Don’t Assume, Ask- A Rant
Commentary by Chitown Kev
It seems as if it’s been ages since I’ve written here at Black Kos.
Frankly, this entire election fiasco has thrown me off a bit.
It’s not as if I don’t have plenty of subjects to write about.
For example, I actually came across a combined copy of this...and I might even review the Gil-Scott Heron novels here.
But...”identity politics...”
Since the 2016 elections, I don’t think that any term has been utilized more as a progressive pejorative than identity politics; so much so that I actually did go and research the use of the term on Wikipedia and even a more academic/philosophical use of the term.
So now I don’t have to wash my mouth out with soap whenever I say it, I guess.
I suppose that, in part, the fact that I am a black man, a gay man, an editor at Black Kos, etc., that assumptions have always been made about what my views are about the broad-based topic known as “identity politics.”
The truth is, though, that I’ve never “liked” identity politics and it always seemed to me that “identity” (or "sameness" or, as the classicist and cultural critic Daniel Mendelsohn once put it, the thing that I repeatedly am) was one of the stupidest ways in which to organize a society.
Always?
Yes, even when I was a kid, I would get terrifically bored and even a bit offended when adult conversations over family-and-friends card games would turn to versions of “how awful white folks can be” many times (and I’m not telling any behind The Veil secrets here; it’s not as if many white people don’t say the same about black people; hell, I’ve been privy to a few of those conversations, as well...we all have our reasons for this, I suppose)
This in spite of the fact that white people were also often my next door neighbors so much to the extent that one young white woman happened to be my substitute teacher for a day and threatened to tell the class my family nickname if I didn’t pipe down (which I promptly did!).
(My childhood nickname was an awfully intimate thing for someone outside of the family to know).
Or...let’s take this past holiday season with my family and their friends.
My cousin actually told some of his guests that, yeah, this guy, me, his cousin, wasn’t as good at play calling and some of the intricacies of playing football (after all, my cousin did play the game) but that when it came to football stats and history...well…I simply bring that knowledge.
And then during the Orange Bowl, I started rattling off various stats and present and past football events and one family friend just looked and stared at me while my cousin and brother just….shrugged.
(I wondered, what in the hell would make him think that I wouldn’t know or be interested in these things?)
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I’ve always found the “different-ness” in peoples to be utterly fascinating. That hasn’t changed and I hope that it never does.
Of course, it took some maturity and study for me to realize that “different-ness” exists even beneath the visible portion of glaciers of “sameness.”
To be sure, some degrees of “sameness” have virtue; I would not be clean and sober for over 20 years if that weren’t the case.
But...my former United States Senator and the 44th President of the United States said it better than I ever could in his farewell address:
For too many of us, it's become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or college campuses or places of worship or our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. The rise of naked partisanship, increasing economic and regional stratification, the splintering of our media into a channel for every taste - all this makes this great sorting seem natural, even inevitable.
And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we accept only information, whether true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that's out there.
The truth... for me, at least, is that I’ve never felt anything like “safety” when I encounter these bubbles.
(Although I do understand the reasons for these retreats into “bubbles”...and those reasons should and must be respected.)
This is something that I think that I’ve always had in common with Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th President of the United States and it’s probably the main reason that I’ve always liked him.
A monochromatic world and universe would strike me not simply as boring but as not even being real.
I guess that all of this incoherent ranting and ramble is simply to say…
The truth is that I lament that “identity politics” is even a thing because I simply see so much more to the world than that.
I also see that all of us embrace “identity politics” in one form or another, in varying degrees and along many different lines recognized and unrecognized.
And NO politician is exempt from catering to “identity politics.” Indeed, it’s impossible for ANY POLITICIAN not to do this.
And there is nothing that you or I can do about it.
So...”you do you” and “I’ll do me.”
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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For as long as he is president, there will be debate over whether or not black people should be meeting with the Marigold Manchurian Candidate. It’s a question The Root’s political editor, Jason Johnson, recently tackled in the piece “So, When Is It OK to Meet With Trump?”
While we are in accord with the notion that certain black public figures—namely, black celebrities—needn’t allow themselves to be used as props in a public relations ploy by the incoming president’s transition team, I still question whether it’s worth meeting with a man who has long proved to have absolutely no concern for black people at all.
Others have lamented that those of us who argue from this stance do so much from a place of emotion rather than from logic. You see, we have to see the bigger picture. We have to understand that the Marigold Manchurian Candidate will be president; thus, if we want results, we must strip ourselves from our feelings and effectively suck it up for the greater good.
The flaws in this line of thinking are abundant.
