Part I

My first name is Ris, given by my mother in honor of her favorite opera singer, Ris Stevens. At age three, an older male relative nicknamed me Sapphire. I thought it was for my September birthstone. No. It was after a negatively stereotypical battle axe character the wife of Kingfish, a scheming man whod do anything for a buck on the Amos n Andy television show. Originally, Amos n Andy was a radio program created and acted by two white men who were familiar with minstrel traditions. Later, it was one of the first black sitcoms on white-run television. My mother disallowed the nickname. Several years thereafter, I began a 40-year boycott of television due to its denigration of black people.

White supremacy is the belief in the superiority of the white race, and that it should therefore dominate other racesespecially the black race. It is the ideology of supremacy and the practices resulting therefrom. White people were and are the colonial power of America. American Apartheiddiscrimination by white people against others allegedly due to racewas and is born of white supremacy. It said that such discrimination is about race. But it is really about dominanceparticularly economic dominanceheartless power, soulless greed. It is time to decolonize America.

At four years old, I preened in the mirror as I recited my first poem:

"Ohhh, looka there

Isnt that little colored girl pretty and fair"

The darker the skin tone, the more nefarious the racism, internalized racism, and colorism. Given this, it was a feat of my brilliant mother that I considered my young dark and incandescent self fairas in beautiful. White beauty was the societal beauty standard. Already, I was setting my own.

Repeatedly, white people say to me, You and I have different perspectives. I havent had your experience. Right. In an Apartheid system, different groups of people do have a different experience and a different perspective. This is because of racismthe structural discrimination, institutional discrimination, systemic discrimination that has been built in, driven in, and that is held in place by power, policy, and practice. That is the issue. And, due to American white supremacy and the resulting Apartheid, discrimination has, so far, bled into and through my black American life. Racism is so normalized in American culture that it is seemingly unnoticeable to many white people. Now is the time for systemic American Apartheid to be brought to light of day, flushed out, cleared out, rooted out. It will take work.

As a 5-year-old in Texas, I was fascinated by the countertop of the tall meat case in the neighborhood black-owned grocery store. Upon it stood several clear three-gallon glass jars. One was stuffed with fat-filled pink pickled pig feet; in the second, pink pickled pig ears fanned wide; in the third twirled clustered pink pickled pig tailsall for sale to eat.

The razor tang of salt, brine, and grease remains in my memory.

In the refrigerated lower section of the meat case lay thick rolls of bologna, summer sausage, blocks of electric-orange American cheese, piles of ox tails, cow tongues, and folds of bloody liver. More intriguing were the large, quivering squares of gelatin and fat-filled hog head cheese, pork neck bones, hog maws, and odiferous grey chitlins. Slave food, Mama said.

Historically, the person who owned the slaves owned the pigs. The owner ate the pork chops, pork roast, and the ham; the enslaved ate the appendageshead, ears, neck, stomach, intestines, tails, and feet. When black folks got a pork butt, we were said to be eatin high off the hog. I shimmied my jejune hips and sang along with Bessie Smith, Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer.

How might 250 years of a slave diet rendered traditionwe were enslaved for a century longer than weve been freecontribute to underlying health concerns that cause black people to be more susceptible to contracting and dying from COVID-19? And, what part might 150 years of Apartheid-induced poverty post enslavement play?

In the 1950s, I lived in Houstons Fifth Ward, a segregated black community. Next door to my house was the abiding neighborhood black-owned Deans Grocery Store. Across the street was the Kelly Courts housing projecta city block of bright orange unrelieved brick cubes of prison cell-like apartments, with tiny square windows built by the white-run government for Negroes after the war. Years later, a new Asian store opened kitty-corner to Mr. Deans store and competed for the business of the black people in the projects. At that time, to my knowledge, Asians didnt live in our neighborhood and, wherever they did live, it was doubtful that blacks owned businesses there. They were rude to us. They didnt hire us or socialize with us, except to undersell low quality food to poor black people. Their store threatened to put Mr. Deans store out of business. However, after a time, they mustve become friendlier because there were a few dark-skinned Amerasian children playing in the projects, apparently being parented by single mothers. It is particularly painful when one oppressed group colludes in the further oppression of another oppressed group. Predatory capitalism is economic Apartheid. Stop.

Just beyond our front yard fence, in the wide muddy ditch that ran the length of our house, red-whiskered crawfish swam. There were no sidewalks. Under an unforgiving sun on those mean Fifth Ward streets, tar boiled up and stuck to my shoe bottoms in long black strands like hot bubblegum.

Last week I read that racist government policies have contributed to the Fifth Ward neighborhood now being one of Houstons cancer clusters. It has a 48% cancer rate. White politicians relegated segregated black neighborhoods to areas where incinerators, landfills, waste sites, and industry were placed. How might longstanding housing injustice and environmental Apartheid contribute to African Americans having underlying health conditions that leave us more susceptible to contracting and dying from COVID-19?

To date, my life has been lived within a system built on white supremacy and bolstered by American Apartheid. If you are an American, so has yours. How palatable your experience has or hasnt been is dependent, in large measure, upon whether or not you were born with white or near-white skin. White supremacy and Apartheid are foundational to our nation. It looks like an issue of race when, in fact, it is an issue of hegemony. It is time for this to be faced and acknowledged. It is time for it to end.

Because weve had 401 years of unequal relationships, weve also had 401 years of unequal experiences though weve lived in the same land. There were 250 years of slavery; the post-Civil War promise of 40 acres and a mule that were to be given to former slaves that was revoked; Jim Crow laws and then Black Codesendless white supremacist practices regulating the places where blacks could and could not gather or be seen at night, which jobs we were and were not allowed to do, how much or little we were paid, our economic advancement and security or lack thereof, where we could and could not live, the air we breathed, the food we ate, the water we drank. Today, in Flint, Michigan, a predominately black area, even after several years, clean water is barely a human right. I doubt it would have taken three years or more to remove lead from the drinking water in Santa Barbara, Aspen, or Sun Valley. Moreover, there have been decades of mass incarceration and no-wage to low-wage prison labor. Time up. No more prisons. Create jobs. Build homes.

