Black Girls Climbing in the Midst of Racism

From the Washington Post -  

The Racism of the Great Outdoors

Hikers and climbers of color face a host of obstacles, from bigoted route names to Confederate flags. This D.C.-based group is trying to change that.

By Ikya Kandula

Five years ago, Gabrielle Dickerson, then a sophomore at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, lay awake in her sleeping bag on her first overnight climbing trip, enveloped by the woods of the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve near Fayetteville, W.Va. Like many rock climbers in the D.C. area, she’d been drawn to the New, as outdoor enthusiasts call it — a five-hour road trip from Washington — because it offers 1,400 of the best climbing routes in the United States.

The rest of her group had swiftly fallen asleep after a day of projecting — the process of strategizing about, and eventually completing, a climb with no breaks — but apprehension took hold of Dickerson. “I was very aware of how uncomfortable I was in the backcountry of West Virginia,” Dickerson recalls. “Not only because I was a Black woman, but also because of the relationship and trauma my ancestors had with the woods.” Her grandfather had been born on a North Carolina cotton farm in 1930 and picked cotton until he escaped from the owner in his teens. On his way to Philadelphia and a new life, he witnessed his best friend get lynched in the woods.

Loneliness sank in as Dickerson realized that no one in her campsite would be able to relate: She was the only Black climber in her group. She’d been climbing in a gym in Rockville, Md., for six months; that day in the New was her first experience projecting in a natural space. She’d spent the afternoon struck with a sense of wonder, but that didn’t offset her disquietude in that moment. She knew that the deep canyons that surrounded her overflowed with histories of Black families just like her own.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/05/19/rock-climbers-color-face-host-obstacles-this-group-is-trying-change-that/?tid=a_classic-iphone&no_nav=true

Cob on Wood

A Luxury Dog House

From Buzzfeed - 

This Guy Built His Dog A Luxury Home, And It's Nicer Than Anything I've Ever Owned

"For all the people asking, 'Why a TV?' Being extra is a choice, and we chose it."

by Alexa Lisitza, BuzzFeed Staff 

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexalisitza/diy-luxury-dog-house

 

The morning makes you. So make the most of your mornings with MTN DEW RISE ENERGY. @KingJames #MorningMakesYou #MTNDEWRISE pic.twitter.com/CBty4JIZTU

— MTN DEW RISE ENERGY (@MountainDewRise) May 13, 2021

Engineer Explains Every Roller Coaster For Every Thrill | A World of Dif...

Hair: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Mortician Answers Dead Body Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

The Shadow of Your Smile (Johnny Mandel) - Fingerstyle

Good Dog!

 

Tiffany Cross Rebuts Senator Tim Scott's Comments On Race in America | M...

Black children with white moms are sharing what it's like for them

How to Buy a Watermelon

 From Eagle Eye Produce - 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Eagle Eye Produce (@eagleeyeproduce)

He's Headed to FAMU!

An excerpt from Black Enterprise - 

D.C. SCHOLAR, 16, WHO WAS DUALLY ENROLLED IN COLLEGE AND HIGH SCHOOL DECIDES TO ATTEND FAMU IN THE FALL 

Curtis Lawrence III’s journey of excellence proves that early scholastic preparation can turn out to be extremely rewarding. FOX 5 reported that the 16-year-old who graduated high school early decided to attend Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. Lawrence will be double majoring in biology and computer science at the HBCU. Also, FOX 5 also reported that Curtis was accepted to 14 colleges and has received $1.6 million in scholarships.

https://www.blackenterprise.com/d-c-scholar-16-who-was-dually-enrolled-in-college-and-high-school-decides-to-attend-famu-in-the-fall/

One Smart Cookie

An excerpt from the NY Times By the Book - 

The One Book Stacey Abrams Would Require the President to Read

Stacey Abrams, the Georgia politician and romance writer, whose latest novel is the thriller “While Justice Sleeps,” recommends “Master of the Senate,” by Robert Caro: “It is a seminal work on the nature of power, the limits of the presidency and the awesome demands politics make on the soul.”

What books are on your night stand?

I read several genres at once, rotating through as the mood strikes me. My long read right now is “The Coldest Winter,” by David Halberstam. My sibling book club picked “Ring Shout,” by P. Djeli Clark, which is paced wonderfully so it will not be over too soon (but luckily before our call). A recent discussion with my niece reminded me how much I love fairy tales of all kinds, so I decided to dive into “Tales of Japan: Traditional Stories of Monsters and Magic.”

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

I had it a few weeks ago. Georgia’s mercurial weather shifted from an unreasonable 48 degrees to a balmy 75 degrees over the weekend. Knowing how soon it could be 25 degrees or 89 degrees, I filled my water bottle, poured myself a glass of Martinelli’s apple juice, and picked up “Black Sun,” by Rebecca Roanhorse. Soon, I was outside on the patio in the springtime, midafternoon, with my feet up on the ottoman and my reading glasses perched on my nose.

What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?

“What’s Bred in the Bone,” by Robertson Davies, is a novel about a man whose life contained much more than the surface would suggest, including espionage and angels. Davies was a distinguished Canadian author, and this is Book 2 of his Cornish Trilogy (“The Rebel Angels” and “The Lyre of Orpheus” are first and third). I usually recommend the book to folks who ask me for a good book list. Rarely has anyone heard of him or the novel, which is a shame.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/books/review/stacey-abrams-by-the-book-interview.html

Uh . . . NO!

