BREEEEEEAKKKK!
A brief comment by Chitown Kev
OK, so...for the past few days, I’ve been waking up at weird hours, falling asleep at weird hours, doing projects at weird hours and...well, everything is just off.
I even forgot that today was Election Day in Illinois but I went out and did the deed (polling place is a block from my house and there was no line).
I just had a shot of...something and now I feel better...I think that I know why.
Need to take better care of myself…
So today…I am blowing it off. See y’all in two weeks...with a book review.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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There are highways that run through cities in this country that go straight through the hearts of neighborhoods with majority-Black and Latino populations — in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and lots of other cities.
This week, the Department of Transportation announced more than $3 billion in grants from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act to help reconnect some of those communities.
There are many reasons why America’s infrastructure disproportionally cuts through communities of color.
“Some of it is overtly racist decisions,” said Ben Crowther, who serves as policy director for America Walks, a nonprofit supporting walkable communities. “Some of it is … highway engineers following the path of least financial resistance. These are the places where it’s cheap to acquire property because of institutional decisions like redlining that has depreciated homes in these neighborhoods.”
And those choices decades ago have had lasting consequences, said Christopher Coes, an assistant secretary at the Department of Transportation.
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The Irish who immigrated to America in the 18th and 19th centuries were fleeing caste oppression and a system of landlordism that made the material conditions of the Irish peasant comparable to those of an American slave. The Penal Laws regulated every aspect of Irish life and established Irish Catholics as an oppressed race. Anticipating Judge Roger B. Taney's famous dictum in the Dred Scott decision, on two occasions officials with judiciary authority in Ireland declared that "the law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic."
When they first began arriving here in large numbers, the Irish were, in the words of Mr. Dooley (a character created by journalist Finley Peter Dunne), given a shovel and told to start digging up the place as if they owned it. On the rail beds and canals, they labored for low wages under dangerous conditions; in the South they were occasionally employed where it did not make sense to risk the life of a slave. As they came to the cities, they were crowded into districts that became centers of crime, vice and disease.
They commonly found themselves thrown together with free Negroes. Blacks and the Irish fought each other and the police, socialized and occasionally intermarried, and developed a common culture of the lowly. They also both suffered the scorn of those better situated. Along with Jim Crow and Jim Dandy, the drunken, belligerent and foolish Patrick and Bridget were stock characters on the early stage. In antebellum America, it was speculated that if racial amalgamation was ever to take place, it would begin between those two groups. As we know, things turned out otherwise.
In 1841, 60,000 Irish in Ireland issued an address to their compatriots in America, calling upon them to join with the abolitionists in the struggle against slavery. Six months after the address, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison wrote what may be the saddest words ever written about the Irish diaspora: "Even to this hour, not a single Irishman has come forward, either publicly or privately, to express his approval of the address, or to avow his determination to abide by its sentiments."
What explains the attitude of people whose experience in Ireland and the United States one might have thought would predispose them to sympathy with all victims of slavery and racial oppression? It was not the inevitable consequence of blind historic forces, still less of biology, but of choices made among available alternatives.
In 1834 a mostly Irish mob in Philadelphia rampaged through the black district. By the time they subsided, two black people were killed and many beaten. Two churches and upwards of 20 homes were laid waste, their contents looted or destroyed. A committee appointed to investigate the riot identified as a principal cause the belief that some employers were hiring black workers over whites.
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Netflix’s Love Is Blind is reigniting conversations about whether the show’s unique dating experiment — courting sight unseen — benefits Black women.
Since season six of the hit show began airing on Valentine’s Day this year, all eyes have been on Amber Desiree (AD) Smith and her bumbling journey through the pods. AD quickly became a fan favorite because she was candid about her destructive choices when it comes to love. “If I see a red flag, I’m like, ‘Oh, well, I’ll just paint my nails red to match,’” AD confessed to the camera early in the season. This tragic admission informed her decision to pair up with Clay, a man who reminded her of her exes and revealed that he selected women solely based on physical appearance. The internet placed Clay in the show’s villain category once he probed AD about her looks, a major faux pas for a show titled “Love Is Blind.”
Throughout the course of their engagement, Clay earned that villain title. Commentators noted how he treated AD like a receptacle for his trauma, even going as far as laying his head on AD’s chest to be coddled like a newborn minutes into their reveal. “I’m a baby,” he told AD, as they took stock of their physical characteristics, noting that both of them were dark-skinned. Clay talked about his father’s infidelity like it was the third partner in their relationship and focused on how AD could build him up. He repeatedly expressed fear about commitment, but AD held his hand through the process. He ultimately managed to shock AD, in front of their parents and other family members and friends, when he said no to marrying her at the altar.
