Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Contributor
"As much as things change, things remain the same." "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."
How many times have we heard those refrains? Yet, are they any less true if we had heard them but once? Or a lifetime's worth? It may be human nature that requires us to be constantly reminded of that which went before; or it may be the affliction Gore Vidal coined, "American Amnesia".
Langston Hughes wrote the following that has the eerie echo of events just happening. But he wrote it when jackboots were beginning a goosestep across the Polish plains; when an American Corporatocracy consolidated wealth in the hands of a distinct few, while tens of millions toiled and starved; when a respected journal published an...
Advertisement For The Waldorf-Astoria: Langston Hughes
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Walk through Peacock Alley tonight before dinner, and get warm, anyway.
You've got nothing else to do.
-- Langston Hughes
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Commentary
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Today's spotlight is on a woman that excelled at physics. She created and patented a technique for projecting 3-D images. Here name is Valerie Thomas
As a child, Valerie Thomas became fascinated with the mysteries of technology, tinkering with electronics with her father and reading books on electronics written for adolescent boys. The likelihood of her enjoying a career in science seemed bleak, as her all-girls high school did not push her to take advanced science or math classes or encourage her in that direction. Nonetheless, her curiosity was piqued and upon her graduation from high school, she set out on the path to become a scientist.
Thomas enrolled at Morgan State University and performed exceedingly well as a student, graduating with a degree in physics (one of only two women in her class to do so). She accepted a position with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), serving as a data analyst. After establishing herself within the agency, she was asked to manage the "Landsat" project, an image processing system that would allow a satellite to transmit images from space.
[snip]
In 1977 she began experimenting with flat mirrors and concave mirrors. Flat mirrors, of course, provide a reflection of an object which appear to lie behind the glass surface. A concave mirror, on the other hand, presents a reflection that appears to exist in front of the glass, thereby providing the illusion that they exist in a three-dimensional manner....Read more
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This Weeks News by Amazinggrace and dopper0189, Black Kos Editor and Managing Editor
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The old and the young are always most affected by natural disasters. New York Times: Earthquake’s Burdens Weigh Heavily on Haiti’s Elderly.
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Junie Sufrad, 110 years old, stopped suddenly as she described what life was like in the Haitian countryside before electricity, paved roads and cars.
"I don’t know if it makes me lucky or unlucky to still be here. It’s like part of me is gone." — Junie Sufrad, a 110-year-old survivor of the Haiti earthquake.
"I don’t know if it makes me lucky or unlucky to still be here," she said after a long pause, adding that although she was missing no limbs, the January earthquake had made her an amputee. "It’s like part of me is gone."
Ms. Sufrad is a monument to the past in a nation that has been severed from it.
Like other aged survivors of the earthquake, she is a rare repository of this country’s history and culture, but she said she considered her memories as much a painful burden as a proud legacy.
read more here -->
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Latin American Herald Tribune: Obama Urged to End Limits on Educational Travel to Cuba.
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Experts, former officials and some university chancellors appealed on Tuesday to U.S. President Barack Obama to end restrictions "immediately" on academic, cultural, sports and scientific exchanges with Cuba.
At a conference in Washington organized by the Center for International Policy, members of the Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel said the restrictions are a legacy of the Bush administration and should not be continued by Obama.
The former chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Wayne Smith, questioned the fact that Obama still has not taken the "easiest step" in his policy of rapprochement with Havana and has only lifted restrictions on Cuban-Americans’ travel and remittances to the island.
read more here -->
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Race Talk: How the War on Drugs gave birth to a permanent American undercaste.
Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s "triumph over race." Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America.
Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that "the land of the free" has finally made good on its promise of equality. There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land.
Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.
Most people don’t like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the "era of colorblindness" there’s a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have "moved beyond" race. Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:
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Such a sad story. New York Times: A Trailblazer of Civil Rights Dies Forgotten.
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Neighbors were chagrined last week when the police here found the body of a 75-year-old woman who had frozen to death, alone in her house, during unexpectedly frigid weather.
Juanita W. Goggins in 1974, when she became the first black woman elected to the South Carolina legislature.
Last year, part of Highway 5 in Rock Hill, S.C., was renamed for her.
But they were shocked this week when they learned that the woman, Juanita W. Goggins, had been a civil rights trailblazer who in 1974 became the first black woman elected to the South Carolina legislature.
Now residents of this normally neighborly Southern capital say they are feeling regretful, and slightly guilty, for allowing one of its most revered figures to disappear into a sleepy ranch house with little company. Possibly mentally ill, living without running water or heat, Ms. Goggins is believed to have died on Feb. 20 — when temperatures dropped below freezing — but her body was not discovered for 11 days.
