Commentary by BlackKos editor JoanMar
While I was never a fan of Wendy Williams, I was aware of her and the place she’d carved out for herself in popular culture. She hosted a prominent radio show in the New York City/Tri-State market and then made a successful transition to television with the Wendy Williams Show. She was a force to be reckoned with. I thought of her as someone who was certainly bright and engaging, someone who was outspoken and not afraid to take up space, and that she seemed to be the type of woman who’d have her stuff together. I also found her to be mean, judgmental, and inconsiderate. As a rule, I don’t like gratuitously mean people. For example, I had an intense dislike for Joan Rivers. To this day, I blame her [Rivers] for the vicious misgendering abuse heaped on Michelle Obama every time her name is mentioned on Twitter. Wendy was nowhere as nasty as Rivers, but she did trade in meanness and became even more so as her show gained popularity.
Wendy was at the top of her game, and then it seemed that everything came tumbling down. There was a public scandal surrounding her husband, there were rumors—and confirmation—of addiction battles, and other health concerns. Some people openly celebrated her humiliating fall from grace and viewed her problems as just desserts for her years of condemnation and criticism of celebrities fighting battles of their own. We learned that Wendy recently lost her mother, with whom it’s reported that she was very close. We also learned that she’s suffering from alcoholism, Graves Disease, lymphedema, aphasia, and dementia.
At first, I was horrified at the idea that Lifetime may be exploiting this woman at her most vulnerable. The documentary was not flattering. She didn’t look good, and that’s putting it mildly. It’s not raining for her, it’s pouring. And Lifetime may not be the only one exploiting this woman. In addition to all of the aforementioned challenges, Wendy also has major money worries. Her bank froze her accounts, and she was placed under conservatorship or guardianship—not quite sure which, as they seem to be using the terms interchangeably. Something is not quite right with what’s happening with her money, but that’s not the focus of this diary.
What can we learn from her health issues?
Alcoholism in the Black Community
Research data seems to suggest that while Black people consume less alcohol than their white counterparts, the effects of alcoholism are more devastating to the Black community.
Although African-Americans drink less alcohol then Caucasian counterparts, African-Americans are more likely to suffer alcohol-related health problems. Death from conditions such as cirrhosis is “1.27 times” more common in African-American drinkers compared to Caucasians. Additionally, there is a “10% higher” rate of death from alcohol-abuse in African-Americans despite overall lower alcohol rates.
Graves Disease in the Black Community
Graves disease is described as “an immune system disorder that results in the overproduction of thyroid hormones.”
- In particular, Black individuals are more likely than White people to develop Graves’ disease, an autoimmune thyroid condition.
- Thyroid tumors in Black communities are frequently diagnosed at a far later stage than they are among other ethnicities.
- Left untreated, thyroid disease can require surgery.
Lymphedema in the Black Community
“Lymphedema is the build-up of fluid in soft body tissues when the lymph system is damaged or blocked.”
Black women experienced higher rates of breast cancer-related lymphedema than white women, and Black race was the strongest predictor of lymphedema development, according to results presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held December 7-10, 2021.
Note: The documentary did not say and there’s no evidence that in Wendy’s case her lymphedema is a byproduct of breast cancer.
Aphasia in the Black Community
Aphasia is defined as a “disorder that affects how you communicate. It can impact your speech, as well as the way you write and understand both spoken and written language.”
Currently over 1 million people in the United State live with aphasia, and nearly 180,000 people acquire aphasia each year. Aphasia occurs across all gender, ages, nationalities, and races. However, Black Americans are at least four times more likely to have a stroke than White Americans. Thus, it stands to reason that Black adults have an increased risk of an aphasia diagnosis.
Dementia in the Black Community
- A 2015 systematic review Trusted Source found that people who experienced racism had higher rates of depression, which can lead to an increased risk of dementia in later life.
- Inequalities in healthcare can also increase the risk of doctors misdiagnosing or overlooking early dementia.
- BIPOC are more likely than white people to develop dementia due to a complex combination of factors, such as racism, structural inequality, and socioeconomic barriers to high-quality healthcare.
