Number Four
Commentary by Chitown Kev
It’s getting close to the end of the year and, like most people, I tend to get a little more reflective about the year that has nearly passed and the year to come.
I have to confess that, generally, I haven’t been as satisfied with my 2018 commentaries here at Black Kos as I was in past years. A new job and then increased and changing hours made for some sudden adjustments that affected my ability to take time out for proper research of some subjects. Sometimes, I became so caught up in the issues and crises and outrages of these days that some prepared work went to the wind and I didn’t return to it.
In other cases, I was flat-out lazy and I know...I know that I am a notorious procrastinator.
I am also the harshest critic of myself that I know.
However, I’ve looked over my 2018 body of work here at Black Kos and I have to confess that I was a little more pleased with it than I expected. I was especially pleased with the fact that I covered a pretty broad range of subjects from pop culture to history to current events to sports and my first love, literature (granted that I did not do as many book reviews as I might have liked). I also liked the fact that I occasionally took up controversial positions with which many people did not agree; the comment section of this commentary on Ta-Nehisi Coates and his overview of the trials and tribulations of Kanye West is untypically confrontational of me.
One of the best things about this space here at Black Kos is that we do disagree...often vehemently but never disrespectfully.
Another thing that I liked is that I disclosed more than I remembered about myself and my life experiences; my commentary on the controversy surrounding Tamika Mallory is probably the best example of that particular autobiographical genre along with Black at the Track.
Most people IRL know me to be a shy, somewhat stand-off-ish person that doesn’t like to disclose much about myself. I’m not like that when I write; far too many of my edits when I write about myself are excisions and deletions because...TMI.
My favorite reason for writing this bi-weekly commentary here at Black Kos is not that I have the opportunity to disseminate so much of my knowledge to the masses but that I learn so much about black history and culture and life that I didn’t know. It is primarily for that reason that my own personal favorite commentary of 2018 was about that ‘’bad-ass’’ spy of the Revolutionary War, James Lafayette. Like most other people, there are glaring holes in both my formal and ‘’Fubu-style’’ education that I have the opportunity to fill and to share.
There are some projects that I could not do to my satisfaction in 2018 that I would like to get to next year. One of my most frequent comments is the reconsideration that I have gone through over the years regarding the legacy of Booker T. Washignton. I have not forgotten Miss Denise’s suggestion that I do an overview of the life and work of E. Franklin Frazier. I would also like to take the time to dig into the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection over at the Carter G. Woodson Library on Halsted and 95th Street on the Far South Side of Chicago. In fact, Chicago is a city so rich and steeped in black culture and history that I would like to do more locally based commentaries.
I also want to do more book reviews.
Most importantly, I would like to thank the Black Kos editorial team and all of the commenters here for allowing me the pleasure (and it is a pleasure!) to spend every other Tuesday here with you on The Porch.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Black Americans, long accustomed to facing more hurdles on the road to homeownership, may consistently find their investments in residential property undervalued, according to a new joint Brookings Institution and Gallup study.
According to “The devaluation of assets in black neighborhoods: The case of residential property,” owner-occupied homes are undervalued by the real estate market across all majority-black neighborhoods, and consistently sell or are appraised for lower prices, at an average of $48,000 per home. Nationwide, this amounts to $156 billion in cumulative losses, what the report dubs a “segregation tax.”
Furthermore, homes of similar value with similar features are valued at 23 percent less in majority-black neighborhoods compared to those with very few or no black residents. The researchers noted that, while some of the majority-black neighborhoods they examined exhibited features associated with lower property values, including higher crime rates, longer commute times, and less access to high-scoring schools and well-rated restaurants, their analysis shows that these factors only explain roughly half of the undervaluation.
Even taking into account the fact that housing stock in majority-black neighborhoods tends to be older and have less space or fewer bedrooms than comparable homes in the same market does not fully account for the differences in housing values.
“We believe anti-black bias is the reason this undervaluation happens, and we hope to better understand the precise beliefs and behaviors that drive this process in future research,” the report says.
Researchers Andre Perry, Jonathan Rothwell, and David Harshbarger used the 2016 American Community Survey and Zillow to determine neighborhood demographics and property values for the 119 metropolitan areas with majority black neighborhoods.
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The charming sight of a gang of hustlers, scheming to commit robbery and then committing that robbery, is not a new one. The heist movie became a classical genre in the 1960s with cheerfully swinging films like Ocean’s 11 (1960) and The Italian Job (1969). In the 1970s, the heist became a narrative template for other styles to build upon, in movies as different as Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and The Sting (1973). Around the end of the century, franchises like Mission: Impossible (1996 onwards) and the Oceans reboots (2001 onwards) launched serial heist-events that have dotted the recent decades of our lives with predictably fun, sexy adventures into robbery.
The question of motivation has always been an interesting aspect of the heist movie. Perhaps the paradigmatic motive for a robber is lighthearted greed: Michael Caine or Robert Redford pocketing the cash in order to have fun with it. When a hustler has different drives, as in the emotional desperation of Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, the heist film reveals the theft plot to be an empty container for whatever themes a director might like to put in there.
