos, adding to the group’s low-profile. read more here -->
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[] "News Organization" My Fat, Black Arse! by ohnoyoudont
[] Archaeology in Egypt: the Night Bus to Dakhleh (photos) by blue jersey mom
[] Slavery in US Prisons--An interview with Robert King and Terry Kupers by Angola 3 News
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