Commentary by BlackKos editor JoanMar
As cops led the handcuffed young director out of the Bank of America building, the voice of a woman can be heard in the background praising them.
“Good job, officer. Good job, officer.”
I wanted to get into that woman’s head… to understand her motivation. Did she only see the cops and see them as saviors? Was she doing her masters’ bidding? Or was she seeing a young Black man who was not bloodied—who was not laying with his lifeblood decorating the marbled floor of the Atlanta Bank of America building and praising the cops for their restraint and professionalism? Exactly what was she praising them for?
So, I wrote the preceding paragraph when I first settled on the idea for this diary, and I decided to keep it. It turns out that the voice belonged to the same teller whose idiocy almost took the life of another innocent Black man. The same idiotic woman who Bank of America was only too eager to let us know was “a pregnant Black female.” That bit of information, as far as BoA is concerned, is of the utmost importance. “See, no racism here, folks.” Notice that they didn’t identify the race of the supervisor on whose instructions the teller would have acted. Btw, I’m almost certain that Ryan Coogler is still alive today because the senior responding cop was Black...this even though he drew his gun without provocation when he first spoke to the director. Of course, there was absolutely no need to handcuff Mr. Coogler. They could have gone up to him, introduce themselves, and engaged him in a conversation. But I guess that’s asking too much, no? We give thanks for mercies.
The fact is, this foolish woman aside, the person to blame is the supervisor/manager. The moronic teller tried to complete the transaction—without even looking at the ID that was presented to her, I’ll note—and the system, as it was meant to do, alerted her that she may need her supervisor or manager to exercise their discretionary power and sign off on this withdrawal. Instead of presenting the facts to her supervisor, she concocted some idiotic story about a robbery-in-progress. A professional, capable supervisor would have taken over the processing of this transaction and gone out to interact with the customer. They would have taken the note and the IDs and, since they’d have a little bit more sense or experience, the issue would have been resolved right there. Instead, it seemed to me that the lazy, unprofessional supervisor looked out and saw that it was a Black man, and instructed the frightened, untrained teller to further embarrass herself by calling the cops; embarrass herself and put Ryan Coogler’s life in danger at the same time. Both of those two workers should be in a world of trouble right about now. We are still mourning the death of the star of Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman, and we could so easily be mourning that of the director as well. Madness.
Solve the class problem, we are repeatedly told, and you’d have solved the problem of racism. You try to come at me with that nonsense, and I know that you are just trolling at this point. You can’t really believe that, can you?
I could give you a thousand examples of rich Black people who were somehow mistaken for common criminals, and trolls will eagerly let me know that those are just random anecdotes and not necessarily evidence of a systemic problem. Lenny Kravitz, James Blake, Henry Louis Gates, Ving Rhames, Chris Rock, Forest Whitaker, Salehe Bembury, Charles Belk, TJ Holmes, Omar Jimenez, to name a few.
Now name one white celebrity who has been stopped, frisked, and detained by police because they "looked suspicious," "fit the description," or were mistaken for someone else. Go on, take all the time you need...I’ll wait.
On his Thursday afternoon show, Jake Tapper reported the incident and repeated this from the press release (without attribution, I might add), “...Bank of America worked with him and addressed the issue to his satisfaction and he has moved on.” Tapper ended the sentence with a flourish, as in “I was forced to read that but there’s really nothing to see here. Just one incident of mistaken identity. Now let’s get back to the real news.” Yes, a Black man being humiliated and terrorized is really no big deal.
This is the tweet:
No, this is not nothing, Jake. “Black female” notwithstanding, this was systematic racism in action. This was #LivingWhileBlack. Name it. And while you do that, we’ll wait for the next incident. I assure you, we won’t have to wait long. And yes, thank you, officers. Ryan Coogler is alive today.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The second-best player in every sport is a superstar at a level that 99.999 percent of professional athletes — who are already the elite of the elite of the elite — will never come close to achieving. Joel Embiid finished second in NBA MVP voting last year; in baseball (a sport once actively played in this country), it was Vladimir Guerrero Jr.; and in football, it was Tom Brady.
n the WNBA, the Phoenix Mercury’s Brittney Griner earned this distinction last year. She was second in scoring, sixth in rebounds, first in blocks (she’s on track to become the WNBA’s all-time leader in that category), and, according to most advanced metrics, the best offensive player in the league. Her résumé is glittering: She won an NCAA national championship for Baylor in 2012, the same year she captured college basketball’s Player of the Year Award. She then won a WNBA championship in 2014 and was selected as one of the best 25 players in league history in 2021. She has two Olympic gold medals to her name. In the gold-medal game against Japan in Tokyo last summer, she dominated, scoring 30 points to clinch an easy victory. She is the apex of her sport. She is the best of the best. She is a legend.
