Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
According to Forbes Magazine, there are some 2,668 billionaires on this our home planet. Generally, people with more money than they could ever hope to spend in 100 lifetimes live large. They spend their money on gadgets, houses, yachts, sports teams, space races, and acquiring both traditional and social media outlets, among other things. They try to buy Supreme Court justices, political offices, and elections. That’s how they do. People with lots of money find lots of ways to flaunt their wealth.
Howard Stern — yes, that Howard Stern — himself a millionaire some 750 times over, woke up one morning and decided that he has a problem with billionaires who flaunt their wealth. Well, actually, he has a problem with only one billionaire. His jaundiced, maybe jealous eyes perused the list of billionaires and landed on Oprah Winfrey! Oprah, who just happens to be one of only two Black women billionaires in the United States of America, is not humble enough. She’s not grateful enough. The way she spends her time and money does not meet with the approval of Howard Stern.
Tell me that you wanna use the word “uppity” without telling me that you wanna use the word “uppity.”
On his SiriusXM show earlier this week, Stern said that, “Oprah’s not embarrassed by her wealth at all,” and accused her of flaunting it on social media in a way that he wouldn’t do.
“You see her estates, her gardens, the people who service her and, you know…She’s got servants and, like, people cooking and it’s f—ing wild,” he said. “She knows how to be rich…She kind of likes to show it off, which is something I’m not comfortable with. I don’t think that people should show off their wealth.”
It would be easy to dismiss Stern’s effrontery as just a result of petty jealousy. After all, both Stern and Oprah have been in the media business for around the same amount of time, and the former is left choking in the dust behind the latter when it comes to industry awards, wealth, cultural influence, political influence, and likeability. Where Oprah earns her goodwill from her known empathy, compassion, generosity, and inner beauty, Stern made his name trading in misogyny, misogynoir, homophobia, racism, and crassness. Let’s not forget that it was on Stern’s show that TFG proudly spilled his rancid guts about his lust for his daughter and his penchant to barge into the dressing rooms of unclothed teenagers. Yes, one is not like the other.
But Stern’s attack on Oprah is a lot more sinister than mere jealousy. It taps into patriarchal racism and its modern-day offshoot, Karenism. His attack harkens back to a time when white people, and especially white men, had control over Black folks’ bodies down to the most intimate details — all up in the ancestors’ business 24-7. Those were the good ol’ days, eh, Howard?
It pisses me off that Howard Stern would waltz past Kim Kardashian and that odious family, for example, to round up his mouth to criticize Oprah for ostentatious living. I found it particularly provoking because just a couple weeks before, I had seen the first episode of “The Hair Tales,” hosted by Tracee Ellis Ross and with Oprah herself as executive producer.
The Hair Tales is a new docuseries about Black women, beauty and identity through the distinctive lens of Black hair. From executive producers Tracee Ellis Ross and Michaela Angela Davis, “The Hair Tales” will lead the audience through a revelatory journey of connecting the personal tales of phenomenal Black women to broader societal and historic themes. The stories shared in the series offer an honest and layered look into the complex culture of Black hair and ultimately Black women’s identity, creativity and contributions to society. Featuring stories from Oprah Winfrey, Issa Rae, Chlöe Bailey, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, Marsai Martin and Chika.
In that first episode, Oprah broke down in tears as she recounted her days on TV in Baltimore, as management went out of its way to control her looks and the way she should present her Black self to their TV audience.
Yep, they insisted that she change the way she wore her hair and strongly recommended that she get plastic surgery. What happened to Oprah then and continues to happen to Black, Brown, and Native women today is that the majority community continues to refuse to allow us to breathe — to live authentically and without interference. We continue to get unsolicited advice about our most visible women: Michelle Obama is not pretty enough, Serena Williams is too muscular, Kamala Harris giggles too much, Kantanji Jackson Brown married a white man, and Oprah shows off the fact that she has money. Give me a break!
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Howard, your demographic has huuuge problems. Huge! Get to fixing those, and in the meantime, in the words of one tweeter, “Leave Oprah’s name outta your mouth, colonizer.”
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The Atlanta-based Black banking startup backed by rapper Killer Mike, entrepreneur Ryan Glover and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, said today that it got an eight-figure infusion of capital to help it expand.