If one is white, whether or not ones family owned slaves, one benefits from white privilege resulting from historic and enduring racism. Though I am not enslaved, historic and enduring racism have been and continue to be to my detriment. Today, after 401 years of economic injustice, the wealth of black families is one tenth of the wealth of white families, though blacks did two and a half centuries of the countrys heavy lifting. Reparationsa means to balance income inequality and wealth inequityare a national debt, a governmental duty. To be just, we must militate for reparations, to include providing no-cost to low-cost education, and unbiased healthcare to African Americans.

Please read: Beloved, by Toni Morrison, and The Book of Negroes, by Canadas Lawrence Hill. This same book was published in the U.S. as Someone Knows My Name.

Please read: The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic.

See Ris Kevalshar Collins' conversation with Marcia Franklin, host of Idaho Public Television'sThe 180.

***

In the last week of June 2020, I hope for a time without further murder of black people by white people, and without further murder of black people by the police. I long for time to sit in sunshine in my patio garden overstuffed with potted plants, tree roses, raised vegetable beds, and lilies. I am holding space to decompress, time to watch red gladiolus bloom in memory of my mother; time to see hummingbirds drink deeply from hanging fuchsia baskets; time with the dogs, cat, birds, squirrels, deer. Time to just be, and to remember.

I recall my mother, an innately elegant woman, saying, I may have been penniless, but I have never been poor. I remember it being said of a woman who was much like my mother: Shes got silk tastes and a sows purse. Neither of them had, but deserved to have had, opportunity equal to thatnot only of white womenbut of white men.

Before I started school, my mother made a request of me. She said, Ris, promise Mommy you will never be a maid. She was planting seeds of aspiration higher than those preordained for me by an Apartheid society.

Growing up, some may not have questioned, but I did question why black people often had so little, why white people often had so much, how they got it, and why they didnt share. Later, I began connecting the intergenerational dots. Those who owned the people and the pigs ate the pork chops and the ham. Those who owned the people and the pigs also owned the houses and the land. Those who owned the people, the pigs, the houses, and the land ran the institutions and made the laws. Those who owned the people, the pigs, the houses, the land, who also ran the institutions and made the laws, then passed their people, their pigs, and their profits down to their heirs; and they promoted policies, practices and laws that they created in their own favor, and in favor of those who looked like them so that they could forever secure what they had gained.

Those who were owned, owned nothing; they ate what their owners threw away; they passed down their love, their pain, and their purpose.

Whether or not all white Americans recognize it, or want it to be so, systemic structures of supremacy and Apartheid, implicit and explicit, remain in place. First we become aware. Then we divest.

Read this: Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Prof. Ibram X. Kendi.

***

White people in Bonners Ferry, in Boise, and elsewhere say to me, Its so sad, but it happened in the past, how long should we feel bad?

The White Lion, the first slave ship, landed in America in 1619. In the 1700s, armed whites organized themselves as slave patrols to monitor and discipline black slaves, and to capture enslaved runaways. These slave patrols were forebears of the modern police force. In 2020, police brutality toward black people remains a source of social terror.

Too often, in interacting with blacks, police officers still operate as slave catchers for a justice system that sends "just us" into a prison system that still operates as a plantation system where black men still provide no-wage to low-wage labor.

In St. Maries and in Boise I hear white riffs on this white refrain: I dont feel any shame, carry any guilt, bear any blame for what my forefathers did.

Per the NAACP, between 1882 and 1968, nearly 4,743 people were lynched in the U.S. Of those, 3,446 were black, and most lynchings took place in the south. Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas, respectively, had the highest numbers of lynchings. Although Franklin D. Roosevelt denounced lynching in the mid-1930s, he did not sign an anti-lynching bill. In 1939, Billie Holiday sang Strange Fruit. In 1964, Nina Simone sang Mississippi Goddam. In 2018, the U.S. Senate passed the first anti-lynching act. In 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act. Still, to my knowledge, no anti-lynching legislation has yet been signed into law. In 2020 a Washington, D.C., football team, under corporate pressure, is at long last poised to change its culturally offensive name. In 2020, Mississippi is after so long a time set to remove the Confederate emblem from its flag. Traditions die hard. But, unlike in 2019in 2020, NFL players will take a knee on the field before the flag during the national anthem in protest of injustice.

Concerning police brutality in America, a Boise neighbor asks, Do things like that still happen?

In the first six months of 2020, modern-day lynchings of American black people remain commonplace. An unarmed black man was shot-gunned down by a white father and son as he jogged and as another white man filmed the act; an unarmed black man was twice shot in his back by a white policeman as the black man, fearful of being arrested for drinking and then falling asleep in his car, ran; an unarmed black woman was shot dead in her bed by white no-knock police as she slept; a black man died, unarmed and bound, lying face down in the street with his neck under the weight of a white mans knee.

In Boise white people repeatedly say: Your viewpoint and experience are different from mine.

In an Apartheid system whites and blacks do have a different experience. Our viewpoint and experience differ depending on which side of colonialism and racial discrimination we land. Those who look like the colonizer have a softer landing. Whites were not enslaved for 250 years. No. Whites reserved that special suite in hell for blacks. White men are not incarcerated at five times the rate of black men who, after being disproportionately imprisoned, and after being given greater time for lesser crimes, are not, without compromise, restored to their right to vote. Blacks dont seek to gain or to maintain political power over whites by suppressing the white right to vote. Whites havent had to fight for all of their civil rights. Per the Economic Policy Institute, in 2019, black unemployment was at least twice as high as white unemployment in 14 states. Black unemployment is roughly 50% higher than that of whites. White men earn more money than white women, and white women earn more money than black women. Whites are safe to sleep in their beds, to leave the doors to their homes unlocked and open, to walk on their streets, to jog around their neighborhoods, to drive in their cars, to park at public rest stops, to camp alone in the woods, to pray in their churches, to have an encounter with a police officer and live to see another day. Blacksnot so much.

