What New Year’s resolutions can not-Black folks make for 2025 to fight back against the incoming racist regime?
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
2025 is right around the corner. I realize that for many of us, the “New Year” signals hardships ahead under the ascension of a racist, sexist, supremacist incompetent convicted felon to the highest seat of power here in the States.
The vast majority of Black folks did their Black job in voting against what has come to pass. Many of us are unsurprisingly very disheartened (I’m being nice — pissed off is more like it) about how certain demographic clusters of not-Black folks have once again failed to live up to “promises.”
I’m not talking about MAGAS. We know who they are and what they support.
We bin known about who our allies have been, and not been for over 400 years. Today many of us are side-eying people who wound up not giving a flying f**k about what happens to us Black folks in the upcoming reign of insane. Many of y’all are gonna be okay (you think) and it’s possible that’s true for some of you. Others of you may just find out what it’s like to have been Black in America all these generations.
I’ve heard grumblings from quite a few not-Black people about the attitudes being expressed by Black folks on social media who are in FAFO mode. For those of you not familiar with the term it is an acronym for “Fuck Around and Find Out.” For those of you who are still suffering from and proud of being “more progressive than thou” by not voting or choosing Jill Stein, the moment of truth awaits. I sit here and wonder if it will ever dawn on you that not-Blackness ain’t gonna save you.
We know we are an easy target. Bin’ known. Melanin tells on us. We know we are only 13% of the population. Our existence depends on building bridges and allyship, even when uncomfortable. Always has. We live in two worlds. A Black world created by centuries of segregation, race creation and hate, and a white world we observe, work in, and sometimes even marry with. Read Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” if you never have. Listen to James Baldwin debate William Buckley. None of this is a secret.
We’ve crawled forward over time — from Dred Scott— to the Civil Rights Act, and once again we are shoved backwards. Some of you excuse yourselves from association with those who opted to vote to take us backward by pronouncing that you voted for Obama, or Kamala. Now that she has lost, I’m reading comments made by far too many of you making it her fault. Or Obama’s fault — anything that lifts the onus off of you and yours — your co-workers, family members, neighbors.
I’ve been writing commentaries for Black Kos for many years now. Thank you David (dopper0189) for creating this oasis for those of us who are unabashedly Black, and for the few white/notBlack folks who “get it” and are not uncomfortable with it. I’ll emphasize “few” because in this huge DKos space we actually have very few regular reader/commenters.
We even get visitors here who waltz into the comments and call some of our members “racist.” I remember someone objecting to our name, and wanting to know why was there no “White Kos”
SMDH.
FYI: Because we are being our very own Black selves doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with each other all of the time. There is diversity in Blackness. We are not a monolith. However — it is still Blackness no matter what. (Even right wing Black folks are at risk for stop and frisk, shoot first and ask no questions after death squads) Bleaching cream won’t cut it.
We get visitors here who have no clue that most of the membership of Black Kos is white — white readers, commenters and an Editor. Our knowledgeable membership is comfortable with it and they don’t try to tell us who are Black that we have to make them comfortable by stifling how we feel about things, or a need to edit, self-censor the words we use.
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I have a few questions for you, if you are not-Black and still reading.
Do you have any very close Black friends? (not talking about acquaintances)
Do you have any Black family members?
Have you ever had, or do you have a Black boss/supervisor?
What organization that has Black leadership have you ever joined, have been or are a member of?
Do you have any Black neighbors?
Is where you live segregated (most of the U.S. still is)? If so — why are you there, and what have you done to change that?
If most of your answers to these questions is “no” (or yes to the last one) what can you resolve to do in 2025 to help change things?
I know how some of my closest not-Black friends grew up to be the human beings they are. Some commenters/community members here in Black Kos have also shared their own experiences/and exposures.
I’m interested in hearing from readers, who are willing to make resolutions and hoping that we can work together towards forging a more equitable path forward.
