Is this what you call freedom?
Rant by Chitown Kev
I was just entering my 40’s, I think, when I read these words delivered by Angela Davis in 1970 in what is now commonly called her “Lectures on Liberation” The words were delivered during her first lecture on “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.”
Is man free or is he not? Ought he be free or ought not he be free? The history of Black Literature provides, in my opinion, a much more illuminating account of the nature of freedom, its extent and limits, than all the philosophical discourses on this theme in the history of Western society Why? For a number of reasons. First of all, because Black Literature in this country and throughout the world projects the consciousness of a people who have been denied entrance into the real world of freedom. Black people have exposed, by their very existence, the inadequacies not only of the practice of freedom, but of its very theoretical formulation. Because, if the theory of freedom remains isolated from the practice of freedom or rather is contradicted in reality, then this means that something must be wrong with the concept — that is, if we are thinking in a dialectical manner.
At the time, I had read a lot of the works of various philosophers that would expound on so-called “freedom” and “liberty” .
I had also read a number of slave narratives by former slaves like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs.
I had never thought to connect the two experiences and I was...somewhat ashamed that I had not made that connection.
To be fair to myself, I was not born in a time or place such that my thinking would even be structured in such a way.
I thought of Professor Davis words from 1970 when I read this AlJazeera essay by Sudanese national Khalid Albaih.
I am sorry to break it to you, but your "new normal" has been the "old normal" for billions of Brown and Black people around the world. For many of us, restrictions, repression, and deprivation have been a constant feature of our whole lives.
Cannot travel wherever you want anymore? Well, the majority of us were never able to travel anywhere we wanted either - many simply because they cannot afford to do so, and the few who can - because of travel restrictions. That is right - declared and undeclared travel bans are nothing new to us.
Yes, South African apartheid would be applicable.
Yes, Jim Crow in the United States (on and off the books) would be applicable as well.
After all, that’s why the Negro Motorist Green Book existed.
And even in this era when Jim Crow has been off of the legal books for over fifty years, we still see various efforts to enforce limitations on black and brown movement (here in the U.S.) in stores and whole neighborhoods and entire ranges of activities.
And now because of the way that the economy and educational institutions and...really the entire society is structured, many black and brown people have now all of a sudden become “essential workers” with the freedom, I suppose, to risk our health and our lives and the lives of our loved ones.
When I see the pictures of these deplorable rallies in various state capitols or the crowds on beaches in Orange County, California or even the pictures of the video from a house party on the South Side of Chicago) my thought is: for some reason, we really have this “freedom” and “liberty” thing really twisted.
I don’t call anything like that “freedom” or “liberty”...I call that “license” (meaning: “a lack of due restraint”).
Without regard to consequences and without a sense of responsibility, either personally or socially.
Maybe, just maybe, a large portion of the American (or even the world) population has this whole “liberty” and “freedom” thing confused because of the basic way that we conceptualize it and maybe, just maybe, it is time that we take Professor Davis up on her challenge to rethink the entire idea.
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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“It bothers me how people seem to have just awakened to the fact that our communities have been leading in the disparity gap for a mighty long time, and we did not just get here,” said New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, her voice emphatic over the Zoom call made necessary after her city’s shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Cantrell was joining OZY and OWN on April 19 for a special edition of the town hall TV show Black Women OWN the Conversation (you can watch here). Her words threw into sharp relief the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 has had on African Americans, even as the pain of the pandemic is felt across all sectors of society.
That disparity is made even clearer by a new public opinion poll conducted by Fordham University, published first by OZY on Thursday.
A FULL 23 PERCENT OF BLACK AMERICANS REPORT HAVING KNOWN SOMEONE PERSONALLY WHO DIED AS A RESULT OF THE VIRUS, COMPARED WITH ONLY 13 PERCENT OF LATINX AND 6 PERCENT OF WHITE AMERICANS.
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Actress Tabitha Brown used her love for vegan food as a vehicle to gain fame via the exponentially popular Tik Tok video app.
