Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I was scrolling through Twitter the other day, and saw this thread initiated by Lecia Michelle, author of the soon to be released "The White Allies Handbook," which I wrote about here in March. Given that we are faced with more and more openly hostile armed white supremacists, many of whom are willing to kill us off, like in the recent Buffalo massacre, we Black folks who are only around 14% of the U.S. population are going to depend on white, and other allies of color in the days ahead. This means that we have to have open discussions with allies around race, racism and white supremacy, as well as being clear about microaggressions — whether or not harm was intended. One of those issues is how to deal with people who say to us “ I don’t see color” or “I’m colorblind” or who constantly lob an out of context quote from the Rev. Dr. MLK Jr. at us, which his daughter Bernice King referenced this week:
That said, here’s the thread that sparked this post.
I enjoyed reading the responses. The hashtag #IDontSeeColor has been around for quite some time — I found it as early as 2014, however it’s clear that the lessons taught about this response from not-Black or melanated folks to discussions of racism and systemic racism has to be repeated over and over again.
From an earlier thread
I got curious about videos that are around, which should be shared by people who are attempting to educate family members, friends, co-workers and neighbors on this subject. There are quite a few and I’m going to post some I’ve found in hopes you will use them. Please post any others you know of to the comments section.
Musician, social commentator and satirist Dara Starr Tucker regularly posts discussions of race and racism on TikTok, YouTube and on her Twitter account. Here’s her take:
PBS addressed the issue of “colorblindness” in 2020
While it may be tempting to shift the focus away from race in an effort to boost unity at a moment like this, Raël Nelson James cautioned against doing so. “Color blindness fundamentally misses the mark by erasing something that’s fundamental to people’s identity and people’s self-love,” she said. Instead of pushing the issue away, James recommended that workplace employees “lean into the kind of discomfort it might take to become an ally” to black and brown communities and devote themselves to pursuing that path. Raël Nelson James, the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at The Bridgespan Group and PBS NewsHour’s Stephanie Sy took viewer questions on navigating discussions of race at work on June 5.
Ianessa Humbert, speech language pathologist gives her perspective on being “the Black Woman”
This video was made across the pond — which has a long history of racism, predating ours here in the U.S.
Poet Marshall Gillson, recited his take back in 2015
If you don’t see color, you don’t see me. Payton S. Gendron saw color. Dylann Roof saw color. George Zimmerman saw color. Let’s stop pretending that seeing color and having discussions about systemic racism can be avoided to keep not-Black folks from experiencing discomfort.
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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There was a wave of anger from Black Twitter users last month when Walmart released its Juneteenth-themed ice cream, with a flavor created by the New York-based company Balchem.
Spotting a trademark symbol for Juneteenth on the product’s label, many on social media criticized both companies for trying to capitalize off Black culture. But what got missed in the uproar was a simple fact: Someone else had claimed the term before any of the major companies could.
That person was Mario Bowler Sr., an assistant director at his alma mater, Lincoln University, a historically Black university in Pennsylvania.
When Biden declared Juneteenth a national holiday last year, Bowler said one of his first thoughts was that the holiday would be exploited by those taking advantage of it with “ill intention,” which led him to apply for a trademark.
Bowler, who had been attending Black business conventions for years and toyed with establishing a business around Black food and culture, filed a trademark application for “Juneteenth Joy” last summer. Not only does the family-owned business sell gourmet popcorn, candles and mints that symbolize the history and collective achievements of Black people, Juneteenth Joy also aspires to give back to the community by funding scholarships and university projects for future Black leaders, while shouting out milestones like new businesses or book releases on social media.
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In its third year, Black Birders Week 2022 is focusing on making outdoor spaces safe for all people of color. Following the viral story of Christan Cooper, a leader in the NYC area bird watching community once threatened by a white woman he’d called out for asking her to leash her dog, necessary conversations around being Black and outside began to take place. If you recall, once Cooper asked the woman to abide by the park rules, she became aggressive and argumentative, conjuring a story she would tell police about “a Black man threatening her life.” This was all of course untrue, and fortunately captured by Cooper’s phone. But who wants to have to go through all of that when you’re just trying to enjoy your day?
Chelsea Connor, a graduate student and herpetologist at Clemson University spoke to USA Today about previously joining a private online networking group for Black people interested in the sciences and the pursuit of outdoor hobbies. What she found was that many of those she interacted with had had similar experiences, even if they were not as overtly racist as what Cooper had gone through.
“We started talking about our experiences being Black outdoors, either birding or doing field work and encountering racist violence,” Connor recalled. “We were angry and hurt and scared.”
