An Historian’s Thoughts on the Uprisings in Our Cities

By Mark Naison (May 30, 2020)

As an historian, I am am hardly surprised at the uprisings taking place in cities throughout the country.

The murder of George Floyd pushed people filled with rage at their position in Trump’s America over the edge.

It is not just that repeated murders of unarmed Black men and women, by police or self appointed security agents, had convinced many Black people that most whites signed off on policies that terrorized their communities, it is that they saw the rhetoric and policies of the Trump Administration as a daily assault on their safety and security.

In the minds of many people of color, it is wholly predictable– and profoundly infuriating- that a country that could elect a race baiting demagogue like Donald Trump would sign off on the murder of unarmed Blacks, and never send those responsible to prison

Think about it: you are living in country where gun toting, Nazi and Confederate flag waving whites are cheered on by the President while unarmed Black men and women are shot down in the streets and their own homes, and where immigrant children of color are put in cages.

If you think that experience wasn’t making people unbelievably angry, you are ignoring the lessons of history.

At some point, I suspected, that anger, which I know well because I feel it inside myself, was going to break loose. George Floyd’s death may have been the spark, but there were a long chain of grievances which have come to the surface in its wake

I do not know where these uprisings are going, nor how they are going to end.

I do know they have been a long time coming.

Anybody really LISTENING to what their Black/LatinX friends, colleagues,neighbors and family members have been saying over the last few years, in response to provocation after provocation, should hardly be surprised at what is taking place in the streets of our major cities.

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Structural Racism is the Reason People of Color Are Dying of Covid-19

By Teka Lark (April 13, 2020)

The Surgeon General, Dr. Adams, stated, to paraphrase, that we people of color (Black people and Latinos) need to lay off the alcohol and healthfully eat so that we won’t die of the COVID-19. People were quite (understandably) outraged, but I also found something similar in the Chicago Defender that also outraged me:

“If it was in place now, it would be issuing nutritional, dietary and lifestyle advice to Blacks that emerging research is beginning to suggest that may minimize the effect of the epigenetic damage.”

Respectability politics sometimes comes dressed in a three-piece suit and other times, it comes dressed in kente cloth. Still, regardless of its uniform, in the end, it blames Black people for our oppression, and it refuses to attack the root cause directly (fewer grants in that).

For many reasons, I don’t like the historical trauma argument. It implies that we’re damaged when we are born and that gives alive racists a get out of jail free card. I’m not willing to do that. I’m not throwing it out, but I feel it’s a dangerous game to play with white institutions, because white institutions are always looking at ways to pathologize Blackness and wiggle out of fixing themselves. Fixing themselves would involve no longer existing.

The disparity in care is a massive problem for Black people. It takes us twice as long to get help, and once we get help, it takes us twice as long to convince medical professionals to understand or rather, care what we ware saying. And once we do all that, we’re dead.

From NPR “All Things Considered” from 2016 Analysis by NYC Health

“Five years of data found that black, college-educated mothers who gave birth in local hospitals were more likely to suffer severe complications of pregnancy or childbirth than white women who never graduated from high school.”

This analysis and other studies point to a disparity of care.

Another challenge is that Black people live farther from their jobs. Black people and Latinos typically live farther from work and are farther away from good public transit options. That means Black and Latino people generally are walking more than a mile and transferring at least once to get to work. The 2015 “It’s About Time: The Transit Time Penalty and It’s Racial Implications” study of the Minneapolis and Twin Cities area stated that people of color communities were spending 11-46 more hours a year on their commute than white people.

You lose nearly two days of your life just for not being white.

More time commuting means more time being exposed to illness, disease, and just the elements and being in cold weather in addition to stressful commutes lower the immune system.

Another huge issue for Black people is that we typically work in the public sector and the service industry. In July 2010, the Center for Labor Research and Education released a report examining the state of Black workers in the years 2005 – 2007. It found that the public sector is the most critical source of employment for African Americans, and it is the sector that provides us with the highest paying jobs.

Those jobs include education, transportation, sanitation, the postal service. Even when we have degrees, we’re going to be working with the public, owing to the dynamics of race and access in the US.

In 2020 this is still the case.

Outside the public sector, we work in retail services and parts of the health care sector, including home health aides and nursing home workers, jobs that also expose you to the public.

And also the kind of jobs we have outside the public sector tend to be last hired, first fired. Jobs that you can’t do at home, that are at-will employment.

The cemented institutions of racism is the reason that Black people are disproportionately —exposed and dying from COVID-19.

