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I Understand Why Black People May Trust Their Intuition Over the Government On COVID-19

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

I Understand Why Black People May Trust Their Intuition Over the Government On COVID-19

I’m ashamed to admit it: I laughed when I saw the news story of the Black woman who wore plastic bags as she picked up a student from a Memphis school where an employee had contact with a patient who had tested positive for the new strain of coronavirus. As a Black woman and a practicing physician who works on Chicago’s South Side, I shouldn’t make light of the way a fellow Black woman attempts to protect herself in a country that often does little to protect her. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends frequent hand-washing, social distancing including avoiding crowds, keeping hands away from the face, and suggests wearing a mask only if you are sick.) Doctors are certainly not immune to panic or fear. But we are trained to remain calm in the face of uncertainty. We a...

Black turnout in primaries might make Democrats think twice about swing voter strategy

11Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Black turnout in primaries might make Democrats think twice about swing voter strategy

Big wins for Joe Biden on Super Tuesday and in the South Carolina primary a few days earlier have seemingly bolstered a centrist view of how best to capture the presidency: appeal to the middle, pick up swing voters. It is true that a sizeable chunk of moderates cast a ballot for Biden over his main rival, the more radical Bernie Sanders, in these contests. But a closer look at how the vote broke down suggests a different interpretation: Biden’s surge may be less about moderates and more about getting out the anti-Trump vote. As a political scientist who teaches in South Carolina and studies African American politics, I believe that understanding what drove the outcome of these early primaries may be key to creating a successful Democratic strategy to beat Donald Trump. The Biden bounce...

Mary McLeod Bethune The Most Famous Black Woman In The World

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IMPACT

Mary McLeod Bethune The Most Famous Black Woman In The World

Mary McLeod Bethune founded a college, defied the Klan, advised presidents, and like my grandmother, was a fierce warrior for justice. Born in 1914, Dovey Johnson Roundtree was subject to the double barriers of institutionalized racism and sexism, but rose from poverty to become a distinguished champion of civil and women’s rights. As a member of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps during WWII, she helped desegregate the US military. She went on to become a crusading lawyer, winning a landmark bus desegregation case in 1955. As a minster in the 1960s, she was in the vanguard of women ordained as leaders in the AME church. In her memoir, Mighty Justice: My Life in Civil Rights, Roundtree describes how the support of community, mentors, and family nurtured her career. In this excerpt, Roundtre...

Slave Cabin Sleepovers Are Helping Black And White Participants To Create Healing Conversations

24Feb

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

LIFESTYLE

Slave Cabin Sleepovers Are Helping Black And White Participants To Create Healing Conversations

By 1860, more than 40,000 plantations in the United States each had 20 or more enslaved Africans. Today, hundreds of those same plantations operate as museums, but only a handful tell the stories of the enslaved who lived, toiled, and died there. Meanwhile, lifestyle magazines tout plantations as a destination—weddings have become the latest trend—emphasizing their idyllic verdant settings and stately architecture. The Whitney Plantation is the only plantation, of the 375 existing locations, expressly designed to center the narrative of slavery, but Black conservationists and historical interpreters such as Joe McGill are collaborating with plantation owners, government agencies, and the public to center the history of enslaved Africans at those historical 46,300 plantations, and broade...

Lynching preachers: How black pastors resisted Jim Crow and white pastors incited racial violence

10Feb

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

Lynching preachers: How black pastors resisted Jim Crow and white pastors incited racial violence

White lynch mobs in America murdered at least 4,467 people between 1883 and 1941, hanging, burning, dismembering, garroting and blowtorching their victims. Their violence was widespread but not indiscriminate: About 3,300 of the lynched were black, according to the most recent count by sociologists Charles Seguin and David Rigby. The remaining dead were white, Mexican, of Mexican descent, Native American, Chinese or Japanese. Such numbers, based on verifiable newspaper reports, represent a minimum. The full human toll of racial lynching may remain ever beyond reach. Religion was no barrier for these white murderers, as I’ve discovered in my research on Christianity and lynch mobs in the Reconstruction-era South. White preachers incited racial violence, joined the Ku Klux Klan and lynche...

A brief history of black names, from Perlie to Latasha

23Jan

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Journalism

A brief history of black names, from Perlie to Latasha

Most people recognize that there are first names given almost exclusively by black Americans to their children, such as Jamal and Latasha. While fodder for comedians and social commentary, many have assumed that these distinctively black names are a modern phenomenon. My research shows that’s not true. Long before there was Jamal and Latasha, there was Booker and Perlie. The names have changed, but my colleagues and I traced the use of distinctive black names to the earliest history of the United States. As scholars of history, demographics and economics, we found that there is nothing new about black names. A 2012 ‘Key & Peele’ sketch poked fun of historically black names. Black names aren’t new Many scholars believe that distinctively black names emerged from the civil rights move...

How a heritage of black preaching shaped MLK’s voice in calling for justice

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS, Religion

How a heritage of black preaching shaped MLK’s voice in calling for justice

The name Martin Luther King Jr. is iconic in the United States. President Barack Obama mentioned King in both his Democratic National Convention nomination acceptance and victory speeches in 2008, when he said, “[King] brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln’s Memorial…to speak of his dream.” Indeed, much of King’s legacy lives on in such arresting oral performances. They made him a global figure. The name Martin Luther King Jr. is iconic in the United States. President Barack Obama mentioned King in both his Democratic National Convention nomination acceptance and victory speeches in 2008, when he said, “[King] brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln’s M...

Black Americans mostly left behind by progress since Dr. King’s death

20Jan

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Journalism

Black Americans mostly left behind by progress since Dr. King’s death

On Apr. 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while assisting striking sanitation workers. Back then, over a half century ago, the wholesale racial integration required by the 1964 Civil Rights Act was just beginning to chip away at discrimination in education, jobs and public facilities. Black voters had only obtained legal protections two years earlier, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act was about to become law. African-Americans were only beginning to move into neighborhoods, colleges and careers once reserved for whites only. How much has really improved for black people in the U.S. since 1968? Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA I’m too young to remember those days. But hearing my parents talk about the late 1960s, it sounds in some ways like another world. Numerous...

What happens when black Americans leave their segregated hometowns

4Apr

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IN OTHER NEWS

What happens when black Americans leave their segregated hometowns

Where someone grows up is profoundly important for their life chances. It influences things like the schools they attend, the jobs, parks and community resources they have access to and the peers they interact with. Because of this comprehensive influence, one might conclude that where you grow up affects your ability to move up the residential ladder and into a better neighborhood than the one you grew up in. In a new study, my co-authors and I show that for many children, where they grow up is profoundly important for where they end up as adults. But for black Americans who move away from the cities of their youth, moving out often means moving up the residential ladder. More than half of black people in the U.S. live in highly segregated areas. Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock.com Segregati...

Racism and the black hole of gun control in the US

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

Racism and the black hole of gun control in the US

Would tighter gun laws help protect African Americans or make them more vulnerable to racism and police brutality? I will never forget the day in eighth grade when my friend pointed a pistol at my face and pulled the trigger. I am old enough now that many of my childhood memories have faded into blurry black and white pictures, but 30 years later, that scene is a vivid colour film in my memory. I can see the smirk in his brown eyes as he points the pistol at my forehead, the slightly blue shimmer of the metal in the afternoon light, the way that the flat side of the barrel reached a nipple of an opening, suddenly curving inward, and the explosion of sound as he pulled the trigger. Time stretches in moments like these, and as time expanded before me, I thoug...