- According to a report from the Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s can affect anywhere from 14–100% more African Americans than white Americans.
I don’t know that there will be anything like a speedy recovery in the works for Wendy. My wish for her is that she gets the help she needs and that she’ll be able to have her loved ones around her very soon. In the meantime, it is said that “a wise man learns from his experience, a wiser man learns from the experience of others.” Thank you, Wendy.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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On June 2, 1863, not long after midnight, 300 recently escaped slaves, all armed and with at least one woman among them, invaded a stretch of rice plantations along the Combahee River in South Carolina. When the armed Black rebels arrived, the slaveholders fled, but their enslaved workers refused to follow them. Instead, at least 727 of them followed the rebels to nearby boats, which ushered them to a military camp, declared them free, and armed those able to fight. Meanwhile, as dawn approached, the retreating Black rebels set fire to the abandoned slave labor camps, depriving the slaveholders’ army of a vital source of food, and delivering a major victory in the Black rebels’ larger war on slavery.
Given the scale of the invasion and the number of Black people emancipated, this attack, known as the Combahee River Raid, could plausibly be considered the largest slave rebellion in American history. It might even be called the largest slave rebellion in what was the largest slave revolution in modern world history. Not even the Haitian Revolution—the first successful slave-led war to overthrow slavery—liberated as many Black people as the one in which the Combahee River Raid was only a part.
Accounts of the Combahee invasion have, somehow, been incapable of imagining it as a slave rebellion, much less part of a larger slave revolution. Yet the American slave revolution, which we have come to call “the Civil War,” shares all the hallmarks of the Haitian Revolution, on an even grander scale. Just as in Haiti, America’s slave revolution came amid a larger white man’s war, which slaves transformed to include their own revolutionary agenda: immediate emancipation and full Black citizenship. Just as in Haiti, America’s enslaved Black revolutionaries allied with white military forces to achieve their goal of emancipation. America’s Black radicals even convinced liberal white reformers, the core of the Republican Party, to become momentary revolutionaries themselves: As the Jacobins did in France, the Republicans in America formalized the freedom that slaves won for themselves, in places like Combahee, by enshrining emancipation in the United States Constitution.
In some ways, America’s slave revolution was even more radical than Haiti’s. America’s Black revolutionaries did not force most of the white people to leave, nor did they create an exclusively “Black” republic. Instead, they persuaded their leaders, in large part on account of their wartime activities, to enshrine the more revolutionary principle of universal citizenship, regardless of class or race. Nor, as Haitians and most other emancipated peoples were forced to do, did America’s Black rebels compensate their former enslavers for their lost “human property.” To be sure, Black radicals hardly got everything they demanded. There would be no land given to them, to say nothing of reparations. Nor would they receive protection against the vicious white backlash that followed in their revolution’s wake. But perhaps most troubling is that, even today, few people see the war waged by enslaved Black Americans as a veritable revolution. How did we miss it?
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The Philadelphia Orchestra’s home is being renamed Marian Anderson Hall in honor of the pioneering Black American contralto, a rare case of an artist’s name replacing a corporation.
The orchestra’s auditorium in the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts was known as Verizon Hall from 1999 through 2023, as part of a $14.5 million contribution agreed to by Bell Atlantic Corp. before its name change in 2000 to Verizon Communications Inc.
Anderson, who died in 1993 at age 96, was born in Philadelphia and in 1955 became the first Black singer to appear at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. The renaming was announced Wednesday, a day after the 127th anniversary of her birth.
“Knowing Marion, she would be humble,” said her niece, Ginette DePriest, the wife of late conductor James DePriest. “She always used to say: ‘Don’t make any fuss about this,’ but I think that the fact that it’s her hometown that she adores — I think she would be obviously honored but mostly humbled by by this gesture.”
Richard Worley and wife Leslie Miller, who live in suburban Bryn Mawr, are underwriting the name change with a $25 million gift to the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center, which united in 2021. Worley joined the orchestra’s board in 1997 and served as its president from 2009-20; Miller was on the Kimmel Center board from 1999-2008, serving as acting president.
