Parents continue to teach their children to hate.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
There are plenty “big stories” of ongoing racism, white supremacy, police brutality that I could talk about here today. They don’t end. They don’t go away. I could probably get into a debate about whether or not things are “getting better” or “getting worse” for Black folks here in the U.S., or Jewish folks, or LBGTQ’s or immigrants ...but I won’t.
I want to talk about a story that made the news and social media for a hot minute, a week ago, which quickly disappeared. Since today is the last day of Black History Month, I thought about writing something sweeping around that, but didn’t. I kept thinking about the image of cards that were “gifted” from one kid to another. Kids.
Here are the original stories I saw.
Then, today, I actually saw an update.
Upland families take legal action against district after students receive cards with racial slurs
UPLAND, Calif. (KABC) -- Parents of students at Pepper Tree Elementary School in Upland are taking public and legal action over racist attacks against their children, including verbal taunting and racist illustrations handed to one student at the beginning of Black History Month.
"That 'my favorite cotton picker' card was one of the two cards that Chloe received," said Marlene Reynoso, adding that another classmate gave her daughter a different card that read "To Chloe: You're my favorite monkey."
[...]
According to lawyers who are now representing four families with similar experiences, the racist attacks against students have gone on for months, and in some cases, years. "During COVID, this young child started to receive links during the Zoom classes," said attorney James Bryant, who went on to explain the link displayed a picture of a so-called "golden N-word pass."
"They've been passing this out and having Black children --- whether African American or African -- sign these things so they'd be the "golden" N-word versus the rest of the slave-like children," said Bryant.
According to the story, one of the lovely little racists handing out cards is the child of a teacher. Am I surprised? Nope. What bothers me is that people keep trying to tell me that once the older generation of racists dies off — things will be different. They told my parents that. My grandparents too.
Then I read Brother Mohistory’s diary today, “I don’t see color” which upset quite a few folks in the comments, since as usual, he isn’t letting anybody off the hook for the foundational racism in this country that goes beyond political party, however I am not up to debating sweeping historical truths at the moment, though I agree with Mo.
I’m thinking about those kids who got those cards. I’m thinking about the emotional scars that aren’t going to go away. I’m thinking about the parents of those kids — and about the parents who have passed on their hate to their progeny.
I was a kid exposed to hate. I have never been allowed to forget my Blackness. It’s indelible. I was 11 years old in 1958 when my parents took me to see the movie “South Pacific.” They had several friends in the cast. I didn’t care — what I remember like it was yesterday was one Rodgers and Hammerstein song from the show — which confronted racism, hatred, and the resistance to interracial marriages, which my dad was a product of. The interracial couple whose child got one of those cards, reminded me of my grandparents.
“You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”
You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade
You've got to be carefully taught
You've got to be taught before it's too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught
Not too long ago, the song was revived by Billy Porter and India.Irie.
I guess my question today is how do folks break the chain of hate passed down from parents to their children? We Black folks can’t fix it. We can simply try to mitigate the scarring.
Thoughts?
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Surrounded by kindergarteners, Lana Scott held up a card with upper and lower case Ys, dotted with pictures of words that started with that letter: Yo-yo. Yak. Yacht.
“What sound does Y make?” Scott asked a boy. Head down, he mumbled: “Yuh.” Instead of moving on, she gave him a nudge.
“Say it confident, because you know it,” she urged. “Be confident in your answer because you know it.”
He sat up and sounded it out again, louder this time. Scott smiled and turned her attention to the other kids in her group session.
As a student teacher from Bowie State University, a historically Black institution, Scott said she has learned to build deep connections with students. The school, Whitehall Elementary, is filled with teachers and administrators who graduated from Bowie State. Classrooms refer to themselves as families, and posters on the wall ask children to reflect on what makes a good classmate.
HBCUs play an outsize role in producing teachers of color in the U.S., where only 7% of teachers are Black, compared with 15% of students. Of all Black teachers nationwide, nearly half are graduates of an HBCU.
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The University of Texas System has paused new diversity, equity and inclusion policies at all of its campuses, according to an announcement Wednesday by the board's chairman.
The system directive comes amid growing criticism from Republican state lawmakers about such diversity initiatives in higher education and a warning to state agencies from the governor's office that using DEI in hiring decisions might run afoul of federal and state laws.
The UT System Board of Regents has also asked for a report on their DEI policies to give the board “a chance to review the various policies systemwide,” Chairman Kevin Eltife said during the board’s quarterly meeting Wednesday. The topic of DEI policies was not on the meeting agenda, and Eltife said his statement was neither a discussion nor action item.
The UT System includes eight academic institutions, including the University of Texas at Austin, and five health institutions, with about 244,000 enrolled students across all campuses. Eltife said in a statement that the UT System welcomes, celebrates and strives for diversity among students and faculty on its campuses.
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Traffic stops, usually over minor infractions, are one of the most common ways that people interact with police. The frequency with which they turn deadly, often with impunity for the officers responsible, has made them a major focal point in the effort to combat police brutality.
In one recent case, police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, pulled over 29-year-old Tyre Nichols for “reckless driving.” Over the next several minutes, officers brutally beat, kicked, and pepper-sprayed Nichols while screaming conflicting orders at him. Three days later, Nichols died from his injuries. Investigators have since said they were “unable to substantiate” the claim that he was driving recklessly, and five officers have since been charged in Nichols’s death.
