“Dream with ambition” ~ VP Kamala Harris
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
There are days when you need a shot of joy. Given all the unbridled spewing of hate in this nation these days, joy is more necessary than ever. I got some of it when I saw the picture of Madame Vice President Kamala Harris surrounded by the beaming faces of the girls and young women in this photo.
I was curious about it. Then I saw this clip.
Wondered just who the Zawadi Scouts are? I found out they are a program run by The Zawadi Cultural Collective in the San Fernando Valley in California.
“A Girl Scout troop specifically for girls of color designed to develop self-awareness, pride and to promote positive role models for young girls”
These girls are having an experience that is so very different from my memories of my first exposure to scouting in 1954. My family had moved from Crown Heights Brooklyn, the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood I grew up in, to State College Pennsylvania, a very WASP town, to the campus of Penn State, where my dad was teaching while pursuing his doctorate on a John Hay Whitney Fellowship.
I joined the local Brownie troop. I was the one of only two “brownies” in it — the other brown girl was the daughter of a Mexican-American teacher, and she and a friend of mine who was the daughter of a NYC Jewish professor and I bonded. We were the three “Missketeers” in a group of WASP girls who weren’t particularly friendly.
One day, several of the WASP Brownie girls pulled me off to the side to ask me if I had been inside the home of my Jewish friend. Puzzled by the question, I answered — “Yes, of course.” I wasn’t prepared for the next question. “Have you seen her horns and tail?” “WHAT?,” I replied. They repeated, “her horns and tail...Jews have horns and tails, you know. They hide them in public.” I spun around and ran away ...ran all the way home...and when I got in the house I ran straight to my mom, babbling at her that we had to pack up and leave and go back to Brooklyn. Alarmed, she asked me what had happened and I told her. Like all good moms she sat me down and gave me a talk about “ignorance” and “prejudice” and how it was important for me to rise above their hatred and continue to build bridges to Jewish people and Mexicans — and even WASPS who didn’t know better.
I have never forgotten those girls. I remember their faces when I see photos of white mobs of college students taunting Black students who braved integrating southern colleges. Their faces were the same as the ones who taunted me when I was a Black 7th grader being bussed into an all-white Junior High School in Queens NY — and the bus was greeted by an angry mob of white racist parents and their children.
I think about them when now, many decades later the ramped up hate is everywhere again, openly egged on by elected Republiklan officials and their followers.
I’ve applauded VP Harris as she openly fights back and shows righteous anger about events taking place in Florida, and across the nation.
However, I also find myself looking for moments of ease from the dis-ease of hatred our nation is infested with.
I was glad to see the smiling faces of those young women with MVP. They are our future. They are joy. She gave them a joyous moment they will never forget and will carry into the future. Let us all try to find moments of shared joy — and then — fight on.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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July is Fibroids Awareness Month. As previously reported by theGrio, we featured Dr. Thomasena Ellison, associate director of gynecology at Maimonides Medical Center, on “Unheard” to shed light on fibroids.
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, Black women are often underdiagnosed and undertreated.
Dr. Ellison explained that uterine fibroids are non-cancerous tumors of the uterus extremely common in women, especially women of the African diaspora, and she shared her thoughts on why Black woman are impacted more when it comes to fibroids.
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President Joe Biden will establish a national monument honoring Emmett Till, the Black teenager from Chicago who was abducted, tortured and killed in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi, and his mother, a White House official said Saturday.
Biden will sign a proclamation on Tuesday to create the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument across three sites in Illinois and Mississippi, according to the official. The individual spoke on condition of anonymity because the White House had not formally announced the president’s plans.
The monument will protect places that are central to the story of Till’s life and death at age 14, the acquittal of his white killers and his mother’s activism. Till’s mother’s insistence on an open casket to show the world how her son had been brutalized and Jet’s magazine’s decision to publish photos of his mutilated body helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement.
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President Joe Biden is tapping Shuwanza Goff — a veteran congressional aide who also served as his main point of contact to the House at the start of the administration — as his new director of legislative affairs, making her the first Black woman to be the White House’s chief emissary to Capitol Hill.