Now she’s being represented by Creative Arts Agency (CAA), joining an agency that counts Beyonceé, Will Smith, Zion Williamson and Trevor Noah among its star-studded clients, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Brown has racked up more than 2 million followers on TikTok, thanks to her short-form videos and video blogs on vegan recipes. The Los Angeles-based social media influencer is also an ambassador for Whole Foods.
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Since the White House announced this “historic public-private partnership,” 63 sites have opened nationwide. Just eight are in black neighborhoods. Vox: Retail Covid-19 testing is a massive failure for black communities
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Adarra Benjamin, a 26-year-old black social worker in Chicago, lacks the luxury of staying home during the Covid-19 pandemic. She assists several elderly patients. Her work demands travel by public transit. Her duties — picking up groceries, running to the post office, counseling clients — have, amid the news of death and disease, devolved into a series of anxiety-inducing tasks.
“I am afraid because my job consists of me not only going in and out of someone else’s home, but shopping for other people,” she said. “It just feels like panic.”
Adarra remains at risk as an essential worker. Chicago stands flush with coronavirus. Cook County, which includes Chicago, has the sixth-most cases of all counties in the country, according to a New York Times tracker, as of April 27. The virus continues to ravage the city’s predominantly black South Side, where Adarra lives with her mother. Recently, when Adarra’s cousin exhibited symptoms of Covid-19, particularly difficulty breathing, he struggled to obtain a test, going to the hospital twice before he received one testing positive.
The situation rattled Adarra. “It has honestly, like, put me into fear,” she said. “To know he went there and that they didn’t have a test to take immediately pushes me back, like, ‘Okay, maybe I could do more harm by going to get tested than I would just staying away.’”
“So now I am really confused as to should I get tested,” she said. “Do they even have enough tests?”
Local activists, politicians, and city data echo the concern about equitable access in Chicago. According to the Chicago Department of Public Health, black people in Chicago make up a majority of Covid-19 deaths, at 56 percent, as of April 26.
Yet for weeks, the black neighborhoods on the South Side of the city with the highest number of cases were tested at a lower rate than the whiter wealthy areas in the city center. It is a problem reflected statewide, and increasingly nationwide. Available data from the state of Illinois shows that even though black residents make up 37 percent of the state’s Covid-19 deaths, they only received 13 percent of the state’s tests, as of April 23.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Chicago serves as the model city of what the White House christened a month ago as an “extraordinary” and “historic” public-private partnership to offer free, accessible coronavirus testing across the country at retail pharmacies and grocery stores.
With three current sites (one recently closed), the Chicago area is among cities with the most retail testing sites in the nation. But a Type Investigations and Vox analysis shows the sites are largely inaccessible for residents in the hardest-hit areas: the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods. The closest retail drive-through testing site to Adarra is at least 18 miles away.
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Anything you want to know about the show In Living Color can be found right in the title. In Living Color: an indication of the abundant, kinetic power of Black life.
Comedy is a unique language, and this show spoke it through the dialect of Black-born wit, irreverence and grace.
This month marks the 30th anniversary of the premiere of the Emmy-winning sketch comedy series. The brainchild of director/writer/comedian Keenen Ivory Wayans, the show immediately exploded. For five seasons, In Living Color stood out from every comedy show before it and has without a doubt influenced every comedy show since.
In 1988, Wayans was approached by executives of the then brand new Fox Network looking for edgy shows that would make it stand out among its competitors. After seeing Wayans’ I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, they felt he was up to the task and gave him total control — and he took full advantage.
The backbone of the show’s success was its cast. Previously unknown forces of nature such as Jim Carrey, Kim Coles, Tommy Davison, David Alan Grier, Jamie Foxx and the talented well-spring of Wayans siblings (Damon, Kim, Shawn, and Marlon) exhibited on-set chemistry that can only be explained by extrasensory perception.
