Commentary By Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
As we move into Black History Month, which is really all year round, and should be a foundational part of what is labelled “American History,” I’d like to remind folks that you don’t have to be Black to become a member of the Black Kos Community and support what we’ve been doing here on Daily Kos since 2007.
Posted this history last year, and felt like I should repeat it:
For those of you who are not Daily Kos "old timers," Black Kos, was founded by David Reid, screen name dopper0189, on Tue Jan 02, 2007, as an open thread, which evolved into Black Kos: weekly round up, and then became Black Kos: Week in review. On Fri Mar 21, 2008 dopper published "My last Black Kos week in review diary," and Black Kos as a user ID was born.
He wrote in 2016:
The reason I started Black Kos way back when was in the hope that it would allow Daily Kos members, who in their day to day lives, may not have much exposure to the everyday lives of black people. When I write of personal interaction, I don’t mean the professional interactions at work, but what life is like for everyday black people for the majority of their day. See I'm quite aware a majority of our readers at Black Kos are white. If I wanted to only address a black or mostly black audience I could more easily do so elsewhere. Think about it. I'm a member of a half dozen other majority black blogs. So why do I bother to post here?
I did it because of what the the image of the progressive Net Roots was at that time. I'm writing specifically of 2003-2005. I remember watching endless hours of TV punditry, on how the Net Roots (then Yearly Kos) were all “lily white” basically the old "limousine liberal" smear. Now think to yourself, when was the last time you have heard that on a Sunday Morning talk show? Go back and look at the coverage of the first Yearly Kos convention (Net Root’s nations predecessor). The number one question then was “where are the Black (and Brown) folks?” I believe that a more visible minority presence helped combat those smears, because we were always here just not visible. (By the way, I did enjoy back before anybody knew what race I was, the discussions were often fun and lively, but I decided on my own to step up and out because sometimes you do need visible members).
But now with the election of Trump who openly espouses bigotry, America seems more racially divided. But maybe it’s really because we’re more aware of our racial shortcomings. Many white Americans have a shocked response to claims of white privilege, unfairness and discrimination. Maybe they have this reaction because it’s outside their daily experience. If you ask many white people, “Do you think traffic stops are done unfairly?” the majority of whites probably would say “NO” because it’s not something they experience. It’s not because of racism; it’s just that it’s not something that they see. Unfortunately personal experiences often are the most powerful foundations of belief systems.
Since David wrote this, we are seeing yet another of those traffic stops, resulting in yet another horrific lynching by police, who are the guardians of a white supremacist system.
I was looking at this Editorial cartoon from Bill Day this morning:
None of us — should be ignoring what is happening not only in Florida, but in all the parts of the U.S. that house people who embrace and tout MAGA, KKK, and Nazi terrorist ideologies. If you are not-Black, you have even more responsibility to fiercely fight back along with us who are, since we.did.not.make.this.shit and we are not gonna be able to fix it and steer a path to sanity alone. Ultimately, unless you take on the battle as yours, you will eventually be harmed even more than we are.
One of the beautiful things about Black Kos, is the bridges that are built here each week, between some of the Black members we have at Daily Kos and those committed folks who are majority not-Black, who come here and engage in the comments section. Thank you, you know who you are. Here’s hoping more readers will de-lurk, and introduce themselves.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Lawyers for the Nichols family said in a press conference Monday that Nichols had been treated like a “human piñata.” Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said in a video statement Thursday that the attack was “heinous, reckless, and inhumane.” Protests, most of them peaceful, sprang up across the country on Friday after the city of Memphis released video footage of Nichols’s brutal assault.
Five Black officers for the Memphis Police Department — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith — were fired after an internal departmental investigation found them to be “directly responsible” for the beating. They also were found to have violated departmental policies regarding excessive force, duty to intervene, and duty to render aid.
Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy announced Thursday that each would face charges of “second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct, and one charge of official oppression.” They could each face up to 60 years in prison for the murder charges alone.
Two Memphis Fire Department workers who were involved in Nichols’s initial care have been “relieved of duty,” according to the department. It’s not clear whether they could also face charges.
The US attorney for the Western District of Tennessee also announced that there is an open civil rights investigation into Nichols’s death, which could result in federal criminal charges.
Police stopped Nichols for reckless driving on January 7. Memphis’s police chief later told CNN that investigators have “been unable to substantiate” the claim that Nichols was driving recklessly, however. Nichols expressed confusion about the stop, saying in the footage that he was “just trying to go home.”
The officers who initially stopped him responded by threatening to “knock your ass the fuck out,” and to break his bones. Nichols fled from the stop; once he was caught, those threats were carried out. Officers encircled Nichols, and repeatedly punched, kicked, and hit him with a baton — sometimes while he was restrained on the ground.
He was taken to a hospital after his arrest, where he died three days later of injuries sustained in the beating.
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About 50 years ago, Greg Bowens was given “the talk” — sage advice about what young Black people should do and, more importantly, not do when stopped by police in Detroit.
But just this month, Tyre Nichols, a Black man, died after police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, stopped, threatened and brutally beat him, even as he seemed to follow the same advice Bowens heard in the 1970s.
“The talk” has been passed down in many Black families for generations as a way to prepare their children for interactions with police. It is part of historical distrust of law enforcement, often seen as being more heavy-handed and violent in dealings with Black people or in Black neighborhoods.
