Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Call it what it is. Republican gerrymandering of electoral maps in GA, and in other places around the nation to eliminate Black elected officials is what I have called “colormandering.” When they know they can’t win they will stoop to underhanded and openly racist rigging of the electoral map.
Rep. Lucy McBath won her first election in Georgia in 2018 and came back again to win handily in 2020.
Now, GA Republicans have figured out that since they can’t beat her, they are gonna try to cheat her.
Daily Kos elections staff writer Stephan Wolf pointed out the draft map issue:
While much media and public attention has been focused on the behavior of Senators Manchin and Sinema — do not fail to pay attention to the fact that we have only a slim margin in the House. Though we follow Rep. McBath here in Black Kos, I have seen not enough attention paid to her elsewhere, as other social media Congressional “stars” in safe blue districts garner the bulk of media reportage.
The DCCC featured McBath last week.
For those of you who may not know her story her congressional website has her bio:
Representative Lucy McBath is a mom, a wife, an author, and an advocate.
On Black Friday in 2012, McBath’s son, Jordan Davis, was sitting in the back seat of a friend’s car at a gas station. A man pulled up next to them, complaining about the “loud music” they were playing. The man pulled out a gun and fired 10 shots into the car, hitting Jordan three times, and killing him.
After Jordan’s death, McBath dedicated her life to preventing other families from experiencing the same pain she did.
McBath left her 30-year career as a flight attendant at Delta Airlines to become the national spokesperson and faith and outreach leader for Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
I was glad to see Trevor Noah feature her back in January to give her wider exposure. In case you missed it:
Noah mentions her book, “Standing Our Ground” which was released in 2020:
Lucia Kay McBath knew deep down that a bullet could one day take her son. After all, she had watched the news of countless unarmed black men unjustly gunned down.
Standing Our Ground is McBath’s moving memoir of raising, loving, and losing her son to gun violence, and the story of how she transformed her pain into activism. After seventeen-year-old Jordan Davis was shot by a man who thought the music playing on his car stereo was too loud, the nation grieved yet again for the unnecessary loss of life. Here, McBath goes beyond the timeline and the assailant’s defense—Stand Your Ground—to present an emotional account of her fervent fight for justice, and her awakening to a cause that will drive the rest of her days.
But more than McBath’s story or that of her son, Standing Our Ground keenly observes the social and political evolution of America’s gun culture. A must-read for anyone concerned with gun safety in America, it is a powerful and heartfelt call to action for common-sense gun legislation.
If GA Republicans succeed in passing a map that is unfavorable to McBath, we will just have to work harder and ensure she has a war chest to counter their move against her. Follow her on social media, boost her public profile — and donate!
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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The Pew Research Center estimates there are between 12 million and 15 million Latinos of African descent in the United States, numbers that are likely an undercount. Some of it is due to self-identifying; not everyone considers themselves to be an Afro-Latino. Secondly, some of the estimated 10 to 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., have consistently led to a Latino undercount. And considering that 95 percent of all enslaved people were first brought to the Caribbean and South America, our countries of origin are racially diverse.
[...]
So what’s it like being a so-called minority within a minority? Sometimes it’s difficult and exhausting. I have been passed over for seats on commissions, boards, and a couple of jobs that seemed earmarked for a “Latina.” I remember getting a call from a board I served on to inquire whether I had “accidentally” checked off “Latino/Hispanic” on a form. Or the white colleague insisting that I couldn’t really be Cuban because all Cubans looked white (at least a third of Cuba’s 11 million+ population consider themselves Black).
It is also true that throughout Latin America and the Caribbean diaspora, Latinos have a complex relationship with race, often perpetuating the same racial hierarchies that we see in the United States. Every social, health, and economic indicator places white European-presenting Latinos at the top of the food chain, with outcomes getting progressively worse the darker one’s skin color.
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It was a confrontation with a female Michael Jackson fan that first drew Martin Senkubuge’s attention to the skin condition vitiligo.
Senkubuge, a Ugandan artist, was describing his tattoo of the musician to the woman at an art exhibition in Kampala in 2019, when he accused the pop star of bleaching his skin.
The woman cut Senkubuge short, telling him that Michael Jackson had vitiligo – a condition where a lack of melanin causes pale white patches to develop on the skin and can turn hair white. Senkubuge, who was studying industrial fine art and design at Makerere University at the time, had not heard of the disease.
The 22-year-old was shocked to discover the stigma that surrounds vitiligo in Uganda and across east Africa, and how people with the condition were treated.
“People said that persons with vitiligo were cursed and bewitched,” says Senkubuge. “There was a lot of myths and misinformation surrounding them, which was unfair.”
Senkubuge decided he would use his art to educate people about the condition. “Since art is associated with beauty, I said to myself I would draw pictures and models of persons with vitiligo to break this stigma,” he says.
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Haiti once mattered to Americans. The revolution of 1791-1804 had seismic repercussions. “All of the mightiest armies in the world [were] defeated by an army of enslaved people,” explains Michael Harriot of The Root, a magazine. The Haitians defeated the British, the Spanish and the French. For black folk and white abolitionists, the first black republic heralded the promise of freedom; for American slaveholders it brought fear. When France moved to blockade the new republic, President Jefferson joined in. Duelling images of Haiti, both a beacon and a bother, competed in the public imagination for a century.
In the 20th century America expanded its sphere of influence, and took an increasing interest in Haitian affairs. It took Haiti’s gold reserves away on gunboats, then intervened to guarantee American banking interests. After the country’s president was assassinated in 1915, marines occupied Haiti for 19 years. The country was run much like the American South, with black people as second-class citizens. A photo of the resistance leader Charlemagne Péralte—Christ-like, spreadeagled on a cross—could have been snapped at a lynching back home. Ms Danticat’s uncle once watched marines kick around a cut-off Haitian head.
Later interventions were more subtle. America brought business opportunities to Haiti, but also backing for despotic dictators—namely the Duvaliers, from whom many Haitians fled between the 1950s and the 1980s. Subsequent American interference was viewed with suspicion. In 2019 protesters sacrificed a pig outside the American embassy to show their contempt for the Trump administration’s support for the unpopular Jovenel Moïse (the president backed by America until his assassination in July). Legend has it that a pig was sacrificed by Haitian revolutionaries the week before the uprising. But the Haitian equivalent of a re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party was lost on most Americans.
Some frame the current migrant crisis within the scope of American meddling. Daniel Foote, the us special envoy to Haiti, resigned on September 22nd citing the “hubris” of constant interventions. Others consider it unhelpful or misguided to rake through centuries of historical wrongs. America cannot be blamed for the devastating earthquake of 2010, for example, which drove many Haitians to South America (from where many of the most recent migrants arrived at the Texas border). But a country first has to know what it has done to understand whether it is responsible for the consequences.
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