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It’s a bright, balmy February day, and a young man dressed in Civil War regalia cuts a dashing figure while striding down U Street, the historic epicenter of Black arts, culture and heritage in the nation’s capital.
Marquett Milton is clad in a replica of a Union Army uniform, complete with a navy wool sack coat, light-blue pants and a kepi cap covering his locs. While his 19th-century attire elicits a few quizzical looks from passersby, it’s clear from Milton’s swagger that he is proud.
He is among a cadre of interpreters and re-enactors across the country — some professionals, others amateurs — who are illuminating people, places and events from the past through a Black lens. At a time when the country is witnessing attempts at erasing entire chapters of American history — whether banning books or deploying revisionist history — these individuals are seeking to embody narratives in a literal way.
“I love talking about history,” said Milton, a staffer at the African American Civil War Museum in Washington, D.C., dedicated to the more than 200,000 United States Colored Troops (USCT) who served the Union Army and Navy during the Civil War, many of them sacrificing their lives to unite the country after 11 Southern states seceded over slavery.
“I first learned about these heroes when my high school teacher showed our class the film ‘Glory,’” the 32-year-old recalled. “After that, I tried to learn all I could. And now I’m educating others.”
Typically, Milton spends his workday in uniform, giving presentations to school kids and tourists about the ava. While in character, he highlights the valor of such men as Corporal Andrew Green, who enlisted after gaining freedom under Washington, D.C.’s 1862 Compensated Emancipation Act.
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A man with a history of "honorary" membership in the Klu Klux Klan not only managed to make it on the unofficial ballot to be the Republican nominee for Missouri governor, but may even appear atop the official ballot when GOP voters vote in the primary this August.
Those revelations came to light last night when former Missouri Representative Shamed Dogan (R-Ballwin) tweeted out a screenshot showing the unofficial candidate filing list for governor posted to the Secretary of State's website. On it, Darrell Leon McClanahan III's name sits atop more well-known GOP contenders like Mike Kehoe and Jay Ashcroft.
The candidates' names are listed in ballot order, and because McClanahan drew a low number his name appears first.
A 2022 article on the Anti-Defamation League's website shows McClanahan next to a man in white robes as both men give what appear to be Nazi salutes in front of a burning cross some time around 2019.
The ADL article claims that the organization's Center on Extremism has been tracking McClanahan for years, as he has affiliated with various white supremacist and Christian identity groups.
"Hey @MissouriGOP I just learned the candidate listed first on our primary ballot for Governor is a cross-burning KKK member who ran for US Senate 2 years ago and freely admits his KKK membership & white supremacist beliefs," Dogan wrote, adding in a subsequent tweet that he hoped the party would reject McClanahan's filing fee, calling him a "racist loser."
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The Covid-19 pandemic revealed that, in a global health emergency, all the aspirational rhetoric about international cooperation didn’t mean much. Once groundbreaking Covid-19 vaccines became available a year into the pandemic, rich countries looked out for themselves and poorer countries were largely left behind.
That brought recriminations, but also a pledge from the world’s nations to learn from those mistakes and create a better playbook for when a future pathogen inevitably threatens the world. So at the end of 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the global community would negotiate a pandemic treaty to set the rules for international cooperation in future public health crises. Those efforts were supposed to reach a triumphant conclusion this May, at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, where the final product of treaty negotiations would be reviewed and ratified by the world’s nations.
But the last few months of negotiations have instead been tumultuous. The same divisions between rich and poor countries that emerged during Covid are now threatening to derail what was meant to be a landmark achievement in protecting the world from catastrophic pandemics.
The fundamental problem is that, much as they were in the thick of the pandemic, wealthy nations remain largely allied with Big Pharma against the Global South’s interests.
One major sticking point in the pandemic treaty is about coming to an agreement on sharing information about dangerous new pathogens — a key component of keeping the world safe from future pandemics.
