Islamophobia and Blackphobia in the United States
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
On my way to school yesterday, I stopped to get gas for my car, at the gas station I usually patronize. I’m friends with the manager, and we often chat a bit. He has helped me out on a number of occasions — putting air in my tires, helping me figure out why a particular warning light has come on, and we talk about a variety of topics. Yesterday he was angry, and also fearful. He’s a Muslim American citizen, originally from Yemen. He votes. He won’t be voting for Donald Trump or any of the Republican candidates. I flashed back to what happened up here where I live after 9/11. My husband and I were worried about the safety of Muslim neighbors. I worried about my cousins in New Jersey, who are black American Muslims. I’m worrying about them now. I feel pain for friends with whom I have attended Masjid. Some are black Americans, some are from places like Mali, Somalia and Eritrea.
I sit here and think about one of the most beloved people world wide — Muhammad Ali .
I have been following the career of our young black American Muslim fencing star, Ibtihaj Muhammad, who “Hopes to make history in 2016 as the first U.S. athlete to compete at the Olympic Games in a hijab.”
I’ve talked about her here before, in En Garde! Fencing and black fencing masters
where I posted this video:
I salute her again today, and all our Muslim sisters and brothers.
I don’t have anything else to say — other than we have to organize, push-back against the hate, and VOTE.
Going back to at least Barry Goldwater’s “constitutional” opposition to civil rights and the strident “law and order rhetoric” of the early 1960s, the Republican Party has specialized in racist dog whistles. But Republican front-runner Donald Trump doesn’t do dog whistles. He specializes in train whistles. Consider the tweet he just sent out with bogus statistics on crime. According to the tweet, 81 percent of murdered whites are killed by blacks. In fact, that’s the reverse of the truth. Most people are killed by members of their own race because crime is motivated by proximity and opportunity. As the Huffington Post notes, “According to the U.S. Department of Justice statistics, 84 percent of white people killed every year are killed by other whites.”
By wildly inflating the likelihood of a murderer of a white person to be black (an exaggeration of nearly sixfold), Trump is catering to the worst sort of racism. Perhaps the icing on the cake of this anti-black outburst is that the source of information cited in the tweet—the “Crime Statistics Bureau” of San Francisco—doesn’t seem to exist. What remains to be seen is if the Republican Party and the other candidates will repudiate this crude and dangerous race-baiting.
DOJ LAWYERS EXPECTED TO FLY TO MINNEAPOLIS AS PROTESTERS AND FAMILY DEMAND AUTHORITIES RELEASE FOOTAGE OF POLICE OFFICERS INVOLVED IN CASE. THE GUARDIAN: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT TO INVESTIGATE FATAL POLICE SHOOTING OF JAMAR CLARK.
US Justice Department attorneys were expected to fly to Minnesota on Sunday to investigate the killing of a black man that has prompted protests and calls for the two Minneapolis police officers involved in the shooting to be prosecuted.
A key issue during the lawyers’ visit will be whether authorities should release to the public videos of the fatal shooting of 24-year-old Jamar Clark a week ago.
Federal and state authorities have resisted releasing the footage – from an ambulance, mobile police camera, public housing cameras and people’s cellphones – because they said it does not show the full incident and making the recordings public would compromise their investigations.
Minnesota governor Mark Dayton said on Saturday that he had asked Clark’s family and representatives of the Black Lives Matter group protesting his death to meet the federal lawyers.
“I will urge that the tapes be provided to the family and released to the public, as soon as doing so will not jeopardize the Department of Justice’s investigation,” Dayton said.
WITH MASS DEPORTATION OF DOMINICAN’S OF HAITIAN ANCESTRY POTENTIALLY PENDING, QUESTIONS OF RACIAL AND NATIONAL IDENTITY HAVE BEEN THRUST INTO THE FORE. SLATE: CELEBRATING THE DIVERSITY OF DOMINICAN IDENTITY.
Who is Dominican? What do Dominicans look like?
Those questions have impacted hundreds of thousands of lives since the Dominican government started threatening to deport undocumented migrant workers—the majority of them Haitian—and their Dominican-born children who fail to provide proof of citizenship. Dark-skinned people have been the subject of special scrutiny as immigration officials sweep migrant-heavy neighborhoods checking for identification.
Colombian-American photographer Antonio Pulgarin has been making visits to his Dominican stepfather’s city, Bani, since he was a kid. This summer, when the government started deportations, he knew he had to return there to witness the deportation crisis, and to create a more positive narrative about the country’s diversity. The result is his series, “Los Banilejos,” a term used to describe people who live in Bani—a term, Pulgarin notes, not limited to a specific skin color or background.
“This project is not meant to be a criticism of the people but more of a celebration of these individuals and the culture. What it does criticize is a political system that needs to change. We all need to realize that no one Dominican person should be considered less or more than the other,” Pulgarin said.