***

When conversing with a Dutch friend with whom I share mutual affectionpossibly about Dutch descended Afrikaners long rape and rule of the black South African people, their resources, and their land with impunity, and likely about pervasive American racism which European immigrants absorb, and from which they benefitshe said, You hate me because Im white!

No, I said, I hate you because youre stupid.

Often, when addressing white racism, white people forfeit common sense. Like my friend, many otherwise intelligent white people suddenly go dense, deaf, dumb, blind, amnesiac, and numb when it comes to acknowledging and dismantling ongoing white supremacy and Apartheid.

Theres work to do. Part of the work is being willing to look for our blind spots with humility and with integrity. It starts with looking at the self where supremacist ideology is internalized, where racism has been socialized. Part of the work is to educate oneself and to inform others. Part of the work is to hold ones own feet to fire.

Please watch: Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay.

Please read: Nelson Mandelas autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, and The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander; and Are Prisons Obsolete? by Prof. Angela Davis, and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

***

Like my maternal great grandmother, maternal grandmother, mother, and sister, I too have lived under the duress of navigating multiple layers of bedrock racism. Living life within a system of white control, systemic injustice, and social terror targeted at African Americans takes a toll. The enduring stress of job, food, housing, and healthcare insecurity that are driven by racism, as well as ongoing social terror, can affect a persons health. They have affected mine.

I am near the age my mother was when, in 1998her illness exacerbated by a lifetime lived in the bit and under the bridle of political, economic, and social bias and constraintshe died after refusing an operation that might have saved her life. Due to Americas palpable history of medical Apartheid, our family code was and is: Barring a life-threatening illness, we dont have surgery.

In America, in the mid-1800s, Alabama surgeon Dr. James Marian Sims, known as the Father of Modern Gynecology, developed his trailblazing surgical techniques and his pioneering tools by research experiments conducted on enslaved black women without anesthesia. It was believed that black people did not feel as much pain as white people. This was white supremacy and medical Apartheid. Lionizing James Marian Sims condones medical Apartheid.

The Public Health services, now associated with the Center for Disease Control, conducted The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment from1932 until 1972a 40-year Study of Untreated Syphilis in African American Men. For 40 years many people colluded with and contributed to this study of untreated syphilis in impoverished black men, notwithstanding its effect on the black mens black wives, and on their black children. This was white supremacy and medical Apartheid. Participating in white supremacy and medical Apartheid is white supremacy and medical Apartheid.

In 1951, while Henrietta Lacks, a black woman, was being treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins, doctors took extra cervical samples from her without her knowledge and without her consent. She died at Johns Hopkins at the age of 31. Her cells, named HeLa cells, revolutionized the medical field. Billions of dollars in profit have been made from the research of the cells, and none of it has been shared with her family. Collusion with white supremacy and medical Apartheid is white supremacy and medical Apartheid.

Proponents of Eugenicsthe application of principles of genetics and heredity to improve the human racepushed for and won legislative policy in its support. The Eugenics Movementbased, in part, on a belief in white racial superioritywas funded by corporate foundations and underwritten by federal programs. For several decades, ending in about 1973, the Eugenics Movement targeted African American women on which to perform coerced and forced sterilizations and hysterectomies. This was also done on Hispanic and Native American women. It was used as a means of controlling undesirable populations that not only included people of color, it further included people with mental illness, people with disabilities, uneducated people, and poor people. (Conversely, in the 1950s in Idaho, some white women needed the consent of their husbands in order to have their tubes tied.) This was white supremacy and medical Apartheid.

Historical trauma caused by slavery, passed down through generations, and triggered by ongoing injustice is distressing. Because of medical distrust, I have postponed and/or avoided certain medical treatments for many years. Recently, I changed my Primary Care Physician in part because, though Im old enough to have been her mother; though I asked her multiple times not to do so, though I explained to her the negative cultural implicationsmy young white female physician couldnt managein a professional settingto stop calling me girl. Bias at worst, stupiditya lack of common senseand insensitivity at best. Theres work to do. Part of dismantling white supremacy: Safe, quality, unbiased healthcare for African Americans.

Please read this: Just Medicinea Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care by Dayna Bowen Matthew, and Black and Blue: The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racism by Prof. John Hoberman.

***

Historically, blacks were not allowed to learn to read or write. Education threatened the institution of slavery; education challenges white supremacy; education helps to dismantle Apartheid. My mother began teaching me to read and write early. My commitment to education is lifelong. Virginia Woolf said, A woman must have money and a room of her own... I say: A modern woman needs a degree; most women of color need two; a black woman needs three.

I was alive during Brown vs. the Board of Education, when the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. I bussed across Houston and was one of a few who integrated a wealthy white high school. We learned almost nothing about the contributions of people of color in my history class. Many Americans dont know our American history because American white people wrote, whitewashed, and published our textbooks. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has produced a documentary, Black Patriots: Heroes of the Revolution, which highlights some of the black patriots who helped to establish America, yet who were minimized, marginalized, written out of our history. We must seek to learn our true American history, so that we can reckon with it, and correct for our future.

