Black at the Track
Commentary by Chitown Kev
One thing that I have always appreciated about growing up with my Mom as...well, my Mom is that she frequently made a point of taking time out for herself.
Sometimes, that would mean that my brother and I would go over to my aunt’s or my Granny’s for hours...we might even get to spend the night over there.
But a lot of times, Mom would take us with her.
One of those places that Mom would take us was to one of the Detroit-area racetracks, which also included a couple of racetracks across the Detroit River right outside Windsor, Ontario in Canada.
I loved going to the racetrack as a kid for a number of reasons.
There was almost always a multiracial and curious ‘’cast of characters’’ with all sorts of idiosyncracies about betting the horses...and everything else; occasionally, Mom would fill us in on the details, there.
The Daily Racing Form looked and seemed, then and now, like a sophisticated mathematical table to be interpreted and even memorized...and Mom showed me how to read it and what to look for (jockey weight, purses of previously run races, etc.); something that I know how to do ‘til this very day.
I still remember the trouble that Mom had in finding a parking space at Hazel Park the day one of my childhood heroes, Steve Cauthen, showed up at Hazel Park to race the day before my birthday (I’d forgotten that Steve Cauthen is only seven years older than I am; the idea that Mr. Cauthen seemed ‘’precocious’’ or, as the Detroit Free Press article said, the so-called ‘’Stevie Wonder’’ of horse racing, was a factor in my admiring him...and remember, this was almost a year before Cauthen rode Affirmed to the Triple Crown.).
One time, I even ran into my gym teacher, Mr. P., at the track and, after getting permission from my Mom, I sat in the stands with Mr. P. and he and I looked over the racing form together for a couple of races; unfortunately, I wasn’t a good luck charm for Mr. P. on that day at the races.
It didn’t occur to me until years later that to other onlookers, Mr. P. and myself may have seemed like a rather odd couple as we were both looking over the racing form, since Mr. P. was white.
One might almost wonder if some do-gooder Becky even thought about running to a security guard at the race track with the tale of a sight as astonishing as...I don’t know, a black man wanting to get up on the roof of Pimlico Park in Baltimore to photograph The Preakness Stakes.
A white woman reportedly called the police on a credentialed black photographer while working in the press box at the Preakness Stakes horse race.
This reported incident is one of the most recent displays of discriminating accusations toward black individuals in public and private spaces.
Photojournalist J.M. Giordano tweeted his observation, saying, “I just witnessed a young, black photog [Arturo Holmes] discriminated against in the press box. He had the proper credentials and was extremely polite asking where he could shoot. His driver's license was demanded and the cops called.”
Some reactions…
First off, Mr. Arturo Holmes was shooting photos at The Preakness?
I’m jealous, although I would more likely be one writing a story about The Preakness...but still…
Second, yes, the fact that this particualar incident happened at storied Pimlico Park in Baltimore was...triggering, for the reasons that I mentioned. I have never been to a Triple Crown race, although going to The Belmont Stakes when The Triple Crown is on the line is on my ‘’bucket list.’’
Lastly, don’t some white women have better things to do than to get on their Beckyphones (h/t Miss Denise for that one!) anytime that they get into too-close proximity with black folks working...or playing...or enjoying life?
Michelle Dione, the white woman who videoed ‘’BBQBecky’’ in Oakland a couple of weeks back, posted a follow-up video to the incident that answers a perplexing question: what was ‘’the card’’ that BBQBecky apparently snatched out of Ms. Dione’s hand?
‘’The card’’ apparently belonged to a man named ‘’Deacon’’, the first to arrive at the barbecue; it was his business card.
In the follow-up video, Ms. Dione says that she was fearful that Jennifer Schulte (aka BBQBecky) was willing to threaten Deacon’s employment.
Goodness, some white folks don’t want people of color to even work or, if we do, we can’t possibly be allowed to actually enjoy what we do, we can’t be allowed to enjoy our time away from the job unless it’s in some sort of space away from white folks, as if people of color contaminate their good time.