Outside of her relationship with Clay, AD faced additional hurdles during filming. Her castmates drew attention to her body, pointing out how “stacked” she is, and made an inside joke (“bean dip”) about non-consensually smacking her breasts, which, no need to look it up, is in fact sexual assault. Now, a year after filming, AD says that she “had such an amazing experience” on Love Is Blind. But her storyline highlights some of the sinister aspects of dating as a Black woman, and because it’s airing on Netflix, the reality is being splashed across one of the world’s biggest platforms. AD’s experience is connected to that of Lauren, Diamond, Iyanna, Raven, Tiffany, and Aaliyah — Black women whose stories came before hers on Love Is Blind — as well as to the Black women whose journeys were never shown, and even those well beyond the show’s pods.
To talk about how this show positions Black women, I reached out to “meeting and mating” sociologist Sarah Adeyinka-Skold, an assistant professor at Loyola Marymount University. Adeyinka-Skold studies how “inequalities are produced and reproduced” in romantic relationships, and says that Love Is Blind viewers are naive to have ever thought that this experiment, sometimes billed as an equalizer, would help Black women have an easier time finding love.
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If you participated in Atlanta’s wildest gathering called Freaknik back in the day, then beware: You might be featured in Hulu’s new documentary about the legendary street party that became popular through folklore tales involving gridlock traffic, public nudity and highway debauchery.
Many of those images will certainly be on full display in “Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told.” But the documentary isn’t just focused on the hyper-sexualized environment and public safety concerns attached to the festival birthed four decades ago. It’s also about how the iconic event started as a simple, Black college cookout that ultimately drew thousands from across the United States, defining Atlanta as a cultural and music hotbed.
“This is more about the culture. This is Atlanta’s version of ‘Beat Street’” said Jermaine Dupri, who executive produced the project with several others including Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell and 21 Savage. The documentary premiered Tuesday night at SXSW in Austin, Texas. It will stream on Hulu on March 21.
“This is our story about our contribution to the culture,” Dupri continued. “Through the music and the parties that happened during Freaknik. It’s much more than people standing on top of cars and playing music outside.”
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Jimmy Chérizier, the elite police officer-turned-gang leader known as “Barbecue,” has risen through Haiti’s political vacuum to become one of the country’s most powerful men.
Chérizier — who got his nickname from his mother’s famous grilled chicken — has proved himself a savvy player of both traditional and social media and a charismatic leader who unified several of Port-au-Prince’s disparate gangs to take control of much of the city and demand embattled Prime Minister Ariel Henry to step down.
He has been accused of crippling Haiti’s economy through extortion and blocking port terminals. His alleged leadership of and participation in slum massacres and violence have left him feared at home and sanctioned internationally. His gang’s most frequent victims are the poor residents and small business owners of the slums he controls.
But Henry, criticized for failing to contain the violence or lead the country to new elections, finally agreed Monday that he would step down once a transitional presidential council had chosen an interim leader to replace him. Chérizier was one of several forces — pressure from the United States and the Caribbean Community were others — that helped push him out of office.
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Born to a Welsh father and a Zambian mother, Mr Gething pursued a legal career before being elected to the Welsh Parliament in 2011.
The Cardiff South and Penarth Member of the Senedd (MS) is currently economy minister in Mr Drakeford's cabinet, and celebrated his 50th birthday on Friday.
Mr Starmer said Mr Gething would "lead a hopeful, ambitious Welsh Labour government, in the face of a tired and failed Tory government in Westminster".
The prime minister said on X, formerly known as Twitter, Mr Gething's election was "a chance for a new Welsh administration to focus on what matters to people in Wales".
“Today, we turn a page in the book of our nation’s history. A history we write together,” Gething said in his victory speech. “Not just because I have the honor of becoming the first Black leader in any European country — but because the generational dial has jumped, too.
“I want us to use this moment as a starting point, for a more confident march into the future,” he added.
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In Haiti, there aren't many certainties in life, but chaos may be one of them.
For a country that's experienced coups, transitional governments, assassinations and gang violence over the years, the chaos of the last two weeks has reached new levels.
During that period there has been no leadership, no law and order in the capital and a dwindling supply of humanitarian aid. The country has been effectively cut off from the outside world.
On Thursday, gangs continued their rampage across the capital Port-au-Prince. They shot at the airport just as workers had begun to fix damage from previous attacks.
Local news reported that gangs had also looted the house of the national police director and then set it on fire.
The violence follows a couple of days of relative quiet and it comes just days after Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry agreed to resign, as part of a deal brokered by regional and international governments to install a transitional council that will eventually elect a new transitional prime minister.
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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.