An excerpt from the Washington Post - 

Opinion: Should you say the n-word? No, especially if you’re not Black.

Opinion by Jonathan Capehart

No one who is not Black and uses the n-word should be surprised to receive blowback, let alone expect a free pass. It’s one of the most offensive and painful words in the English language. Sometimes, a pass could be granted depending on the context. Ultimately, I just wish folks, especially White folks, would have the good sense not to say it under any circumstances.

I’m wading into this thicket because of a controversy at Rutgers University Law School in New Jersey. Last October, a criminal law student said the n-word while quoting a 1993 legal opinion during virtual office hours. The class’s professor, Vera Bergelson, told the New York Times this week that she didn’t hear the word said at the time and wishes she had.

I have great sympathy for that Rutgers student, a middle-aged White woman embarking on a second career in law. According to the Times story, she had the good sense to forewarn her classmates by saying, “He said, um — and I’ll use a racial word, but it’s a quote.” In that context, I can’t fault her for wanting to quote from the legal opinion exactly. But if she knew enough to warn of the forthcoming word’s “racial” nature, she should have known better than to utter the six-letter abomination in the first place.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/07/should-you-say-n-word-no-especially-if-youre-not-black/

Artist Draws Hyperrealistic Portraits Using Bic Ballpoint Pens

Josh Groban - Bean Song | Bush’s Beans

Daunte Wright’s Death & America’s Broken Policing System | The Daily Soc...

The Supreme Court Sanctioned "Driving While Black"

An excerpt from Politico -

How the Supreme Court Helped Create 'Driving While Black'

A reckoning with police violence must include a reckoning with how the nation’s highest court enabled it.

By CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT DUROCHER

The reason Brooklyn Center police pulled over Daunte Wright is unclear and largely irrelevant. The Department’s chief of police said the car he was driving had expired tags. His mother said he thought he was pulled over because he had air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. Regardless of the reason, 20-year old Wright was shot to death by a police officer minutes after the traffic stop began.

Traffic stops figure prominently in some of the most high-profile police killings of Black people. We remember many of their names—Walter Scott, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile —but they are just a few of the many people who have been killed or died as the result of law enforcement’s expansive authority to enforce traffic laws.

Traffic stops might seem like a local matter, or a subjective police decision, but actually the practice is built on five decades of Supreme Court precedent, a set of decisions that has successively opened the door to — and given police an incentive to — use traffic stops as an invasive tool of policing aimed mostly at people of color, primarily Black people.

As a result, reckoning with police violence must include a reckoning with how U.S. Supreme Court precedent has enabled it through its decades-long campaign to empower law enforcement in the so-called War on Drugs. Litigators must continue to push the Court to revisit these damaging decisions with the goal of overturning or weakening the precedents that have put too much power and discretion in the hands of police. Federal, state, and local policymakers, meanwhile, must recognize that these precedents provide a constitutional floor for police behavior; laws and policies can and should be adopted to hold police to a higher standard.

“Driving While Black” is a tongue-in-cheek expression that describes a frightening reality—police can, and often do, find any reason to pull over Black drivers. Given the glut of traffic rules, police rarely have to concoct a reason to pull over any driver they choose. Their job as traffic enforcers enables police officers to pull over Black drivers whenever their implicit or explicit biases tell them that a Black driver is “up to no good.” Harassment, intimidation, violence, and sometimes death, too often ensue.

The Supreme Court opened the door to legally permissible racialized policing with the 1967 case Terry v. Ohio, by allowing police to conduct certain cursory searches, now known as stop-and-frisks, based on the low legal standard of “reasonable suspicion.” As our country’s experience with stop-and-frisk vividly demonstrates, however, for police, reasonable suspicion is too often synonymous with being a Black or brown person in public.

The practice of racially profiling Black drivers was effectively endorsed by the Court in the 1996 ruling in Whren v. United States, which decided that police are allowed to use minor vehicle infractions as a pretext to initiate traffic stops with the goal of investigating other possible unrelated crimes.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/04/17/how-the-supreme-court-helped-create-driving-while-black-482530

Only Rage

An excerpt from the NY Times - 

Rage Is the Only Language I Have Left

Society has become horribly desensitized to police killings of Black men.

By Charles M. Blow, Opinion Columnist

These killings often happen during the day and in public, not under the cover of night, tucked away in some back wood. And they are often caught on video. Tamir Rice was killed during the day. There was video. Walter Scott was killed during the day. There was video. Eric Garner was killed during the day. There was video.

Now there is another: Daunte Wright, shot and killed during the day in Brooklyn Center, Minn., not far from where Floyd was killed. There is video.

Very little has changed. The aftermath of these killings has become a pattern, a ritual, that produces its own normalizing and desensitizing effects. We can now anticipate the explosions of rage as well and the relative intransigence of the political system in response.

That is not to say that absolutely nothing has changed, but rather that the changes amount to tinkering, when in fact our whole system of policing must be re-evaluated and fundamentally altered.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/opinion/us-police-killings.html

That examination, oddly enough, starts with gun control. The police justify their militarization and armed-and-ready positioning, by correctly observing that they can be outgunned by a public with such easy access to guns, including military-style guns.