Several neighbors in her elderly, mostly black community in downtown Columbia said they had learned the full scope of Ms. Goggins’s accomplishments only from her obituaries. At the peak of her political career, in the 1970s, she twice visited President Jimmy Carter at the White House and was the first black woman appointed to the United States Civil Rights Commission.
read more here -->
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Chicago Sun-Times: Black Saint
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The Archdiocese of Chicago announced that Cardinal Francis George is pushing sainthood for a Chicago clergyman who was born into slavery and went on to become the first Black American Catholic priest.
read more here -->
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NewsOne: OPINION: Ron Paul And Glenn Beck Promote White Right Wing Terrorism.
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Since the election of Barack Obama there have been several instances of "lone wolf" terrorism. The media has focused a lot of attention on the cases of Nidal Hasan, the army psychiatrist who killed 13 men in a Fort Hood shooting rampage, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who brought explosives onto a plain destined for Detroit.
After their incidents, there was a mad rush to find out what there ideologies were, both politically and religiously. Though both clearly had mental issues, the incidents were treated as politically motivated terror attacks.
Muslims and Africans aren’t the only people who have been involved in politically motivated attacks on the government. Since the election of Barack Obama, there has been a resurgence of white right wing politically motivated terrorism. Since Obama’s election we have had several white terrorists who were motivated by racism, hatred of the government and conspiracy theories.
Of the five major incidents of white terrorism, congressman Ron Paul directly influenced four of them. Paul’s promotion of conspiracies, paranoia and connections to racism has led to him being a magnet for lunatics, white supremacists and conspiracy theorists.
The first Ron Paul influenced terrorist is Richard Poplawki. Poplawski got in argument with his mother and she called the cops. When the cops arrived Poplawski was waiting for them with a bulletproof vest and shot five police officers with an AK-47, wounding two and killing three, including an African American.
read more here -->
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Race Talk: Want to know what’s wrong with the War on Drugs?
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It’s the first time that 1 in every 100 adult Americans is in prison, proof of an exploding prison system that our country can ill afford and a movement away from rehabilitation programs. Even more disturbing are the racial disparities within the prison system. More than 60% of people in prison are racial and ethnic minorities which means that 1 in every 36 Hispanic adults and 1 in every 15 black adults are in prison. How did this all happen? A change in laws and policies over the past decade have convicted more offenders, including non violent offenders, and put them away for increasingly lengthy sentences. For many, it is a system that is not providing the same returns in public safety in relation to this growth, and a rapid movement to change unfair laws has seen growing progress.
The 1980’s saw the "War on Drugs" launched in a big way. It was also the time for many federal policies that disadvantaged communities of color. One example: sentences for crack cocaine offenses (the kind found in poor Black communities) that were treated a 100 times more severely than powder cocaine offenses (the kind that dominates White communities). According to the Drug Policy Alliance Network,
Reform advocates say no other single federal policy is more responsible for gross racial disparities in the federal criminal justice system than the crack/powder sentencing disparity. Even though two-thirds of crack cocaine users are white, more than 80 percent of those convicted in federal court for crack cocaine offenses are African American.
The differences in sentencing were based on a myth that crack cocaine was more dangerous than powder cocaine and that it was instantly addictive and caused violent behavior, all of which has been disproved. What it’s actually led to is a costly system that focuses on low-level offenders and users instead of dealers and suppliers, imprisoning addicts that could benefit from rehabilitation programs. One analysis by Senator Richard Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois, estimates that an increased focus on community programs and an end to the sentencing disparity could lead to a savings of half-a-billion dollars in prison costs.
read more here -->
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McClatchy: Pardons sought for 'criminals' who helped free slaves
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The Rev. Calvin Fairbank spent 17 years in a Kentucky prison — suffering beatings and brutal labor — for committing the felony of helping slaves escape to freedom. Released in 1864, a broken man, he kissed the dirt of Ohio upon reaching that free state.
"Out of the jaws of Hell!" Fairbank cried, according to his autobiography.
In the 19th century, Kentucky convicted at least 58 people for "seducing or enticing slaves to leave their lawful owners." Defendants faced 20 years in the Kentucky State Penitentiary, where some died. One, David C. McDonald, was forgotten and languished in prison until 1870, five years after slavery was abolished.
Now, several men are working to clear the names of those — men and women, black and white — whose "crimes" today would be recognized as among mankind's finest acts.
read more here -->
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[] Race disparities in sentencing. by futurebird
[] What Haitians Want From Americans (And What They Don't) by Bev Bell
[] It Takes a Village to Raise a Racist, It Takes a Train to Cry by Justice Putnam