Goff succeeds Louisa Terrell in the role, a position that is especially vital for a president who spent more than three decades in Congress and takes pride in his connections to lawmakers. Goff comes into the job with deep relationships not just with Democrats but with Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., that were honed over more than a decade on Capitol Hill.
In a statement announcing the hire, Biden called Goff a “proven leader and trusted voice on both sides of the aisle” who played a key role in the biggest legislative accomplishments from the first two years of his presidency, including COVID-19 relief, a major climate, tax and health care package as well as the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Before joining the Biden administration, Goff was a senior aide to Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., eventually becoming his floor director when Hoyer served in House Democratic leadership.
“Shuwanza’s close partnership with my decades-long friends in the House and Senate, and her expertise, instincts and deep respect for the United States Congress will continue to serve our Administration and the American people well,” Biden said.
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In the abstract, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) defense of changes to discussion of slavery in his state’s schools is baffling. The state’s new educational standards suggest that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” as though being considered property was simply a step on the career ladder.
Asked about it, DeSantis offered that the curriculum — which he insisted wasn’t something he produced — would probably “show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.” Needless to say, this is not generally how historians view the institution of slavery.
But DeSantis’s argument isn’t offered solely as a governor of a large state. It is also offered as a guy who is running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and, in that context, his efforts to downplay the extent to which Black Americans suffered from slavery make much more sense.
Last week, YouGov published polling data showing a divide in how Americans view the effects of racism. Poll respondents were asked whether racism against various racial groups was a problem now and the extent to which it had been in the past.
Republican respondents were more likely to say that racism against Black people was lower in the past than were White respondents or respondents overall. (Perceptions of racism in the past are shown with triangles on the graph below.) They were also less likely to say that racism against Black Americans is currently a problem (shown with a dot) — and were about half as likely as respondents overall to say that racism is currently a big problem (indicated with a dashed line) for Black Americans.
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Kenya, one of Africa's most stable and prosperous economies, is reeling from the impact of a series of violent protests against the cost of living and tax rises. NPR: Kenya hit by a wave of protests over the cost of living and taxes
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Kenya risks tumbling into a dark and dangerous abyss. That warning comes from two national newspapers, which issued a rare joint editorial today. The country has been hit by a wave of opposition-led protests over the cost of living and a rise in taxes. Michael Kaloki reports from the capital, Nairobi.
Kenya is in the grip of another wave of disruption and protest. What started out as a call from opposition leader Raila Odinga to protest against last year's election results has morphed into frequently violent demonstrations against the rise in food and fuel prices and a series of tax hikes.
And protest is often met with force from the police - teargas and rubber bullets. Nearly 30 people have died in the last few weeks of violence. Kenya's president, William Ruto, has called for calm.
PRESIDENT WILLIAM RUTO: Every part of Kenya have said we cannot sabotage our economy using violence and destruction of business and destruction of property. All of us must protect our country.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Editor
The time it takes to blink an eye is the time it takes to roll back the clock to segregated lunch counters and strange fruit hanging from the poplar tree. Time is truly, that fluid. And yet goosestepping Governors of the Old South want to grind the iron heel of their white go-go boots on the throat of that recent history and suffocate it out of existence. We are forced to believe the enslaved were the cause of their enslavement, and if not for their enslavement, American slaves would be far worse off, and they should thank their lucky stars to be enslaved by such an advanced race that lifts all boats into the service of their existence.
The Nazi Frauen of the KKKlanned Karenhood insist the teaching of Black self-determination in the face of forced servitude is racist to white people, and absolutely pornographic to the white kiddies being groomed in their state-approved Nazi homeschools. Pointing out that “woke” as a pejorative is really the “N” word, will bring charges of hate speech against white Christians and grave consequences should be expected.
We are forced to ignore the New York Slave Revolt of 1712, the Stono Rebellion and even the Igbo Landing.
But we won’t. Ever.
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
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