For the past two years at Boise State University, where I am a student in the Creative Writing Program, Ive taken one class, during one semester, with one other black person. In two years I know of no black or indigenous adjunct, lecturer, professor, or administrator in the Department of Theatre, Film, and Creative Writing. I am aware that the extraordinary Dr. Mamie Oliver was a professor in the Department of Social Work at Boise State, that she was the first African American professor at Boise State, and that she taught there from 1972 to 1988. But, during the past two years, Ive briefly met only one black instructor on the university campushe was in the music department. In two years' time, Ive met only one black administrator at Boise State. She, a veteran, was the Director of Equity and Inclusion. A month later, she was gone.

American structural oppression is standard; its mainstream. Last year, in one of my classes, I was introduced to a film that is foundational to the American film industryTheBirth of a Nationoriginally titled, The Clansman. It was the first movie screened in the White House. Seen there by Woodrow Wilson in 1915, he declared, Its like writing history with lightning. This film is taught in American cinema courses, influenced American society, inspired the revival of the KKK, is rabid with racism, debases black people, and glorifies white supremacy. I, the only black person in the class, chose to watch the film in its entirety. Afterwards, I was ill for two days. Although technically significant, and chosen by the Library of Congress to be preserved in the National Film Registry, the film is damaging. Gone with the Wind, another American film classic, is rife with classic white supremacy and classic American racism.

Im not sure that I want to read arguable racism in the works of novelists such as Mississippian William Faulkner, or that I need to read anti-Semitism in the works of poets such as Idahoan Ezra Pound. But if such work must be taught, the benefit should far outweigh the offense, and it would be wise to consider who makes that determination, and how such works are taught. The Pieces I Am, a 2019 documentary on the life and work of black American Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison, offers a view into American literary Apartheid, as well as a view into Morrisons workaround.

White supremacy and Apartheid have been the American standard. Broadway theatre started in 1750. The first play written by an American black woman that debuted on Broadway in its over 200-year history was A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959. Nearly 20 years thereafter, from 1976 until 1978, I acted in the second play written by a black American woman to be performed on Broadwaythe original Broadway production of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange.

For educators and administrators there is much work to do to decolonize our educational system. I place faith in my Millennial and Generation Z adjunct instructors, and graduate student teaching assistants. I am particularly inspired by peersthe astute and generous Caitlin McGowan and Jacob Robartsboth of whom write, and both of whom will teach. I believe that they will continue to educate themselves on white supremacy and on racism, and that they will do their part, in their spheres of influence, to decolonize the classroom. After we verbalize anti-racism sentiment, and write anti-racism statements, we must take anti-racism action, and maintain it in existence over time. Because of Caitlin and Jacob, and others like them, I take heart.

Please read this: Racism and EducationCoincidence or Conspiracy? by Professor David Gillborn.

I, Ris Kevalshar Collins, am committed to love, to equity, and to justice. For those who stand for equal justice, there is work to do.

Here is the original post:

Challenging American Apartheid, Championing American DecolonizationWith Love, and More - Idaho Press-Tribune

Fast fashion and a lockdown boom in online ordering has exacerbated poor working conditions at a UK factory and could have helped fuel a local spike in COVID-19 cases, it has been claimed.

The organisation Labour Behind The Label (LBTL) says a company which supplies online retail giant Boohoo has been found to be exploiting workers, paying illegal wages and failing to safeguard its employees against COVID-19.

Workers told Euronews that the factories have not been made COVID safe: "it was as normal as before [coronavirus]. No gloves, no masks, no social distance, nothing at all," says Nick Sakhizadah, a textile factory worker.

During an interview with our correspondent, some of the factory owners attempted to intimidate Sakhizadah and the other workers for "telling the truth", which he says is part of the problem.

Colin Whyatt, regional organiser for trade union GMB in Leicester, believes around two thousand factories employ illegal workers which he says could mean tens of thousands of illegal employees who are vulnerable to trafficking and modern slavery.

Whyatt added that at an ethical trade conference he attended four years ago, auditors admitted to turning a blind eye to these poor conditions because of a loss in revenue if the factory was forced to close.

Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe told Euronews that the government could have stepped in earlier. She says: "I just wonder, if this was a different community whether help would have been provided much sooner so that workers weren't exploited in this way".

The campaign group say Boohoo accounts for 80 per cent of Leicester's capacity and they have for years set garment producers in competition against each other to drive prices down.

LBTL found a very recent order from Boohoo for 1 million pairs of cycling shorts to be produced in Leicester for 1.80 per pair (unit) including packaging, labelling, factory overheads, labour costs and delivery. These shorts have been reportedly sold on Boohoo and its sister site Pretty Little thing for between 3-10.

At the same time, Sakhizadah says he has been paid considerably less than minimum wage during lockdown. He says: "I'm working for free and taking this big risk".

Megan Lewis from LBTL says: "Brands like Boohoo make a huge profit by pushing prices as low as they can, and this is why they have allowed the situation to go on like this.

She adds: "For too long, brands have distanced themselves from their suppliers, when they know that exploitation is an inevitable outcome from their poor purchasing practices demanding low prices and fast production times.

Susan Harris, Director of Legal Services at GMB, says it is not compulsory for an employer to admit a trade union into the premises. In addition, Harris says there is often mistrust and a reluctance from workers in this industry to join a trade union:

If people were encouraged to join unions, if we had the right to visit workplaces and have access to workers to question if there was any failure by the employer to comply with legislation - whether that relates to Health and Safety, wages etc - then this type of exploitation would be reduced or eliminated.

Data from the campaign group details that around a third (33.6%) of workers in Leicester's garment industry are born outside of the UK and most of the workers come from minority backgrounds.

Workers who are not born in the UK are more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation due to their immigration status or language skills.

"If people don't know their rights, they don't know that they can complain or know how to complain. And if you then factor into that lack of knowledge with the fact that many of these workers will not have English as their mother tongue then the conditions exist for unscrupulous people to exploit workers," outlines Harris.

