Thank you Ben Jealous
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
When I read headlines announcing that Ben Jealous is stepping down as the head of the NAACP, I was surprised, and saddened.
I first joined the NAACP when I was a child. My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles were members. I was raised with elders who taught me the history of the organization. I didn't learn it in school. It was not part of my grade school curriculum. As a young teenager I joined my local NAACP youth group in NYC, in the chapter headed by William Booth, and participated in sit-ins to combat housing discrimination.
I didn't always agree with some of the positions they took. As a very militant young adult I was impatient with what I thought at times was a too conservative stance of the organization, especially under Roy Wilkins. Yet, I always thought of the NAACP as a rock. A solid foundation. That it would always be there.
It almost wasn't. In recent years the NAACP has gone through major internal changes, and faced fiscal challenges. Rescued financially by Myrlie Evers Williams stint as Chairperson of the Board of Directors, the organization began to turn itself around. Slowly, it began to remake itself.
Five years ago, when the Board brought in Benjamin Jealous, they made a decision to select a young person (he was born in 1973) to captain the ship.
Benjamin Todd Jealous
Jealous was born in Pacific Grove, California and grew up in Monterey Peninsula, California. He holds a B.A. in political science from Columbia University and a master's degree in comparative social research from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Jealous went to York School in Monterey for high school.
His mother, Ann Todd Jealous, who is black, is a retired psychotherapist from Baltimore, Maryland who participated in Western High School's desegregation. She is also the author, with Caroline Haskell, of Combined Destinies: Whites Sharing Grief about Racism, released in April 2013. His father, Fred Jealous, who is white, from New England, is the Founder and President of the Breakthrough Men's Community and participated in Baltimore sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters. As a multiracial couple, it was illegal for them to get married in Maryland until 1967; therefore, they had to marry in Washington before returning to Baltimore. Afterward, Jealous’ father was disowned by his white family from New England
Like many young African-Americans Ben got his feet wet in
activism early in life.
Jealous began his career as a community organizer in Harlem in 1991 with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund while working his way through college. In 1993, after being suspended for organizing student protests at Columbia University, he went to work as an investigative reporter for Mississippi's frequently-firebombed Jackson Advocate newspaper.
Over the past two decades, he has helped organize successful campaigns to abolish the death penalty for children, stop Mississippi's governor from turning a public historically black university into a prison, and pass federal legislation against prison rape. His journalistic investigations have been credited with helping save the life of a white inmate who was being threatened for helping convict corrupt prison guards, free a black small farmer who was being framed for arson, and spur official investigations into law enforcement corruption.
A Rhodes Scholar, he is a graduate of Columbia and Oxford University, the past president of the Rosenberg Foundation and served as the founding director of Amnesty International's US Human Rights Program. While at Amnesty, he authored the widely-cited report: Threat and Humiliation--Racial Profiling, Domestic Security, and Human Rights in the United States. Jealous has led the NAACP to advocate against "stop-and-frisk" police tactics and stand-your-ground laws following the death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. He has also fought to abolish the death penalty at the state level, in Maryland, New Mexico, Illinois and Connecticut.
The Baltimore Sun had this excellent editorial:
Not your grandmother's NAACP
Our view: Retiring President Benjamin Jealous transformed the nation's oldest civil rights group by refocusing it on contemporary challenges
When Benjamin Jealous, at 35, became the youngest person ever to lead the NAACP in 2008, he took over an institution with a venerable name but whose greatest triumphs appeared to lie in the past. Mr. Jealous, who announced last week that he will step down from his post as president of the nation's oldest civil rights organization in January, quickly set about changing that, working to attract a younger generation of members with a more expansive vision of civil rights that addresses contemporary concerns. As a result, the NAACP he leaves behind is today a far larger, stronger and more effective advocate for social justice than the group he inherited just five years ago.