Or maybe white folks like that don’t know how to have a good time…
Aside from the racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and general ass-holiish-ness of Trump supporters (and I doubt, for some reason that Ms. Jennifer Schulte is a Trump supporter) is the fact that they remain angry and joyless everytime that I see them on TV, video, or in any of the seemingly millions of news articles about them; in this respect, Trump supporters most resemble the man that they voted for.
It’s like, even being bigoted and acting out on that bigotry (looking at you Aaron Schlossberg, I don’t care if you did issue a tired-ass apology) simply makes them angrier.
Life can’t always be joyous, but I am not trying to stay angry and dark and pessimistic all the time nor am I trying to pass that on to others.
If being in a constant state of turmoil and anger and joylessness is what Trump and his supporters mean by ‘’Making America Great Again,’’ then I, for one, have no use for that.
To the extent that I can resist feeling the dark contagion that Trump and his supporters are, rather successfully, infecting this country with on a daily basis, then maybe I am a proud member of what has been called ‘’The Resistance.’’
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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On June 1, the Mormon church will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the “revelation” that black men should be allowed to be full members of the church. In anticipation of the event, top leaders of the Mormon church, including president Russell Nelson, met this week in Salt Lake City with national leaders of the NAACP. The meeting was significant, given the history of tension and enmity between the groups; the NAACP led a march in the city against the church’s racial policies in the 1960s, for example. But the substance of the meeting—education initiatives, humanitarian work, and a shared commitment to civility—was hardly revolutionary.
Hours earlier, however, a forceful statement appeared online, labeled as an official church release and looking every bit the real thing.
“President Nelson Meets With NAACP; Offers Apology for History of Racism,” the headline announced. The statement included what was described as a statement Nelson would deliver at the meeting with the NAACP. “I offer a full unqualified apology for the error of racism which was taught from this office and in the tabernacle and over the pulpits of our churches the world over,” the statement read, before a detailed repentance of the church’s wrongs toward black members. “Our souls are harrowed up by the memory of this sin.”
The full-throated apology left many Mormons, especially black Mormons, in a state of happy shock. The local Fox outlet posted an article about the apology (now removed). But within hours, word had spread that the letter was a sophisticated fake. The URL included an extraneous hyphen, for example, and the fine print included a reference to the church’s official “pasquinade”—satirical—newsroom. The revelation devastated many of the same people who had celebrated it just hours before.
“Anyone with an ounce of sense or empathy would instantly know this is cruel and wrong,” Steve Evans, an author at the Mormon site By Common Consent, wrote to me Thursday when it was still unclear who had posted the fake. “If well-intentioned, it’s a vivid demonstration of white privilege.” At the time, some critics were speculating that the statement had been designed in part to mock black Mormons.
Race is a sensitive issue within the LDS church, which has made fitful attempts to reckon with its history in recent years. Until 1978, the church prohibited black men from the priesthood, a category encompassing basically all male church members. The ban originated under the church’s second president, Brigham Young, who attributed it to the supposed “curse” of Cain. The church formally disavowed the ban in 2013. Just 1 percent of Mormons in America are black, according to Pew, although black people make up 1 in 10 converts to the faith.
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From the Givenchy gown to the gospel choir, Saturday’s royal wedding had something for everyone. But one of the most memorable moments at St. George’s Chapel came from Bishop Michael Curry, who preached the sermon at the heart of the ceremony. Curry is the head of the American Episcopal Church, a denomination that is related to the Church of England. But Curry is also a black preacher from Chicago, and his style—energetic, urgent, and with touches of repetition for emphasis—appeared to make some members of the royal family uncomfortable. He also made an immediate impression on viewers at home:
But Curry’s delivery style was not the only thing that made his sermon a departure from royal tradition. It was also a subtly radical piece of theology.
