Same ol’ Song
Commentary by Chitown Kev
So here it is, another Black Kos Tuesday mid-morning day where I’m searching around the met desperately trying to find a story worthy of writing a little bit (or a lotta bit) about in Black Kos. (I swear, it’s really not good for my mental and emotional health that I do this and I can stop doing it at any time but...alas.)
This morning, though, I scored a hit with this article authored by Cherice Escobar Jones, Gwendolynne Reid, and Mya Poe in The Conversation about how one of the nation’s leading medical journals continues to omit critical medical research and opinion-based articles by Black medical researchers.
In 2008, the AMA [American Medical Association] publicly apologized and pledged to right the wrongs that were done through decades of racism within its organization. Yet our research shows that despite that public reckoning 15 years ago, the opinion column of the AMA’s leading medical journal does not reflect the research and editorial contributions by NMA members.
Invisibility in the opinion column of one of the most prominent medical journals in the U.S. is another form of subtle racism that continues to lessen the importance of equitable medical care and health issues for Black and underserved communities.
As the article implies, the legacies of racism and segregation continue to affect the medical community (just like it does every other nook and cranny of American society) resulting not only in the marginalization of Black medical practitioners and medical research professionals but also, ultimately, in Black people not trusting the medical care that they do receive which, in turn, can result in racial disparities in a variety of health outcomes including maternal health, heart disease, mental health, Alzheimer’s Disease, diabetes, and, of course, COVID-19 (at least for the first year and a half of the pandemic).
The article continues:
We traced how frequently JAMA and JNMA opinion writers referenced one another from 2008 to 2021 by reviewing the 117 opinion pieces published in JNMA and 1,425 published in JAMA during this 13-year period. We found that JAMA opinion columns have continued to, in effect, uphold racial bias and segregation by ignoring JNMA findings.
Even when focusing on race, racism and health disparities, topics that JNMA has explored in great detail, JAMA opinion columns did not reference JNMA colleagues or research. Only two JNMA articles were credited and referenced in the 1,425 JAMA opinion pieces that we reviewed.
Editors at JAMA did not respond to our requests for their comments on our analysis.
I’m not a medical practitioner or a medical researcher or even a medical anthropologist yet still I see a very familiar pattern of thought in this report: that is, those who prick and prod and probe every little thing about every aspect of Black American life become (even unwittingly) the so-called “experts” on Black American life. Such are the American legacies of racism and segregation (legacies which are present and continuing) that even what help and assistance these “experts” can provide is, on the whole, extremely limited. In fact, it occasionally makes the lives of Black Americans even worse. And unhealthier.
And deadlier.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The co-author of The Black Guy Dies First on the Oscars, Black horror, and the future of Hollywood’s attempts at inclusivity. VOX: What’s the future of Black horror?
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It’s a familiar trope, so familiar it has been skewered over time: In Hollywood horror movies, “the Black guy” usually dies first. The token minority character in the film will be the first to go, a casualty of horror’s need to up the ante and make you scared for the main characters’ lives.
That trope lends its name to The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror From Fodder to Oscar, a witty, lively, and ultimately troubling history of Blackness in horror — its stereotypes, its caricatures, its themes, and its possibilities. Written by film critic Mark H. Harris and scholar Robin R. Means Coleman, it’s a great reference book and a great read.
And it also points to why, exactly, this trope has become common. Three-dimensional Black characters have historically been so vanishingly rare in Hollywood that they were easily disposed of or pushed to the sidelines in favor of the white characters’ development and story arc. That’s no accident; it’s the product of a century of board rooms and writers rooms filled with mostly white creative forces.
But there’s so much to be excited about in Black horror, which they argue has a unique ability to frighten and thrill and unnerve us. The popularity of innovators like Jordan Peele or Nia DaCosta, or the Purge movies (yes!) show that something is slowly, slowly shifting in Hollywood. But there’s still a long way to go.
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Bell noted that increasing the number of Black banks in America is essential to ensuring equal access to financial services that create generational wealth.
“This system has offered no grace and no mercy for Black people in our country,” said Bell, The AJC reported. He added that he believes a financial institution named Redemption, “where grace and mercy will be bountiful for people who need it, is important.”