We need better legislation and regulation within the industry and the government must step up to make these changes," says Lewis from LBTL. "The government must also take responsibility for the wider economic and racial inequalities that leave workers vulnerable to such exploitative labour."

LBTL are now calling on Boohoo to commit to transparency and to take more responsibility of their supply chain.

"Boohoo must commit to paying living wages for all workers in their supply chain and crucially, they should commit to supply chain transparency. Other brands have published lists of factories and workshops where their clothes are made, and Boohoo must do this too.

Excerpt from:

Leicester lockdown unveils the truth about its fast fashion industry - Euronews

Viewpoint by Dr Alon Ben-Meir

The writer is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

NEW YORK (IDN) The rage, desperation, and determination which continue to bring tens of thousands of Americans to the streets in protest against racism and injustice hopefully will be just the beginning.

They are sick and tired of systemic racism against Black people, of bigotry at the top, crude discrimination, police brutality, a prejudiced criminal justice system, economic disparity, and societys robbing black people of experiencing real freedom and equality. Hypocritically, white people blame the victims of racism for their own plight, claiming that Black people would do better in life if they were only willing to work harder.

We are now reaping the harvest of the seeds of racism and discriminationthe devaluation of black life. The whole socio-economic and cultural system is lopsided, as it lacks the fundamentals of justice and equality. The pandemic provided the wakeup call that pointed out the ugly tradition of subjugation of the Black community, which sadly did not stop with the end of slavery, but continued in the wanton indifference to their pain and agony, our uncanny negligence, and our failure to understand what they are really experiencing.

Ingrained Racism

The fact that Black people were slaves, and the carefully cultivated myth that slaves were always obedient and happily served their white masters, left an indelible imprint on white people that has lasted generations. They maintain that African Americans were born to servitude and hence they do not qualify for equal treatment, equal opportunity, and equal status.

Films such as D.W. Griffiths immensely influential Birth of a Nation (1915), which helped to reestablish the Ku Klux Klan, also reinforced the racist stereotype that Black men are unintelligent and an inherent danger to the white communityspecifically white women. When on May 25 (the same day George Floyd was killed) a white woman, Amy Cooper, called the cops on a Black man, Christian Cooper, who was birdwatching in Central Park, she was tapping into the long history of that racist trope. To put it plainly, Black lives are simply not valued the way white lives are, as white people consciously or subconsciously view Black man as both sub- and supra-human, threatening, and expendable.

Thus, due to this entrenched prejudice, any activity, however innocent, in which a Black man is engaged in invites suspicion, alarm, and often puts the life of Black men in danger such as 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot and killed by white residents of the suburban Georgia neighborhood he was jogging in. The mayor of Minneapolis bluntly said Being black in America should not be a death sentence. Racism, to be sure, is so ingrained it flows in the veins of many Americans without notice.

The insidious, learned biases pitting white against Black Americans directly leads to the treating of Black Americans as second-class citizens and suppression by white Americansa necessary ingredient that satisfies their ego and elevates their self-worth. Although the majority of white Americans may not be white supremacists, they certainly hold onto their privileges in all walks of life as they view their relation with Black people (and other people of color) as a zero-sum game, as if a Black mans gain invariably chips away at a white mans privileges.

Wanton discrimination

Racial prejudice in America takes a heavy toll on African Americans, which translates to discrimination in all walks of life, including education, job opportunities, professional advancements, and medical treatment, especially maternal health. Black workers receive 22 percent less in salary than whites with the same education and experience; Black women receive even less34.2 percent.

According to a University of Chicago/Duke 2016 study, when factoring in all African American and white men (inclusive of those incarcerated or otherwise out of the workforce), the racial wage gap is the same as it was in the 1950s. Even where racial discrimination should not occur, in medical treatment, when Black patients access medical care, doctors regularly prescribe fewer pain medications and believe Black patients feel less pain than white patients, even among veterans seeking care.

Whereas Black men have served in the military and fought and died alongside white soldiers in every war since the Revolutionary War (when 5,000-8,000 Black soldiers fought against the British), they had to face the revulsion of discrimination and segregation while still serving in the military, hardly recognized for acts of bravery. Indeed, until 1948after the end of WWIIthe US military was entirely segregated. While the top brass of the military, who are mostly white, like to claim that military institutions are colorblind, the reality is that racism and discrimination remain extensive problems even in the U.S. military.

Police brutality

Although police brutality against Black men in particular, which instigated the current protests, is a known phenomenon, police killings of Black men continue unabated. It can and has taken different forms historically including harassment and intimidation, assault and battery, torture and murder, and even complicity with the KKK. Often, police officers approach any situation connected to a Black man with apprehension and fear. White police officers see threats where they do not exist; they are too quick to draw and as quick to fire to kill.

Here are just a few glaring examples: a Black man taking a nap in a car in a parking lot was shot dead. Another pulled over in a traffic stop was shot and killed in front of his girlfriend and her daughter. A Black man sitting in his home eating ice cream was shot dead by his neighbor, an off-duty white police officer. A Black woman playing video games with her nephew was shot and killed through her window. A Black woman (and EMT) sleeping in her home was shot eight times when officers entered her apartment executing a no-knock warrant.

It is rare for a prosecutor to decide to charge a police officer, especially because they often know each other and have developed close working relationships. Even Internal Affairs divisions of police departments, which ostensibly exist to investigate and report misconduct among officers, have widely conducted sub-standard investigations and failed to identify problem officers who commit wanton abuse.

This cultural pattern enables police officers like Derek Chauvin, Daniel Pantaleo, and Nathan Woodyard to commit the heinous crime of slowly squeezing the life out of George Floyd (MN), Eric Garner (NY), and Elijah McClain (CO). As troubling is the fact that police officers have been known to give false testimony in court, whether to avoid punishment for their own criminal and/or unconstitutional actions, to ensure a conviction, or for other reasons.

