Category Archives: Black Lives Matter

Republican attempts to gain political support by promoting racist fear and hatred, reflexively siding with police in confrontations with African Americans and denouncing Black Lives Matter demonstrations are a prominent feature of our political landscape. But they're also nothing new. In many ways, the battle lines of 2022 can be seen forming in 1964. A letter published 58 years ago this week in the New York Times can help explain the underlying issues, both then and now.

As President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2, 1964, he called upon Americans to "close the springs of racial poison." Two weeks later, on the same night that Sen. Barry Goldwater accepted the Republican presidential nomination with an explicit endorsement of extremism, a 15-year-old African American was shot and killed in Harlem by a New York City police officer. The incident began after the white superintendent of a group of apartments turned a hose on a group of Black kids who often sat on the steps to the buildings. According to them, the superintendent shouted at them, "Dirty n***ers, I'll wash you clean." They responded by throwing bottles and garbage-can lids at the super, who retreated inside one of the buildings. A boy not involved in the original incident, James Powell, pursued him, and when Powell exited the building he was shot and killed by an off-duty policeman.

That led to an almost immediate confrontation between neighborhood young people and police. Over the following days, these clashes escalated into the first major urban "riot," or "uprising," of the 1960s. (Those two nouns were used by different sides to describe the same phenomena, the former by most white people, the latter by Black people and, as the decade went on, a growing number of whites on the left.)

By the night of July 18, thousands of Black people were in the streets of Harlem, breaking windows, looting stores and shouting at police, "Killers! Killers!" When a police officer tried to disperse one of the crowds by yelling, "Go home, go home," people in the crowd responded, "We are home, baby."

Over the next few weeks, northern urban uprisings spread to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn (then largely Black and low-income, today a zone of intense gentrification) to Rochester, New York; to Jersey City, Paterson and Elizabeth in New Jersey; and then to Chicago. At the end of August, immediately following the Democratic convention in Atlantic City, serious disorder erupted less than 60 miles west, in Philadelphia. As in the other cases, the underlying cause was a series of charges of police brutality, and the fraught or openly hostile relationship between cops and the African-American community. White policemen beating and killing Black people with impunity was, to be sure, nothing new in 1964. Nor was it unprecedented for such incidents to spark rebellion in the Black community, including property destruction and sometimes violence.

But street-level resistance by Black residents became much more common in 1964 and throughout the ensuing years of the '60s. As historian Elizabeth Hinton demonstrates in her 2021 book, "America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s," the vicious policing that remains a principal battle line today has been the cause of many outbursts of rebellion by African Americans. White police officers are almost never convicted of murdering a Black person, more than a half-century later. The 2021 murder conviction of the Minneapolis cop who killed George Floyd provides hope for change on this front, but the police killings of Black people have continued, during and after that trial.

The 1964 hopes of Republicans and fears of Democrats about the political effects of racial conflict are also strikingly familiar. President Johnson feared the riots could help Goldwater win the November election. "If we aren't careful, we're gonna be presiding over a country that's so badly split up that they'll vote for anybody who isn't us," White House press secretary George Reedy said to Johnson after the Harlem riot had been going on for a couple of days.

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Much as Democrats do today, Johnson felt the need to condemn the riots while simultaneously emphasizing the centrality of the pursuit of racial equality and justice. On July 20, he issued a statement on the situation in Harlem in which he declared: "In the preservation of law and order there can be no compromise just as there can be no compromise in securing equal and exact justice for all Americans."

The hopes of Republicans and fears of Democrats from 1964 are strikingly familiar. Lyndon Johnson feared the urban riots could elect Goldwater, and felt the need to condemn them while calling for racial justice.

The prospect that white "backlash" might turn the nation against Johnson and to Goldwater did not materialize in 1964 and Johnson was elected in one of the biggest landslides of American political history. It was to be the much larger uprising in the Watts district of Los Angeles in August 1965 which began five days after Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law that would wind up producing the sort of dramatic political backlash that Johnson had feared in 1964.

The causes of the 1964 rioting were brilliantly explained by a Black woman in Brooklyn named Barbara Benson, who wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times after the outbreak. Benson wrote that she wept "at the damage done to this city and the world by the Harlem riots" and was especially concerned that "this rioting may have made a Goldwater victory more likely." But she felt the need to try to explain what leads to rioting. Her words sound all too contemporary more than a half century later:

All minorities recognizable by the color of their skin have experienced the irrational quality of the police force evident in the slaying of the 15-year-old boy. Many of us have been stopped by police and, yes, many frisked for no other reason than that a Negro in a certain neighborhood "seems suspicious."