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The ACLU and NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed a federal lawsuit against requirements that put voters at risk of COVID-19 exposure. Color Lines: Advocates Sue South Carolina for Voter Suppression
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In a desire to protect South Carolinians during the COVID-19 pandemic by ensuring that all voters can cast a vote via mail for the state’s upcoming June 9 primary elections, the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of South Carolina, and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a federal lawsuit on April 22, according to a press release.
The civil rights defenders are also challenging South Carolina’s requirement that absentee voters have a third-party witness sign their ballot envelope, as everyone is supposed to be social distancing, according to the advice of health experts.
Says Deuel Ross, senior counsel at LDF:
Structural racism has resulted in the COVID-19 crisis having a devastating and disproportionate impact on African-American people in South Carolina. Yet, state law restrictions on absentee voting will needlessly force many African-American and other voters to vote in-person in contradiction of the governor’s shelter in place order. Similarly, the state’s requirement that a witness sign an absentee ballot will endanger vulnerable voters by forcing them to leave their homes and interact with others. Election officials must act to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by both broadly expanding absentee voting options and making in-person voting as safe and accessible as possible.
The 49-page suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Columbia, South Carolina, plainly states that “Plaintiffs bring this action to prevent the needless deprivation of their fundamental right to vote.” It also highlights sociological concerns that people of color are at higher risk of being exposed because “the idea of social distancing is really a privilege for those who have money and resources.”
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From an early age, Ellis Marsalis III knew what grief in New Orleans sounded like.
The shuffle of leather shoes walking a lost soul to the grave. The slow wailing of a brass band setting the pace. Some Sundays, he chased the sound, his ear catching the mournful notes of “Just a Closer Walk With Thee.” When he heard the music switch from a somber dirge to an upbeat rhythm, he knew it was time to join in.
“Once a person is buried, you have the second line. It’s the party, the good time, the celebration of life,” Marsalis said. “It’s a community’s responsibility to celebrate the life of someone. Even if I didn’t know them, I pull out my umbrella, get my best dancing shoes on, and we’re gonna have a good time.”
In traditional jazz funerals, that moment between grief and catharsis when the deceased is lowered into the ground and the family says a final farewell is known as “cutting the body loose.”
Just as a casket feels lighter if more hands carry it, that metamorphosis of a private funeral march into a jubilant, street-winding second line is a way to process the death of one by joining arms with many. For generations, it’s been an important way to cope for the city’s historic black neighborhoods that through fires, plagues and hurricane seasons have had to get used to saying goodbye.
But the novel coronavirus pandemic has put jazz funerals on hold when communities need them most.
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In many ways, Washington Castro was a typical resident of Rocinha, the immense redbrick favela that towers over Rio de Janeiro’s Atlantic coast.
Industrious, God-fearing and the offspring of migrants from Brazil’s parched and impoverished north-east, he supported two young children by working two separate jobs and wore a suit and tie when attending his local church.
“He was a marvellous boy. He worked Monday to Monday,” his grief-stricken father, José Osmar Alves da Silva, remembered as he reflected on his son’s death. “Now there’s this hole inside of me and I just can’t make sense of anything.”
Castro died of suspected Covid-19 last Saturday at age 27 – one of at least six Rocinha residents to lose their lives to the coronavirus as it begins what many fear could be a devastating march through some of Latin America’s most vulnerable communities.
“He was a cutie … Whenever we met he was always wearing the same smile,” said Cecília Vasconcelos, a childhood friend who grew up with him in this sprawling hillside community of some 100,000 residents in southern Rio.
The coronavirus appears to have been brought into Brazil by members of the country’s middle and upper classes as they returned from February holidays in Europe or the United States.
In Rio and São Paulo, many of the early infections were concentrated in the richest neighbourhoods, such as Copacabana and Gávea, where Castro had worked as an assistant at an accountancy firm and a poolside waiter at a club for Brazil’s wealthy elites.
One of the most famous clusters was Rio’s Country Club, an ultra-exclusive enclave of privilege and power just three miles from Rocinha where at least 60 of the 850 members were infected.
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY’S PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.