Reject self-appointed gatekeepers of blackness
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Today marks the birthday of songstress, actress and civil rights activist Lena Horne, born on June 30, 1917. Sitting here thinking of her, the barriers she faced as a Black woman thrown into the racially segregated world of Hollywood, her commitment to uplifting the troops in WWII, her work with the civil rights movement…
Horne never had a leading role in her early films due to racism. While entertaining troops at Fort Reilly, Kansas during World War II, Horne filed a complaint with the NAACP because African American soldiers in the audience had to sit in back seats behind German POWs. Horne financed her own travel to entertain black troops when MGM Studios pulled her off its tour. In the late 1940s, Horne sued a number of restaurants and theaters for race discrimination and also became politically allied with Paul Robeson in the liberal organization Progressive Citizens of America. She joined Eleanor Roosevelt's unsuccessful campaign for anti-lynching legislation and worked on behalf of Japanese Americans who faced discrimination. During the anti-communist hearings in the U.S. Congress in the 1950s, Horne was among hundreds of entertainers blacklisted because of political views and social activism. In the 1960s, she performed in the South at rallies for civil rights, participated in the 1963 March On Washington, and supported the work of the National Council for Negro Women.
She her own personal struggles dealing with the privileges of and resentments against her for her very light skin, and I feel sad, and angry that at this crucial moment in our history, as crowds gather around the world to support #BlackLivesMatter, that some of us are going backwards —into a kind of reverse colorism, aided and abetted by right wing funding for ADOS.
Colorism, and the rejection of dark skin within our own community is an ugly cancer — which has not yet been excised. So to add to the toxic mess we are facing, yet another “who is really black” bomb, echoing the crap thrown at Barack Obama, is more than just tiresome — it is damaging to our body politic. As we get closer to Joe Biden’s selection of his Vice Presidential pick, bots, trolls and malcontents are reviving their “Kamala Harris is not black” campaign which was trotted out during the debates.
We Black folks are a rainbow.
A large chunk of that rainbow was painted with a brush steeped in pain. Poet and writer Caroline Randall Williams, laid part of the story out in her powerful opinion piece for The New York Times; “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument”
The black people I come from were owned and raped by the white people I come from. Who dares to tell me to celebrate them?
NASHVILLE — I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.
If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.
Dead Confederates are honored all over this country — with cartoonish private statues, solemn public monuments and even in the names of United States Army bases. It fortifies and heartens me to witness the protests against this practice and the growing clamor from serious, nonpartisan public servants to redress it. But there are still those — like President Trump and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell — who cannot understand the difference between rewriting and reframing the past. I say it is not a matter of “airbrushing” history, but of adding a new perspective.
I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.
There were some Black folks who didn’t care for this essay. They refuse to accept a rapist ancestor into the family tree. Should we then excise from our ancestry anyone who has been deviant, cruel, addicted, or morally repugnant? For me, ancestors are ancestors; good, bad and indifferent. What we should do is learn from history. The history of our Black existence, from ecru to ebony, is not only one of pain, it is also one of endurance and strength to survive. We are surviving, and fighting back.
For those folk who now dare to decide someone “isn’t Black” because they had an ancestor who owned and enslaved us, or they may be of a lighter hue than others of our brethren and sistren — I have the utmost contempt. Just as I disdain those who have decided if your kin were dropped off the slaveships in Jamaica or Barbados or Brazil it somehow un-blacks you. Xenophobia masked in cultural nationalism, is still xenophobia.
I saved a link to some tweets from last years reparations discussions. Lee Fang, a journalist writing for The Intercept, got ratioed for this tweet, as did some others in the thread.
This brings me back to Lena Horne. Am elated to see that she was trending today on social media.
in case your interested — this is a great 1996 PBS American Masters documentary with Lena Horne.
So, here’s to a Happy Birthday remembrance for the incomparable Ms. Horne!
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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Transgender women of color led the uprising at the Stonewall Inn 51 years ago on Sunday, but they were never put at the center of the movement they helped start: one whose very shorthand, “the gay rights movement,” erases them.
