Sunday, January 12

Tag: black

Preventing Burnout Among Black Movement Leaders
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Preventing Burnout Among Black Movement Leaders

I’m not a good friend anymore. I am burned out and have little emotional energy left to cultivate the community I’m told I’m supposed to lean on for support. I am writing this three years into my role as executive director of Power Shift Network, a climate justice organization, and parenting a toddler, during what we now just call “these unprecedented times.” This is not a unique experience, especially for Black organizers and leaders. But it feels distinct now that it’s happening to me. What is actually a widespread, sector-wide problem has been pushed behind closed doors and turned into a private problem for individuals to solve using their personal resources. The truth is, burnout among Black activists and the organizational refusal to address it has serious implications for who remain...
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The Black People
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LIFESTYLE

The Black People

Black American's are American's mostly or partly of African descent. More than 28 million blacks live in the United States. They account for 12 percent of the nation's total population and make up the largest minority group. About half of all black Americans live in the Southern States. Most of the rest live in large cities in the east, Midwest, and West. Black people belong to the African geographical race. This race consists of dark-skinned peoples who live or whose ancestors lived south of the Sahara, the vast desert that stretches across northern Africa. In addition to dark brown skin, most members of this race have brown eyes, dark wooly or curly hair, and thick lips. Most black American's have used five terms to refer themselves. The term Negro (which means black in Spanish and Port...
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Growing Up Black In America
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LIFESTYLE

Growing Up Black In America

I grew up in a home with both parents having a heritage rooted in black America. My father was born in Mississippi to parents who operated a farm their entire lives. He had 2 sisters and a brother. Once he was grown he moved to Illinois, took a job, married and raised a family. My mother was born in Louisiana to a father who was of direct African descent and a mother who was of direct native Indian. They moved to California and made a home having just one daughter and many sons. Her brothers ended up joining the military and made a career serving and protecting our country. As a child we never had a lot of money but my family still managed to purchase a home, my father always keep a nice car and he worked every day to support his family. I learned from my father the importance of a great...
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African Americans Have Long Celebrated Black Culture In Public Spaces Defying White Supremacy
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IN OTHER NEWS

African Americans Have Long Celebrated Black Culture In Public Spaces Defying White Supremacy

From Richmond to New York City to Seattle, anti-racist activists are getting results as Confederate monuments are coming down by the dozens. In Richmond, Virginia, protesters have changed the story of Lee Circle, home to a 130-year-old monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It’s now a new community space where graffiti, music and projected images turn the statue of Lee from a monument to white supremacy into a backdrop proclaiming that Black Lives Matter. This isn’t a new phenomenon. I’m a historian of celebrations and protests after the Civil War. And in my research, I have found that long before Confederate monuments occupied city squares, African Americans used those same public spaces to celebrate their history. But those African American memorial cultures have often been o...
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The Uproar Over The First Black Woman Supreme Court Nominee
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VIDEO REELS

The Uproar Over The First Black Woman Supreme Court Nominee

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement in late January, after months of pressure from progressives. At 83, Breyer is the oldest member of the nation’s highest court and is one of three liberal justices remaining on the nine-member body. Now, Democrats, who retain the slimmest of majorities in the U.S. Senate, have a chance to replace Breyer with a younger liberal justice. President Joe Biden, in keeping with his campaign promise to name a Black woman to the court, announced in January, “The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity. And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.” Republicans and conservatives immediately protested the announcement,...
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Black History Month: To Fully Appreciate Black History, The US Must Let Go Of Lingering Confederate Nostalgia
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IN OTHER NEWS

Black History Month: To Fully Appreciate Black History, The US Must Let Go Of Lingering Confederate Nostalgia

As a nation, the U.S. is debating the meaning of Confederate symbolism and history. That debate is closely tied to how the U.S. commemorates, or fails to commemorate, the full spectrum of African-American history. In my research I explore why people choose to remember some parts of the past and not others. I have also studied how communities choose to forget portions of the past in order to overcome longstanding conflicts. Based on this work, I would argue that nostalgic versions of Confederate history inhibit our ability to memorialize African-American historical experiences and achievements as centerpieces of U.S. history. Forgetting and forging ahead A commitment to starting over and creating a new future is a deep-seated part of the U.S. experience. Thomas Paine published “Common Se...
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Top 20 Quotations To Celebrate Black History Month
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Top 20 Quotations To Celebrate Black History Month

"I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me." -- Muhammad Ali The Greatest (1975) "Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise." -- Maya Angelou "Still I rise," And Still I Rise (1978) "Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can." -- Arthur Ashe quoted in Sports Illustrated "Just like you can buy grades of silk, you can buy grades of justice. " -- Ray Charles "The past is a ghost, the future a dream. All we ever have is now. " -- Bill Cosby "There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their ow...
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Black Women In Television And Film – Grace In The Face Of Discrimination
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CELEBRITY NEWS

Black Women In Television And Film – Grace In The Face Of Discrimination

When I was fourteen, I traveled to North Carolina with my mother to her home town in Greensboro and experienced a kind of racism that gave me a serious wake up call about discrimination. I was angry, confused and hurt that we could have been arrested just for shopping like normal people and the experience affects me still today. This was in 1968, the same year that Martin Luther King Jr, was murdered, and I felt strong in my Blackness due to the achievements of the Civil Rights movement taking place up to and during this time. In this Five and Dime discount store, as I browsed and touched things I was followed by a white clerk and warned by my mother to not put the hat I was looking at on my head. Defiant, fourteen and coming from Ohio where white people were a little more subtle about th...
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In Martin Luther King Jr.’s Neighborhood Black Mothers Will Soon Receive Monthly Cash Payments
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IN OTHER NEWS

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s Neighborhood Black Mothers Will Soon Receive Monthly Cash Payments

A new program is launching in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward — the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr. — that could help build the case for the idea he popularized half a century ago: guaranteed cash payments as a vehicle out of poverty. The program, which will launch early this year in King’s neighborhood, will send monthly payments of $850 to 650 Black women over two years, making it one of the largest guaranteed income programs to date. Guaranteed income — the concept of sending people cash payments with no strings attached — was featured in King’s 1967 book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” in which he argued that sometimes the simplest idea could be the most effective in ending poverty. But the concept of guaranteed monthly payments remained a fringe issue for decades un...
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Since The Death Of Dr. King Black Americans Mostly Left Behind By Progress
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Since The Death Of Dr. King Black Americans Mostly Left Behind By Progress

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. 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 African-Americans now hold positions of power, from mayor to governor to corporate chief...
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