The people in his photographs, whom he met at parties, beaches, and on the street, are Dominican citizens of Haitian descent, light-skinned Dominicans, undocumented migrants, and members of his own family. But his captions don’t identify who’s who, and that’s a good thing. The country has been divided enough already, Pulgarin said, and his portraits should, as much as possible, bridge the gap.
A TAX BREAK PLAYED A ROLE IN THE DECLINE OF PUERTO RICO’S ECONOMY. BUSINESSWEEK: THE TOWN VIAGRA BUILT TRIES TO MOVE ON.
In December, the Puerto Rican government may default on its bond payments after years of overborrowing—it owes $70 billion—and lack of growth. The origins of the crisis lie partly in a tax break that enriched and then devastated the Puerto Rican economy.
“We’re responsible for a lot of good moments,” Mayor Wanda Soler Rosario says in her office in Barceloneta’s city hall. After Pfizer won U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for Viagra in 1998, it chose a plant in the city to produce the drug that helped millions of men overcome impotence. The pineapple-and-sugar-cane town was transformed into one of the biggest concentrations of pharmaceutical manufacturing in the U.S.
Barceloneta and other Puerto Rican towns were the beneficiaries of Section 936 of the Internal Revenue Code, which provided a tax exemption for mainland U.S. companies, mostly manufacturers with operations in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories. At the peak, 14 pharmaceutical and other plants operated in Barceloneta, a city of 25,000.
That golden age of subsidized prosperity is over. In the mid-1990s politicians of all stripes came to oppose the tax break. Pro-statehood groups said the exemption perpetuated colonialism. On the mainland, it was seen as corporate welfare—U.S. taxpayers lost $3.9 billion in 1994 alone, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. President Bill Clinton signed a bill in 1996 phasing out 936 over 10 years. Puerto Rico saw a slew of pharmaceutical and manufacturing plant closures caused by recession, mergers, and slow sales. Pfizer stopped making Viagra in Barceloneta in 2008. “There was some expectation that jobs would be lost,” says Elias Gutiérrez, an economist at the University of Puerto Rico. “But that was optimistic. It’s been catastrophic.”
They were lawyers, feminists, Christians, transgender women, domestic workers, militants, favela dwellers, politicians, students and many more. Despite their differences in beliefs, education and income, on Wednesday they came together behind the one thing they had in common: being a black woman in Brazil. On that day, more than 10,000 black women from all over the country gathered in Brazil’s capital city, Brasilia, for the first national black women’s march—Marcha das Mulheres Negras. The march’s tagline was, “Against racism and violence and for the well-being.”
“This is the first time black women coming from all parts of the country came to Brasilia with the same message,” said Ivana Braga, a march organizer from the state of Maranhão. “It doesn’t matter if a black woman is in Congress, is a civil servant, in academia or is a domestic worker; their skin color will continue to play a part in how their rights are denied.”
Braga, 38, marched alongside her 63-year-old mother, Maria dos Rosana Moraes. “It was important for me to bring my mother because she has been a domestic servant since she was 13 years old,” said Braga, who promotes women’s rights in Maranhão and is a Fulbright scholar. “She was denied rights her entire life.
“This isn’t just my fight or her fight. It comes from generations of women who were denied their rights,” Braga added.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
CHEF JUSTICE'S FLAMING BOURBON BBQ SAUCE
1/2 white onion, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 cup bourbon whiskey
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black & white pepper medley
1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
2 cups ketchup
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/3 cup cider vinegar
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
2 teaspoons hot paprika
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon Tapatio or Sriracha hot pepper sauce, or to taste
In a large skillet over medium heat, combine the onion, garlic, and whiskey. Simmer for 10 minutes, or until onion is translucent. Mix in the ground black pepper, salt, ketchup, tomato paste, vinegar, smoked & hot paprika, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, and hot pepper sauce.
Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for 20 minutes. Run sauce through a strainer if you prefer a smooth sauce.
-- JP
Harold's Chicken Shack #1
(i was born by a lake, chicken shack,
& a church
— Common, “The Morning”)
1st defense against food deserts.
when the whitefolk wouldn't sling
us burgers you gave no fuck.
stuck your golden-ringed hand
into the flour & fixed the bird.
you 1st example of black flight.
original innovation of deep fry.
you beef tallow, city slick
& down home migration taste.
of course your sauce sweet
& burn at the same time.
of course you call it mild
so whitefolk won't know
to fear until it's too late.
you no corporate structure,
just black business
model. they earn the recipe
& go make it their own.
every cut of crow you
throw in the grease is dark
meat. the whole shack:
shaking, drenched in mild
sauce, sweet spirit, baptized.
-- Nate Marshall
Harold's Chicken Shack #1