If there is no "irrational" fear of the black man operating within many on the police force, why is it that intelligent, collegeeducated Negroes like myself simultaneously fear any possible involvement with the police, even for our own protection?

Let no one be deceived. Many Harlem police are sadistic in their administration of the law, insatiable in their beatings, unable to discern men from children, and irrational in their fear of the black man, as well as incapable of telling one black man from another.

There was really no need for the various commissions set up from 1964 through the end of the decade most notably the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders, popularly called the "Kerner Commission," set up by Johnson in 1967 to earnestly search for the underlying causes of urban uprisings. Benson's letter, then as now, pretty much said it all.

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Racism, policing, politics and violence: How America in 2022 was shaped by 1964 - Salon

All right. Here we go.

The opening lines of Ayo Agunbiades song that speaks about and to his late mother, Teresa Ann Ward, capture the musicians philosophy as he strives to impart meaning to life, loss and love. Although many of his songs pay tribute to an imperfect and sometimes painful past, Agunbiades eyes and heart are fixed in one direction: forward.

In a song titled Up, the hip-hop artist recounts a journey that has taken him from an impoverished childhood in Prince Georges County, Maryland, to academic and career achievements that once seemed out of reach:

I fell down sometimes and though it cost me

I couldnt be the best me without the losses, see

All these lessons that I learned made me wise up

They taught me even when Im down keep my eyes up

Today, as a senior academic advisor in the Poole College of Management, hes helping NCState students chart their own paths in uncertain times.

Ive made a career out of working in higher education because of how much I value education and how transformational it has been in my life, he says. When I went to college, I recognized that I needed to be successful there if I didnt want to go back home and sell drugs or pump gas, something like that.

Success in the classroom didnt come easy, but Agunbiade kept moving forward, earning a bachelors in communication and a masters in education.

Getting those degrees was the most gangster thing Ive ever done in my life, because I didnt have anyone ahead of me who took that path, he says.

His journey as a musician began in high school, where he participated in impromptu rap competitions.

Pretty much every day at lunch we would have these freestyle battles, and it was the best part of the day, he says. Somebody starts to hit a beat on the table, and its you versus whoever has the boldness to step up. Its you and your words against theirs, and the winner is the one who can come up with the cleverest lines and just keep the flow going.

Music took a backseat to football in Agunbiades life for a while, but after high school he found his voice and an outlet for his emotions in composing, recording and often producing his own original songs. Hes released two albums, Destiny in 2017 and Destiny Reimagined in 2018, as well as a slew of singles available on streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify. And he appeared on a 2020 album, Deans List, produced by a rap collective called the Great Minds Alliance.

The name he writes and performs under iYo the Philosopher is a nod to his reputation for thinking deeply (or in the words of a friend, overthinking) about his life and the world around him.

A lot of my music is autobiographical, he says. Through music, Im able to process my own feelings and sometimes come out with something that I didnt quite expect. Sometimes, something that was deep in my soul just kind of pours out. I cant keep it all bottled up for so long.

Its more cost-effective than a therapist.

His mothers death in 2010 left Agunbiade struggling to cope with his grief and loss. It was, he says, a dark time.

My mom was my best friend, and it took me a really long time to properly grieve, he says. One thing that helped me through is understanding that even though my mom is no longer here in the flesh, she lives through me. I cannot be me without the impact that she had on my life.

In Teresa Ann Ward, a song celebrating her life, he marvels:

We never had a lot but it felt like plenty

How you raise a good kid in a mad city?

Worked all day, paid bills, made dinner

Even when I lost, had me feeling like a winner

The music video for the song, directed by Joey Gizzi, features the singer TreAlise, whose soulful vocals on the chorus float above Agunbiades somber rapping. The cinema verit work, shot handheld with available light in and around a desolate city park, was named best music video at the 2020 Longleaf Film Festival.

Agunbiade first teamed up with Gizzi in 2017, when the pair worked on a music video for the song Riot, an antiracist anthem inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.

There was a string of Black men getting killed on camera, and I had this song on one of my old mixtapes that dealt with that, he says. I put an ad on Craigslist looking for somebody to shoot the video, and Joey responded. He charged me basically nothing because he was just getting started.

It turned out to be a really good video, but even more interesting is the fact that after that video, Joeys skill and his talent just sort of skyrocketed.

Since then the pair have worked together on several other video projects and won more awards. Its a rewarding collaboration that seems to come easily to both. Ill have an idea and Ill share it with Joey, and hell just take it to the next level, Agunbiade says.

His focus on racism and other social issues in his music reflects his struggle to make sense of the times.

