Why He Took a Knee

An excerpt from the Washington Post - 

This is why Colin Kaepernick took a knee

By Sally Jenkins 

Two knees. One protesting in the grass, one pressing on the back of a man’s neck. Choose. You have to choose which knee you will defend. There are no half choices; there is no room for indifference. There is only the knee of protest or the knee on the neck.

NFL owners chose the knee on the neck. They did. They may rationalize it as controversy avoidance or respect for the flag or audience mollification or economic strategy or business exigency. But when they collectively ostracized Colin Kaepernick for his protests against police brutality on unarmed black citizens, they chose the wrong knee. They chose the knee on the neck, the knee that pressures, stifles, gags, chokes and silences.

Kaepernick is still so present in the American consciousness that he might as well be playing in the league. Oh, the owners thought they made him disappear with a settlement. But the image of the kneeling, bow-headed Kaepernick becomes newly indicting each time someone is pinned down by a brute in a blue uniform and dies pleading in a street. The owners misidentified the problem, you see. The problem they can’t get rid of isn’t Kaepernick or his knee. It’s themselves. Their own denial, that’s what dogs them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/05/30/this-is-why-colin-kaepernick-took-knee/

What a Difference a Color Makes

An excerpt from Salon - 

I can't get past the differences between the Minneapolis BLM protest and anti-lockdown protests

In Minneapolis, police tear-gas unarmed protesters opposing racist violence — but armed Trumpers get the red carpet

By AMANDA MARCOTTE

On Memorial Day, four Minneapolis police officers killed a black man named George Floyd. In a video taken by a bystander, one can hear Floyd, who is on the ground and not resisting as an officer named Derek Chauvin kneels on his neck, pleading for his life, saying, "I can't breathe" and moaning in pain. (Chauvin was involved in at least two previous police shootings of civilians.) Onlookers can also be heard begging the police not to kill Floyd, while another cop named Tou Thao just glares at them, indifferent to the gathered crowd's increasing panic. As the cops take Floyd's unconscious body away, one man can be heard yelling, "You just really killed that man, bro."

The video is incredibly disturbing, so it's no surprise that thousands of people hit the streets in protest on Tuesday, breaking lockdown in a city with a rising rate of coronavirus infection to register their outrage.

The vast majority of protesters weren't violent and none were armed. But Minneapolis police showed up ready to rumble. News photos show the cops pouring out of vehicles fully clad in riot gear and as soon as a handful of protesters committed minor acts of property damage and threw some water bottles (the Star Tribune reports that peaceful protesters pleaded with others to stop the vandalism), cops used that as a pretext to shoot tear-gas canisters into the crowd. 

Those images are much like the ones we've grown accustomed to in the era of Black Lives Matter protests (though this time with the addition of face masks): Cops in riot gear striding like conquering soldiers through clouds of tear gas, unarmed protesters running in terror and weeping, surreal images of people's faces covered in milk as they try to wash the tear gas from their eyes. 

But what I can't get past — and judging from the reactions on social media, I'm not alone — is how wildly different that scene played out compared to the astroturf anti-lockdown protests staged in various state capitals across the country over the past month or so. 

https://www.salon.com/2020/05/27/i-cant-get-past-the-differences-between-the-minneapolis-blm-protest-and-anti-lockdown-protests/

Oh God! It Happened Again.

If you’re unbothered or mildly bothered by the 1st knee, but outraged by the 2nd, then, in my father’s words, you’re “more devoted to order than to justice.” And more passionate about an anthem that supposedly symbolizes freedom than you are about a Black man’s freedom to live. pic.twitter.com/kxpVOEeTNR

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) May 26, 2020

Black History is American History - Memorial Day

An excerpt from Time  -

The Overlooked Black History of Memorial Day

BY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN

Nowadays, Memorial Day honors veterans of all wars, but its roots are in America’s deadliest conflict, the Civil War. Approximately 620,000 soldiers died, about two-thirds from disease.

The work of honoring the dead began right away all over the country, and several American towns claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day. Researchers have traced the earliest annual commemoration to women who laid flowers on soldiers’ graves in the Civil War hospital town of Columbus, Miss., in April 1866. But historians like the Pulitzer Prize winner David Blight have tried to raise awareness of freed slaves who decorated soldiers’ graves a year earlier, to make sure their story gets told too.