Africa in particular is the source of many emerging diseases that could pose a risk to humans. Under the system being contemplated in the pandemic treaty talks, once a potentially dangerous virus is identified, developing countries would share access to viral samples with developed countries, home to the bulk of the world’s biopharmaceutical industry. The industry would then take that information to begin developing medical countermeasures, like vaccines or new treatments. Then those new medicines would be shared equitably between the nations where they were developed and the nations that provided the raw material about the diseases.
In exchange for providing pathogen samples, African nations want pharmaceutical companies to pay an annual fee to support a centralized system for sharing pathogen information and for sharing the medical products that are ultimately developed from that information, potentially managed by a major multilateral body like the WHO. They also want pharmaceutical companies to commit to making a certain percentage of the products developed from these pathogen samples (diagnostics, vaccines, medicines) available for free or for the cost of production in a future pandemic.
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The rebuke was blunt and brief. On February 15th Senegal’s Constitutional Council, the last line of defence for its democracy, summarily cancelled a presidential decree that had indefinitely postponed the election due on February 25th. It also cuffed down a law rushed through the National Assembly that had then attempted to reschedule the poll to December 15th. Stripped of a veneer of legality for his actions and under heavy pressure, Macky Sall, the president, promised to “fully implement the decision” of the council. That is a tremendous boost to democracy and rule of law in Senegal, where both had recently seemed in retreat.
Yet there is a wrinkle. The council conceded that there is not enough time for the government to organise the poll by its original date. Instead it told the government to hold the vote “as soon as possible”. Mr Sall has promised to do so. What that means in practice has been hotly contested.
A civil-society group that has led the campaign against the delay is demanding that the election be held by March 10th. That would ensure that Mr Sall leaves office by April 2nd, when his constitutional term ends. However, even holding it on March 10th would trigger an infringement of the constitution and the electoral code, since it would be too late under the constitution and would not allow the required 20-day campaign period. Some candidates have instead said that the election must be held by April 2nd at the absolute latest. But Mr Sall’s party has suggested it will be difficult to organise a poll even by then. The president was expected to speak soon after The Economist went to press.
Mr Sall has made some conciliatory moves. More than 300 out of perhaps 1,000 political prisoners have been released. On February 17th the authorities permitted a protest march for the first time in the two weeks since the elections were cancelled. He has also been meeting political leaders, including some from the opposition, to decide on what to do next. Discussions about the date of the election are tangled up with much else. Karim Wade, the son of a former president, wants the electoral process started from scratch, which would allow him to apply again to run. His application was rejected by the Constitutional Council because he held Senegalese and French nationality at the time he submitted it, though he has since given up the latter.
Yet going back to square one would restart an 80-day electoral process. That would seem to be at odds with the council’s ruling that voting should happen as soon as possible. Moreover, the council’s decision seems to imply that if the election is not completed by April 2nd, then Mr Sall would have to step down to make way for a caretaker president. Mr Sall, who has said he will not run for a constitutionally questionable third term, has not commented on such specificities.
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Climate change is already taking a severe toll on Cape Town, contributing to worsening droughts that threaten to leave the city’s taps dry.
In response, conservationists here are frantically chopping down trees — and are even contemplating burning them down.
While preserving the world’s forests is widely considered essential to combating climate change, scientists in South Africa have determined that invasive tree species are sucking up so much groundwater that the area is better off eliminating the trees. Invasive black wattle, pine and gum trees crowd the jagged slopes that encircle this region’s sprawling wine lands, displacing native vegetation and choking off precious water that would otherwise trickle into the city’s reservoirs.
The Greater Cape Town Water Fund's hydrologists have projected that eliminating foreign tree species can provide an extra two months' worth of water for Cape Town at a lower cost compared to alternative solutions like desalination. By clearing 120 square miles of invasive trees over three years, the initiative has improved water flow, creating a significant impact on the region's water supply.
Statistics from the Nature Conservancy's Water Fund project indicate that catchment areas with native fynbos vegetation have 34% higher flow per year compared to those invaded by pine trees. This data reinforces the importance of removing invasive species to restore the natural balance of the ecosystem and preserve the water supply for Cape Town.
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WELCOME TO THE FRIDAY PORCH
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