Cape Verde Islands
Commentary aaraujo, Black Kos Guest Commentator
Cape Verde is pronounced like Cape Verd (rhymes with herd). The language is Cape Verdean Creole (Portuguese mixed with African).
We call ourselves Creole and define our race as mostly mulatto (a centuries old biracial mixture of white Portuguese and black West African - mostly from Portuguese speaking Africa and Senegal) . The vast majority are Roman Catholics. Most Cape Verdeans live outside of Cape Verde in the Diaspora and the majority of those are in the US (and most of those in Southeastern New England).
Socially, Cape Verdeans live in the twilight zone between the Old World and the New World, between Europe and Africa, between Black and Brown. We have spread out from a tiny volcanic island nation to almost every single country on Earth. We are a people without borders. In the past we were pirates, slavers and whalers and now we co-mingle with all the races of the world.
During the 20th century severe droughts caused the deaths of 200,000 and prompted heavy emigration. But this tragic event could destroy the islands rich culture.
Cape Verde became free from her Portuguese colonial masters in July 5, 1975. Our national hero was the Marxist Amílcar Cabral who was killed by Portuguese agents on January 20, 1973.
Cape Verde Flag
Discovery
The uninhabited islands were discovered and colonized by the Portuguese in the 15th century; Cape Verde subsequently became a trading center for African slaves and later an important coaling and resupply stop for whaling and transatlantic shipping. Following independence in 1975, and a tentative interest in unification with Guinea-Bissau, a one-party system was established and maintained until multi-party elections were held in 1990. Cape Verde continues to exhibit one of Africa's most stable democratic governments. Repeated droughts during the second half of the 20th century caused significant hardship and prompted heavy emigration. As a result, Cape Verde's expatriate population is greater than its domestic one. Most Cape Verdeans have both African and Portuguese antecedents.
Cape Verde History:
In 1462, Portuguese settlers arrived at Santiago and founded Ribeira Grande (now Cidade Velha)--the first permanent European settlement city in the tropics. In the 16th century, the archipelago prospered from the transatlantic slave trade. Pirates occasionally attacked the Portuguese settlements. Sir Francis Drake sacked Ribeira Grande in 1585. After a French attack in 1712, the city declined in importance relative to Praia, which became the capital in 1770.
With the decline in the slave trade, Cape Verde's early prosperity slowly vanished. However, the islands' position astride mid-Atlantic shipping lanes made Cape Verde an ideal location for re-supplying ships. Because of its excellent harbor, Mindelo (on the island of São Vicente) became an important commercial center during the 19th century.
Portugal changed Cape Verde's status from a colony to an overseas province in 1951 in an attempt to blunt growing nationalism. Nevertheless, in 1956, Amilcar Cabral, a Cape Verdean, and a group of Cape Verdeans and Guinea-Bissauans organized (in Guinea-Bissau) the clandestine African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC), which demanded improvement in economic, social, and political conditions in Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea and formed the basis of the two nations' independence movement. Moving its headquarters to Conakry, Guinea in 1960, the PAIGC began an armed rebellion against Portugal in 1961. Acts of sabotage eventually grew into a war in Portuguese Guinea that pitted 10,000 Soviet bloc-supported PAIGC soldiers against 35,000 Portuguese and African troops.
By 1972, the PAIGC controlled much of Portuguese Guinea despite the presence of the Portuguese troops, but the organization did not attempt to disrupt Portuguese control in Cape Verde. Portuguese Guinea declared independence in 1973 and was granted de jure independence in 1974. Following the April 1974 revolution in Portugal, the PAIGC became an active political movement in Cape Verde. In December 1974, the PAIGC and Portugal signed an agreement providing for a transitional government composed of Portuguese and Cape Verdeans. On June 30, 1975, Cape Verdeans elected a National Assembly, which received the instruments of independence from Portugal on July 5, 1975.
Immediately following the November 1980 coup in Guinea-Bissau, relations between Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau became strained. Cape Verde abandoned its hope for unity with Guinea-Bissau and formed the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV). Problems have since been resolved, and relations between the countries are good. The PAICV and its predecessor established a one-party system and ruled Cape Verde from independence until 1990.
Responding to growing pressure for pluralistic democracy, the PAICV called an emergency congress in February 1990 to discuss proposed constitutional changes to end one-party rule. Opposition groups came together to form the Movement for Democracy (MPD) in Praia in April 1990. Together, they campaigned for the right to contest the presidential election scheduled for December 1990. The one-party state was abolished September 28, 1990, and the first multi-party elections were held in January 1991. The MPD won a majority of the seats in the National Assembly, and MPD presidential candidate Mascarenhas Monteiro defeated the PAICV's candidate with 73.5% of the votes. Legislative elections in December 1995 increased the MPD majority in the National Assembly. The party won 50 of the National Assembly's 72 seats. A February 1996 presidential election returned President Mascarenhas Monteiro to office.