What kinds of deals can black people score with a man who would nominate Jeff Sessions as his attorney general? How much faith can you place in someone whose campaign reportedly actively sought to suppress the black vote, only to later smugly thank black voters for lower turnout? Can you really achieve much from a “law and order” candidate who still labels the Central Park Five guilty even after they’ve long been proved innocent of their crimes?
Even now, consider the sort of black folks the new president has been meeting with: Jim Brown, Kanye West and Steve Harvey. While these famous black men may take themselves a wee bit too seriously in terms of their actual power, these highly publicized meetings suggest a continuation of the Marigold Manchurian Candidate’s overall stereotypical view of black people. This man thinks that these people are our “leaders” for no reason other than that they are famous and willing to speak to him.
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Shouting protests against the negative rhetoric they heard in President Trump's campaign women and men came out to send a message to the new administration. Ebony: Women’s Marches Draw Armies of Unified Voices in Multiple Cities.
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Cities throughout the United States and in various parts of the world saw droves of people demonstrating in response to the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Mobilized by rhetoric in his campaign they found racist, sexist and intolerant of marginalized communities, hundreds of thousands of women and men took to the streets with placards and picket signs, taking stages and shouting through bullhorns to send a message to counter what they fear could be four years of regression under the new commander-in-chief.
The Women’s March on Washington was primary among the events and the 500,000 who showed up was twice the 250,000 that attended the inauguration ceremony. EBONY.com had contributors at four of the dozens of marches to describe the energy brought by the people who were there.
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West African troops entered the Gambia’s capital, Banjul, on Sunday, to cheers from the city’s residents, a Reuters witness said, as part of efforts to allow the new president, Adama Barrow, to take office after the country’s former ruler fled overnight.
Yahya Jammeh, who led the Gambia for 22 years but refused to accept defeat in a December election, flew out of Banjul late on Saturday en route to Equatorial Guinea as the regional force was poised to remove him. A convoy of around 15 vehicles, including armoured personnel carriers mounted with heavy machine guns and pick-up trucks full of soldiers, rolled down one Banjul street in the late afternoon, according to a Reuters journalist who saw them.
City residents lined the road, applauding and shouting “thank you” as the soldiers smiled and waved back. Troops were later seen entering the presidential compound, State House.
The regional operation began late on Thursday after Barrow was sworn in as president at the Gambia’s embassy in neighbouring Senegal, but it was halted hours later to give Jammeh one last chance to leave peacefully. His departure followed two days of negotiations led by Guinea’s president, Alpha Condé, and Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania, prompting speculation over what, if any, terms were agreed to convince him to step down.
Speaking on a Senegalese radio station, RFM, Barrow denied that Jammeh had been offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for leaving the country. “He wanted to stay in the Gambia. We said we couldn’t guarantee his security and said that he should leave,” Barrow said.
Earlier in the day, the African Union and United Nations published a document on behalf of these two organisations and the regional organisation, the Economic Community of West African States. In it, they pledged, among other things, to protect Jammeh’s rights “as a citizen, a party leader and a former head of state” to prevent the seizure of property belonging to him and his allies, and to ensure he can eventually return to the Gambia.
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A 63-year-old man who helped found an organization to improve relations between the black community and the police in Bristol was tasered by police after he was mistaken for a wanted man. And it was all caught on video. Police are now investigating how it was that police got to the point of firing a Taser at Judah Adunbi outside his home on Jan. 14.
The video shot by a neighbor shows how Adunbi refused to identify himself to the police officers, who repeatedly asked him for his name. “I’ve done no wrong,” Adunbi can be heard saying in the recording. “Leave me alone.” Police then tried to prevent Adunbi from getting into his home and fire the Taser that hit the grandfather in the face. He quickly fell to the ground.
“I felt that was it. Because of the way I fell back. The way I fell backward on the back of my head. I was just paralyzed. I thought that was it,” Adunbi said. “I thought they were taking my life.”
Adunbi described the humiliating experience of having been taken to the hospital with a Taser still dangling from his face. “They then removed most of the loose wires. They lifted me back on my feet. They tried to pull the one from my face off and realized they couldn’t,” he said.
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Agricultural productivity in Africa is rising, but still lags behind much of the world. Would a greater role for multinationals in the continent’s farming sector help or hinder progress? The Guardian: For Africa's farmers it's government, not big business, that is key
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Africa’s agriculture sector is on the up. After decades of stagnation, the continent’s farms have registered sustained growth in productivity every year since 2005. That’s good news for the 520 million Africans dependent on farming for their livelihoods, and the millions more who rely on them for their food.
