“…there is this misguided group of Afrodescendants, who are throwing shade at those who are not ‘American descendants of slaves’ ADOS. Their shade is an odd version of the “am I Black enough for you” game that some folks ran against President Barack Obama, and are now running against Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Corey Booker.”
Our world is melting. Glaciers are disappearing. Oceans are rising. Lowlands (mostly populated by low income and Black people) are disappearing. And, before Democrats took power in this term, few other than Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New Green Deal have been able to address matters of climate change and, in the words of the New Poor People’s Campaign, “ecological devastation.”
No freedom in this homeland of the free, but this Congress offers freedom possibilities. It offers the possibility of fixing the Voting Rights Act, even as the Supreme Court has attempted to erode voting rights, even as at least two elections were stolen in 2018, those of Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum in Florida.
I’m writing about Robby because his memory has challenged me to make a 2019 resolution.
Bennett College has a unique history, and it is a history that must be preserved. It will only be maintained if folks who love women, women’s history, and the elevation of Black women’s voices come together to find five million dollars in just a few weeks. I am writing this column to appeal to those who will help. Here’s how:
Black, White, Latina, Asian, Native, Palestinian and other women have starkly different experiences. We are joined by our gender but separated by the status of the men in our race, and by the differential privilege that some women experience.
Jackson changed the way that African American people saw ourselves politically. Before him, we thought we could not make a difference. Because of him, we know that we can. Before him, we did not believe, in his words, that “the hands that picked peaches could pick Presidents.”
What is exciting about the Black political excellence is that it also represents a generational changing of the guard.
Kofi Annan made his transition in August. The seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, he worked up from the lower ranks (starting at age 24) of the international organization, to serve as head of peacekeeping operations, and four years into his term as UN Secretary-General, earning the Nobel Peace Prize.
I am no fan of Omarosa Manigault Newman, the mononymous diva who dominates the airwaves whenever she wants to. Her new book, “Unhinged,” which I won’t read, is billed as a tell-all on “45’s” White House and its shenanigans. In making the rounds, “Omierosie” (my nickname for her) has played tapes that seem to corroborate at least some of her allegations about “45.” More importantly, her tapes are evidence that the game captured the hunter. In other words, Omierosie took a page from “45’s” book and trusted fewer people than even “45” did.
Just over four years ago, on August 9, 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown was murdered by police officer Darren Wilson. He was shot six times, and might have survived some of the shots, but was fatally wounded when he was shot in the head. Wilson claimed he shot in self-defense, but Michael Brown was unarmed. St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch took his time convening a grand jury and announced in November 2014, three months after Brown’s murder, that the grand jury voted not to indict Wilson.
Recently, Vivint Solar—one of the largest sellers of solar panels in this country—was sued in California by a Black employee who alleges that his superiors likened him to a monkey; used a racial epithet against him; and that his coworkers used cardboard boxes to build a fort around their desks that was marked as “White only.” The complainant’s lawyer provided pictures of this absurd and abhorrent cardboard façade to the media and The Sacramento Bee published the photo.
Dellums was a fierce, focused fighter for justice, an anti-war activist who served in the military, authored several CBC Alternative Budgets (budgets that focused on human needs rather than military buildup) and was an indefatigable fighter for South African freedom.
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Hattie Carroll (1911-1963) was a 51-year-old restaurant server who was murdered by a White aristocrat, 24-year-old William Devereux Zantzinger (1939-2009) who struck her with a cane, because she took too long to serve him a drink, during The Spinsters’ Ball, an event at the old Emerson Hotel in Baltimore. Zantzinger’s crime was minimized, and he got a scant six months in jail (not prison) for killing a woman, the mother of at least nine children, who was more than twice his age, and with just a fraction of his power.