There are no buts here. There are no if we just…no, it’s structural racism, that’s why and that is the only reason why.

References

Nelson, A. (2002). Unequal treatment: Confronting racial and ethnic disparities in health care. Journal of the National Medical Association, 94(8), 666-8.

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Why Did Southern Black Folks Vote for Biden?

By Teka Lark (February 5, 2020)

If you think I believe Black voters voted for Biden because they believe white people are racist and he was the most palatable racist, you have lost your damn mind. That is not how Biden got the Black vote. That is not how this works. That is some very creative fiction, which will get you a lot of talking head gigs, but that’s bullshit.

There is a very complex and complicated network of systems and institutions that make this magic happen. Since the 3/5th Compromise the Black vote has been played with and manipulated, am I saying that Black people are more ignorant when it comes to voting than anyone else? No, anyone can be manipulated with the right messaging, the right propaganda, and the right people paid for a long enough amount of time.

White people have voted against health care, college, and all kinds of things that would greatly benefit them, so ignorance is the United Stated voting tradition not relegated to a particular race.

The Southern Black community votes as the DNC tells them to every single election because of a very complicated and old system that involves the Democratic Committees and the Historic Black Baptist Church (which 53% are a member in the south that number goes past 80%). The Baptist Church EXISTS FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF CONTROLLING THE BLACK MOVEMENT and that includes the vote. The DNC pours money (not a lot) and time into the Black community in the primary in states that, for the most part, DO NOT COUNT IN THE GENERAL. They do this all the time. They do this for the sole purpose of economically propping up establishment candidates. With fewer polling places, selective enforcement of illegal voter ID laws, and limited transportation options in the Black belt is even easy to control which Black people vote. The Black vote is generally pretty cheap.

Since Black people are hyper-segregated, it’s rather easy to misinform and more importantly, to block information. When I tried to remedy this situation in Los Angeles by starting a newspaper, my office was shot up, my house was broken into, and my life was directly threatened.

This system is not only deep; it’s dangerously deep and bites hard. It’s not as simple as white people are racists, so we’re going to vote like this, that’s not how this works, but that’s some amazing spin to stop anyone from questioning the DNC.

 

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A Prayer for Black Futures and Collective Liberation

By Chris Crass (February 20, 2020)

While Elizabeth Warren was destroying Bloomberg from jump at the Democratic Debate, I was doing bedtime with River and August (but I watched what I missed right away and Warren was incredible).

We read Freedom Soup, a gift from their aunt Rahula S. Janowski, and it’s a beautiful picture book about a Haitian Grandmother telling her Granddaughter about Black people fighting back against the ruling class and leading the Haitian Revolution against slavery and colonialism. The Grandmother is preparing Freedom Soup, denied to enslaved people before, as their family and friends come together to celebrate.

“They won!” River said with excitement.

“It’s like the Civil War.” my little four year old August says.

“Yes, in the Civil War, thousands and thousands of Black people fought back against slavery and freed themselves, just like in Haiti. And the revolution in Haiti both scared racist people in power, and inspired people here who had been forced into slavery, to fight back – before and during the Civil War and they were a major part of ending the slave system here.” I shared.

River asked questions about the Civil War and August mentioned how families were divided on different sides of the Civil War – as they’re learning about it in his pre-kindergarten class.

“Malcolm X had his family separated when white supremacists burned down his house.” River said, and his eyes got big as he starts making historical connections. River did a Black History Month project on Malcolm X last year and is learning more about him this year.

“What else do you know about Malcolm X’s life?” I ask and River goes over a handful of moments in his life, while August and I listen.

“And Harriet Tubman fought back against slavery too.” River adds. He continues, “She freed herself and then freed lots of other people from slavery and helped them get to a country where slavery was illegal.”

“They covered themselves in hay”, August jumps in. Which leads to a conversation about the Underground Railroad and how people used hay to cover themselves up riding in wagons and other ways people hid, as well as the Black and white abolitionists who hid people in their wagons, boats, and houses.

River read a kids book about Harriet Tubman – a book I’d been asking him periodically if he’d like to read for a couple of years, and he had said no, but now he was the one who brought up Harriet Tubman, he was the one who wanted to learn more. August and I snuggled and read stories about Frozen.