Another member, Harvard University researcher and graduate student Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman had the idea to introduce a national day to celebrate Black bird watchers, while Tykee James, a government affairs coordinator for the National Audubon Society suggested that they turn it into an entire week.
The celebration caught on like wildfire and is now observed in cities nationwide from New York to Philadelphia, Cleveland to Raleigh, North Carolina. Participants are able to learn about falconry, and are supported by tips to overcome mental illnesses and learning disorders. Overall, Black birders are simply looking for those to enjoy their outdoor hobbies with, even if that support is from afar. Feeling safe while alone in predominantly white spaces calls for the disruption of racism in these environments. Something the people of these communities look to their allies to handle.
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After the mass shooting at a Texas elementary school, schools around the country pledged to boost security measures and increased the presence of law enforcement on campus — partly to reassure parents and students.
But police inside schools can make some students more uneasy, not less. Especially for Black students and other students of color, their personal experiences with policing can leave them feeling unsafe and alienated from school when they see officers on campus.
High school senior Malika Mobley has seen three different school resource officers patrolling the campus in Raleigh, North Carolina. Once on the way home from school, Mobley saw officers detain a visibly distraught classmate and push the student into the back of a police vehicle.
“They were crying, ‘Why are you doing this to me? I didn’t do anything,’” said Mobley, co-president of Wake County Black Student Coalition. “I was just forced to stand there and couldn’t do anything.”
Since 2020, the student group has advocated for eliminating police officers from school buildings in favor of investing in counselors and support staff for students.
“We don’t see police presence as part of the solution,” Mobley said. “If you really think about why police don’t make us safer, you can draw connections to all types of tragedies that impact the most marginalized among us.”
Police officers have a regular presence at schools across the country in recent decades, often in the form of school resource officers, who are tasked with building relationships with young people to promote trust of law enforcement, providing security, and enforcing laws. Critics say having armed police on campus often results in Black students being disproportionately arrested and punished, leading to what they call the school-to-prison pipeline.
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This is the tale of a fake news story, widely shared by a lot of smart people who so badly wanted it to be true that they didn’t care that it wasn’t. It is also the tale of the decline of local news in America, the wave of pink slime that is replacing it, feeding destructive partisan narratives about public institutions.
And here is the lede:
Oak Park and River Forest High School administrators will require teachers next school year to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students. In an effort to equalize test scores among racial groups, OPRF will order its teachers to exclude from their grading assessments variables it says disproportionally hurt the grades of black students. They can no longer be docked for missing class, misbehaving in school or failing to turn in their assignments, according to the plan.
This sounds bad! A Chicago suburban school is handing out different grades depending on race! You can’t punish students for misbehaving!
Nor surprisingly, people were outraged. The story went viral, with big Twitter names posting it to their hundreds of thousands of followers. (Some would later delete their tweet for reasons that will become clear below.)
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Editor
I was thinking the other day of the poems Gwendolyn Brooks would have written of the dead in the Buffalo white supremacist killings, how the personal would have risen like an angelic spirit from each. Brooks had that magical literary quality to breathe life to the living, and the dead, on the page. She could take singular, trivial acts of every day life and they would glisten in a sun filled kitchen described in meter and verse, a rhythm and a beat of the heart pulsating on the grain of bound paper, giving proof that a life was living there.
Gwendolyn Brooks would be 105 years old today. She lives and breathes, still, in the bound grains of paper in the hands of the curious and the reverent. I honor her.
breath,
life after seven decades plus three years
is a lot of breathing. seventy three years on this
earth is a lot of taking in and giving out, is a
life of coming from somewhere and for many a bunch
of going nowhere.
how do we celebrate a poet who has created
music with words for over fifty years, who has
showered magic on her people, who has redefined
poetry into a black world exactness
thereby giving the universe an insight into
darkroads?
just say she interprets beauty and wants to
give life, say she is patient with phoniness
and doesn’t mind people calling her gwen or sister.
say she sees the genius in our children, is visionary
about possibilities, sees as clearly as ray charles and
stevie wonder, hears like determined elephants looking
for food. say that her touch is fine wood, her memory
is like an african roadmap detailing adventure and
clarity, yet returning to chicago’s south evans
to record the journey. say her voice is majestic
and magnetic as she speaks in poetry, rhythms, song
and spirited trumpets, say she is dark skinned,
melanin rich, small-boned, hurricane-willed,
with a mind like a tornado redefining the landscape.
life after seven decades plus three years
is a lot of breathing.
gwendolyn, gwen, sister g has
not disappointed our expectations.
in the middle
of her eldership she brings us
vigorous language, memory,
illumination.
she brings breath.
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH.
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