Mr. Jealous was the first leader of a major traditional civil rights organization to openly advocate not only for equal treatment of gay people in housing and employment but also for their right to serve openly in the nation's military and to marry. Moreover, he did so at a time when many among the NAACP's traditionally church-going membership opposed equating African-Americans' struggle for equal justice with the gay rights movement. But Mr. Jealous recognized that no one's rights were safe unless the rights of all were secure. Acting on that principle, he courageously allied his group with gay rights organizations and stood on the front lines of their struggle. When critics charged he had strayed from the NAACP's core mission, he had a ready answer: There are lots of gay people who are also black, and they deserve our support too.
It was a principle he also applied to immigration and the right of people of color from all over the world to live and work in the U.S. free from racial profiling and police harassment. Again, Mr. Jealous insisted on breaking down the cultural barriers that separated African-Americans' quest for equal rights from the struggles of Hispanics and even from black immigrants from places like Haiti, Jamaica and Nigeria.
The NAACP board is now setting up a
search committee. There is talk that they may be looking for a woman to head the organization for the first time. Frankly, I don't care about what gender they choose. It needs to be someone who will continue what Jealous has done in making the NAACP of today relevant, and who will move it forward in today's society, dealing with the multiplicity of challenges we face, in a political climate poisoned by a right wing SCOTUS majority and a racist Republican backlash against the nation's first black President.
So thank you Ben Jealous, for not only what you have achieved, but also for what I know you will go on to achieve in the future.
(Just a reminder, Jealous was a keynote speaker at Netroots Nation in 2012)
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The authorities in Somalia are launching a campaign to get one million more children into schools. BBC: Somalia aims to get a million more children into school.
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The Go 2 School initiative started simultaneously in the capital Mogadishu and in the main cities of Somaliland and Puntland. It's being supported by the UN children's agency, Unicef, at a cost of $117m (£75m).
After two decades of civil war, aid agencies say Somalia's formal education system has almost completely collapsed. School enrolment rates are among the lowest in the world. Only four out 10 Somali children currently attend school.
Girls are particularly badly affected. Only one in three are at schools in south and central Somalia, where the militant Islamist group Al-Shabab still controls many areas.
Only four out of 10 Somali children attend schools
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Having your hair cut isn't just about grooming says photographer Andrew Esiebo, who spent months documenting African coiffure. The Guardian: The barbershops of west Africa.
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Nigerian photographer Andrew Esiebo has explored barbers and their shops across seven west African countries, capturing the spaces in which they operate, the aesthetics of their premises and the style of their customers.
His photos have been featured in the New York Times, and 10 of his prints have been added to the permanent collection of the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.
Esiebo spoke to Voices of Africa about the barbers, their shops and the hairstyles he shot.
How did the barbershop project come about?
The idea for Pride came about during a street photography project I was doing in Lagos. While photographing people on the street, I stumbled upon a barbershop and started talking to the owner. He said to me that while he might not be considered an important person in the society, he was proud to be the barber to one of Nigeria's ex-presidents. That resonated with me and made me think about the role, and importance, of barbers in west African society. I thought about the idea for several years and in 2012, following an artistic award I received, I was able to develop the project. I traveled to several west African cities and looked at the relevance, and the role, of the barbershop in the city.
A barbershop in Mali. Photograph: Andrew Esiebo
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Being selected is only the beginning of the job. Black Enterprise: Black Corporate Directors Must do More Than Occupy a Seat.
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I believe that African Americans who serve on corporate boards should do more than occupy a seat. While board service is both prestigious and financially rewarding, your directorship does not give you license to put on blinders to the reality of inequities in corporate America. Left unchecked, these companies will maintain the status quo and operate without regard to equal opportunity and fairness. African American board members have an absolute duty to inquire, challenge, and advocate on behalf of all stakeholders, including people of color. CBS Corp. and Northrop Grumman board member Bruce Gordon put it best: “If there are African Americans around the table then there is an obligation to represent the community from which we come. I’m not convinced that everyone sees it the way that I do. That simply says to me that we still have some work to do to help one another understand our responsibilities as African American directors.”
Earl "Butch" Graves Jr.
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Jamilah Lemieux says that policing Black behavior won't end racism, nor will it uplift our people. Ebony: Dear Respectability Police: You Won't End Racism.