According to Blight’s 2001 book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, a commemoration organized by freed slaves and some white missionaries took place on May 1, 1865, in Charleston, S.C., at a former planters’ racetrack where Confederates held captured Union soldiers during the last year of the war. At least 257 prisoners died, many of disease, and were buried in unmarked graves, so black residents of Charleston decided to give them a proper burial.

In the approximately 10 days leading up to the event, roughly two dozen African American Charlestonians reorganized the graves into rows and built a 10-foot-tall white fence around them. An archway overhead spelled out “Martyrs of the Race Course” in black letters.

About 10,000 people, mostly black residents, participated in the May 1 tribute, according to coverage back then in the Charleston Daily Courier and the New York Tribune. Starting at 9 a.m., about 3,000 black schoolchildren paraded around the race track holding roses and singing the Union song “John Brown’s Body,” and were followed by adults representing aid societies for freed black men and women. Black pastors delivered sermons and led attendees in prayer and in the singing of spirituals, and there were picnics. James Redpath, the white director of freedman’s education in the region, organized about 30 speeches by Union officers, missionaries and black ministers. Participants sang patriotic songs like “America” and “We’ll Rally around the Flag” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In the afternoon, three white and black Union regiments marched around the graves and staged a drill.

The New York Tribune described the tribute as “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.” The gravesites looked like a “one mass of flowers” and “the breeze wafted the sweet perfumes from them” and “tears of joy” were shed.

https://time.com/5836444/black-memorial-day/

HBCU Love

An excerpt from The Undefeated -

My family is rooted in black colleges and now I am, too
I found my passion as a journalist at Hampton University
BY RANDALL C. WILLIAMS

My entire family is rooted in historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

When my family could attend college, my grandparents flocked to North Carolina Central University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and Fayetteville State University. My parents followed suit, attending Hampton University and N.C. A&T. That left the HBCU legacy up to me. And after attending predominantly white schools for all of K-12, I decided it was time for a breath of fresh air.

I followed my father’s footsteps to Hampton, and four years later, I can finally say that I understand the HBCU experience. It means connecting with young black folks from all around the world, blossoming, creating memories that will last a lifetime and building foundational steps for their desired profession.

https://theundefeated.com/features/my-family-is-rooted-in-black-colleges-and-now-i-am-too/

Dad Advice

From Upworthy -

Man whose dad walked out when he was 12 shares his own fatherly wisdom  'Dad, How Do I?' channel
by Annie Reneau


Rob Kenney's dad left his family when he was 12. One of eight kids, Kenney went to live with his older brother when he was 14, spending his teenage and young adult years without a father to guide him.

Now a father of two grown children himself, Kenney is offering others the fatherly wisdom and skills he had to gain on his own. His YouTube channel "Dad, How Do I?" shares videos on everyday practical things most people might ask their dad like the proper way to tie a tie, how to unclog a sink and how to check the car oil. Since it was launched April 1, the channel has exploded in popularity.

https://www.upworthy.com/man-whose-dad-walked-out-when-he-was-12-shares-his-own-fatherly-wisdom-dad-how-do-i-channel

This 8-year-old’s financial knowledge is mind blowing l GMA Digital

Obama: Pandemic Has 'Finally Torn Back The Curtain' On Trump Administrat...

Key Lime Pound Cake Recipe

From Good Housekeeping -

This Key Lime Pound Cake Is Better Than Pie
Sweet and tart in the best of ways.
BY CANDACE BRAUN DAVISON

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/food-recipes/dessert/a32476677/key-lime-pound-cake-recipe/

Angela Robinson's 2020 Spring Graduation Message

Donald Trump: A Study in Leadership

Favorite Zoom Meeting EVER!