“(Nichols) had his window down. He was stopped. He was calm,” said Bowens who watched several videos showing the traffic stop, beating and failure by officers and medical personnel to render aid to Nichols as he lay writhing in the street. He later died at a hospital.
“It didn’t seem like they were trying to arrest him,” Bowens added. “It seemed like they were trying to hurt him. It was terrifying. I was in tears.”
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For those who are unsure how it began, Black History Month initially began as a 7-day celebration in 1926.
That year, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History proclaimed that the second week of February become know as “Negro History Week.” This provision would finally celebrate what Black Americans contributed to the history of the US.
The esteemed historian Carter G. Woodson, whose parents were enslaved, worked with other leaders and activists to start the Association. It is now known as Association for the Study of African American Life and History, which publishes the works of Black researchers and scholars.
Woodson selected February to celebrate Negro History Week because two men who he believed represented freedom for Black folks, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, were born during that month. Though it began in the 1920s, it would take decades for Black History Month to become nationally observed.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that college students and teachers encouraged Negro History Week to be celebrated all month long. Soon after, schools and various institutions across the country began to celebrate Black History Month.
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Black quarterbacks have come a long way in the NFL since Fritz Pollard became the first to play in the league in 1923 and Doug Williams was the first to start and win a Super Bowl following the 1987 season.
Now, Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts will be the first Black QBs to face off in a Super Bowl.
It’s fitting that a season which began with 11 Black QBs starting in Week 1 will end with a historic matchup.
Mahomes can become the first two-time winner if he leads the Kansas City Chiefs to victory over the Philadelphia Eagles on Feb. 12. Hurts aims to become the fourth Black QB to win the Super Bowl, joining Williams, Mahomes and Russell Wilson.
Steve McNair, Colin Kaepernick, Cam Newton and Wilson also started in the Super Bowl and lost.
Michael Vick was the first Black QB selected No. 1 overall in the draft in 2001. McNair became the first Black QB to win MVP in 2003. Mahomes and Lamar Jackson won it back-to-back years.
Jalen Hurts — NFL.Com
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Five centuries ago, South Africa’s original inhabitants, the Indigenous Khoi and San people, won a great military victory against Portuguese explorers in the Battle of Salt River, near the Cape of Good Hope. It was the first instance of an anti-colonial struggle that would continue until the advent of the country’s democracy in 1994.
Another battle has been raging for several years at the very same location, today a genteel Cape Town neighborhood called Observatory, again pitting Khoi and San against another great Western power—the U.S. tech behemoth Amazon—but perhaps more importantly, turning members of South Africa’s most marginalized community against one another.
It has brought up sensitive questions over who gets to speak for whom, what is sacred, and how to commemorate injustice, while some argue for the need to modernize and improve the dire economic conditions that Indigenous communities face.
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Voices and Soul
“… a poem cannot stop a bullet
but can swallow the hate and spit back
a sonnet… “
- Darius V Daughtry
“what can a poem do?”
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Editor
I told myself I could not watch another recording of another Black person killed, that I just could not stomach it anymore. But I did, in snippets. It had the familiarity of another lynching of another runaway slave, the familiarity of a warning to anyone presuming they have equal protection and due process, under law.
And all the old racist tropes were trotted out by all the old racists, and some new ones, too. The abject cruelty, and the reveling in it was as familiar as those old post cards of the whole town at the hanging elm, sent to distant relations then displayed the horror prominently with the other family heirlooms. I told myself I could not watch it again, that I just could not stomach it. I was correct,
a poem cannot save a life
cannot Luke Cage your skin
fend off a dark alley attack
cannot make you less woman
or less poor
or less Black
and
thus
treated equally
a poem cannot stop a bullet
stop a bomb
stop terror on your doorstep
your step
even with poem in hand
could be your last
a blast would turn the paper poem is written on into dust
particles
simile up in smoke
metaphors
just molecules forgotten
a poem cannot turn back time’s hand
erase mistakes made
or cut, copy, paste memories
a poem cannot delete history’s horrors
but a poem can love
like hold you and scold you at the same time
a poem can rip away the untruths that have cocooned us
a poem can make you butterfly
not fly
you already fly
but a poem can make you float
no need to watch your step
quiet as kept
a poem can introduce you to yourself
help you discover those hidden
forbidden parts
a poem be like a mirror sometimes
help you see the crust in your eyes
and the plank
on second thought
a poem can save a life
like wise words granddaddy whispered
like the layer of truth just below the scriptures
a poem cannot stop a bullet
but can swallow the hate and spit back
a sonnet
that sonic booms
a room till
quotes
float like balloons
goblins and goons
soon just nod their heads
snap their fingers
to what’s written and said
isn’t it ironic
they say the pen is mightier than the sword
but there were few writers on my block
mostly fighters on my block
dropouts that pulled all-nighters on my block
they’d blue and red light us on my block
then indict us on my block
what if there were more writers on my block
on your block
in every barrio and borough
conclave and commonwealth
courtroom and capitol hill
what if they all spilled ink
on pages
allowed the innerworkings of their hearts
to scribble a poem or two
I wonder where we’d be if the masses knew
just what a poem could do.
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