Disproportionate incarceration

Although the US judiciary is considered to be just and impartial, in most court hearings race is present albeit it is not spelled out. It is as though Black men inherently have no equal rights and to this day, 230 years since the constitution was written, injustices still exist in both federal and state courts.

Blacks are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whiteswhile they are 13 percent of the total US population, they constitute 40 percent of the total male prison population. The mass incarceration of African Americans in this country has created what sociologist Becky Pettit, citing the novelist Ralph Ellison, calls invisible menthe millions of black men in the American penal system. Prison inmates are not included in most data-collecting national surveys, so these men are effectively invisible to social institutions, lawmakers, and most social science research. It is almost as if they do not exist, they do not count; their reality is ignored, neglected, and brushed aside.

A staggering 75 percent of young Black men will be imprisoned at some point in their lives. These statistics can only begin to convey the enormity of the injustice that is being compounded day after day. Pettits book reveals that penal expansion has generated a class of citizens systematically excluded from accounts of the American populace. This exclusion raises doubt about the validity of even the most basic social facts and questions the utility of the data gathered for the design and evaluation of public policy and the data commonly used in social science research. As a consequence, we have lost sight of the full range of the American experience.

Economic disparity

Economic disparity between white and Black Americans is glaring, and reverberates through generations of Black families. Economic exclusion is the source of inequality. It is caused by a confluence of factors, beginning with nearly 250 years of chattel slavery (during which Black families were torn apart, let alone able to accumulate wealth), to sharecropping and unrestrained lynchings, to 90 years of Jim Crow laws, to redlining neighborhoods on demographic lines.

All of these factors are manifested today in hiring decisions, property valuation, mortgage applications, interest charges, and even how credit scores are tabulated. The average white familys net worth is more than ten times greater than a Black family. Economic disparity, to be sure, is the mother of all evil in the lives of Black people.

A poor Black man cannot pay for decent housing, cannot pay for health care, and cannot afford to send his kids to higher education, which directly impacts his social standing and professional competency. Thus, he has to settle for menial jobs, low wages, and little or no prospect of ever climbing out of the vicious cycle. The saddest thing of all is that he is blamed for his own dilemma, as if the conditions and lack of opportunities in which he lives has nothing to do with his sorry state of affairs.

The bigotry of the leadership

During the past four years, racism in America has been on the rise and in no small measure Trump, the Racist-in-Chief, has made race a campaign issue from the very start. He began his political campaign by branding Hispanics as rapists; in his presidency he banned Muslims from entering the US, cruelly separated children from their parents at the borders, described white supremacists in Charlottesville as very fine people, and celebrated this 4th of July by defending Confederate statues.

Trumps racism against Blacks in particular is nothing new. It was there in 1973 when Trump Management Inc. was sued by the Department of Justice for housing discrimination against African-American renters. We could see it in 1989, when he took out a full-page advertisement in four New York City newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty over the Central Park Five, who were wrongfully convicted and sent to prison.

Trump refuses to apologize for that, even though, as Innocence Project founder Barry Scheck said, by calling for the reinstitution of the death penalty, it contributed to an atmosphere that deprived these men of a fair trial. He also refused to apologize for his persistent perpetuation of the birther lie that Obama was not born in the US.

Trumps Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore was laden with racially divisive and partisan rhetoric, but that makes no difference to many conservative Republican leaders and his misguided supporters who follow him blindly. They wrap themselves with the flag as a sign of American patriotism, when in fact their patriotism is defined by their racism and intolerance of people of color.

Although some Republican leaders disagree with him on race, they are fearful of his anger to say anything publicly, lest they risk losing their power or position. Sadly, their silence suggests consent, which only reinforces Trumps racism. With Trump, as with much of the country, racism is deeply ingrained, something he refuses to admit.

Although racism did not start when Trump came to power as it is imbued into Americas history and culture and it will not end with his departure from office, his overt racism brought to focus racism in America. The persistent protests reveal the deep sense of frustration with a president who fans the flame of racism, who sees the country as his own enterprise, who does whatever he wants to serve his own interests. He is cruel, cunning, and careless about the pain and suffering of Black America; he cannot count on their political support and hence completely rejects their outcry.

Unlike any other protests in the past against racism, this years protests have had a greater impact in part due to the spread of the coronavirus and its disproportionate impact on Black people, who are being infected and dying at higher rates than whites. That, and in conjunction with a presidential election, provides a rare opportunity to start a process of mitigating racism in earnest.

What will be necessary, however, is for the protests to persist through Election Day in the hopes that the Racist-in-Chief will be ousted. Only then we stand a better chance that a new day will dawn and a new administration will commit to relentlessly addressing the plight of Black people for the sake of all Americans, especially because the day when America will have a majority of people of color is fast approaching.

Although there are scores of measures that must be taken and many years and huge financial resources to make a discernible change for the better in the life of Black Americans, we have no choice but to start, regardless of how insurmountable the obstacles and the culture of resistance to change. It will take the collective efforts, determination, and consistency of local, state, and federal authorities to begin this process if we ever want to reach a modicum of equality.

The work to change the culture of innate racism in America will be long and hard, but we must not shy away from it. As a small start, the immediate focus should be on educating students about Black history, changing the police culture and training, investing in housing in black neighborhoods, offering educational support for young Black boys and girls starting at elementary age, up to providing free education for them to attend college or professional schools, and providing job opportunities and equal pay to give them the chance to climb up over time the social ladder.

