The more things change…
Rant by Chitown Kev
Good afternoon and it is good to be back on The Porch...for the first time in 2020.
And I have a lot of stuff planned for this year in this space but...it’s primary season and...you guessed it...I have a rant to get out.
Four years ago, I wrote this very mocking diary about how white Democratic contenders seem to always fall in love with people of color generally and black folks specifically every four years (luckily, the comment section of the linked diary was hijacked into a discussion of food!).
At the same time, people (and I presume that the overwhelming majority, at least here at Daily Kos, are white) are working themselves into conniptions asking why black people vote the way that they do.
Just as they did four years ago...and 12 years ago...and going way back, probably.
I mean, Black Kos appears here twice a week. Many Black Kos editors write individual diaries on some aspect of Black history, Black culture, Black something, and that includes Black voting behavior as evidence by exit polls and analysis and current polling
Here’s two of my own examples here and here.
Yet a lot of times it seems to me that instead of reading and studying a little bit on the subject (and there’s a loooooooot of available material on the subject even here in the Daily Kos archives) and accepting the black vote as it is and black people (including myself) as we (generally) are (in all of our diversity), people would rather project, make sinister accusations, etc.
I have very little patience for that in 2020 and after several election cycles, especially here at a place that’s supposed to be about electing more and better Democrats.
We have to do better.
And to make this personal, I do think that I have to do better, as well and that will be my goal for 2020.
Ultimately, though, all I can do is lead a horse to water...and you know the rest.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Cultural expectations can weigh extra heavily on blacks. An OZY original series exploring how Black Americans are confronting elder care. Ozy: THE UNEQUAL FINANCIAL BURDEN FOR BLACK CAREGIVERS
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Carlo St. Juste Jr. is on his way to bring his mother to a hospital appointment when he takes OZY’s call. A part-time acupuncturist and businessman, St. Juste is also the primary caregiver for his 69-year-old mom, who suffers from chronic kidney disease and diabetes.
“I’ve organized my time so I can do these things for her,” says St. Juste, 38. Before taking care of his mom, he did the same for his paternal grandmother, so he’s used to the commitment and balance that constant care for loved ones require. But that’s not to say it’s easy.
St. Juste, who was born in the United States to immigrant parents from Haiti, is one of an estimated 41 million caregivers in the U.S. who handle such commitments in addition to other duties, which often include full- or part-time jobs and other family responsibilities. In St. Juste’s case, that includes a young daughter.
All caregivers could use more support for what is a fundamental but often invisible role. But the financial strain on African American caregivers is particularly acute when compared with their White counterparts. Generally, African American caregivers have lower household incomes than White caregivers, but spend similar amounts of money on caretaking, according to research by the AARP. Effectively, they face a greater financial “care burden.”
Some 57 percent of African American caregivers spend more than 34 percent of their annual income on costs associated with providing care, compared with 14 percent for White caregivers. This commitment extends to people’s time — 57 percent of African American caregivers meet the standard of “high burden” and spend on average 30 hours a week caring for their loved one.
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President Trump made a stark appeal to black Americans during the 2016 election when he asked, “What have you got to lose?” Three years later, black Americans have rendered their verdict on his presidency with a deeply pessimistic assessment of their place in the United States under a leader seen by an overwhelming majority as racist.
The findings come from a Washington Post-Ipsos poll of African Americans nationwide, which reveals fears about whether their children will have a fair shot to succeed and a belief that white Americans don’t fully appreciate the discrimination that black people experience.
While personally optimistic about their own lives, black Americans today offer a bleaker view about their community as a whole. They also express determination to try to limit Trump to a single term in office.
More than 8 in 10 black Americans say they believe Trump is a racist and that he has made racism a bigger problem in the country. Nine in 10 disapprove of his job performance overall.
The pessimism goes well beyond assessments of the president. A 65 percent majority of African Americans say it is a “bad time” to be a black person in America. That view is widely shared by clear majorities of black adults across income, generational and political lines. By contrast, 77 percent of black Americans say it is a “good time” to be a white person, with a wide majority saying white people don’t understand the discrimination faced by black Americans.
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Guangzhou China has earned the nickname “Chocolate City” in Chinese because of the 150,000 African immigrants living there who Grapple with the question: Is it racism or ignorance? And how do you distinguish the two? quartz: China has an irrational fear of a “black invasion” bringing drugs, crime, and interracial marriage
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In March, amid the pomp of China’s annual rubber-stamp parliament meetings in Beijing, a politician proudly shared with reporters his proposal on how to “solve the problem of the black population in Guangdong.” The province is widely known in China to have many African migrants.
“Africans bring many security risks,” Pan Qinglin told local media (link in Chinese). As a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the nation’s top political advisory body, he urged the government to “strictly control the African people living in Guangdong and other places.”
Pan, who lives in Tianjin near Beijing—and nowhere near Guangdong—held his proposal aloft for reporters to see. It read in part (links in Chinese):
“Black brothers often travel in droves; they are out at night out on the streets, nightclubs, and remote areas. They engage in drug trafficking, harassment of women, and fighting, which seriously disturbs law and order in Guangzhou… Africans have a high rate of AIDS and the Ebola virus that can be transmitted via body fluids… If their population [keeps growing], China will change from a nation-state to an immigration country, from a yellow country to a black-and-yellow country.”