In case you’re wondering why I use “Not-Black” as an identifier term, I have real problems with the use of the term “non-white” since it centers whiteness, which I’ve written about in the past in “I am not 'non-white'”
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The renowned poet Nikki Giovanni has died. Giovanni died on Monday, Dec. 9, following her third cancer diagnosis, according to a statement from friend and author Renée Watson. She was 81. "We will forever be grateful for the unconditional time she gave to us, to all her literary children across the writerly world," said poet Kwame Alexander in the statement.
Giovanni published her first poetry collection, Black Feeling Black Talk, in 1968. It established her as an emerging figure out of the Black Arts Movement. In it, Giovanni writes about the intersections of love, politics, loneliness and race. Her language is sometimes spare and longing, other times dense and righteous. The final lines in "Word Poem" read, "let's build / what we become /when we dream."
She was born Yolanda Cornelia Giovanni, Jr., on June 7, 1943, in Knoxville, Tenn. Though she grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and its surrounding suburbs, she returned to Nashville to attend Fisk University for college. There, she met other writers who'd become leading Black literary figures – Dudley Randall, Margaret Walker, Amiri Baraka and more. While at Fisk, she also re-established the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
As her writing career took off, Giovanni became a regular guest on Soul!, a Black arts and culture talk show on WNET. Her conversation with the acclaimed writer James Baldwin came on the heels of being named "Woman of the Year" by both Ebony magazine and Mademoiselle.
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Despite the political climate, 2024 has been the Year of the Woman in sports. Recently, interest in women’s sports peaked as the industry saw record viewership, attendance, sponsorships, and revenue across sports categories. So much so that stars like Whoopi Goldberg launched the All Women’s Sports Network (AWSN), the first global women’s sports channel, and WNBA stars launched the Unrivaled Women’s Basketball League.
Though most athletes care more about their craft than their coins, tracking female athletes, especially Black female athletes’ earnings, is particularly important as athletes in these demographics have historically been underpaid in comparison to their white and male counterparts. Last week, Sportico released its list of the highest-paid female athletes of 2024, in which Black female athletes showed some of the highest earnings.
According to this year’s list, Coco Gauff took the number one spot for the second year in a row, earning approximately $30 million in endorsements and salary/prize money. Fellow tennis star Naomi Osaka, who came in sixth on the list, earned nearly $15 million this year. The list also included Olympic gymnast and gold medalist Simone Biles, who reportedly earned $11.1 million.
While these women reached incredible financial heights, their recorded earnings do not even reflect half of what the highest-paid Black male athletes reportedly made. Forbes’ annual highest-paid athlete list reported that LeBron James earned $128.2 million, followed by other Black athletes like Giannis Antetokounmpo with $111 million, Kylian Mbappé with $110 million, and Stephen Curry with $102 million.
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About 200 people were killed in violence in Haiti’s capital over the weekend, many in a massacre in which a gang boss reportedly targeted Voodoo practitioners.
The killings of at least 110 people were overseen by a “powerful gang leader” convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, according to the civil organisation the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD).
“He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and Voodoo practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of sending a bad spell on his son,” a statement from the Haiti-based group said. “The gang’s soldiers were responsible for identifying victims in their homes to take them to the chief’s stronghold to be executed.”
The UN rights commissioner, Volker Turk, said at least 184 people had died over the weekend. “These latest killings bring the death toll just this year in Haiti to a staggering 5,000 people,” he told reporters in Geneva.
Both the CPD and UN said that the massacre took place in the capital’s western coastal neighbourhood of Cité Soleil.
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Chaotic scenes have broken out in the Bahamas parliament after the indictment of senior police officers on drug trafficking charges sparked a heated debate over corruption, in which the deputy opposition leader tossed a ceremonial mace out a window.
During the incident, Shanendon Cartwright of the opposition Free National Movement approached the speaker, Patricia Deveaux, after she did not allow him to speak, grabbed the parliamentary mace, and tossed it out of a nearby window.
