black – Page 21

4Apr

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IN OTHER NEWS

Black transgender woman who was attacked in April fatally shot

Muhlaysia Booker found dead in Texas on Saturday, about a month after she was assaulted in an attack caught on video. Muhlaysia Booker is the fourth black transgender woman to be killed in the US this year, rights groups say [File: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post/Getty Images] A 23-year-old transgender woman seen on a widely circulated video being beaten in front of a crowd of people has been found dead in Dallas, Texas. Police say the body of Muhlaysia Booker, who was shot dead, was found in a street on Saturday and that no suspect has been identified. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators say there's no apparent link to the April 12 beating Booker suffered after she was involved in a minor traffic accident. A mobile phone recording d...

27Apr

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Journalism

The History and Political Power of Black Motherhood

Author Dani McClain wants us to stop pathologizing Black mothers’ experiences in this country. I first became a mother at 20 years old and was 22 when I had my second child. What I learned about the technicalities of being pregnant and what to expect came from what some have called the pregnancy bible, What to Expect When You’re Expecting. But, like many mothers, the practicalities and examples of motherhood came from the women in my family: my mother, my six aunts, and my maternal and paternal grandmothers. From them I learned what I wanted to do—and what I didn’t want to do. I made mistakes. But looking back, I realize I worked at it—hard. I find labels like, “stay-at-home mom,” “homemaker” “housewife” and “single mom” disparaging; there’s something even backhandedly co...

2Apr

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Journalism

For Black Women, Reproductive Justice Is About More Than High-Risk Pregnancies

Infertility affects Black women twice as much as other women—and they’re less likely to seek assistance. Lately, more light has been shed on the risks Black women face during pregnancy and childbirth. While this is good, another struggle remains largely hidden for Black woman—becoming pregnant. While infertility affects roughly 12 percent of the population, Black women are twice as likely to experience challenges achieving or sustaining a pregnancy—and less likely to seek assistance. According to Juli Fraga, a psychologist who specializes in women’s health, including pregnancy-related depression, infertility can severely harm women’s mental health. “Depression, anxiety, PTSD, unresolved grief/loss, and marital tension are all possible mental health consequences of infer...

4Apr

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Journalism

Birding Is Booming. So Where Are the Black Birders?

Raising the profile of Black birders could help foster a healthy connection between Black communities and the natural world. Tiffany Adams grew up in the Chelsea-Elliott Houses, a sprawling, low-income housing project on the west side of Manhattan. There, cookie-cutter brick buildings are separated by modest courtyards with benches and tables. Trees and grassy yards enclosed by black, wrought-iron fences dot the fringes of the project. The scant open spaces could seem confining, except to young girls with dreams of growing up to become zoologists or to tired, hungry birds navigating the Atlantic Flyway. During her youth, Adams escaped to the natural world by watching National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. Five years ago—on a lark, so to speak—she attended a bird wa...

21Feb

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Journalism

Social Media Offers a New Teaching Tool for Black History

Race Women on Instagram spotlights generations of Black women trailblazers. Have you heard of Rosetta Douglass Sprague? I hadn’t. Then I came across a black-and-white photo on Instagram of a stately yet solemn-looking Black woman who lived during the 19th century that made me stop scrolling through my feed. It’s Black History Month, and here’s an image of someone, although similar to those of which I’m familiar—Ida B. Wells, Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth—I’d never seen. As I read the post, I learned that she was the daughter of abolitionist Frederick Douglass. But she was also a trailblazer of U.S. history in her own right. Although her name is rarely, if ever, mentioned, Sprague was a founding member the National Association of Colored Women, the largest federation...

7Feb

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Journalism

Black Lives Matter Is Making Single Moms Homeowners

In Louisville, the group is purchasing vacant homes for low-income families to promote stability in the community and fight gentrification. In May, Tiffany Brown and her children will move into a new home in the historic Black neighborhood of West Louisville, Kentucky. A single mother of three, Brown has spent most of her adult life in public housing. Her first shot at homeownership comes courtesy of a new project by the Louisville chapter of Black Lives Matter to help provide permanent housing to transient families and low-income single-mother households like hers. She had recently relocated to Section 8 housing because of involuntary displacement in her previous location, the result of ongoing practices of segregation and unequal access to housing based on race. The B...

2Apr

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VIDEO REELS

Chicago cops acquitted of cover-up charge in black teen’s killing

Relatives of Laquan McDonald, killed in 2014, call ruling step backwards for black community's fight for justice. Reverend Marvin Hunter: 'To say that these men are not guilty is to say that Jason Van Dyke is not guilty' [Noreen Nasir/AP] Activists and relatives of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager in the United States who was killed by a white police officer more than four years ago, have decried a court ruling that acquitted three current and former Chicago officers of conspiring to protect a white colleague by lying about the circumstances around the fatal shooting. The October 2014 killing of 17-year-old McDonald, which was captured on police video, triggered months of protests and became emblematic of long-standing police abuse in Chicago, the country...

4Apr

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IN OTHER NEWS

Black Mothers Change the Narrative By Telling Their Stories

Black women have been poorly represented in the mainstream. So a new yearlong fellowship prepares women to redefine the stories that are being told and control who gets to tell them. The wrenching image of a Black mother clinging to her 1-year-old son as police officers and security guards at a public benefits office in Brooklyn ripped him from her arms went viral recently. Child endangerment and resisting arrest charges against the 23-year-old Brooklyn mom were later dropped. Now, Jazmine Headley is speaking out. What happened to her, Headley told The New York Times, is not isolated; it happens to many people. “My story is the only one that made it to the surface.” “The surface” Headley is referring to is mainstream media. The charges against her were dropped and she re...

4Apr

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IN OTHER NEWS

How Funding Black Businesses Can Help Bridge the Racial Wealth Gap

The Runway Project is making entrepreneurship more accessible to Black communities. Richmond, California, native April Fenall didn’t grow up with aspirations of becoming an entrepreneur. But upon moving from Sacramento back to the Bay Area in 2015, she couldn’t find work. A past conviction—even though it had been expunged from her record—and severe scoliosis made it difficult to find gainful employment. So she became an entrepreneur out of necessity. “I wasn’t able to show up as my complete self,” Fenall said, referring to her struggle to integrate into the workforce. “And I made an assumption that other people were probably encountering the same thing, of having all of these different identities that make up a whole person but not being able to show up as that whole perso...

4Dec

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Journalism

Black-Owned Banks Keep Community Money Where It Belongs

A national network of financial cooperatives is helping marginalized groups keep their money out of an extractive banking system. Me’Lea Connelly is from the Bay Area of California, but she has deep roots in Minnesota. Her mother’s family was one of the first to migrate to the state after slavery ended. When she was 15, her parents divorced, and she moved with her mother to Minneapolis. “I’ve always just felt more at home here,” Connelly said. “All my ancestors are just calling me home.” But that home, in Minneapolis’ Northside, has a severe shortage of shopping centers, grocery stores, and banks. In 2017, Minnesota was named the second-most unequal state for Black people in a study of Black and White inequality by 24/7 Wall St., a financial news and opinion website. Despite the ...