And for more than a month now, she has been in the custody of the Russian government. Yet until Russian officials released a statement over the weekend saying they had detained Griner after finding hashish oil in her airport bag, it seemed that nobody had noticed. And the reaction since the arrest has been stunningly quiet. One of the greatest athletes in American sports — a gold-medal winner, a superstar, a champion — was arrested in a dangerous and volatile country that has suddenly become a pariah on the world stage. Making equivalences between sports only takes you so far here, but seriously: Imagine if Tom Brady were being held by Russian officials right now.
It is unclear how directly Griner’s plight connects to the catastrophic Russian invasion of Ukraine, and her detention has been overshadowed by the death and destruction wrought by Putin. And part of the muted response is likely due to sensitivity of the negotiations between Russian and American officials. Griner’s wife asked for privacy on Instagram, and it’s clear the precariousness of the situation has led to a certain institutional resistance to even mentioning it: That WNBA.com doesn’t include a single story about one of the organization’s best players being detained speaks to this dynamic. It is also worth remembering, as ESPN’s T.J. Quinn did on Monday, that Griner, whatever the specifics, is likely in some danger; Quinn noted that “as a 6-9 Black gay American woman, she’s a powerful cultural symbol,” and “even in the best case, she’s in for a long legal slog in the Russian criminal justice system. And there’s little the US govt can do about it.”
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The 2020 census missed an unexpectedly small percentage of the total U.S. population given the unprecedented challenges it faced, according to a report released Thursday, but civil rights leaders were outraged that Black, Hispanic and American Indian residents were overlooked at higher rates than a decade ago.
The percentage of people overlooked during the 2020 census was much higher for some minority groups, with the Asian population being an exception, the Census Bureau said in a report that measured how well the once-a-decade head count tallied every U.S. resident and whether certain populations were undercounted or overrepresented in the count. Overcounts take place, for example, if someone owns a vacation home and is counted there as well as at a home address.
Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, blamed political interference by the Trump administration, which tried unsuccessfully to add a citizenship question to the census form and cut field operations short.
“These numbers are devastating. Once again, we see an overcount of white Americans and an undercount of Black and Hispanic Americans,” Morial said on a call with reporters. “I want to express in the strongest possible terms our outrage.”
The Black population in the 2020 census had a net undercount of 3.3%, while it was almost 5% for Hispanics and 5.6% for American Indians and Native Alaskans living on reservations. The non-Hispanic white population had a net overcount of 1.6%, and Asians had a net overcount of 2.6%, according to one of the reports.
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Black senators delivered impassioned speeches against the bill. Republicans were united in backing the proposal. It passed on a 24-15 party line vote. The Grio: Florida GOP lawmakers pass bill to limit discussion of race
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The Republican-dominated Florida Legislature gave Gov. Ron DeSantis another victory in what some call his political culture war by sending him a bill Thursday that will limit discussions teachers and businesses can have about race.
Black senators delivered impassioned speeches against the bill, and there was little Republican debate for it. But in a year DeSantis is seeking reelection and positioning himself for a 2024 presidential run, Republicans were united in backing the proposal the governor has said is a top priority. It passed on a 24-15 party line vote.
The bill reads in part, “A person should not be instructed that he or she must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions, in which he or she played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.” It applies to K-12 public schools, but not universities.
Black senators said the bill will have a chilling effect on how African American history is taught because teachers will fear lawsuits if students’ parents object to how they present subjects like slavery, segregation, lynchings and the continued presence of racism in the United States.
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The Coast Guard said the final tally of migrants from Haiti packed onto a rustic wooden ship that grounded off an ultra exclusive gated community in the Florida Keys Sunday afternoon is 356 people.