Still having the company meetings online. pic.twitter.com/aR3LfuSdKl

— Andrew Cotter (@MrAndrewCotter) May 11, 2020

We Could Learn From Them, But We Won't

An excerpt from the New Yorker -

What African Nations Are Teaching the West About Fighting the Coronavirus
By Jina Moore

n early March, Ingrid Gercama left her home in the Netherlands and flew to war-torn South Sudan. An applied-research anthropologist with a special interest in epidemics, she had spent time on the African continent during a public-health emergency before, remaining in Liberia, in 2014, during that country’s Ebola outbreak. When she landed at the frill-free airport in South Sudan’s capital of Juba, she was taken to a separate screening area, the shape and size of a shipping container, where her temperature was recorded by government health workers, along with her hotel address and her local telephone number. Gercama was asked a series of questions about her travel and health, she recalled, including whether she had recently come into contact with a bat. The screening area’s walls were covered with posters about covid-19 and its symptoms, and she was ushered into the country past a banner explaining the disease and offering a telephone number for a national coronavirus hotline, which she was to call if she developed a fever. She had to wash her hands once to get into the screening area, and again when she left.

Much of what Gercama encountered at the airport had been designed to prevent Ebola. Since 2018, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan’s neighbor to the southwest, has been struggling with the disease. But local public-health officials’ quick repurposing of Ebola protocols and infrastructure impressed Gercama, as did the work of rapid-response teams, whom she twice witnessed respond to suspected coronavirus cases during the week she spent in the country. She left South Sudan on March 19th, a few days after the country began quarantining arriving passengers, and a few days before they stopped international flights altogether. From Juba, she flew through Stockholm, where no one asked her where she had been nor recorded her temperature, and landed back in Amsterdam, where, again, she was not questioned about her travel history or health. When she passed through passport control, she found no leaflets, no covid-19 awareness banners, no hotline. “They didn’t even tell me to self-isolate,” Gercama told me. “I did so because I have common sense.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-african-nations-are-teaching-the-west-about-fighting-the-coronavirus

Multi-Talented Mr. Foxx

View this post on Instagram

#billwithers #music #acapella #beardgame just a vibe

A post shared by Jamie Foxx (@iamjamiefoxx) on May 12, 2020 at 6:04pm PDT

Princeton’s First Black Valedictorian In School’s 274-Year History

View this post on Instagram

Congratulations to Nicholas Johnson, named valedictorian and Grace Sommers, named Latin salutatorian for #Princeton20! 👏⁣ ⁣ Nicholas Johnson ’20⁣ Hometown: Montréal, Québec⁣ Major: Operations Research and Financial Engineering⁣ Certificates: Statistics and Machine Learning, Applied and Computational Mathematics, and Applications of Computing⁣ Residential College: @whitmanatprinceton⁣ Thesis: “Sequential Stochastic Network Structure Optimization with Applications to Addressing Canada’s Obesity Epidemic”⁣ Post-grad plans: Johnson begins Ph.D. studies in operations research at @MITpics.⁣ ⁣ “My favorite memories of my time at #PrincetonU are [those] spent with close friends and classmates engaging in stimulating discussions - often late at night - about our beliefs, the cultures and environments in which we were raised, the state of the world and how we plan on contributing positively to it in our own unique way."⁣ ⁣ Grace Sommers ’20⁣ Hometown: Bridgewater, NJ⁣ Major: Physics⁣ Certificates: Applications of Computing, Applied and Computational Mathematics, Ancient Roman Language and Culture⁣ Residential College: @butlercollegeprinceton⁣ Thesis: “Order and Disorder in a New Class of Spin Systems”⁣ Post-grad plans: Sommers begins Ph.D. studies in physics right here at #PrincetonU.⁣ ⁣ “In addition to the joy of learning the material … the approachability of my professors, both as advisers and as instructors, has been a highlight of my learning experience … I’ve enjoyed having thought-provoking conversations with my professors and classmates."⁣ ⁣ Johnson and Sommers will participate in the 2020 virtual commencement on May 31, 2020. Congrats to Nicholas and Grace!

A post shared by Princeton University (@princeton) on Apr 27, 2020 at 2:21pm PDT

Learning From Mom

An excerpt from the Washington Post -

Everything I learned about being a dad, I learned from my mom
By Nevin Martell

As soon as my son, Zephyr, arrived, I realized my autonomy had an unexpected downside: It felt like going up a certain creek without a paddle. I needed a lodestar to help guide me through the process. I had so many questions and so few answers. Sometimes, I even considered reading all the books still taking up space on my nightstand. But, nah. Too much work.