Widows, the new feature from Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave), is a brilliant case in point. Based on the novel by Lynda La Plante, and co-written by Gillian Flynn, the movie stars Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Elizabeth Debicki as a gang of women whose male partners all died committing a robbery together. Saddled with their debts and pursued by the thrillingly evil Jatemme Manning (Daniel Kaluuya), the trio decide to pull off a job themselves, recruiting Rodriguez’s babysitter, Cynthia Erivo, to make a gang of four.
The movie is set in Chicago, and the background to their heist is a corrupt political contest for alderman of the city’s 18th ward. Colin Farrell plays Jack Mulligan, a young Irish-American politician from a deeply racist lineage who is challenged by Jatemme’s brother, Jamal, for local supremacy. As in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006), we’ve got regional corruption and criminal/cop conflict as the moral landscape against which a symbolic crime takes place.
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In “Other,” a short film that premiered today (November 28) on Shadow and Act, director Xavier Burgin and writer and actress Vanessa Baden Kelly explore the ways Black people contort themselves in White spaces. In it, Kelly’s character experiences recognition in truthful conversations with Black peers, and frustration in unhelpful and avoidant exchanges with White neighbors following the 2017 Unite the Right rally. Viewers are privy to her inner monologue as she twists and turns through compromising situations.
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Film production with black Brazilians both in front of and behind the cameras has been one of the most exciting developments in black Brazilian entertainment, along with the rise of black theater, in recent years. And this push for black representation in Brazilian cinema has been spearheaded by black women. Although most of the productions have been limited to the short film variety, a number of Afro-Brazilian female filmmakers have been receiving accolades and making strides in knocking down the barriers that Brazil’s audio-visual industry continues to maintain. When we see the fact that Afro-Brazilian filmmakers are recognized more overseas more than in Brazil, there could only be one factor that explains why it took nearly four decades from the first time a black woman made a feature length film until another Afro-Brazilian woman managed to accomplish this feat again. In the story below, black film researcher Edileuza Penha tells us that only that little word starting with an “r” and ending with an “m” could possibly explain this issue.
Although many Brazilians would go out of their way to deny this, it’s really not that hard to tell. How else do you explain data from a study that shows that of 142 Brazilian feature films released in cinemas in 2016, 75.4% of the directors were white men, and 19.7%, white women, while black men represented only 2.1%, and black women didn’t direct any production? The film exhibition that recently took place in the capital city demonstrates the fact that there are a number of talented black Brazilian women who are more than capable enough to write, produce and direct films. But the question remains, when will these women start attaining the funds to make bigger budget films and when will they begin to have their films distributed nationally like other films make by white directors featuring primarily white casts? There are no more excuses.
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Although the book industry remains overwhelmingly white—87% of respondents to PW’s most recent annual salary survey identify as Caucasian—there is undeniably a new and passionate generation of young black professionals working inside publishing houses.
To get their perspective on the industry, PW spoke with a group of 20- and 30-somethings that included Georgia Bodnar, associate editor, Viking; Milena Brown, publicity manager, Atria; Rakia Clark, senior editor, Beacon Press; Christian Coleman, associate digital marketing manager, Beacon Press; Nicole Counts, associate editor, One World; Devin Funches, sales and marketing manager, Lion Forge Comics; Zakia Henderson-Brown, associate editor and strategic partnerships coordinator, New Press; Chelcee Johns, editorial assistant, 37 Ink; Ebony Ladelle, senior marketing manager, HarperTeen; Tolani Osan, corporate marketing associate, Simon & Schuster; and Christina “Steenz” Stewart, associate editor, Lion Forge Comics.
Why and How They Got Jobs in Book Publishing
Johns: I knew I desired a life of words, to help shape and create culture. I also knew the importance of diversity not just in writers, but the editors and agents that walk these books into the market. I figured, by working in publishing, I could read, write, edit, and create books that stand the test of the time, empower, and maybe even change minds.
Coleman: I worked at two nonprofits in the Bay Area: one dedicated to environmental issues, the other a support organization for LGBTQ+ South Asians. The marketing, writing, and copyediting jobs I had at these places primed me for the digital marketing associate position that opened at Beacon Press.
Stewart: I knew I was always going to be in the arts, but as I started working in the comics industry, my interests moved toward publishing. It was all on-the-job training from being a comic shop retailer, comics-focused librarian, and now an editor! After having done a huge amount of event coordination and community management, I ended up having the skills to be the social media and community manager at Lion Forge; my knowledge of books in all markets is what led me to become an editor.
Funches: I went to school for marketing, so I have no true academic background in publishing. Everything I know I learned on the job or by taking the time to learn outside of work.
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Emantic Bradford Jr, the 21-year-old African American man who was killed by a police officer on Thanksgiving at a mall in Alabama, was shot three times from behind, according to an independent autopsy released by a civil rights attorney on Monday.
According to the report, Dr Roger A Mitchell observed gunshot wounds to the right side of Bradford Jr’s body, in his head, neck and lower back. The report states: “The cause of death is gunshot wound of the head. Manner of death is homicide.”