But African farmers still produce far less food per hectare than the world average. Yields for cereal farmers in South Africa, home to one of the continent’s most productive agriculture sectors, are less than half those of their UK counterparts. In central African states such as Niger and Eritrea, they are less than a 10th.
One of the key differences between the UK and Africa is the role of the private sector. In the UK, as in much of the developed world, corporations control a large chunk of the food chain. Not so in Africa. So should big business have a greater role in the continent’s agriculture sector? And, if so, what?
Panellists at a Guardian public debate, supported by the global beverage firm Diageo, had differing views but agreed that government, not corporate, leadership was the critical factor in developing agriculture.
At the beginning of the debate Diageo’s John O’Keeffe introduced the idea of inclusive business, the latest buzzword in business and development circles. Behind the jargon, he explained, is a basic proposition: multinationals have lots of spending power, while Africa has lots of poor farmers hoping to increase productivity; when those farmers are integrated into the so-called “value chains” of big business and helped to improve their yields, they can see their livelihoods improve while corporations get the raw materials they need.
In Kenya, the multinational brewer now sources sorghum (an alternative to millet in beer) from 30,000 contracted farmers. That’s 30,000 farmers with a stable income who didn’t have one previously, O’Keeffe noted. Plus, Kenyan consumers can now enjoy an affordable, locally produced pint of beer, while the government can benefit from new tax revenues.
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A new study, which excluded women with hysterectomies, showed the disparity in death rates between blacks and whites was significantly wider. New York Times: Wider Racial Gap Found in Cervical Cancer Deaths.
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The death rate from cervical cancer in the United States is considerably higher than previously estimated and the disparity in death rates between black women and white women is significantly wider, according to a study published Monday in the journal Cancer.
The rate at which black American women are dying from the disease is comparable to that of women in many poor developing nations, researchers reported. What makes the findings especially disturbing, said experts not involved in the research, is that when screening guidelines and follow-up monitoring are pursued, cervical cancer is largely preventable.
“This shows that our disparities are even worse than we feared,” said Dr. Kathleen M. Schmeler, an associate professor of gynecologic oncology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. “We have screenings that are great, but many women in America are not getting them. And now I have even more concerns going forward, with the” — expected — “repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which covers screening, and the closing of family planning clinics, which do much of that screening.”
The racial disparity had been noted in earlier studies, but it had been thought to have narrowed because cervical cancer death rates for black women were declining. But this study said that the gap was far greater than believed.
In the new analysis, the mortality rate for black women was 10.1 per 100,000. For white women, it is 4.7 per 100,000.
Previous studies had put those figures at 5.7 and 3.2.
The new rates do not reflect a rise in the number of deaths, which recent estimates put at more than 4,000 a year in the United States. Instead, the figures come from a re-examination of existing numbers, in an adjusted context.
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Voices and Soul
by
Justice Putnam Black
Kos Poetry Editor
In the more sympathetic biographies of Jefferson Davis, he is depicted as a benevolent, garrulous and kind task master, devoted to his human chattel as much as to his family. But history shows Davis was a virulent slavery apologist, owning over 100 slaves on his cotton plantation in Mississippi. He was petty, vindictive and unforgiving. Bell Irvin Wiley, in his 1967 study, "Jefferson Davis: an appraisal," describes an ineffective leader, plantation owner and businessman that is eerily similar to a current successful failure who is now at the helm,
"... (h)is preoccupation with detail, reluctance to delegate responsibility, lack of popular appeal, feuds with powerful state governors and generals, favoritism toward old friends, inability to get along with people who disagreed with him, neglect of civil matters in favor of military ones, and resistance to public opinion all worked against him... "
Devotion to family and charges is also suspect. Mention of his adopted son, Jim Limber, in the tens of thousands of pages of correspondence in the last two decades of his life is scant, to non-existent.
They put me in a dead boy’s clothes dead Joseph
Except he wasn’t dead at first they put
Me in his clothes dead Joseph’s after Joseph
Died and I used to call him Joe they put
Me in Joe’s clothes at first before he died
Joe wasn’t five yet when I met him I
Was seven I was seven when he died
Still but a whole year bigger then but I
Wore his clothes still and the whole year I lived with
Momma Varina and with daddy Jeff
I never lived so good as when I lived with
Them and especially it was daddy Jeff
Who kept me fed and wearing those nice clothes
Until they fit as tight as bandages
-- Shane McCrae
"Jim Limber the Adopted Mulatto Son of Jefferson Davis Was Another Child First"
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY’S PORCH