Celebrating Kamala’s birthday and our HBCUs
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I literally wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for our Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Not only did my mom and dad meet at one — West Virginia State, but my mom’s dad was able to make it possible for her to go to college, because he graduated from one, Wayland Seminary (which became Virginia Union) barely 20 years after the end of the enslavement period.
Thanks the the historic candidacy of Kamala Devi Harris, more and more Americans, who are not part of our Black communities are learning something about the role HBCUs have played in our history. Harris, is a graduate of Howard University, in Washington, DC, one of the flagship HBCUs.
Throughout her early campaign for POTUS, and now during her candidacy for the Vice Presidency, Harris has always given credit to the role attending an HBCU played in her life, and the lives of so many black folks, and she has also demonstrated the bonds of sisterhood she formed early on with the members of her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha. In doing so, she has openly embraced the entire “Divine Nine” — the federation of nine black fraternities and sororities, sending media outlets scrambling to do stories explaining us, to a world that has had very little understanding (if any at all).
Here’s Harris speaking at Shaw University, where the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded, in 1960.
This is one of those recent news stories explaining the Divine Nine.
Never thought I’d get to hear a VP nomination acceptance speech that included those words “Family is my beloved Alpha Kappa Alpha...our Divine 9…and my HBCU brothers and sisters.”
Kamala spoke of the impact of going to Howard, in March 2019 at the Black Enterprise's Women of Power Summit.
Today is candidate and Senator Harris’ 56th birthday. From across the nation, and around the world, many people are sending well-wishes, and with them images, that reflect Harris’ joy and jubilation with her roots that come out of HBCU’s.
If you haven’t already — send her birthday wishes — for a landslide election victory!
Vote!!!
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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For weeks, I’ve been trying to figure out why polls keep showing that a small, yet still politically significant number of Black men are likely to vote for President Trump.
Then along came Ice Cube and his Contract With Black America, and suddenly, it’s all a little clearer.
For those who haven’t been keeping up, the L.A. rapper — who, by his own admission, only started paying attention to politics this year — has admitted to working with the Trump administration, basically agreeing to act as an independent adviser on behalf of all Black people.
(For the record, as a Black person, I did not agree to this.)
That Ice Cube felt justified in putting himself out there in this way is pure hubris. In ordering up his Contract With Black America over the summer, he did so without first consulting with many of the Black activists who have crafted similar plans and are in the process of implementing them with elected officials.
But what’s truly telling is his explanation for why he has been shopping around his plan to Republicans and Democrats mere weeks before the most contentious U.S. election in modern history, and why he’s upset that, in the midst of all of this, Democrats understandably blew him off.
His thought process, a strange combination of obliviousness and misplaced entitlement, blasted on Twitter for the world to see, helps explain why Trump has an in with a demographic that should be solidly against him.
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Chris Scott thinks the nation has hit a "perfect storm" for voters to be inspired to get involved in local elections.
As political director for Collective PAC, which aims to elect more Black people to public office, Scott said the impact of COVID-19, calls for police reform and a slew of other issues are "combining everything for people to really get an understanding."
"All politics really are local," Scott told USA TODAY. "You can have a president, but the person that is most likely going to have an impact on your everyday life is that state (representative), is that county prosecutor or district attorney."
Democratic leaders are hopeful that a renewed focus on local elections amid a contentious presidential election could mean flipping some statehouse and county-level seats from Republican red to Democrat blue.
“What I think we're seeing is that, especially for young people, especially for young people of color, yes, they are going to vote for Joe Biden because they hate Trump,” said Run For Something co-founder Amanda Litman. “But they are fired up about voting against their city council or holding their mayor accountable."
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Black voters in North Carolina are disproportionately having their mail-in ballots flagged for potential rejection in the battleground state, setting off alarms about disenfranchisement.
North Carolina requires mail-in voters to get a witness for their ballots and at least 7,000 mail-in ballots have been flagged across the state because of a deficiency, according to data collected by Michael Bitzer, a professor at Catawba College who closely tracks voting data in the state. As of Wednesday, 40% of rejected ballots – 2,871 – were from Black voters, even though they comprised only 16% of the overall ballots returned. (A spokesman for the state board of elections cautioned some of the data may be outdated because local election offices have not been entering rejection data into the statewide system while legal challenges are pending.)
The Rev Anthony Spearman, the head of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, attributed the higher rate at which Black voters’ ballots were being flagged to the fact that African Americans traditionally have not widely voted by mail in the state, instead opting for in-person voting. Many voters are getting tripped up by the state’s requirement that mail-in voters get a witness to sign their absentee ballot, he said.
“The African American community, many of them for the first time, are utilizing absentee ballots and have not been cultivated to the practices thereof. There is a level of them being not aware of the process and how it goes and so they’re not filling out their forms correctly,” he said.
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Donald Trump has made one thing clear: he doesn’t care about democracy or protecting your right to vote.
With an on-going pandemic hampering local and state government’s capacity to run safe elections, Trump and the GOP at every level are making it harder for people to vote. In Florida, people who are formerly convicted of felonies have to pay off fines before they are able to cast ballots in this year’s election—even though Florida voters, through referendum in 2018, decided that a felony should no longer preclude a person from voting. In several states across the nation, Republicans are holding up mail-in ballots and trying to limit the number of drop-off ballot boxes under the unproven argument of voter fraud. Then, of course, there is the very real specter of Trump campaign-trailed supporters who may be deployed to intimidate voters at the polls under the gaze of poll watchers.