Yes, Curry quoted the Bible, a theologian, and the lyrics to a few old songs. But that doesn’t quite capture the subversiveness of his message. Curry opened and closed his sermon with quotes from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: “We must discover the power of love, the redemptive power of love,” he began. “And when we discover that, we will be able to make of this old world a new world. L
The scripture he quoted included the Old Testament prophet Amos, a favorite passage of King’s: “Let justice roll down like a mighty stream, and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook.” The lyrics he chose included the black American spiritual “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” which he introduced by noting that slaves in the American South had sung it “even in the midst their captivity.” The official transcript of Curry’s sermon does not include the mention of slavery, suggesting he was riffing just a bit—not unusual for a preacher, but notable considering Curry riffed in the direction of referencing slavery in front of the queen, not to mention hundreds of wealthy British dignitaries, some of whose family fortunes surely were built on the backs of enslaved people.
The scholars he referenced included the 20th-century Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whom the Vatican has long held at arm’s length. Curry also quoted Charles Marsh, a religious studies professor at the University of Virginia. “Jesus had founded the most revolutionary movement in human history,” Curry quotes Marsh writing, “a movement built on the unconditional love of God for the world and the mandate to live that love.” The quote comes from Marsh’s 2005 book, The Beloved Community, which traces the influence of faith on the Civil Rights movement and argues that the spiritual underpinnings of that movement can serve as a source of moral energy today.
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Last week, Rakem Balogun — who has been described as the first American citizen targeted for prosecution under a secretive government program focused on identifying “black identity extremists” — gave his first interview after being incarcerated for five months.
He’d been waiting in jail as federal attorneys tried, and failed, to prosecute him for terrorism and, when that case fell apart, illegal possession of firearms. Even that charge got dismissed by the judge.
His prosecution and time behind bars represented “tyranny at its finest,” Balogun told the Guardian.
In an August 2017 report, the FBI argued that black domestic terrorists, spurred by concerns over “alleged police brutality” following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, were likely to take up arms against law enforcement.
The terrorism charge against Balogun crumbled when the FBI admitted it had nothing more on him than a few overheated Facebook posts and advocacy of black gun ownership. After the death of five police officers in Dallas in July 2016, Balogun wrote on Facebook: “They deserve what they got. LMAO!” And he took part in a rally outside the Texas Capitol at which black men carried guns and some chanted, “The only good pig is a pig that’s dead.”
Despite its failure, the aggressive prosecution signals a serious imbalance in law enforcement priorities, especially at a time when virulent and violent white nationalism is on the rise.
While it would be easy to assume this is a symptom of the malignancies of the Trump era —the FBI report on black identity extremism was published a little over a week before torch-wielding white supremacists attacked anti-racist activists in Charlottesville, Virginia — that would be a mistake.
The disparity reflects a more longstanding problem: the inability of US officials to see white people as genuine threats, and its equally longstanding inability to see black people as rights-bearing citizens.
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Anyone who has been to Haiti's capital knows that crumbling infrastructure, terrible gridlock and blackouts are the norm.
Youri Chevry, the mayor of Port-au-Prince, says foreign aid can help him change all that — but not from Haiti's traditional partners. From mainland China.
“We don’t have a city,” said Chevry, who campaigned on reviving the destitute capital city, which was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake. “It’s not about China, or anybody else. It’s about rebuilding Port-au-Prince. China is offering me something that I like and I want to go for it.”
The Dominican Republic, Haiti's next door neighbor on the island of Hispaniola, has just entered into a new partnership with China after it reportedly offered $3.1 billion in investments and loans. In the process, the Dominican Republic severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a relationship it has had for 77 years.
Will Haiti be the next to find China's money too tempting to turn down?