Im a little lost in terms of where we are as a society, he says. It doesnt even feel real; it feels like a dream that maybe one day well wake up from. But theres so much going on, and the tensions are so deep. I dont ever remember a political moment in my lifetime that was so polarized.

People cant hear each other anymore.

Its one of the reasons Agunbiade values his work at NCState, where hes part of a small percentage of Black men in leadership roles. Working as an academic advisor gives him an opportunity to counter racial stereotypes and support the schools efforts to promote a welcoming environment for everyone.

Most of my students dont look like me, he says. And some have told me that its their first time interacting with a Black man in a position of authority. So I get to introduce them to someone who is supportive, reliable, accountable all these good things, but with a different skin color.

For Black students, Agunbiades visibility sends a positive message.

I appreciate that the students who do look like me have someone who actually looks like them on the staff, he says. Because there arent a whole lot of us in the college or across the university.

Not all of Agunbiades music deals with weighty issues or unresolved emotions. Butterfly, a catchy 2021 single, is a sweet and sometimes spicy ode to his wife, Rachel. The couple met working together in the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes.

Girl, youre so fly like a butterfly

I couldnt let you fly to another guy

All up in the sky you be so high

You got the right mind and youre so fine

My life philosophy that theres joy to be found, and we have to find it, he says. No matter what were going through, we have to work our way back to it.

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Rhyme and Reason | NC State News - NC State News

On a block of L.A.'s skid row where the tents cluster corner to corner, theres a store that most people know as the place with a little of everything.

When May and Bob Park took it over in 1995, the store was called Best Market. The Parks tried to stock it all, and if they didnt have it, they were known to drive to the warehouse after hours to get it.

After their son, Danny, joined the business in 2015, he renamed it Skid Row Peoples Market. Its the latest of many names over the years, and the everything store tries to live up to all of them, stocking food, drinks and items geared toward life outdoors, such as drink mix, tents, cups of ice on hot days, warm socks on cold ones.

Danny Park, 38, stands in front of Skid Row Peoples Market in Los Angeles. When his parents took over the store in 1995, it was called Best Market.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Danny wants the store just south of Little Tokyo to be more than its inventory. His new mission statement is hand-painted high up on the wall in English and Korean: A safe space for Skid Row community to heal ourselves and develop healthy identities and, below it, Food is medicine not only for the body, but spiritual connection to history, ancestors and the land.

On a given shift, employees might serve as therapists, social workers, confidants or mediators. The store tries to help customers build self-esteem, express themselves, display their art, even take steps toward building credit.

We all believe, in whatever work we do, that we are doing some kind of good for humanity no matter what it is, Danny said. So why cant that be the product?

Column One

A showcase for compelling storytelling from the Los Angeles Times

The story of why the everything store tries to do so many things has a lot to do with Danny, but it really started long before, on a Saturday morning in 1991, when Korean American shopkeeper Soon Ja Du fatally shot Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old Black girl, at a South Los Angeles liquor store.

Many Angelenos remember Latasha whenever a young Black victim is denied justice. And when they remember Latasha, they also remember it was a Korean shopkeeper who shot her.

A photo of Latasha Harlins, right, who was killed by Korean shop owner Soon Ja Du in 1991, is part of a community altar in Danny Parks Skid Row Peoples Market in Los Angeles.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Danny was a kid then. Now 38, he knows that no matter his intentions, someone will see the store as just another Korean American business profiting from a mostly impoverished Black clientele.

So another thing he wants the store to do is remember that history. Danny keeps a framed photo of Latasha at the front and a printout in his office, taped at eye level when he sits at his desk.

Even if it hurts, even if youre ashamed, Danny said, you have to keep the images close, because thats how we heal. Because by remembering, thats how we learn.

Latashas photo isnt alone. A stately row of framed headshots reminiscent of a Day of the Dead ofrenda meets you at the door. Theres Grandma Bessy, Cecil, Uncle Rock, regular customers who passed away. Next to them, faces grown too familiar: George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, victims of police violence.

Above the register is a set of clay figurines of each member of the store staff made by a customer, Kevin Kidd.

Above the register at Skid Row Peoples Market is a set of claymation figurines of each member of the store staff made by a customer, Kevin Kidd.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The staff is half Korean, half Black, half skid row locals and half Korean immigrants hired through an ad in the Korea Times. The oldest employee is in her 70s, the youngest 35.

And in the narrow closet that serves as Dannys office, swimming under paperwork, is a studio portrait of a Korean American family. Danny, a young man refusing to smile against marble-blue backdrop, stands behind his father, whose suit looks crisp, especially his tie, which somehow accommodates a map of Korea.