Though active in the Black Lives Matter movement from the beginning, they have not been prioritized there either. At no point have black trans people shared fully in the gains of racial justice or L.G.B.T.Q. activism, despite suffering disproportionately from the racism, homophobia and transphobia these movements exist to combat.
But now, as the two movements are pulled together by extraordinary circumstances — the protests sparked by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery; the killings of two black trans women, Dominique Fells and Riah Milton, shortly after a black trans man, Tony McDade, was killed by the police; a pandemic that has disproportionately affected people of color; an economic crisis that has disproportionately affected trans people; and a Supreme Court decision protecting gay and trans people from employment discrimination, all coming to a head during Pride month — black trans people are mobilizing more visibly than ever before.
This moment, advocates say, is long overdue, and they are determined not to let it slip away.
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WHEN PROTESTS broke out after the senseless killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a white policeman, many Americans felt the need to speak out. Some did so in offensive ways, and so shot themselves in the wallet. “What is this like night 4 of looting with 100% impunity. The pussy Mayor and Governor don’t give a shit about small businesses, and it’s never been more clear,” wrote Michael Fuller, the founder of Fulltone, which makes effects pedals for guitars, on Facebook. After a wave of outraged responses, he issued a rejoinder: “Ahh I feel better, and flushed out some prissy boys who were raised to pee sitting down. Now I’ll delete.”
High-profile rockers announced they would never buy his pedals again. YouTubers issued videos on how to paint over his logo on their pedals. And Guitar Center, America’s biggest musical-instrument retail chain, dropped Fulltone pedals from its stores.
What next? After the furore, guitar aficionados discussed where to find black-owned pedal companies. No answers were forthcoming until Lance Giles of Oxford, Ohio meekly suggested his Dogman Devices on Reddit, a social-media forum. He offered a 25% discount and free shipping, hoping the offer would blow life into a business that had yet to take off, and went to bed. By morning, all of his stock had sold (having listed one too many, he had to ship his personal pedal). His e-mail inbox was full of would-be customers wanting to know when he would have more.
Mr Giles is now in conversations with Guitar Center about stocking his gear. But his operation is nowhere near big enough to meet such demand yet; he is thinking about financing, looking at workshop space, enlisting free legal advice from a cousin and wondering whether to take on employees or to contract out manufacturing. Having a good product is one thing; increasing output quickly is another altogether.
A “buy black” challenge, sponsored by the Black Lives Matter protest movement, began on June 19th, or “Juneteenth”, an unofficial celebration of the abolition of slavery in America. The campaign runs until July 4th. If American consumers directed just a small portion of the $13trn they spend each quarter to black businesses, that surge in revenues might help build them up. With 13% of the population, black Americans owned just 2.1% of small businesses with employees, according to a study in 2012 by the Census Bureau. Today they hold 2.1% of the country’s private business wealth, according to the Federal Reserve.
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Malawi’s chief justice, Andrew Nyirenda, is an industrious chap. Since donning the wig 26 years ago he has racked up 572 days of untaken leave, or so says the office of Peter Mutharika, Malawi’s president. Last week it ordered Mr Nyirenda (above left) to go on holiday immediately. Since the chief justice would reach retirement age before the end of his break, it also said he should step down forthwith.
Mr Nyirenda presides over Malawi’s Supreme Court, which in May upheld a ruling annulling the president’s re-election last year after a lower court found correction fluid had been used to alter the tallies. He will also be the ultimate arbiter of the re-run that took place on June 23rd. Mark Botomani, the information minister, insists these are coincidental: the government merely wants to give Mr Nyirenda enough time to relax and “write his biography”.
Since inducement, intimidation and pressure are occupational hazards that African judges frequently encounter, it might have been reasonable to expect Mr Nyirenda’s capitulation. But he refused to go, as did Edward Twea, another supreme-court judge the government tried to shuffle into early retirement. Malawi’s legal community has rallied around both men. Hundreds of lawyers marched to support them and a court has stayed their dismissal. For the moment, at least, Mr Mutharika (above centre) has had to back down.
The obduracy of Malawi’s judges is not only welcome; it could have consequences beyond the country’s borders. Their demand for a re-run of the presidential vote is only the second time that courts in Africa have overturned a dodgy election; Kenya’s Supreme Court did so in 2017.