Before they both went to bed, we talked about how important it is that it’s Black History Month, and that a Black man named Carter G. Woodson, who lived here, in Kentucky, two hours away from Louisville, in Berea, taught history and created Black History Month and that because people fought and organized for justice, we now have Black History Month in our schools. Racism doesn’t want us to know these histories, but people fought back, just like in our book Freedom Soup, that aunt Rahula gave you.

I prayed last night with gratitude for all who have fought back, who have brought leadership to and participated in the vast efforts to make Black History Month a reality and who continue to expand what is possible, expand what kids and adults are learning, and making Black History Month part of movements for Black Futures where there is racial justice and collective liberation. And movements to end the malnourishment of white people’s souls and historical knowledge by white supremacy, so that white people rise up against this death culture too, and can get inspiration from the Haitian Revolution, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman and Black and white abolitionists, inspiration to get free.

Chris Crass on collective liberation
Chris Crass on collective liberation

On George Washington, Destroyer of Towns

By Teka Lark (February 18, 2020)

This week we’re honoring George Washington or Conotocaurius (Town Destroyer) as the Iroquois called him, a man who enslaved 316 people and brought nine of them to the White House (Coard, Philadephia Tribune, 2018).

When I was a child, I was told that George Washington was our first president and that he had wooden dentures, but his dentures were not made of wood they were made of human teeth.

In 1789, according to the book “George Washington’s Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century” by Dr. Robert Darnton, Washington had teeth extracted from enslaved people’s mouth and got a full set of dentures made.

Five years prior in an account documented in the “The Private Life of Washington’s Slaves” by Mary V Thompson it states:

May of 1784, Washington paid several unnamed “Negroes,” presumably Mount Vernon slaves, 122 shillings for nine teeth, slightly less than one-third the going rate advertised in the papers.

I guess this is supposed to let us know that while yes, you historians lied to us for decades about the origins of this stolen country’s first president’s teeth, now you’re telling the truth. Washington was clearly reasonable. He bought teeth from enslaved people. He didn’t just yank them out. See, he really was a good guy, because even white people sold their teeth back then, poor white people got their teeth yanked too.

Why don’t you care about them? What about poor white people. Don’t they matter to you?! This isn’t a Black thing, why do you always have to make this about “the blacks?”

Anyways, Happy Town Destroyer Day.

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Moderates Don’t Care If This Country Goes to Hell

By Teka Lark (January 31, 2020)

Being in the United States owing to slavery, and having relatives who are still alive who survived Jim Crow, gives you a unique perspective on justice in the United States.

If you look throughout history in this country, oppression is an ebb and flow. For example, during the Reconstruction Era, the era right after the ending of slavery (1863–1877), there were 1500 Black political officeholders. More than a half-million Black men became voters in the South during the 1870s, and the federal law somewhat protected Black people’s rights. But after Reconstruction, not only did we not hold office, we couldn’t even vote, and by “we” I mean Black men.

When I look at Trump’s impeachment trial my friends that are reasonable and logical say: “Well the moderates will be so disgusted by this that even if he doesn’t get impeached, they will come around?” Come around? Come around to what? This country bankrupts its own white children because they don’t want one tax dollar to go to a college program that might benefit a “Black.”

This country doesn’t have universal childcare because it would rather have white women kill themselves if they don’t have to share with Mexican-Americans. The moderates are racists and nationalists whose retirements are tied to the stock market. They don’t care if this country goes to hell. They’ve sent it there many times before.

The people who are most pro-Trump right now who are trying to suppress the witnesses in the Senate are the moderate Republicans. If they do the right thing, they will be primaried out.

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Does the Anti-War Movement Include the War on Black People?

By Teka Lark (January 8, 2020)

In Newark & Los Angeles, when I would go to protest I would have to step over Black people. I would have to step over them on the way to train, on the way to the march. I would have to pass over places where my friends used to live. But now they live in their car, at their grandmothers…. I had a good friend, a comrade try to get a job in NJ ,and this Black man, despite having a college degree, could not get a job. He was political, far left, but he paid for college through the military. It was not his desire to choose this Robert Frostian path, but after much resistance he had no choice but to reenlist in the military.

The best draft the US has is racism and classism. You get some amazingly talented, smart, and able Black people who are highly motivated to not die on the streets of Newark, Los Angeles, Chicago….

You will sign up to do a lot of things when you’re hungry.

I myself was never able to obtain employment in New Jersey, despite having a Masters degree. I was never able to obtain a job that would give me enough money to pay my rent. In NJ a place with the biggest and best paid middle class in the entire United States.