The turmoil came as the country’s top police official, commissioner Clayton Fernander, resigned following the indictment of three police officers in what the US Department of Justice described as a “massive cocaine importation conspiracy enabled by corrupt Bahamian government officials, including high-ranking members of the Royal Bahamas police force”.
US prosecutors said that since May 2021, drug traffickers had smuggled tons of cocaine through the Bahamas with the help of corrupt local officials who controlled airports and disclosed information about US Coast Guard movements.
According to the indictment, the bribes that officials were promised or given ranged from $10,000 to $2m to facilitate trafficking, including the movement of 1,320lbs (600kg) of cocaine through the Bahamas’ main international airport.
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As the school year approaches its final stretch in 2025, high school seniors are starting to make their final preparations for life after graduation. For many of those students, that means choosing to continue their education in college.
In the case of Black students, many of them might choose to look at attending one of the more than 100 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) across the United States as a viable choice. Not only do HBCUs present an opportunity to connect with like-minded students and embrace the Black experience, but tuition and admission fees for many HBCUs are also below the national average costs for higher education.
MORE: A Wake-Up Call for HBCUs: The Trump Administration’s Impact On Funding And Legacy
According to the Education Data Initiative, the average cost of college in the United States has more than doubled in the 21st century.
- The average in-state student attending a public 4-year institution and living on-campus spends $27,146 for one academic year.
- The average cost of in-state tuition is $9,750, while out-of-state tuition averages $27,457.
- The average private, nonprofit university student living on-campus spends $58,628 per year, with $38,768 of it going to tuition and fees alone.
According to the latest statistics released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. spends more per student on colleges and universities than every other country in the developed world.
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Voices & Soul
“… we will call this woeman and her/
name will be sapphire and she will divide into four parts/
that simone may sing a song… “/
-- Nikki Giovanni
"Poem For A Lady Whose Voice I Like"
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Editor
I come from a strong Matriarchy, so strong in fact, one might say I come from a feminist extended-family. There was no division of labor by gender when doing chores, growing up, all of us mowed the lawn, washed dishes, cooked, cleaned. When we lived on the farm outside of Corvallis, all of us learned to sew and sow.
The great Matriarch of the Family, our Great Aunt Mabel, lived to be 102. Shortly after marriage in the late 1880's, she and her new husband provisioned a covered wagon and trekked across the plains on their way to California. Along the way, as she put it, "he wasn't up to snuff, so I had to kick him out." She took up with another fellow during the almost year long voyage and he was "worse than the first", so he was sent packing as well. It took a special man to be with this special woman, as it has been, as it is and as it will be with all the women in my family.
I've heard the accusation, on more than one occasion, that the women in the family are "full of themselves."
"Yes," is their unabashed reply, resonating across the generations, "yes we are!"
I met Nikki Giovanni at a few readings back in the day when I was full of myself and thought my work was not self-serving. But I was willing to listen, I was willing to learn. It might have taken some time for me to learn to shut up, but she was always so gracious. I will miss her greatly.
so he said: you ain’t got no talent
if you didn’t have a face
you wouldn’t be nobody
and she said: god created heaven and earth
and all that’s Black within them
so he said: you ain’t really no hot shit
they tell me plenty sisters
take care better business than you
and she said: on the third day he made chitterlings
and all good things to eat
and said: “that’s good”
so he said: if the white folks hadn’t been under
yo skirt and been giving you the big play
you’d a had to come on uptown like everybody else
and she replied: then he took a big Black greasy rib
from adam and said we will call this woeman and her
name will be sapphire and she will divide into four parts
that simone may sing a song
and he said: you pretty full of yourself ain’t chu
so she replied: show me someone not full of herself
and i’ll show you a hungry person
-- Nikki Giovanni
"Poem For A Lady Whose Voice I Like"
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- Nina Simone
"Four Women"
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
