Friday, January 10

Tag: black

I’m a Young Black Activist in Georgia. I Don’t See Voting As the Only Answer
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Journalism

I’m a Young Black Activist in Georgia. I Don’t See Voting As the Only Answer

I never thought about politics purely in the context of elections. When I was growing up in Georgia, my first exposure to inequity came through my lived experience of living in a majority Black area. My first exposure to fighting inequity came through reading books. I learned about the icons of Black grassroots organizing: civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., anti-rape activist Rosa Parks, workers rights champion Dorothy Bolden. What spoke to me was their commitment to door knocking, radical imagination, hard conversation, and deep care for people they had never met. To me, that looked like the most viable path to liberation. This history taught me that when discussing the role and impact of electoral politics for Black people, the context of community is paramount. It wasn’t unti...
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IN OTHER NEWS

Berkeley Law Dean believes that Comcast and Charter Communications are putting Black people’s civil rights in jeopardy

When asked in legal circles who is the premiere voice on constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction, many attorneys will stop and think of one name— Dr. Erwin Chemerinsky His unpacking of the document that binds our country’s political ethics with civil rights has been heralded by scholars, politicians and pundits alike. This is evident in his book, We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century (Picador USA), where he contends that slavery, as an institution, has always been protected by the U.S. government. As a result, there continues to be a need to make revisions to the constitution and various acts that would reconcile some of the systemic racism that continues to pervade this country today. These various acts and the Pre...
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Black Girl Magic: How Tarot Is Helping Women of Color Connect
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ASTROLOGY

Black Girl Magic: How Tarot Is Helping Women of Color Connect

The Detroit Blk Gurls Do Tarot Facebook group empowers women in traditional spiritualities. Once taboo, tarot reading is considered spooky, and even wicked by some. But the form of divination that uses cards dates back to the 15th century—and has become the latest spiritual trend. Decks are sold at almost any store, and hundreds of thousands of Instagram and Facebook pages are dedicated to the art of divination. But some practitioners in the United States have been using the cards for decades as a tool in their spiritual practices as they turn away from Western religions for traditional African-centered and Indigenous spiritualities. Thirty-five years since the release of Jambalaya: The Natural Woman’ s Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals, by teacher and author L...
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Black Funerals Are a Radical Testament to Blackness
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Journalism

Black Funerals Are a Radical Testament to Blackness

For African Americans, homegoings are the ultimate form of liberation. The funerals—or homegoing celebrations, as they’re called in many Black communities—of Aretha Franklin and hip-hop artist Nipsey Hussle garnered millions of views from people across the globe on live television and viral online videos. They gave the world a glimpse of a tradition and ritual that until recently has mostly been witnessed from within African American communities. Whether held at a small storefront church or one that seats thousands, as in Franklin’s, or at a stadium, as in Hussle’s, some things are constant: On display are flower-filled altars as the backdrop of the neatly casketed loved one, tear-jerking slideshows, the belting of Negro spirituals, odes to ancestors, sometimes West Africa...
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VIDEO REELS

Outrage in US as photo shows police leading black man by a rope

Critics demand dismissal of officers involved in 'racist' incident saying Texas police chief's apology was inadequate. An NAACP official says the police have an obligation to explain the officers' actions to the public [Courtesy: Adrienne Bell/Twitter] Outrage has erupted across the United States after a photo of two white police officers mounted on horseback walking a handcuffed black man by a rope - recalling the long history of violence, slavery and racism against African Americans during the era of segregation - went viral. Vernon Hale, the police chief of the US city of Galveston in Texas state, issued an apology following the incident, but his statement drew more criticism for being "weak". Hale said the black man in the photo, Donald Neely, who was ...
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Journalism

How This Black Entrepreneur Went From Homelessness to Housing Others

With help from a business incubator, Tyrone Poole created a platform to help people on low incomes find housing. Collapse and regeneration are experiences Tyrone Poole knows intimately. There was that period back in 2006 when he was homeless—that moment when, on crutches and in excruciating pain, Poole found himself staggering into the bus station in Portland, Oregon, where he collapsed on a bench and threw up. That was how a policeman found him that night and later took him to the YMCA homeless shelter, where he got a cot on the gym floor. Everything he owned was in a bag under the bed. What had led to Poole’s downslide was medical debt. He’d completed his associate degree at Portland Community College and was training to be a firefighter when he suffered a debilitating i...
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How a Black Farming Community Found Justice
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

How a Black Farming Community Found Justice

Black families in the South are doing important work to continue the legacy of Black farming communities. Shirley Sherrod co-founded New Communities, a Black farming community in rural Georgia. But at one time, she wanted to leave farming far behind. As a teenager, Sherrod dreamed of leaving the South. Her mind traveled North—away from the White sheriff, known as “The Gator,” who ruthlessly and violently patrolled the area’s Black residents. Away from her family’s farm and the backbreaking days spent picking cotton. Away from the segregated schools. “My goal was to try to get as far away from that whole system and as far away from the farm as I could,” she says. But in March 1965, her senior year of high school, Sherrod’s father was shot by a White farmer during a disag...
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IN OTHER NEWS

US court tosses black man’s murder conviction over racial bias

Supreme Court tosses out Curtis Flowers's conviction in sixth trial of 1996 murders, citing racial bias. Curtis Giovanni Flowers, left, listens to testimony in his third capital murder trial [Winona Times/Dale Gerstenslager/AP Photo] The United States Supreme Court on Friday threw out the murder conviction and death sentence for a black man in Mississippi because of a prosecutor's efforts to keep African Americans off the jury. The defendant already has been tried six times and now could face a seventh trial. The removal of black prospective jurors deprived inmate Curtis Flowers of a fair trial, the court said in a 7-2 decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The long record of Flowers's trials stretching back more than 20 years shows District Attorney...
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Journalism

Why the Demand for Black Bone Marrow Donors Is High—and Awareness Is Low

For Black people, whose donor pool is exceptionally small, addressing racism in the medical profession is crucial to finding solutions. Every week for the past five years, Destiny Worthington has sat in a chair watching donated blood pump through narrow plastic tubing into her body. At the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles County, she spends up to six hours every week getting blood work done followed by blood and platelet transfusions. When she was 15 years old, Worthington went to a required routine physical for her softball team. At the time, she had a lot of bruising on her body, so doctors ran blood tests for leukemia, various types of anemia, and other blood disorders. “I actually wasn’t diagnosed back then. They just knew that something was wro...
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IN OTHER NEWS

Police Are Still Killing Unarmed Black People

The Hands Up Act could do something about it. Since the police killings of Botham Jean in Dallas and Emantic “E.J.” Bradford in Birmingham, Alabama, two months apart last fall, ongoing news coverage of unarmed Black people killed by police has mostly waned. The street protests ended more than a year ago, but the horrific, traumatic occurrences have not. I can’t count the number of posts I’ve scrolled past to avoid the image of an officer sitting on top of a Black child, tightly holding a plastic bag over the 12-year-old’s head. Or the number of posts screaming outrage about the officers who irresponsibly shot at a fleeing vehicle, injuring three small children. And the countless other posts of news stories about or videos of police officers harassing, assaulting, abus...
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