The poverty rate for Black people in Newark is 30%. I would be part of that 30% if I had been born here and was not able to obtain the experience and social capital (social capital is key and hard to come by in places as hypersegregated as NJ) to access jobs in other states that hire Black people.

If you are Black stay out of this place, seriously.

I can’t help but see over and over again college educated Black people in NJ with no job, no prison record, constantly hustling to fight unemployment and underemployment.

But you know, I feel that being a high school drop-out shouldn’t doom you to starvation; but I also don’t feel that being Black should doom you either.

I don’t mean to bash people, but context is everything, I can’t not be Black or pretend that Black people aren’t here when I do my political work, I don’t have the privilege.

I am anti-war and that would include being against the constant war on Black people. I can’t walk over homeless Black people to do a political action, I just refuse to do it. I am willing to do many things, but I just don’t have the cognitive dissonance needed for that kind of thing.

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Radical Movements Have Shaped the Presidential Race for Democrats

By Chuck Morse (December 3, 2019)

Bloomberg apologizes for “stop and frisk;” Kamala Harris backs away from her record as a prosecutor; Cory Booker voices regret for heavy handed police tactics in Newark; Biden attempts to blabber his way out of accountability for his role in passing the “crime bill.”

It is a big deal that these candidates feel compelled to define themselves in relation to mass incarceration and police terror.

This is a huge victory for Black Lives Matter, the protestors who marched in city after city, and everyone who spoke out (and speaks out) against state terror. They forced the issue onto the agenda and the world is an immensely better place for it.

The faction of the left focused on punching nazis will miss this, but it is a gigantic affirmation of what radical movements and people of conscience can do.

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Letter to the President of Georgia Southern University Regarding Book Burning

By Mark Naison (October 13, 2019)

Letter to the President of Georgia Southern University regarding book burning at his school

President@georgiasouthern.edu
Kyle Marrero
President, Georgia Southern University

Dear President Marrero

As a historian of race in the United States, who has written 7 books on the subject, and a professor for 49 years at one of the nation’s major universities, I am writing to express my extreme dismay at the burning of the books of a prominent LatinX author who spoke at your campus. In all my years of college teaching, this may be the single most disturbing act of racial harassment I have heard, both because of the specter of Nazism it invokes, and the chilling message it sends to students of color in an already highly charged political climate.

If students of color at your university are to feel protected from racial violence- and book burning is a violent act- and if your university’s reputation is not to be permanently tarnished, you must take much more dramatic action than you have so far done.

First of all, the book burning must be described as an act of racial violence and harassment, not as a manifestation of free speech. You must say, in the loudest possible voice, that this action has covered Georgia Southern with shame, and that it must NEVER happen again on your campus or at any campus in the nation

Secondly, you must take some disciplinary action against the students involved, ranging from academic probation to suspension. Your students of color will never feel safe unless those responsible for the book burning are punished

Let me close with one more reminder. There was another time when the state of Georgia was known for the use of fire as an expression of rage- the burning of Black bodies during lynchings. If you don’t believe me, look up the lynching of Sam Hose, who was burned at the stake in your home state after his body was dismembered

The history that comes before us should be a guide to greater wisdom, not an excuse for looking the other way when racial violence and harassment occurs.

Please consider what I say very carefully, because it is in the minds of thousands of my peers who teach at universities around the nation

Sincerely

Mark D Naison


Dr Mark Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Founder and Director, Bronx African American History Project

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Do Black Lives Matter in The Joker?

By S. (October 8, 2019)

This article is spot on BUT Joker is also racist AF too. The more I thought about the movie after watching the more my blood started to boil. It’s the subtle racism of erasure, misdirection, and employment of poorly thought out visual tropes. I fully expect the filmmaker’s defense against a racism accusation to be one of gaslighting and denial. I don’t care though. Here’s my evidence:

a) Within the first five minutes Phoenix’s character, Arthur Fleck, is the victim of a “gang” attack in which a group of teen boys steal his sign and beat up him. You probably saw it in the previews. The camerawork zooms in on the faces of these children so that we can see that they are children but we also see that they are beautiful shades of brown with afros that change color based on where the light is shining. I don’t think the filmmakers saw the beauty of these children. The narrative tone of the film is one of fear and the threat of violence. These children are not depicted as humans but as cruel animals toying with their prey. And they are all black.

