Tuesday, November 3, 2020
Saturday, October 31, 2020
April 7, 2020
Was April 7, 2020 the day that sealed the fate of America?
By Thom Hartmann
On April 18, Bob Woodward recorded Jared Kushner saying that Trump had taken control away from the doctors and was going to open the country back up. So what might have provoked that? What was happening right around that time?
Trump’s official national emergency declaration came on March 11, and most of the country shut down or at least went partway toward that outcome. The economy crashed and millions of Americans were laid off, but saving lives was, after all, the number one consideration.
Trump put medical doctors on TV daily, the media was freaking out about refrigerated trucks carrying bodies away from New York hospitals, and doctors and nurses were our new national heroes.
And then came April 7, 2020, when the New York Times ran a front-page story with the headline: “Black Americans Face Alarming Rates of Coronavirus Infection in Some States.”
Across the American media landscape, similar headlines appeared at other outlets, and the story was heavily reported on cable news and the network news that night. White American conservatives responded with a collective, “What the hell?!?”
Rush Limbaugh declared soon after that “with the coronavirus, I have been waiting for the racial component. … The coronavirus now hits African Americans harder—harder than illegal aliens, harder than women. It hits African Americans harder than anybody, disproportionate representation.”
It didn’t take a medical savant, of course, to figure out that would be the case. African Americans die at disproportionately higher rates from everything, from heart disease to strokes to cancer to childbirth.
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Tucker Carlson, the only primetime Fox News host who’d previously expressed serious concerns about the death toll, changed his tune the same day, as documented by Media Matters for America.
Now, he said, “we can begin to consider how to improve the lives of the rest, the countless Americans who have been grievously hurt by this, by our response to this. How do we get 17 million of our most vulnerable citizens back to work? That’s our task.”
White people were out of work, and Black people were most of the casualties, outside of the extremely elderly. And those white people need their jobs back!
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/10/was-april-7-2020-the-day-that-sealed-the-fate-of-america/
At 102 years old, my great aunt, born the year of our last great #pandemic, made her way to the ballot box to cast her #vote. If she can do it, you can too! #Vote #VoteEarly #Election2020 pic.twitter.com/3nFCB3c4Ei
— Quentin Youmans (@QuentinYoumans) October 21, 2020
Then and Now
https://www.boredpanda.com/young-celebrities-kids-then-and-now-digital-art-ard-gelinck/
Saturday, October 17, 2020
Blacks Pay More
An excerpt from Complex -
Study Shows Black Americans Are Paying More to Own Homes
BYJOE PRICE
In a new study from MIT, it has been reported that Black Americans are often forced to pay more than any other group of individuals to own a home.
CNN reports that Black homeowners on average pay more in mortgage interest, mortgage insurance, and property taxes than other homeowners. Written by Edward Golding, MIT's executive director of the Golub Center for Finance and Policy, the paper concludes that the vast difference between what Black homeowners and white homeowners pay indicates that it's considerably more difficult for Black homeowners to accumulate wealth through ownership at the same rate as white homeowners.
The differences between mortgage payments is $743 per year, mortgage insurance premiums $550 per year, and property taxes at $390 per year. Totaling $13,464 "over the life of the line," the gap could result in up to $67,320 in lost retirement savings.
"The small differences compounding over the life of the mortgage and during home ownership can add up," writes Golding. "Even if it is a few hundred dollars a year here and there, it can amount to another year's salary families would otherwise have."
https://www.complex.com/life/2020/10/black-americans-pay-more-to-own-homes-study-shows
A Hotel Where Women Reign
An excerpt from Insider -
A new hotel in DC features a Ruth Bader Ginsburg portrait made from 20,000 hand-painted tampons — and that's not even the wildest design
By Melissa Wiley
Called Hotel Zena, it features over 60 bold and provocative artworks dedicated to female empowerment and those who have fought for women's rights.
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| View of the exterior of Hotel Zena, seen from Thomas Circle in northwest Washington, DC. Hotel Zena |
https://www.insider.com/dc-women-rights-hotel-features-ruth-bader-ginsburg-portraity-2020-10#called-hotel-zena-it-features-over-60-bold-and-provocative-artworks-dedicated-to-female-empowerment-and-those-who-have-fought-for-womens-rights-2
HBCU Virtual College Fair
An excerpt from the Sacramento Bee -
Black students in California offered CSU, UC alternatives at HBCU virtual college fair
BY MARCUS D. SMITH
President and CEO Dr. Alan Rowe and his wife, Donna, founded the U-CAN foundation in 1988 when looking to enroll their son in a four-year college or university. They realized the limited resources and programs for Black students and started a foundation that would shape scholars in Sacramento – and California – for the next 40 years.
The HBCU college fair has now expanded throughout the entire state of California.
The United College Action Network (U-CAN) is hosting its 21st Annual Historically Black College and University (HBCU) College Fair online, in accordance with public health regulations.
U-CAN’s goal is to give California’s Black student population the opportunity to attend a four-year university. What started with just five students admitted in 1989 has grown to thousands of students accepted to various HBCUs across the country with their on-the-spot admission annual college fair.
The fair began on Wednesday and will end on Saturday. Registration is free and available every day of the virtual fair online at ucangotocollege.org.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/equity-lab/article246425780.html
Expelled From 10 Schools - Now Ph.D.
An excerpt from Black Enterprise -
THIS BLACK MAN GRADUATED WITH HIS PH.D. AFTER BEING EXPELLED FROM 10 SCHOOLS
by Dana Givens
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| Image via Tommie Mabry |
The pursuit of higher education looks different for each person—with so many barriers standing in the way of obtaining a college degree for many marginalized groups. One man was able to beat all of the odds from his upbringing and is now celebrating earning his Ph.D.
As a child, Dr. Tommie Mabry was expelled from 10 different schools all before entering high school. Fast forward to December 2019, he was able to celebrate a huge milestone, finally obtaining his Ph.D. after a difficult journey of pursuing his education.
“My mom and dad [have] all my books in their house, they’re proud and they’ve come to all my graduations. Hopefully, if God says the same, they will be there at my Ph.D. graduation in December,” Mabry told Because Of Them We Can. “My mom said she didn’t think I would make it and now [I’m] the only doctor she knows.”
https://www.blackenterprise.com/this-black-man-graduated-with-his-ph-d-after-being-expelled-from-10-schools/
The Million Man March - 25 Years Ago
From Esquire -
The Million Man March Inspired a Generation. Here Are Photos From the Historic Event.
On Oct. 16, 1995, Black men from across the country marched on Washington, D.C.
By The Esquire Editors
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| Attendees at the Million Man March carried signs and raised their fists in the symbol for Black power. |
Oct. 16, 2020 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Million Man March, an event in which Black men from across the country poured into Washington, D.C. as a sign of unity. The event was massive. More than 11,000 buses delivered passengers in the days ahead of the event, according to the New York Times, with planes and trains ferrying even more. Celebrities like Will Smith, Stevie Wonder, and Diddy (then Puff Daddy) attended, along with civil rights icons like Jesse Jackson Jr. and Al Sharpton.
“I lost my mind,” Virgil Killebrew, who attended the march, told USA Today. “It wasn’t the speeches. It was the excitement. ... You felt the truth of all these people saying, ‘Black Power.’”
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| A wide shot of the National Mall on the day of the March. |