Bell and King co-founded the National Black Bank Foundation, which, since 2020, has directed $600 million in deal flow to Black institutions. They said that acquiring a non-minority bank aids in reversing the recent decline in the number of Black financial institutions.
Former NFL player Dhani Jones was also involved in purchasing Holladay, soon to be the only Black-owned bank in the nation’s Mountain West area.
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The world’s existing mechanisms to help developing countries through debt crises are coming up short. Foreign Policy: Suriname’s Unrest Is a Warning
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Suriname, a nation of around 600,000 people on the northeastern coast of South America, rarely earns public comment from U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. But when anti-government protesters rioted through the capital city of Paramaribo on Feb. 17—storming the country’s legislature—Guterres issued a call for restraint. The violence also prompted condemnations from a Caribbean Community summit underway in the Bahamas.
High costs of living exacerbated by government efforts to address a sovereign debt crisis are driving the unrest in Suriname. The country has defaulted on its foreign debt three times since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the administration of President Chan Santokhi agreed to remove subsidies for fuel and electricity as part of a December 2021 loan program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Now, households are feeling the pinch. “A hungry mob is an angry mob,” Suriname anthropologist Maggie Schmeitz wrote of the riots in the Stabroek News.
The 2021 IMF deal was designed to encourage international creditors to restructure Suriname’s heavy debt load. In cases like these, the IMF typically requires debtor countries to present a plan for how they will be able to repay their creditors (usually by implementing austerity measures) and then slowly dispenses loan money if the country complies with the plan. The setup prevents the IMF from unconditionally covering countries’ shortfalls so that it has enough money to assist others.
At the end of 2020, the biggest holders of Suriname’s public external debt were private bondholders and commercial banks (over 40 percent), the Inter-American Development Bank (around 25 percent), and Chinese state-affiliated lenders (around 17 percent), according to the IMF. As part of Suriname’s IMF deal, the country’s major bilateral creditors gave the fund assurances—some stronger than others—that they would restructure their debt to the country. The IMF assumed that private creditors would do so, too. But over a year after the arrangement was approved, plans for how and when Suriname will repay these various creditors remain incomplete.
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It was rhetoric that has become all too common among European populists. “Hordes” of African migrants were descending on the homeland, bringing with them “violence, crimes and unacceptable practices”. Their arrival was a conspiracy to change the demography of a proud nation. Fear not, though. The president, who ran for office as an outsider determined to upend the political order, vowed urgent measures to secure his country’s borders.
One thing made it different: this language came not from Marine Le Pen or Giorgia Meloni, but from Kais Saied, the president of Tunisia.
There was a grim irony to his comments at a meeting of the national-security council on February 21st. His citizens have long been on the receiving end of such rhetoric after crossing the Mediterranean to Europe—and his autocratic presidency has spurred more of them to attempt that journey. Yet as Tunisia’s economy sputters and popular anger mounts, he has deployed the same language against the migrants in his own midst.
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A 1992 federal court agreement that led to a Black justice being elected to Louisiana’s once all-white Supreme Court is no longer needed and should be dissolved, an assistant to the state’s attorney general told a federal appeals court Monday.
The case pits Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is running for governor, against voting rights advocates and the U.S. Justice Department. Former state Chief Justice Bernette Johnson has also filed briefs opposing Landry’s position, as has term-limited Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, who leaves office next year.
Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill told the appellate judges the agreement, which effectively maintains federal court oversight over a state Supreme Court election process, is no longer needed.
“There is nothing that remains to be done,” Murrill said, noting the agreement has resulted in a seat on the high court being held by a Black judge for the past three decades. They include current Justice Piper Griffin, who began a 10-year term.
Judge Carl Stewart noted voting rights activists’ fears that, in absence of the agreement, the state could revert to a system that divides New Orleans and again dilutes Black voting power.
“It’s possible,” Murrill said. “Is it likely? It’s highly unlikely.” Even without the agreement, she said, the state would be bound by federal voting law and its own laws enacted to comply with the agreement. Landry’s office has also noted there was no attempt in a redistricting session last year to do away with the existing mostly Black district.
Attorneys for the original plaintiffs in the voting rights case and the U.S. Justice Department said the state has presented no evidence to show it would not revert to old voting patterns that denied Black voters representation on the state’s highest court.
“There is no map, there is not data,” argued attorney Leah Aden.
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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.