Dannys family has operated stores as long as he can remember. His grandfather managed a store when he came to the U.S. in the 1970s, and so did several of his uncles.

We all believe, in whatever work we do, that we are doing some kind of good for humanity no matter what it is.

Danny Park, Peoples Market owner

Sometimes it was a liquor store in Silver Lake, or a laundromat in Gardena, but it was always a business, one small step toward an ever-distant American dream.

Korean Americans owned more than 30% of non-chain liquor stores in Southern California in the early 1990s. In many cases they took over stores previously established by largely Jewish entrepreneurs who were eager to leave the citys south side, where gang violence bled into the fabric of everyday life.

May Park, 67, speaks with a customer in a wheelchair as she works at Skid Row Peoples Market in Los Angeles. May helps run the store with her son, Danny.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

In South Los Angeles, the Korean entrepreneurs met Black communities battling crack and gangs, impoverished by redlining and abandoned by larger retailers for fear of street violence. Robberies were a constant problem, and it was especially dangerous for those rumored to be cooperating with the police, like Soon Ja Dus family.

At least 19 Korean shopkeepers were killed in Southern California in the decade before 1992, largely by Black assailants. But when shopkeepers began to arm themselves, an untold number of their customers became innocent victims too. A few weeks after Latasha died, Lee Arthur Mitchell, a Black man and popular boxing coach, was shot and killed by Tae Sam Park, a Korean American shopkeeper.

Danny was born in 1984, a time when the violence between Korean shopkeepers and their customers was making national headlines. He speaks quietly and is prone to long silences, short sentences and clothing with protest slogans such as Black Lives Matter and No justice, no peace. His face reveals emotion easily, and he listens intently, as if words must be chewed before understood.

He attended UC San Diego and studied sociology, but without much focus. He went to art school, studied graphic design and found a job doing that. A large tattoo of the Gustav Klimt painting Life and Death covers his left forearm. On his right arm are a Dodgers hat, ball and glove for his dad, who always seemed happiest at Dodgers games and a portrait of his grandfather.

Residents pass by as owner Danny Park, center, fist-bumps employee Phillip Kim while waiting for customers at Skid Row Peoples Market in Los Angeles.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

He is sincere to a fault. When he was 27, he jogged the nearly 1,000 miles between Los Angeles and Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., to hand-deliver his application and illustrate his desire to work there. (He got the job.)

He grew up not knowing much about the Harlins case, but the archetype of the racist Korean shopkeeper had become a staple of films and TV shows depicting Black life in cities, most famously in Spike Lees Do the Right Thing.

For example, Danny didnt know that in Dus letter to Judge Joyce Karlin expressing remorse, she offered condolences to Latashas mother, unaware that the mother was dead. Or that a few months before Dus acquittal, another Korean shopkeeper had received jail time for fatally shooting a dog, and that many in the community wondered why a dogs death carried harsher consequences than Latashas.

But he loved hip-hop, and wrote a college essay about how it shaped him. He listened to Tupac and Immortal Technique, loved the movie Dead Presidents and slept in a bedroom with a Martin Luther King Jr. poster on the wall.

Then Michael Brown, an 18-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo. Danny found himself in the streets, attending protests and rallies. For the first time, he learned the details of the Harlins case, and he was ashamed by what he found.

May Park, left, with her son, Danny, at Skid Row Peoples Market in Los Angeles. The Park family has operated the store since 1995. Danny renamed it after he joined the business in 2015.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

On his right forearm, Danny Park has a tattoo of his grandfather, who managed a store when he came to the U.S. in the 1970s. So did several of his uncles.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Danny and his father never talked about these issues. Korean Americans were leaving the liquor store business in droves, and the family was struggling to stay afloat. A screen-printing business flopped, and the Parks filed for bankruptcy. They left their home in Fullerton and moved in with Mays mother in Downey.

And in 1995, they took over the lease for what they named Best Market.

His father drank and from a young age, so did Danny. Bob Park drank mostly because he was angry he often beat Danny and he was angry for the same reason so many immigrant fathers are: because failing at a business in America made him feel like a failure as a man.

Both men struggled with addiction. Danny was arrested three times for public intoxication, he said, and when his dad came to pick him up, he was as likely to weep as to become violent.

Liquor stores, as businesses, offered great risks, painful side effects and few rewards. An uncle and a grandfather lost their businesses, struggled with alcoholism and died by suicide.

For years, all Danny can recall doing was trying to reach greater states of inebriation. He tried sobriety, religion and meditation retreats. He traveled and wrote. Even after landing his dream job, working in design at Nike, he felt restless.