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“Who taught you to hate yourself?”
Malcolm X’s famous query has been on my mind lately. It was there when President and First Lady Obama took brand new HBCU alumni and their families to task on Morehouse and Bowie State’s graduation days. It was there when Don Lemon posed Boy Scout-esque steps that we -- we -- could take to end racism. I thought of those words when our beloved POTUS came for us again in his comments during the celebration of the anniversary on the March on Washington. And when Sheryl Underwood sat beneath a shiny wig and before a largely White audience and mocked nappy Black hair. And again yesterday, as the image of a crying Black girl circulated the net after her Black-led school punished her for having Black girl hair.
I don’t think that any of these people would tell you that they hate Black people or themselves or things that are associated with blackness. But the uncomfortable thread running all through these narratives is the suggestion that we have to be good to be good enough. To be respected, to be human, to be validated in the eyes of White folk.
Because, you know, this is what really matters. In fact, I often feel like some of us are walking around wearing invisible W.W.W.F.D. bracelets around their wrists in hopes of somehow policing themselves into validity.
What would White folks do? And what can we do to get them to tell us we’re okay? Who do we have to be to gain their respect? If we play nice, will you finally treat us that way?
Generic image (Thinkstock)
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A new report shows that 10 southern states have withheld nearly $57 million dollars in mandated state appropriations to more than half of the federally designated historically Black colleges and universities over the last two years. HBCU Digest: Southern States Held $57 Million in Mandatory Funding to Historically Black Land Grant Institutions.
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A new report by the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities says that 10 southern states have withheld nearly $57 million dollars in mandated state appropriations to more than half of the federally designated 1890 Land Grant historically Black colleges and universities over the last two years.
The report outlines disparities in states’ matching funding for the United States Department of Agriculture to historically Black 1890 colleges and universities and predominantly white 1862 colleges universities. Between 2010 and 2012, HBCUs received more than $244 million from the USDA for research and cooperative extension development, while states matched just over $188 million.
The congressional mandate for matched funding to historically Black land grant institutions does not impose penalties for states who cannot or refuse to equitably fund the schools, but requires HBCUs to match the funds up to 50 percent to keep the federal allocation. Black colleges are eligible to apply for a waiver of the requirement, a measure that more than 50 percent of HBCU Land Grant schools have used regularly since 2008.
“When the state does not match the funds, the university is on the hook to provide the money back to the USDA,” says Dr. John M. Lee Jr., Vice President for the APLU Office of Access and Success. “There’s no mechanism now to make states accountable if they don’t match the funds. In fact, it presents a big problem for those HBCUs that want to pursue other USDA grants. If their state legislatures aren’t matching annual funding, and a particular grant requires matching dollars from state governments, some Black colleges may be hesitant to go for that kind of grant.”
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
It's not enough to just win the game, the economic elites only feel satisfaction after the loser is also ground into the ground and hated for it.
Contrary to our true intent of just being treated fairly as decent human beings in America, the economic elites fear we will do to them what they have done to us; and that is the problem. We want equality.
They see no one and no thing as their equal. They want domination; and in like measure, they fear being dominated.
They will steal and commit fraud; they will game elections and blow up the world so as to not be dominated so.
Even when their fear is misplaced. Especially when their fear is misplaced.
Securitization
In someone’s distant algorithm
your mortgage was bundled to another’s
—hedged—
and stamped a new “security.”
While it was swapped
from investor to investor
accruing fees and interest at each turn,
your shadow
partner
defaulted
and she abandoned her home.
Someone uses your mortgage
to leverage
something
far inside the starbursts of a server.
Likewise marriage
has
no image—
What’s a mortgage
and who’s
it engage
on the other side of the firewall?
*
I witnessed a will
which—the language invested with law
godmothers the peacock’s
fanned
screech—
would take care of the baby in the event of a
[blesses herself]
It lives at the Cathedral
and seems to be some kind of
mascot for
Baptisms
*
Securities:
The future art you’ll make and its pleasure
is hedged against the
boys who died
you fancied
-- Ange Mlinko
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