The political and the personal
Commentary by Chitown Kev
I’ve never paid much attention to the five stages of grief but I have found myself taking a peek at this sort of self-diagnosis tool in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election.
I’m feeling all sorts of things.
I don’t know if all of these stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) are supposed to occur in stages; at any given moment; I can easily feel three or even four of these emotions at the same time with the exception of “bargaining.”
But now…
I talked to my Mom last night and when she gets on the subject of the reelection of the shoe salesman, she does not want to stop. When she answers my call, I can hear MSNBC in the background so I know she’s paying attention.
(When Trump was elected in 2016, Mom literally got sick and I wasn’t able to talk to her for a few days. I’ve stayed in contact with her most days during this post-election period.)
As we talked, Mom informed me that two of my close relatives voted for Trump.
She told me the rationales that they gave. Honestly, I’m not surprised that one of those relatives voted for Trump but the disclosure of the second relative that did so surprised me. A lot.
Both relatives have a bachelor’s degree, so neither meets the definition of being “uneducated” or a “low-information” voter; I’ve had a couple of lively political discussions with one of them (that’s the one that surprises me).
This is on top of my first cousin dying from COVID in 2021 because he listened to and followed all of the various COVID-related conspiracy theories up to the time that he was on his deathbed.
I love the fact that Mom can call me at any given moment and get her questions about political content answered or any conspiracy theories rolling around in her head debunked. While I shied away from her complement that reminded her so much of a certain Oxford-trained Rhodes Scholar on MSNBC (I’m really not all of that!), I did dub myself Mom’s “personal newswire service” (all of her children and grandchildren have certain functions to fulfill in her life). Indeed, when the family does have a political question, I often receive it.
Yet I do feel a little...guilt. I was not able to provide factual information to my now late cousin.
I never had the chance to debunk the apparent election-related misinformation rolling around in the heads of my Trump-voting relatives.
I’m not naive; there’s only so much that can be said to grown folks; they’re going to do what they want to do.
Yet I also feel that if I was gifted (?) in such a way in a certain area of expertise and I cannot help my own family, then what good am I?
In that way, the tragedy of the 2024 presidential election is not just national, not just international, not simply infuriating but also...very personal.
And I am compelled to do something about it before I take a dirt nap.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Black users make up some of social media’s most engaged, influential audiences. They are now also among the thousands of people who have left X, formerly Twitter, citing a flood of bots, harassment and partisan ads surrounding the polarizing presidential election. With throngs of people leaving, “Black Twitter” may become a thing of the past as more users move to alternative text-based social media apps.
“I don’t think that Black Twitter is going to exist within the next couple of years,” said Jonathan Johnson, a 29-year-old behavioral therapist in Houston and a longtime Twitter and X user.
The future is unclear for Black Twitter, an unofficial group of users self-organized around shared cultural experiences that convenes sometimes viral discussions on everything from social issues to pop culture. It has played a key role in movements such as #SayHerName, #BlackLivesMatter and #OscarsSoWhite.
Through memes, gifs, threads and hashtags, Black social media users have been able to navigate moments like Mike Brown’s murder and the rise of Donald Trump, as well as come together to live-tweet award shows, discuss current events and watch Black-centered television shows together.
“Black Twitter is one of the most important forms of community that made the platform what it was,” said Ashon Crawley, a professor of religious studies and African American and African studies at the University of Virginia. “Social media is only important because of the social part, and if you don’t have that, people aren’t going to use” the app.
Johnson joined the app in 2009 when he was a teenager. Last week, he signed up for an alternative app, Bluesky. “Everyone is on the same page of what we don’t want to see.”
Elon Musk’s involvement in Trump’s campaign and his changes to the social media platform have prompted many people to abandon X in his two years as owner of the company. More than 115,000 accounts deactivated on the day after the election, the most dropped accounts in a single day since Musk acquired the platform, according to data from Similarweb, a third-party company that tracks social media analytics, shared with NBC News this week.
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From a tiny office behind a Haitian grocery store on Springfield’s South Limestone Street, Margery Koveleski has spent years helping local Haitians overcome bureaucratic red tape to make their lives in the Ohio city a little bit easier.
But Koveleski – whose family is Haitian – has noticed a major change recently.
Haitians are now coming to her to figure out how to leave.
“Some folks don’t have credit cards or access to the internet, and they want to buy a bus ticket or a plane ticket, so we help them book a flight,” she told the Guardian recently. “People are leaving.”
Koveleski, leaders in Springfield’s Haitian community, and others have relayed reports of Haitians fleeing the city of 60,000 people in recent days for fear of being rounded up and deported after Donald Trump’s victory in the 5 November presidential election.
“The owner of one store is wondering if he should move back to New York or to Chicago – he says his business is way down,” Koveleski remarked.
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Activists and education experts are slamming President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal to seek “restitution” for so-called “victims” who are discriminated against by education programs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, also known as DEI.
”It is consistent in tapping into an unjustifiable feeling — whether that be rage, ignorance or animus — that people have that’s really anchored in a desire to whitewash history,” Dr. David J. Johns, CEO and executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, told theGrio.
The aim of Trump and Republicans in eliminating DEI in public education, said Johns, is to “prevent students and people by censure from engaging in critical thinking in ways that make it easier to uphold this regime.”
In a video, Trump vowed to use the power of the Justice Department to “pursue federal civil rights cases” against schools that “engage in racial discrimination and schools that persist in explicit, unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity.”
The president-elect said he would tax the endowments of schools engaging in racial equity work and fine them. He proposed that a “portion of the seized funds will then be used as restitution for victims of these illegal and unjust policies … that hurt our country so badly.”
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KK knows that a well-told colonial joke can excite a Kenyan crowd. “I love how white people discover stuff that was already there,” he tells the audience at the Punchline Comedy Club which is staged at Two Grapes, a Nairobi restaurant. “I got this DM from this white man the other day. He was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. I love your content. I’m so glad I discovered you.’ I’m like, ‘No, We’ve done this before.’”
He goes on about how they “discover” people then take them to other places “to be discovered”, and how those who have been “discovered” end up travelling the world and making a lot of money.
Then, after a brief pause, he delivers an unexpected punchline: “I would like to be discovered, actually. I think that would be a good thing. I take that back.”
It’s a Wednesday night, and KK, whose full name is Kimathi Kaumbutho, is performing at an open-mic night featuring 19 other standup comedians in the packed outside area of Two Grapes.
The standup comedy scene in the east African country is having a moment as a crop of new comedians invite Kenyans to crack up about their daily lives as well as social issues. In recent years, the craft has attracted numerous aspiring and established entertainers who perform at sold-out venues. They have created a flourishing industry, with some going on to star in TV shows and perform on stages around and beyond the continent.
Topics encompass daily life and the entire range of challenges that beset the country, including corruption, frequent power blackouts and rising national debt, as performers tap into the power of standup to make people laugh about their difficulties.
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The United States has made almost no progress in closing racial health disparities despite promises, research shows. The government, some critics argue, is often the underlying culprit.
KFF Health News undertook a yearlong examination of how government decisions undermine Black health — reviewing court and inspection records and government reports, and interviewing dozens of academic researchers, doctors, politicians, community leaders, grieving moms, and patients.
During the past two decades, there have been 1.63 million excess deaths among Black Americans relative to white Americans. That represents a loss of more than 80 million years of life, according to a 2023 JAMA study.
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