The company, Greenwood Inc., said it raised $45 million in a round of funding led by investment firm Pendulum Holdings LLC, which also included Cercano Management, Cohen Circle, The George Kaiser Family Foundation, and NextEra Energy.
Pendulum is an investment advisory firm founded by D’Rita and Robbie Robinson, who in 2017 was hired to handle investment management for former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama. Earlier this year, Pendulum got an undisclosed cash infusion when merchant bank BDT took a minority stake in the company, and has since been on a tear investing in brands with Black founders. In October it was part of a $6.7 million investment in Detroit-based cosmetics firm The Lip Bar Inc. In July, Pendulum poured $3 million into Spearhead, a London-based spirits company.
But the Greenwood investment appears to be the largest yet. Greenwood launched in October 2020 offering a host of digitally-based financial services including savings and spending accounts, debit cards, peer-to-peer money transfer and ATM access. The company says it now has more than 100,000 customers.
Greenwood has already expanded beyond financial services with other acquisitions. It acquired The Gathering Spot, an Atlanta-based company that runs membership-based clubs for networking, dining and co-working in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., with another location under construction in Los Angeles. And it bought Valence, a digital recruitment and career development platform for Black professionals. The company said at the time that it planned to create “a trifecta of fintech product, million-member community, and career development platform.”
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Pearl Devers was too young to understand why her mother was bundling her and her brothers up and fleeing their family home on tribal land in Palm Springs.
Devers’ father, who built the house with his own hands, stayed behind to make a stand against the brutal 1950s urban renewal project that was seizing their prime downtown land for nothing — no legal process, no compensation, no relocation aid.
In the years after city employees and the Fire Department razed and burned down the houses in the area known as Section 14, Devers said her father, a community spokesperson and devoted family man, fell into alcoholism and never recovered.
“It tore apart my family,” Devers said before a Los Angeles news conference on an amended reparation claim filed Tuesday against the city for what a state official called a “city-engineered holocaust.”
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A trial to determine whether South Carolina’s congressional maps are legal closes Tuesday with arguments over whether the state Legislature diluted Black voting power by remaking the boundaries of the only U.S. House district Democrats have flipped in more than 30 years.
The trial also marks the first time the South Carolina maps have been legally scrutinized since the U.S. Supreme Court removed part of a 1965 law that required the state to get federal approval to protect against discriminatory redistricting proposals.
A panel of three federal judges will hear closing arguments in the case in Charleston. A ruling is expected later.
The Republican-dominated General Assembly redrew the maps early this year based on the 2020 U.S. census, and they were used in this month’s midterm elections.
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On Monday, US Rep. Donald McEachin passed away. His office shared a statement honoring the Virginia Democrat who was 61 years old at the time of his death. “We are all devastated at the passing of our boss and friend, Congressman Donald McEachin,” Tara Rountree, his chief of staff, explained.
“Valiantly, for years now, we have watched him fight and triumph over the secondary effects of his colorectal cancer from 2013. Tonight, he lost that battle, and the people of Virginia’s Fourth Congressional District lost a hero who always, always fought for them and put them first.
“Until a new representative is elected, our office will remain open and continue to serve our constituents. The family asks for privacy at this time. Arrangements will be announced over the next few days,” Rountree stated.
In 2016, McEachin was elected to Congress after working in both chambers of Virginia’s General Assembly. McEachin represented Virginia’s 4th Congressional District, which includes Richmond (the state capital) to the North Carolina line.
With his passing, this means the seat will remain empty until a special election is held since someone cannot be appointed to the House. According to state law, the governor sets special elections to fill a U.S. House vacancy. However, there isn’t a certain deadline they must adhere to.
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Six artefacts looted by British troops 125 years ago from Benin City, in what is now Nigeria, are being repatriated to their place of origin, increasing pressure on the British Museum to follow suit.
The objects, including two 16th-century Benin bronze plaques ransacked from the royal palace, were handed to Abba Tijani, the director general of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), at a ceremony at the Horniman Museum in south London on Monday.
Tijani said he hoped other museums holding looted artefacts from Benin City would be encouraged by the Horniman’s example. In particular, he believed that an agreement could soon be reached with the British Museum, the national cultural flagship that holds 900 objects, the largest collection in the world.
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