The continuing demonstrations throughout the country suggest not only the obviousthat Black lives matterbut that racism is consuming America from within, that injustice affects the perpetrators just as much as the victims, that enough is enough. [IDN-InDepthNews 16 July 2020]

Photo credit: Black Lives Matter

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The Pandemic of Racism in America - IDN InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

First of all, let me say that the Black Country name is nothing to do with race or ethnicity. And the imagery or colours of the Black Country flag are not intended to be linked to slavery.

But that doesnt mean questions can not be asked of the Black Country region or the symbolism behind the Black Country flag. We shouldnt blindly beat our chest in defence of both the flag or the region without knowing its history.

The Black Country is a region of England which today covers the metropolitan boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton.

The region was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and its landscape was dominated with coal mines, iron foundries, glass factories, brick works and many small industries for as far as the eye could see.

Chimneys of factories, furnaces and small home forges bellowed out smoke and soot to heavily pollute the air.

The pollution filled the sky and the region which was described as 'Black by Day' and 'Red by Night' by Elihu Burritt became known as the Black Country.

In 1712 the Black Country changed the world when it became the first place to harness the power of steam with the Newcomen Engine.

In 1828 the working class people of the region built the Stourbridge Lion which was the first steam locomotive to run in the USA, they made the glass and iron for the Crystal Palace and its great exhibition in 1851 and also forged the anchors and chains for great ships like the Titanic.

The hard work by Black Country people changed the world and shaped the modern world we see today but that is not to say that the region and its work force did not produce items for the slave trade, or that we should dismiss the regions links to the enslavement.

African men and women were undoubtedly shackled and chained on the Atlantic crossing with items that were produced in the Black Country. Once they reached their destination, they would be held captive with Black Country made products of various descriptions.

There is evidence of Black Country products marketed specifically for the slave market with items listed as Negro Collars and African Chains. Enslavement was big business and rich men capitalised on that industry to make as much money as possible.

The rich people who marketed these products did not care about the slaves that their products were used on and they did not care about the people who made the products either.

The working-class people of the Black Country were extremely poor. Life expectancy in the region in 1841 was 17 years old. People worked from the age they could walk, and some died before they became adults. There was no luxury for our ancestors and there was no profit. They worked hard in hope they would live a little longer than the people dying around them. If cholera didnt kill them then hard work would.

The working class people of the Black Country never profited from the slave trade, in fact there is little evidence to suggest that they even knew what their products were used for.

When modern Black Country folk show pride for the history of our region, it is the working-class people we are proud of. We dont take pride in the starvation wages that our ancestors were paid or the squalid conditions they were forced to work in or the rich who profited from the slave trade. We celebrate their hard work and the fight they put up to ensure the first ever minimum wage, we respect the courage shown by people uniting and laying down of their tools to ensure women were paid equally.

This is not a case of pitting the plight of our Black Country ancestors against the horrendous treatment of the people who were enslaved. It is saying that in many cases working class Black Country people and black slaves were victims of the very same people who profited from their labour.

To cause offence intention is important and there is no intention to offend anyone with the Black Country flag. If I am honest most people I speak to are not offended.

The Black Country flag was designed by 12-year-old Gracie Sheppard in 2012. It features a glass cone to represent the glass industry of the Black Country. The cone is flanked by black and red panels inspired by Elihu Burritts famous description of the area black by day and red by night, and the chain across the centre represents the chain industry in the region but is also to symbolise the linking up of the different communities.

I believe we should all take time learn about the remarkably interesting history of our region and it should be open for discussion.

Each year we celebrate Black Country Day on July 14th. We have a Black Country anthem and Black Country flag.

I am not an expert, just someone who loves the Black Country and exploring our history.

I am proud to fly the Black Country Flag.

Steve Edwards

Read more here:

Black Country Festival founder on the meaning of the Black Country flag - expressandstar.com

Fringe Arts by Mzwandile Poncana Published July 17, 2020 |

In one of the opening scenes of Haiti Betrayed, a Haitian man stands alone outside of the Canadian embassy in the arid landscape of Port-au-Prince, yelling out in frustration.

His cries are clearly directed towards the Canadian government and its presence in Haiti.

With his back towards the camera, he screams: We dont have anything against Canada! Why are you against us? Why do you hate Haitians?

This is a pinnacle moment, as the film spends its entire length tackling these questions.

Cinema Politica is a non-profit media organization, founded in 2003, that regularly screens political, alternative and radical films at Concordia. At the screening for the film Haiti Betrayed, one of the researchers involved in the making of the film, Nik Barry-Shaw, mentioned it was created within an eight-year process.

That broad time-period is unsurprising, as the film effortlessly weaves together various moments in 21st century Haitian history.

The film is calmly narrated, yet abrasiveand centres Canadas responsibility over Haitis current political-state as something that has been historically ignored, but now cannot be turned away from.

Director Elaine Brire said the film began accidentally. Whilst on a photography project in Haiti in 2009, she had been taking photos in Cham Mas, a major square in Port-au-Prince, when a poor man approached her. The man mistook her for a journalist, and told her she didnt know what was really happening in Haiti. There had been UN soldiers patrolling the area, so she neared him so they could speak more discreetly.

They are killing us! he told her. We are poor people. Tell them to stop. And then he began to cry and walked away. Brire said this moment shook her to the core, and her film was consequently a response to this mans plea.

As the film recounts, Haiti began as a slave colony and became the worlds first Black republic after the Black Haitian slave armies defeated Napoleons French army in 1804. Encountering freedom in a world that was still riddled with slavery, Haiti was shut out of the worlds economy.

As Brian Concannon, the executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, mentions in the film, if Haiti was allowed to succeed, it would have proven to the world that Black people were competent enough to run their own country.

Because the West feared slave revolts in their own nations, they attempted to discredit Haiti by either ignoring or exploiting itFrance demanded Haiti pay it 150 million francs in exchange for its freedom, and America only acknowledged Haiti as a state 58 years after its independence.