b) At two different points in the movie, Fleck talks to two separate black, middle-aged, female social workers. I can’t even. The trope of the black woman social worker swallowed up by an indifferent bureaucracy who then becomes an uncaring face of that bureaucracy is so freaking dangerous and ugly. There is a grand history of black women in social work. And to see white filmmakers treat it is as a quickie signifier is gross. My maternal grandmother died of tuberculosis when my mother was 3. She contracted the disease from working with populations for whom TB was endemic. She literally gave her life for the cause. A generation of brave and kind black women, inspired by Jane Adams among others, became social workers in the 1930s to combat the extremes of inner city poverty and the lazy ass filmmaking of Joker treats it as more evidence of urban blight. Also the Joker kills one of those women, do black lives in films matter?

c) The love interest is a black, single mother and Fleck is white. I’m always for more diversity in casting but sometimes more thought needs to go into the choices. The love interest is a neighboring tenant in Fleck’s giant apartment building. The casting choice would have been interesting if the other tenants were predominately white, it would invoke the question of why Fleck singled out the sole black inhabitant. Or what if the love interest was white and the majority of tenants were black and brown. Yet race does not seem to be an issue in Gotham City in 1981.This leads us to the biggest problem I have with race in this movie.

d) the movie depicts the urban unrest and crime of the 1970s and 80s as if were the fault of income inequality, not racism. It whitewashes the history of our cities. It denies the history of urban black America and replaces it with a class analysis. There are no black people in this Gotham, there are just people with different skin tones. This movie goes out of its way not to see race and in doing so it replicates racist tropes. The movie doesn’t understand the danger of showing a group of black boys mugging people, it doesn’t understand the offensiveness of the black female bureaucrat, it doesn’t get that years of municipal neglect, economic shock, voter disenfranchisement, segregation, and demonization flavored urban environments from that era. White people and power structures that favor white people created the urban inequality of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The Joker replaced that history with a rich-versus-poor narrative.

I love a good comic book movie and the world of Batman is ripe for storytelling. Gotham has always been depicted as a corrupt city of haves and have nots. Presumably, the inspiration for many of Batman’s foes were the colorful mobsters of the Prohibition Era. Tim Burton’s Batman captures this well. Burton’s Gotham is so visually distinct that you can imagine a separate history in which racism is a less important factor in civil unrest than income inequality. I have no problem with an income-inequality storyline, I have a problem with the displacement of a real historic event in favor of a fictional one. Joker’s fetish for realism (even though Fleck’s mental illness is largely fictional) reminds us of the very real history. You can’t have it both ways. Gotham is a fictional city with a fictional history. We don’t even know where it’s located. Is it in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware. Maybe it really is Chicago. We don’t know. But when you throw in the visual language of 1981 inner-city urbanity, Gotham becomes part of our very real United States, with its very real history of urban disinvestment.

In 2019, I expect more from my filmmakers.

What Would Justice for Botham Jean Look Like?

By Teka Lark (October 3, 2019)

White America believes in vengeance. It believes in an eye for an eye. The Botham Jean case was so very hard to watch, because here is a Black man who was perfect, as perfectly good as a human can be–because if he hadn’t been, the defense would have found out his imperfections and smeared them all over the Internet.

People say if he were a white man, Amber wouldn’t have shot him or she would have gotten more time than 10 years – but here is the thing: a white man with Botham’s credentials and talent wouldn’t be living next door to a cop. If Botham were a white man he’d be living in NY making half a million dollars. The reason he was living next door to a cop in a Dallas suburb, was because he was a Black man, because these are the kinds of people that even the most talented of Black people end up next to when they do well. They end up next to angry, barely middle class, white people who have failed. And this puts us in all kinds of danger. People who have grown up with trauma, who are angry, because they have had their dreams crushed owing to capitalism, and only have their whiteness to lean on, are dangerous people for Black people to be around. Well they are pretty dangerous for anyone, but typically it is OK to kill Black people if you feel angry and say “you’re scared.”

They are never scared. I learned that a long time ago; they just lie, the police lie, the women on the cellphone lie, and the people next door lie, they are all liars.

Our system of justice is dishonest, punitive, and sadistic –just like our country, the United States.

You know I don’t want the kinds of wins that white nationalism celebrates, that Americans celebrate. It has never brought me joy to see a person sentenced to the maximum prison time or the death penalty, even if I know they did it.

What would a victory for Botham Jean have looked like for me? A victory would be him being alive, a system where no one has to fail, a system where everyone feels supportive, and a system that doesn’t create situations that are unforgivable. Anything less than that to me –is still losing.

I don’t want your eye. I don’t need your eye. I don’t want vengeance, I want justice.

teka