Precedent alone will probably not be enough to free Africa’s judiciaries. A culture of subservience to governments runs deep. Allan Hancox, Kenya’s chief justice between 1989 and 1993, was fond of telling colleagues that their chief loyalty was not to the state but to the head of state (then the dictator Daniel arap Moi).
Even where judiciaries were more independent, politicians often got the better of them. Robert Mugabe forced Zimbabwe’s chief justice and many of his colleagues to resign in 2001 after they ruled that his land grabs were unlawful. A chill swept over Senegal’s judiciary after Babacar Seye, the vice-president of the Constitutional Court, was assassinated in 1993 before a ruling on an election petition. And bribery has often been as effective as intimidation in neutering judges.
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The new President of Malawi, Lazarus Chakwera, has told the BBC that his win in the rerun election was a "victory for democracy and justice". BBC: Lazarus Chakwera sworn in as Malawi president after historic win
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He defeated incumbent Peter Mutharika with 58.57% of votes in Tuesday's poll.
"I do feel like Lazarus, I've come back from the dead," Mr Chakwera said, referring to the biblical character of the same name. In February, Malawi's constitutional court annulled Mr Mutharika's poll win in May 2019, citing vote tampering.
The country was bitterly divided in the run-up to this week's election. But Mr Chakwera said those who did not support him had nothing to fear.
"There's no cause for fear because I will be your president and my policy for inclusivity means we are building a new Malawi for all of us," Mr Chakwera told the BBC Newshour programme.
"I'm not a president of a faction, I'm a president of everyone in the country," he added.
Mr Chakwera dismissed allegations by Mr Mutharika that the poll was marred by violence and irregularities, saying his predecessor was "misled by rumours".
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Doctors in Nigeria have gone on strike, demanding face masks and pay that reflects the rising risk. Hospital staffers in Guinea-Bissau had to shutter a treatment ward after nearly everyone on the floor got sick. Nurses in Cameroon are working through fevers — even dodging tests — because they can’t afford to lose a shift’s wages.
The coronavirus pandemic has tightened its grip on much of Africa, where reported cases have more than tripled over the last month, jeopardizing overstretched medical teams as the need for care soars.
From the pandemic’s early days, leaders across the continent urged prevention and took aggressive action — sealing borders, tracing contacts and building extra isolation wards — asserting that many places lacked the resources to withstand unchecked outbreaks.
Now African health officials and medical professionals are raising concerns about cracks in a crucial armor: Infections among health-care workers have shot up 203 percent since late May, according to the World Health Organization’s Africa arm, following a spike in community transmission and a drop in access to protective gear.
The trends have alarmed epidemiologists at the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who warned in a June report that most countries face a “catastrophic shortage” of medical professionals.
While the novel coronavirus has infected devastatingly high shares of health-care workers worldwide, African nations, on average, have far fewer staffers who can fill in on the front lines. The sub-Saharan region has 0.2 doctors for every 1,000 people, according to World Bank data — well below the world average of 1.6. (North America has 2.6, and the European Union has 3.7.)
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Pregnant people in the United States who are exposed to air pollution and heat exposure have significantly higher chances of having a pre-term birth, stillbirth, or a baby with low birth weight, according to a new study. Black people and those with asthma are particularly at risk.
The report, “Association of Air Pollution and Heat Exposure With Preterm Birth, Low Birth Weight, and Stillbirth in the US: A Systematic Review,” was published on June 18 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It looked at 57 past studies that made a connection between these environmental factors and negative pregnancy outcomes. Reports The Guardian:
In the review, 19 studies linked air pollution to pre-term birth, defined as a baby born alive before 37 weeks of pregnancy. Twenty-five studies linked air pollution to low birth weight. And four studies linked air pollution to stillbirth. One study found the risk of stillbirth increased 42 percent with high third-trimester exposure. Stillbirth is rare, so data on it is limited and it is difficult to draw broad conclusions about why it happens, [study co-author and retired obstetrician Bruce] Bekkar said.
Because poverty, long-term stress levels and access to healthcare—the social determinants of health—impact people of color more than Whites, the study concluded that Black mothers are at greater risk for pre-term birth and low birth weight.
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