Now, Memphis lawmakers are considering legislation that would ban officers from stopping drivers for certain low-level driving offenses. The bill, which is modeled after a Philadelphia law, attempts to reduce the potential for deadly interactions between the police and Black drivers, who are pulled over more frequently than drivers of other races.
How did we reach the point where traffic stops escalate into police killings? In her 2019 book, Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom, Sarah Seo, a historian of criminal law and procedure and professor at Columbia Law School, examines how the automotive era upended society, dramatically expanded the power and authority of the police, and altered our society in the process, resulting in the traffic enforcement system we have today. Vox spoke to Seo about the legal, social, and historical forces that shaped our modern, deadly approach to traffic enforcement.
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A Democratic lawmaker who called the late pastor of Emanuel AME Church a friend is continuing his push to make South Carolina the 49th state with a hate crime law.
After an avowed white supremacist murdered nine members of the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the U.S. South in 2015, Rep. Wendell Gilliard revamped his ongoing pursuit of enhanced state penalties for hate crimes.
Before adjourning that summer, lawmakers provided a special session might allow them to stiffen punishments for crimes motivated by bias against particular groups. But no such proposal has become law in the years since.
The measure took its first steps this year when a House subcommittee unanimously advanced the bill Thursday. Gilliard told lawmakers that it brings “no pleasure” to discuss the issue every year. For Gilliard, the debate recalls memories of the attack on churchgoers he knew in the district where he was raised.
“It’s a weight to carry,” Gilliard told The Associated Press. “But you know you have to do it.”
South Carolina and Wyoming are the only two states without a hate crime statute.
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Final tally not expected until middle of next week as polling system hit by significant technical problems. BBC: Rain marks end of voting on historic day
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It is now raining heavily in the capital, Abuja - the first time this year and symbolically marking the official end to voting.
Those who are superstitious are reading meanings into the rain, while those who stayed around during the sorting of ballots at polling stations have scuttled for cover.
It has been an eventful day with security fears and logistical problems being blamed for delays to voting – people are still in queues in some parts of the country.
Some images sum up the enthusiasm of young voters, like the bride who turned up to vote in her wedding dress:
Amid violence at a polling station in Lagos state, a woman was stabbed but later returned to vote with her patched up face to cheers from other voters.
All eyes will now be on the central collation centre here in Abuja where the results from the hundreds of thousands of polling units will be sent - it is likely to be a slow process
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There is a patient Dr Véronique Tognifode, a gynaecologist, will always remember. About eight years ago, Abosede*, a student, visited her clinic in tears. Pregnant with an unwanted baby, she asked for an abortion, but the law in Benin at that time permitted termination only in cases of rape or incest, or where the mother’s life was at risk or the unborn child had a serious medical condition.
Tognifode counselled her, telling her a baby was a blessing and that she would help her through the pregnancy. Tognifode felt Abosede took all this on board, and “she left in a calmer state, saying she would come back for prenatal appointments”.
Three weeks later, Tognifode was working on a ward at the local hospital when she reached a woman who had septicaemia, probably caused by a clandestine abortion. “It was the same young woman I had seen a few weeks before,” she says. “She had found her own solution in secret … I hadn’t completely recognised her because she was no longer in the same state but close to the other side, close to death.”
For Tognifode, this story – and there are countless others from gynaecologists around the country – illustrates why reform to the law in Benin was so crucial.
When abortion is illegal, says Tognifode, women resort to “unimaginable and inhumane methods” that are “completely mad, medically speaking”. They may ingest pills or bleach, or insert sharp objects into their vaginas, sometimes causing intestinal damage. Benin’s health minister, Benjamin Hounkpatin, estimates that unsafe abortions are responsible for one in five maternal deaths nationwide.
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Voices & Soul
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Editor
Sometimes it is hard to keep up with all this white grievance, but not really. If there is any initial confusion, it is quickly alleviated by the knowledge it is the same old, same old. You have a stunted stick figure cartoonist whose stick figures are all tubes whining that Black people are a hate group and white people better “run fer yer lives!” While the heir to an apartheid blood emerald fortune tweets on his bird app, “yep, true true!”
I came across the ruminations of an incel neo plantation neo slaver bemoaning why won’t women be feminine again, while posting the cosplay of his Lolita fantasy lounging in a verdant field.
When I simply posted, “Make Women Equal, Pass The ERA,” you would have thought I was reading the “Feminine Mystique” in drag at the library.
Sometimes it’s hard to keep up, but not really.
Why is there (under this sea) always
an other sea? Scrolling through miles
of leopard-print bikinis, I wonder, could I go
“all out”? Just imagine where my cleavage should peak,
would peek from under—do I go for side or classic?
Which stretch marks will I sun, running
like shoals of mica palmed by waves?
Will I add a shell
accent?
Some saddie on the web says,
a hungry moon snail made the mark,
says, moon snails release an acid
to soften the shell, then drill a borehole
(a toothed tongue) and feed off the meat
of the “victim.” What if I lost
these breasts altogether? I’m hunting.
Another saddie says, those holes were made
by a boring sponge, drilling holes
into shells for their calcium.
The leopard walks on water. Their claws
just prick the surface without going under.
You’re a heavy cat, and I wish I had you-
r muscle. Just imagine. I could love it.
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