And the reality is that you may not be able to rely on your elected officials, particularly in GOP-controlled areas, to help you because they are likely the ones behind the voter suppression. And if you see men with guns near your polling station, it may not be wise to call the cops because they, too, may not help the situation.
As a voter, how do you protect yourself against these attempts to undermine your right to cast a ballot? Activists and voter rights advocates told The Root that the No. 1 thing people can do is educate themselves on how they plan to vote.
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Her evasions and knowledge gaps might help her through a Senate confirmation but should terrify if she’s on the Supreme Court. Slate: Cory Booker Called Amy Coney Barrett’s Bluff on Racism
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Sen. Cory Booker was concerned and relentless. It was Wednesday, the third day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. And Booker had just asked her about a study by the U.S. Sentencing Commission discussing the profound racism exercised against Black Americans who enter the criminal justice system.
“You said you were not familiar with that particular study, as you just reaffirmed, or the facts that they cite in this study showing that interracial bias is present in our system,” Booker said. He noted that he believes Barrett understands that racism does, in fact, exist and that judges have played a crucial role in correcting for racial inequalities.
“I understand that you weren’t aware of specific studies I cited, which are central to the important work of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which advises federal judges or provides recommendations to federal judges,” he continued. “So I just want to give you an opportunity today to share what studies, articles, books, law review articles, or commentary you have read regarding racial disparities present in our criminal justice system.”
Barrett replied by explaining that she knows the commission issues guidelines and studies, but Booker homed in on his original point.
“Forgive me for interrupting … but I was actually asking specifically any books you can name that you’ve read on this subject, or law review articles, anything that you specifically read outside of the sentencing guidelines?”
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A court in Tunisia has allowed an 81-year-old man to remove a word from his name that marked him out as descended from slaves, in the country’s first ruling of its kind, his lawyer has said.
Tunisia abolished slavery in 1846, but critics say it has not done enough to address racism against black Tunisians, who make up 10-15% of the population and are mostly descended from slaves.
Campaigners said the case brought by Hamden Dali would open the door for others who wanted to drop the word “atig”, or “liberated by”, which originally denoted a freed slave and forms part of the names of many Tunisian families.
Dali’s lawyer, Hanen Ben Hassena, said the association with slavery was an assault on human dignity and the man’s adult children had faced discrimination because of the family name, which had made it harder to get jobs.
“In ‘Atig Dali’, there is a certain humiliation because it is as if the person is not free – there is a discomfort for the family to live with this name,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation after the ruling on Wednesday.
Black Tunisians are descended from sub-Saharan Africans brought to Tunisia by slave traders. Activists say they face unequal job prospects and high levels of poverty and are often portrayed negatively in the media.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Editor
Some say that Life is a mystery. Some say if we can just cut into it, dissect it and see what makes it breathe and speak, we then will have our questions answered, the mystery will be solved. Will it though? Won't our fears and prejudices interpret or misinterpret what we see? Alexander Pope said, "T'is with our lives as our watches. None go just alike, but each believes his own."
But what if we see clear-eyed and have honed our speech to the essential truths? What if we seek the most definable terms to convey our most important ideals? What if we demand precision in our communication, but the algorithm won’t recognize that precision? What then?
My nights
play cousin to
their mothers’ favorite
kettles. My nights won’t consume
their reflections so they pour milk
in their coffee. My nights never rest
so they sing their shadows to sleep. Sometimes
they don’t remember any words. My nights have frogs
stuck in their throats, no light soul, every bit of pain, my nights
all Louis Armstrong minus a trumpet, and my nights play chicken
with the train. My nights both shoe and polish. Both Sambo and Bruce
Leroy. We all little pretty medallions on our grandmothers’ nightstands. My nights
are mistaken for other nights that bear no resemblance. I saw the sinew of the oldest night
in the neighborhood on the floor, his saint pendant missing. All the small, down-feathered nights
scatter from the groan of pig sirens. My nights don’t know their history. My nights are pecans without
the trees that grow them. My nights instruct all the people in their head to weep. My nights hate the firefly
cutting their darkness. My night, did you see them? They just walked right past us and didn’t even speak. My nights are ordinary,
wear ruffled socks, have the best belts. My nights don’t always go to church but my nights are lambs worthy
of the morning. My nights are revised constitutions, crypt keepers, my nights are a congregation
of alligators on a rumpus bayou. My nights hiss into themselves. No one hears. Their blood
rolls its eyes. My nights chew gum and sunflower seeds. My nights eat pork. My nights
get the itis and slur their speech. My nights protest protests. The government
watches. My nights live in Brazil Botswana the Congo Cuba the D.R. France
Grenada Greece Honduras Ireland Liberia Lithuania Nigeria Venezuela
Zimbabwe. My nights live in America to remind you of me. Some
people think my nights are better with their eyes closed but
my nights have beautiful corneas. My nights wash clothes
that don’t belong to them and won’t look their bosses
in the eye. My nights know necessity. My nights
oblige. When my nights die, I wash them on
my kitchen table. After my nights are
washed, I throw away the table.
My nights have names. My
nights smell of sage.
My nights smell
of the muddy
rivers they
will never
swim in
again.
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