The blue boat, which appeared to be some sort of old yacht or a ferry, ran aground about 200 yards off Ocean Reef Club at the northern end of Key Largo. Immediately after the vessel came to a stop, almost half of its occupants jumped into the ocean and swam to shore.
Photos were released Sunday that showed the people huddled on Ocean Reef’s grounds swathed in the resort’s towels.
In a statement issued Monday, the Coast Guard said there were no reported injuries. It still remained unclear if anyone needed medical attention. The statement also confirmed the worst fears of migrant advocates — that the people would likely be returned to Haiti at a time when the island nation is experiencing extreme widespread violence and political upheaval.
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Street artist Basil Matsika paints murals of local musicians and daily life in the streets of Mbare, one of Zimbabwe’s oldest townships, in the capital Harare. With his brush and paint jar, he says he communicates deep sentiments of hope amid the overwhelming landscape of poverty.
While many see Mbare as a crime-ridden neighbourhood, Matsika, 40, chooses to see beauty in the grimy, patched walls of the Matapi flats, which have become his canvas for his giant murals.
He starts by sketching the image with a pencil before applying paint. It takes a day or two to complete his murals, covering up some of the more crude writings on the walls.
“We normally replace vulgar graffiti from the walls by painting murals of our local heroes,” says Matsika.
“To protect the children and the community from being exposed to obscene language, I paint. I choose to bring out something beautiful from what the society regards as filthy,” says Matsika, adding that his art is meant to protect the history of Mbare.
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But while renewable energy production will be part of a long-term solution, the idea that it can replace Russian oil and gas quickly and at scale is disingenuous at best—and disastrous for Western economies and consumers at worst. The reasons should be clear to all but the energy-illiterate: Wind and solar power can replace some of the Russian gas used to generate electricity—but only when the wind blows and the sun shines, requiring substantial backup generation capacity, much of it powered by natural gas. What’s more, electricity is only part of the energy equation: The majority of Russian oil and gas is not used by power plants but to heat homes, run factories, and fuel cars, trucks, planes, and ships—none of which can be easily shifted to other fuels. If Western countries don’t want their economies to come to a standstill, oil and gas previously delivered from Russia needs to be sourced elsewhere.
Germany has already announced it will further increase its use of coal, which overtook wind to become the biggest input for electricity production globally in 2021. Some of this will be lignite—the worst possible fossil fuel, dirtier than conventional coal and extracted in vast open-pit mines that litter the German countryside. But Germany has boxed itself into a corner with its energy policies—most crucially, the replacement of nuclear power with Russian gas—and does not have a lot of options. Already, the European Commission has given its absolution to countries replacing Russian gas with coal and producing higher emissions as a result.
[snip}
Germany must also be clear-eyed about its long-term energy future, including rethinking its current stance on carbon-free, non-Russian nuclear energy. Germany will also need substantial supplies of natural gas for the foreseeable future. If Berlin is serious about energy security, it should look to Africa, which has substantial natural gas production, reserves, and new discoveries in the process of being tapped. Algeria is a major gas producer with substantial untapped reserves and is already connected to Spain with several undersea pipelines. Germany and the EU are already working to expand pipeline capacity connecting Spain with France, from where more Algerian gas could flow to Germany and elsewhere. Libyan gas fields are connected by pipeline to Italy. In both Algeria and Libya, Europe should urgently help tap new fields and increase gas production. New pipelines under discussion currently focus on the Eastern Mediterranean Pipeline Project, which would bring gas from Israel’s offshore gas fields to Europe.
But the biggest African sources lie south of the Sahara—including Nigeria, which has about a third of the continent’s reserves, and Tanzania. Senegal has recently discovered major offshore fields. Very little of Africa’s gas has been exploited, either for domestic consumption or export.
Germany should take note of these opportunities. The proposed Trans-Saharan pipeline will bring gas from Nigeria to Algeria via Niger—going through some vast, ungovernable territory. If the project is completed, the new pipeline will connect to the existing Trans-Mediterranean, Maghreb-Europe, Medgaz, and Galsi pipelines that supply Europe from transmission hubs on Algeria’s Mediterranean coast. The Trans-Saharan pipeline would be more than 2,500 miles long and could supply as much as 30 billion cubic meters of Nigerian gas to Europe per year—equivalent to about two-thirds of Germany’s 2021 imports from Russia.
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