Legislative elections in January 2001 returned power to the PAICV, with the PAICV holding 40 of the National Assembly seats, MPD 30, and Party for Democratic Convergence (PCD) and Party for Labor and Solidarity (PTS) 1 each. In February 2001, the PAICV-supported presidential candidate Pedro Pires defeated former MPD leader Carlos Veiga by only 12 votes. The PAICV won again in legislative elections in January 2006, with 41 seats for the PAICV, 29 for the MPD, and 2 for the UCID (Cape Verdean Independent and Democratic Union). Pedro Pires, supported by the PAICV, won the presidential election again in 2006.
Our most famous musician is Césaria Évora and our most famous song is Sodade in a uniquely Cape Verde genre called Morna (closest translation is "Blues")
Two last things; here is a bit on Cape Verdean Americans. Here is a bit of trivia, Mount Fogo is an active volcano that last erupted in 1995 and the most powerful type of Atlantic hurricanes form over these desert islands.
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News by dopper0189
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Pontchartrain Park in New Orleans is the oldest planned middle-class Black community in NO and one of the oldest in the country. Atlanta Journal Constitution:
Rebuilding a Katrina-ravaged community
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Much of the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath has largely centered on the lower Ninth Ward area of New Orleans, widely considered to be the epicenter of the disaster.
But as we approach the fifth anniversary of the most destructive and costliest natural disaster in our nation’s history, homeowners in the historic African-American community where I grew up in another part of the Ninth Ward are also struggling to rebuild their houses, lives and deeply rooted community ties.
Pontchartrain Park is the oldest planned middle-class African-American community in New Orleans and one of the oldest of its kind in the country. Built during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in Louisiana, "the Park," as us natives call it, gave black New Orleanians all the benefits of suburbia within the city. With more than 1,000 modest ranch homes, wide curving streets and 200 acres of green space, it included a golf course and later a Little League ballpark and tennis courts.
This community was a safe haven for working-class blacks and, in many ways, shielded those of us in later generations from the harsh realities of racism and prejudice. Somebody once told The Times-Picayune newspaper that growing up in Pontchartrain Park was like growing up on "Leave It Beaver." I can relate.
In an era where American families are often disconnected and scattered across the country, this was always a close-knit community where familial bonds were not only the norm, but they were strong and celebrated.
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Feminism, race, ethnicity all covered in this post. Huffington Post: Is (Black) Beauty Still a Feminist Issue?
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Last night I read my friends' tweets about the Miss Universe Pageant. But I didn't watch it. I am an old fashioned feminist when it comes to pageants. They turn my stomach. I find them embarrassing and absurd. But I can't be preachy about my dislike.
After all, I love fashion magazines, the ones filled with fantasies of over-the-top consumption and impossible beauty and I won't apologize for that indulgence, so I have no judgment for pageant watchers. Pageants just aren't for me.
But out of curiosity this morning I looked at the Miss Universe contestants online, inspired by the internet chatter. And lo and behold I was shocked when I realized that Miss Ecuador, Miss Honduras and Miss Nicaragua, were all Latinas of African descent. Only recently have noticeably Indian and African looking women begun to be featured on Latin American television and film, and still in small numbers.
Despite substantial African-descended populations throughout Latin America, they remain even more invisible in U.S. popular culture, notwithstanding the writings of Junot Diaz, Veronica Chambers, and Rosario Ferre, among others, who insightfully depict the fabric of race, history, and culture in Latin American nations.
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For almost 3 decades beginning in 1936, many Black travelers relied on a booklet "The Negro Motorist Handbook" to help them decide where they could comfortably eat, sleep, buy gas, find a tailor or beauty parlor. New York Times: The Open Road Wasn’t Quite Open to All
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For almost three decades beginning in 1936, many African-American travelers relied on a booklet to help them decide where they could comfortably eat, sleep, buy gas, find a tailor or beauty parlor, shop on a honeymoon to Niagara Falls, or go out at night. In 1949, when the guide was 80 pages, there were five recommended hotels in Atlanta. In Cheyenne, Wyo., the Barbeque Inn was the place to stay.
A Harlem postal employee and civic leader named Victor H. Green conceived the guide in response to one too many accounts of humiliation or violence where discrimination continued to hold strong. These were facts of life not only in the Jim Crow South, but in all parts of the country, where black travelers never knew where they would be welcome. Over time its full title — "The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide" — became abbreviated, simply, as the "Green Book." Those who needed to know about it knew about it. To much of the rest of America it was invisible, and by 1964, when the last edition was published, it slipped through the cracks into history.