And then, my mother came to live with us for several weeks to help us transition into parenthood smoothly. Whenever Indira needed a break from holding Zephyr and I wasn’t there, my mom swooped in to take him before she was even asked. I’d be feeling tired, and my mother would magically ask whether I’d like a cup of the coffee she was thinking of brewing. Zephyr would be on the verge of getting fussy, and she would suddenly be rocking him while cooing and making cute faces. She seemed to anticipate everyone’s every needs, often offering help before we even knew to ask.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/05/08/everything-i-learned-about-being-dad-i-learned-my-mom/

A Shining Star

An excerpt from the Washington Post -

Kizzmekia Corbett spent her life preparing for this moment. Can she create the vaccine to end a pandemic?
This 34-year-old African American woman scientist is a rarity. But with increased visibility comes increased scrutiny.
By Darryl Fears

Kizzmekia Corbett talks with President Trump, Anthony S. Fauci
and other officials at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., in early March. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Halfway through the school year, Myrtis Bradsher found herself paying close attention to a little girl called Kizzy. She always looked sharp, with ribbons knotted to her ponytails and socks that matched every outfit. But it was the way she rushed to help other fourth-graders with classwork that really stood out. “She had so much knowledge,” the teacher recalled. “She knew something about everything.”

In 25 years at Oak Lane Elementary School in rural Hurdle Mills, N.C., Bradsher had not seen a child like her. Bradsher was one of a few black teachers, and Kizzy was a rare black student. At a parent-teacher conference, Bradsher pushed to give the girl the advantages she felt she deserved. “Look,” she recalled saying to her mother, Rhonda Brooks, “she’s so far above other children. We need to send her to a class for exceptional students. I need you to say we have your permission.”

Bradsher’s recommendation put Kizzmekia Corbett on a path that ultimately led her to the National Institutes of Health, where she is heading the government’s search for a vaccine to end the coronavirus outbreak that has infected more than 1.2 million Americans, killed over 70,000 and devastated the economy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/05/06/kizzmekia-corbett-vaccine-coronavirus/

Kindness Remembered Almost 200 Later

An excerpt from Upworthy -

Irish help raise $1.8 million for COVID-hit Navajo Nation, repaying $170 sent during the potato famine
by Annie Reneau

The Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation in the southwestern U.S. have been hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak. With a third of the population having no running water, proper virus-avoiding hygiene is nearly impossible. Access to groceries is limited, and the community has a high number of elderly and individuals with health conditions that put them at higher risk of complications from the virus.

A GoFundMe fundraiser was organized on behalf of the Rural Utah Project Education Fund to raise money for groceries, water, health supplies, and other necessary items in these Native communities. And this week, they have received a huge influx of donations from a seemingly unlikely source—Ireland.

If you're wondering what would prompt people on an island across the Atlantic to send money to a specific community in the U.S., the answer is simple. Gratitude.

In 1847, Native American tribes were struggling to get established after being forced to relocate from their homelands during the cruel and shameful Trail of Tears. The tribes had suffered greatly and had very little. But when the Choctaw nation heard about the suffering of the Irish people during the potato famine, they pulled together a donation of $170—around $5000 in today's dollars—to send to Ireland.

That collective act of sacrificial generosity was not forgotten. And now people in Ireland are repaying that gift many times over in a beautiful expression of historic human connectedness.

https://www.upworthy.com/navajo-covid

Rings Hollow

An excerpt from the Washington Post -

Heroes, we cannot possibly repay you for your sacrifice, so we will make no effort to
By Alexandra Petri

Good news, front-line worker: You are essential. No, more than that: You are a hero.

Look, some jets are flying over!

Here is your salute! Here is your banging of pans! Look, your employers have made you — with their own dollars! — a commercial with gentle piano music, in the tenderest possible tone, to say thank you. We salute you. No, we do more than that: We owe you a debt of gratitude. No, wait, let us not introduce the word “debt,” which might imply monetary compensation of some kind. You are a hero, after all. You are beyond all that money nonsense. We are beyond all that.

Look, here are some more jets!

We cannot hope to thank you for this sacrifice you are making so we can be fed and entertained and comforted. But we will offer you this word: essential! Do you not feel better? Is the word itself not better than any kind of safety gear? Okay, here are some masks — not to wear, but affixed together into a big collage, as a symbol! As the vice president has shown, masks are optional. But symbolism — that is essential.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/30/heroes-we-cannot-possibly-repay-you-your-sacrifice-so-we-will-make-no-effort/

New documentary tells the story of first wife of country music star John...