Since last summer, two Chinese companies — Southwest Municipal Engineering Design and Research Institute and the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC), a state-owned construction firm — have been negotiating with Chevry over a $4.7 billion plan to rebuild the municipality of Port-au-Prince and transform it into a more modern city, according to the mayor and representatives of the Haitian firm involved in the negotiations.
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More than 7,500 doses of an Ebola vaccine are being given out in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an outbreak of the deadly virus is ongoing.
Merck’s rVSV-ZEBOV is the first highly effective Ebola vaccine, and it’s expected to be an extremely useful tool in the DRC outbreak, which so far involves 46 cases and 26 deaths.
“This is the first time it’ll be used in a new outbreak,” said John-Arne Røttingen, chief executive of the Research Council of Norway, who worked on the Ebola vaccine trials. “[Health officials] will vaccinate early on and hopefully before the epidemic takes off.”
The news marks a rare public health success story involving a neglected disease, and it’s worth celebrating.
The global community pours more money into fighting baldness and erectile dysfunctionthan developing treatments or vaccines for “neglected tropical diseases” like Ebola that affect more than a billion of the world’s poorest people. And when these scourges attract funding, it tends to come from defense budgets (remember, Ebola is considered a potential bioterrorism weapon).
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I would hold the pen, writing narratives that would show the totality of what it meant to be Brown and Black, to be trans and poor and femme in an era in New York City dictated by a series of ills. Color Lines: Janet Mock Hopes 'Pose' Changes Hollywood for Trans POC Artists
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Journalist and advocate Janet Mock added more roles to her résumé when she joined the crew of FX series “Pose” as a writer, director and producer. The series follows two concurrent developments in late-’80s Manhattan: the ball culture, primarily developed and celebrated by LGBTQ people of color, and new forms of ostentatious wealth, as epitomized by now-President Donald Trump.
Mock, who identifies as a Black and Native Hawaiian transgender woman, wrote about the significance of the series in a guest column for Variety on Wednesday (May 16).
“When girls like us flitted onto my screen, we were seen through the narrowest lens—either as points of trauma, treated as freaks, or mere punchlines,” writes Mock, who says she is the first trans woman of color hired as a writer on any TV series of this profile. “Rarely were we given a chance to be the center of the story, to be the protagonists, the antagonists and the damn villains. And I knew with ‘Pose,’ I would hold the pen, writing narratives that would show the totality of what it meant to be Brown and Black, to be trans and poor and femme in an era in New York City dictated by a series of ills, from HIV and gentrification to crack and greed.”
Mock said that she joined the project at the invitation of its prolific co-creator, Ryan Murphy (“Glee,” the “American Horror Story” series). Murphy, a gay White man, centers Black and Brown LGBTQpeople both on- and off-camera for “Pose”:
This issue of whose gaze, whose stories, and whose bodies were in focus and in leadership behind the camera presented me with much caution as I considered the offer to write on “Pose.” I would soon learn that Murphy was aware of this issue. That’s why he assembled a team of culturally specific collaborators from the ball community, including Dominique Jackson, who plays one of “Pose’s” leading ladies, as well as Leiomy Maldonado and Danielle Polanco, who serve as choreographers; and our braintrust of consultants: Freddie Pendavis, Hector Xtravaganza, Jack Mizrahi, Michael Roberson, Skylar King, Sol Williams and Twiggy Pucci Garçon.
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“One of the simple joys of our time in public service was getting to meet so many fascinating people from all walks of life, and to help them share their experiences with a wider audience," the former president said in a statement. "That's why Michelle and I are so excited to partner with Netflix — we hope to cultivate and curate the talented, inspiring, creative voices who are able to promote greater empathy and understanding between peoples, and help them share their stories with the entire world."
Obama previously appeared on Netflix's "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman."
Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said in a statement the Obamas "are uniquely positioned to discover and highlight stories of people who make a difference in their communities and strive to change the world for the better." A New York Times report in March said Obama's projects are not intended to address President Donald Trump or conservatives. Instead, it would focus on inspirational content.
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