After Thanksgiving dinner with his family, Bradford Jr went to the mall. Gunfire broke out. A witness said he heard multiple gunshots and later walked by Bradford’s body. A 12-year-old girl and an 18-year-old man were injured.
Initially, Hoover police identified Bradford as the suspect. They later said he was not the suspect, but had “brandished” a gun. Police backed off that claim too. A week after the shooting, a suspect was arrested in Georgia.
On Monday, through the lawyer Ben Crump, the Bradford family said: “[The autopsy] clearly demonstrates that EJ posed no threat to the off-duty Hoover police department officer who killed him while working a private security detail at Riverchase Galleria mall, since EJ was moving away from him.”
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The Philadelphia Eagles took their fight for social justice to the bank and bailed nine people out of a jail over the Thanksgiving holiday.
On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the Eagles posted $50,000 in bail ― $25,000 raised by the players and $25,000 matched by the team’s Eagles Social Justice Fund ― so that nine defendants in Philadelphia could spend Thanksgiving out of jail.
The money went to the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund, a local organization aimed at reforming the cash bailout system, which has been a major issue for Philadelphia city officials over the years.
After the Thanksgiving bailout, Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins and the Players Coalition, which he co-founded, hosted a services fair on Monday to connect the nine individuals with organizations that can help them get back on their feet.
“The cash bail system punishes poverty and … punishes people of color at a grossly disproportionate rate,” Jenkins said during a news conference on Monday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
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It should not fall to the only black Republican senator to block a man who spent his career seeking to disenfranchise minority voters from being appointed to the federal bench. The Atlantic: The Conscience of a Conservative
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Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina opposed the Civil Rights Act, calling it “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress.” He opposed the Voting Rights Act. He filibustered a bill to establish a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr., accusing the civil-rights leader of “action-oriented Marxism.” He protected South Africa’s apartheid government from sanctions. He backed white rule in Rhodesia. And when he died in 2008, President George W. Bush called him an “unwavering champion of those struggling for liberty.”
It makes perfect sense that a party that celebrates a man like Helms, whose many former aides retain positions all over Washington, would nominate Thomas Farr to the federal bench. The Justice Department identified Farr, anattorney for Helms in 1984 and 1990, as aiding the Helms campaign’s effort to keep black voters from the polls. The campaign mailed postcards to some 125,000 black voters in North Carolina threatening them with prosecution if they had lived in a given precinct for less than a month and attempted to vote. Disenfranchising black voters was of the utmost urgency because Helms was running against Harvey Gantt, the black former mayor of Charlotte, and his campaign feared an energized black electorate. After running a campaign on naked appeals to white racism, including the infamous “white hands” ad,Helms prevailed.
Farr has spent much of his post-Helms career attempting to weaken the influence of black voters or to keep them from the polls. He defended gerrymandered maps that were drawn with race as “the legislature’s paramount concern.” He defended a North Carolina voting law that a federal court said targeted “African Americans with almost surgical precision.” In response to the the court’s ruling finding that the North Carolina voting restrictions “constituted racial discrimination,” Farr said the decision “insults the people of North Carolina and their elected representatives by convicting them of abject racism.” Attempting to disenfranchise or otherwise diminish the power of black voters was not, in Farr’s view, cause for outrage. Rather, it was accurately describing those attempts as targeting black voters that he found offensive.
If Donald Trump’s administration had its way, Farr would be a federal judge. Senator Tim Scott scuttled Farr’s nomination on Thursday by joining his colleague Jeff Flake in opposition. Scott said he could not support Farr following the release of the 1991 Justice Department memo that “shed new light on Mr. Farr’s activities.” In July, Scott sank the nomination of Ryan Bounds, whose past writings were replete with racist generalizations. But neither of these men should ever have been nominated in the first place, and blocking their confirmation should not have rested on the conscience of the Republican Party’s only black senator. If the Republicans decide to renominate Farr when the new Senate is inaugurated, then Scott’s stand will be insufficient to stop him.
The fact that Farr came so close to being seated on the federal bench is a symptom of a greater sickness afflicting American democracy, which is that one of the two major parties has decided that disenfranchising a core constituency of its rival party is a legitimate political approach. The polarization of the two parties into one that is almost entirely white and one that relies substantially on the support of racial and ethnic minorities has exacerbated a trend toward conservatives believing that their opponents’ political victories are illegitimate. It is no coincidence that the voter-fraud conspiracies of Trump and his defenders center around undocumented immigrants or black neighborhoods—alleging criminality allows them to suggest political victories that rely on minority voters are usurpations, without saying so explicitly.
The rhetoric with which conservatives describe elements of the Democratic coalition—black voters are frequently described as being stuck on a “plantation”—denies black agency and also Republicans’ responsibility for their difficulties attracting minority voters. Suggesting that voters of color are somehow coerced or brainwashed into voting for Democrats not only justifies efforts to disenfranchise them, it means that criticism of the Republican Party’s record on racism can easily be dismissed as fake news.
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