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Of course, while a growing number of Africans work and study in China—the African continent’s largest trading partner—the notion that black people are “taking over” the world’s most populous nation is nonsense. Estimates for the number of sub-Saharan Africans in Guangzhou (nicknamed “Chocolate City” in Chinese) range from 150,000 long-term residents, according to 2014 government statistics, to as high as 300,000—figures complicated by the number of Africans coming in and out of the country as well as those who overstay their visas.
Many of them partner with Chinese firms to run factories, warehouses, and export operations. Others are leaving China and telling their compatriots not to go due to financial challenges and racism.
“Guangdong has come to be imagined to embody this racial crisis of some kind of ‘black invasion,'” said Kevin Carrico, a lecturer at Macquarie University in Australia who studies race and nationalism in China. “But this is not about actually existing realities.” He continued:
“It isn’t so much that they dislike black residents as they dislike what they imagine about black residents. The types of discourses you see on social media sites are quite repetitive—black men raping Chinese women, black men having consensual sex with Chinese women and then leaving them, blacks as drug users and thieves destroying Chinese neighborhoods. People are living in a society that is changing rapidly. ‘The blacks’ has become a projection point for all these anxieties in society.”
The past year or so has seen heated debate among black people living in China about what locals think of them. In interviews with Quartz, black residents referred to online comments and racist ads as more extreme examples, but said they are symptomatic of broader underlying attitudes.
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The barge, weighed down by half a million bottles of beer, pulls out into the middle of the Congo river. At its tip, breezy rumba music drifts out of a small radio and a group of young men sit around grumbling about the hardships of life on board. “We stay on this boat until death,” claims one sailor (pictured, right). In reality, the crew spends a total of only six months on the barge a year—although the risk of it sinking is not trivial. Laden with beer belonging to Bracongo, a brewery, the boat is travelling from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the city of Bandundu, 387km (240 miles) upstream.
Omar Barcat, the barge’s owner, has been running a fleet of five cargo ships for 20 years. He predicts that various apparatchiks, some wielding Kalashnikovs, will intercept the boat at several points along the river. They will try to extort payoffs that amount to around $500. Unruly sailors are another problem. Far away from their bosses back in the capital, they are sometimes tempted to stop off in villages and visit friends. Occasionally they drink beers they claim have exploded or broken (which can lead to worse misdemeanours). “But they know that if anyone is caught doing that he will immediately be fired,” he says.
Much is at stake for Mr Barcat and for Bracongo. The brewery, owned by Castel, a French firm that operates across Africa, has been competing with Bralima, owned by the Dutch company Heineken, for customers in Congo for 70 years. Both breweries have been around since colonial times; unlike most foodstuffs in Congo, beer is local. And yet the difficulty for both companies is getting bottles from the factory to the bar.
Congo is not an easy country to get around. China has three metres of road per citizen; Congo has three centimetres. Only four out of 26 provincial capitals have roads that reach Kinshasa. Some villages are so isolated that they still use a currency that was abolished in 1997. It is no surprise that, in the east, the government has little control and the people in power are those with guns. Millions have fled the violence there over the past 20 years.
For most people the only way to travel long distances is to go on boats that ply the Congo river and its tributaries. All the beers that reach the country’s dense, forested interior will have been shipped up the river. The journey on Mr Barcat’s boat will take a week. If the roads in Congo were made of tarmac instead of undulating mud and sand, then the beers would reach Bandundu in less than a day. But the rusting carcasses of overturned vehicles languishing in ditches serve as a reminder of what can happen if that journey is attempted by a lorry with a heavy load.
Indeed, despite the country’s abysmal infrastructure, beer gets everywhere. Like the rumba music which is blasted from fuzzy speakers at every run-down bar, it is one of the few things Congolese can rely on. To understand how one brewery gets its wares to thirsty customers, your correspondent embarked on a series of voyages.
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It wasn’t your typical summer camp. In August, Lolo Cynthia, a public health specialist and sexuality health educator, taught some 250 girls in southwest Nigeria how to sew their own reusable menstrual pads from linens and cloth. Each teenager went home with two washable pads, materials to make more at home — and straight talk about sexual health that is hard to come by here.
Backed and funded by the first lady of Nigeria’s Ondo state, Betty Anyanwu-Akeredolu, the camp is just one example of how the 24-year-old founder of social enterprise LoloTalks — an online channel that has attracted more than 1.5 million views — is changing the conversation in Nigeria. Cynthia’s period pad initiative has become a powerful symbol in a conservative country where discussions around menstruation and sexual health are often seen as taboo.
A 2015 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) study in three Nigerian states revealed that many school girls “believed that menstruation was a secret and unclean experience.” With their periods, they experienced anxiety, abdominal pain and cramps, nausea and vomiting, dizziness and a loss of appetite — which in turn took a toll on their studies. Nigeria is one of many countries that place a heavy tax on menstrual products; a pack of sanitary pads costs an average of $1.30, even as an estimated 44 percent of Nigeria’s population (87 million people) live in extreme poverty, earning less than $1.90 per day.
“Lolo’s eco-friendly pad is a viable business that should be replicated across Nigeria,” says Oritseweyinmi Erikowa-Orighoye, a friend of Cynthia’s and project manager at the Coastal and Marine Areas Development Initiative. “If women learn how to make reusable sanitary pads, they can also use it as a means of livelihood, turning it into a wealth-creation avenue.” Indeed, women in Ondo have already started to make money since the training.
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