Then, on top of still dealing with the extreme debt Haiti was paying to the French government, Haiti was obliterated by discriminatory foreign practices in the early 21st century.

This included the U.S. invasion of the country from 1915-1920, where U.S. marines gained control over Haitis national bank and customs operations. This also included the Haitian Massacre by the Dominican Republic in 1937where the racist Dominican president, Rafael Trujillo, massacred up to 35,000 Haitian immigrants at the border because he saw them as racially and culturally inferior, and therefore an inhibitor to the growth of the Dominican economy.

After the massacre, Trujilio was ordered by the U.S. to pay Haiti reparationsbut not all of it was paid, and, due to corruption by the Haitian government, not all of the funds paid reached the families of victims.

Courtesy Elaine Brire

The documentary is conscious of this broader history of Haiti, whilst it specifically centres on Canadas involvement in Haitis political state. The film is particularly concerned about how Canada helped to topple Haitis first democratically elected government.

The elected administration was the political organization, Lavalas and it was headed by President Jean-Paul Aristide, who won the election in 1991. In the film, Patrick Elie, Haitian Secretary of State for Public Security from 1994 to 1995, with stars in his eyes, describes the Lavalas administration as one that wasnt pursuing greater political power for its own interests, but as one that consistently pushed forward what the people of Haiti truly wanted.

Haiti at this time had an impoverished majority, and Aristide was mostly popular because he spent his career advocating for this group.

One of his main priorities was to redistribute the nations wealth in a more equitable way.

The Lavalas administration had numerous successesHaitian literacy rate increased by 20 per cent, malnutrition dropped by 12 per cent and 138 new secondary schools were built in 14 years.

Its shameful that the treatment of Haiti is disguised as helping Haiti. Elaine Brire.

During this time, there was an extreme power imbalancethis inequality was due to the country being mostly controlled by a small group of wealthy families, according to the film.

These families, backed by multinational corporations, opposed the Lavalas government and its dedication to forcing tax collections from the rich.

The disapproval eventually led to the forced removal of the Lavalas administration from office, twicethe first time with the help of the Haitian army in 1991, and then, again, with the help of the U.S., France, and Canada in 2004.

As well as France and the U.S., Canada had pernicious reasons for supporting the 2004 coup that led to the ousting of the Lavalas government, according to the film. (France had felt threatened by Aristide in 2003after he gave a speech demanding that France pay Haiti reparations of 21 billion US dollarsthe modern day equivalent of the 150 million francs that Haiti was forced to pay France after the end of slavery.) Canada has since used the coup as a way to further exploit Haiti.

An example of this exploitation is the Canadian company Gildan, whose workers in Haiti made less than a dollar a day whilst the company gained millions. The Aristide government attempted to double the minimum wage but this was not seen as popular to some of the rich elites. The exploitation of Haitian workers by Canadian multinational corporations therefore continued.

In the film, the revelations of Canadian complicity hit viewers like a brick, and whenever its done, its accompanied with an ominous audio back-track that rouses feelings of suspiciousness and unease. Its similar to the music youd hear in true crime dramas; its as if the film is sonically replicating the clandestine, stealthy nature of Canadian foreign policy.

Another repeated feature that permeates the film is its fearless attitude towards the presentation of violence. Images of brutal attacks against Hatians, lifeless mutilated bodies lying in the streets, burning vehicles; these are all casually shown without warning, in a bland, understated and emotionless manner. This seems strategic, as it mirrors the indifference foreign nationals express towards the suffering of Haitihow ignorance has become more normalized than intervention.

Brire said she was selective about the violence she chose to include. It was imperative to include an accurate example of the brutality without being too gratuitous, she said.

Because the film focuses mainly on events around the Aristide administration, it doesnt completely extend to Canadas current complicity in Haitis political state. The Mose administration came into power in 2016. The poor majority have largely protested his regime for its fuel hikes, corruption, high rates of unemployment, spiking inflation, currency devaluation, and extrajudicial killings by government officials.

Ottawa, however, supports the government and its repressive police force. Canadian officials have blamed any violence on protesters, and have told them to resort to ballot-boxes and voting instead of protesting. This is ironic, as Canadian officials took part in election interference when they raised funds in order to exclude the Lavalas party from running in the 2010 Haitian elections.

The Mose administration itself was brought into power through voter suppression. One in five eligible voters votedhe therefore only received 600,000 votes in a country made up of 10 million citizens. After protests arose due to his election, Canada released a statement defending him.

Canada has repeatedly ignored the violence of the Mose administration. Perhaps the most egregious example of this violence is in November 2018, when the U.N. confirmed involvement by the Haitian government in a massacre that left up to 71 people dead in Saline, a neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.

According to an article in Ricochet, Canadian police have also provided support and training to the violent forces that have maintained Moses rule, and have remained silent on it.

When asked if the film resonates with the current turbulence around the Black Lives Matter movement, Brire agrees there is a relation, as Canada has become a full-fledged member of the club that keeps the boot on Haitis neck and doesnt let them breathe. She acknowledges how the histories of Haiti and Black Lives Matter are both rooted in colonialism, and how Haitis suffering is rooted in its existence as the worlds first Black republic.

Its shameful that the treatment of Haiti is disguised as helping Haiti, said Brire.

I wonder when we are going to let go of punishing Haiti every time they try to bring a modicum of social justice to their long-suffering people.

At the end of the film, were circled back to the man yelling outside the Canadian embassy, in the dusty, open terrain of Port-au-Prince.

We are tired, he chants. The Haitians arent against you! Why are you against the Haitians? Why do you support the forces against the people? he asks.

The film ends thereleaving the audience, together with the man, begging for an answer.

*The film Haiti Betrayed is available for rent through the Cinema Politica On Demand Service. It can be accessed here.

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