Until he met a friend’s elderly father-in-law at a funeral a few years ago, the Atlanta writer Calvin Alexander Ramsey had never heard of the guide. But he knew firsthand the reason it existed. During his family trips between Roxboro, N.C., and Baltimore, "we packed a big lunch so my parents didn’t have to worry about having to stop somewhere that might not serve us," recalled Mr. Ramsey, who is now 60.
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Never mind Katrina and the Gulf oil spill. There's a reason the rallying cry here is, "Laissez les bon temps rouler." It's all about letting the good times roll -- by any means necessary The Root: New Orleans: The Real City That Never Sleeps
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New Orleans has been through a lot. In the five years since Katrina and four months of the BP drilling disaster, we have seen more than our share of trauma and loss. But this is still a city where the streets are always alive with music and culture. In New Orleans, we dance at funerals because we mourn through celebration. It's a city of kindness and community, where bars never close, where you can find great live music with no cover (and sometimes free food) on any night of the week -- and almost every weekend has a festival or some kind of street party.
In an early episode of Treme, the HBO drama dedicated to embracing New Orleans culture, a character based on local musician Davis Rogan advises some young Christian volunteers to check out a neighborhood bar named Bullets, where every Tuesday night the much beloved musician Kermit Ruffins plays. When Davis runs into the volunteers the next afternoon, they haven't slept. They've been out all night, having the time of their lives, forgetting all of their volunteering responsibilities.
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The conservative 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overrules two Southern juries to declare that the use of the term "boy" by a supervisor is not evidence of discrimination. The Root:
When 'Boy' Is Not a Racist Remark
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Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's book Racism Without Racists is an essential read for anyone trying to understand race in 21st-century America. But even Bonilla-Silva's thesis -- that the American liberal embrace of "colorblindness" ignores the attitudes, policies and practices of institutional and unconscious racism that perpetuate racial inequality -- could not have prepared us for what we see unfolding today. The wave of mass hysteria that's taken over the far right since the election of President Barack Obama has produced an even more pernicious phenomenon: the virtual eradication of a narrative of anti-black racism.
Neither Mel's Gibson's admonishment to his wife that her attire might result in rape by "a pack of n****ers"; nor Glenn Beck's decision to hold a conservative "answer" to Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech on the anniversary of the March on Washington; nor Dr. Laura Schlessinger's "n-word"-laced tirade against a black caller; nor the daily, deliberate and malicious character assassination of our president as those on the right depict him as a dangerous alien is regarded as evidence of racism. Each individual act or statement is stripped of context, common-sense interpretation and obvious intent. Anti-black racism has been relegated to a mere figment of the imaginations of blacks seeking to limit the "First Amendment right" of whites to speak their mind.
It's one thing to have to tolerate this "race through the looking glass" fable on cable TV, or even to hear it gain increasing currency in political discourse. But it's another thing entirely when these fantasies make their way into the courtroom and take on the stamp of law. And that's just what's happening in some Southern courts. In one case several years ago, the Louisiana Supreme Court found that it was not racial when a prosecutor compared a black defendant to O.J. Simpson because, the court said, the prosecutor never mentioned the race of either O.J. Simpson or the defendant. The Supreme Court reversed the Louisiana court.
Now there's last week's decision in Ash v. Tyson Foods. In an unpublished opinion, two judges on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Edward Carnes and William Pryor Jr., reversed the findings of two successive Alabama juries who'd found in favor of a black plaintiff, John Hithon, who claimed that he was passed over for a promotion in favor of less qualified white candidates at a Tyson Foods plant in Gadsden, Ala. The jury found that the Tyson manager had discriminated and awarded Hithon back pay, $300,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages. The 11th Circuit wiped out the jury verdict.
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For most of the 20th century the U.S. imprisonment rate stayed about the same from year to year, but it began to soar in the early 1980s with tough-on-crime policies and especially the war on drugs. Seatle Times: Social inequality in prisons
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Becky Pettit's latest paper strengthens a point she's made in the past about imprisonment's impact on black and Latino populations from disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Pettit says we are creating an outcast group that sustains itself from generation to generation. We could fix that and lower the crime rate by improving the life prospects of disadvantaged people. At a time when dollars are short, we need to be reminded what spending gets us the most for our money.
Washington is already doing some things right. The Department of Corrections, for instance, has education programs and skills training as part of its core goals. We need to stand behind that work.
And when we are talking about improving K-12 education for all students, we should think of that as part of our public-safety policy.
Pettit is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Washington and her paper is part of an issue of Daedalus, a magazine of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The summer issue is dedicated to issues of imprisonment and inequality.
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[] My ten year old niece is a racist by owl06
[] Owning My Racism by scribe
[] Do Racist Judges Still Exist in Georgia? by Bruce Reilly
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Happy Friday the Front Porch is Open