Employee Mark Burton, left, works the cash register as Danny Park stocks the counter baskets with food at Skid Row Peoples Market in Los Angeles.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

At work, he kept thinking about this book he was reading, Father Gregory Boyles Tattoos on the Heart, which speaks of compassion and forgiveness. In his spare time, he volunteered at a soup kitchen.

When his father contracted cancer and died in 2018, it felt like a sign. Danny quit his job at Nike and took over the store.

For the first time in his life, he felt as if he was where he was supposed to be. He had found peace with his father before he died, and wrote about it in a June 2018 Facebook post:

Growing up my dad would every once in awhile tell me its okay for you to cry. If you need to cry, go take time to yourself and cry. And when youre ready, come back. Come back, ready and strong.

Best Market became Skid Row Peoples Market on an overcast morning in 2018. Danny and the staff painted the store a cheerful yellow, though the landlord repainted it in beige to match the rest of the building.

Down came the all-caps RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE and NO REFUNDS signs and up went inspiring words (Joy is an act of resistance) and quotes such as How can we truly be sovereign people if we cannot feed and nourish ourselves?

A woman and a man lie on the sidewalk outside the entrance of Skid Row Peoples Market. Danny Park sees the homeless crisis outside his doors in terms of sickness and a struggle for health in mind and body.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Danny imagined creating a space where he could apply the knowledge gained from a life of trauma and addiction, a place that would be a member of the community and take on the communitys problems.

He sees the homeless crisis outside his doors in terms of sickness and a struggle for health in mind and body. So the best way he can describe what hes trying to do inside the store is thus: to offer medicine in the form of healthful food, kindness, a creative outlet, a supportive work environment or whatever else the day calls for.

We look at these societal problems as failures of individuals, but its not that way, Danny said. Its all an ecological relationship. We are all this one web of light, this collective organism.

Can an open heart find solutions that a police baton and ballot box cannot? Can small interactions at the store stop a disagreement, a fight, a bullet? Save a life?

Danny doesnt know, but he wants to find out.

So whatever the problem, the staff tries to help or at least listen. Sometimes its a phone charge, an address to receive mail, or some advice from the staff, who know the neighborhoods maze of public assistance programs. Some aspiring artists display their work on spare patches of wall, and theres a community bulletin board that anyone can use.

May Park, 67, speaks with a customer in a wheelchair as she works at Skid Row Peoples Market. She was the one who first showed Danny that a store and its customers can be a community.

(Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times)

Jin Kim, 68, restocks shelves at Skid Row Peoples Market. The store tries to be a refuge of civility and safety in a place where both are in short supply.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

But most of all, the store tries to be a refuge of civility and safety in a place where both are in short supply. And the key to that has been Dannys mother, May, and the stores best-known employee, Mark Burton.

May, 67, who shares a ready smile beneath a spray of salt-and-pepper curls, was the one who first showed Danny that a store and its customers can be a community, back when he was small and spent evenings on a stool in the corner.

She treated customers with the care reserved for families, until friendly customers outnumbered the troublemakers. Now even the troublemakers are wrapped around her finger.

Good morning, Mrs. Park, said a thin man in sweats and a durag on a recent weekday. I like your outfit today.

May, in a classy polka dot dress, smiled through her mask.

Over by the door, Burton was holding court as he downed an energy drink. Burton, 35, is a micro-local celebrity who works the register and hands out change with jokes. He stands 6 feet tall and then some, and hes often wearing cornrows, shorts and scrupulously white Nikes.

Employee Mark Burton, 35, looks out over skid row while waiting for customers. He a micro-local celebrity who works the register and hands out change with jokes. He knows everyones name and lectures patrons who end up admitting that they should know better.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Cant wait to get the day started, Burton said. Its gonna be a good day.

He sang the chorus to the R&B song Slow Down to a customer who rushed out and left his groceries at the counter, prompting a snort of laughter. He teases people about their sneakers and commiserates with people about life on skid row.

I realize Im lucky, he said. I get to come to work and have a job. Not everyone gets that.

Burton has lived in skid row for nearly a decade, and he was a regular at the store. One day, a fight broke out while he waited in line. Fights were nothing new to him, so he paid and left. But that day, he turned around.

And all of a sudden, he recalled, I was breaking up the fight and pulled the guy off the other guy.

Once he got to know Danny and his family, he found they had far more in common than he realized.

People, they dont understand and nor do they have the respect to understand. They think these guys are rich, but they take the bus here, Burton said. Were all suffering here, the customers, the staff, even Danny.

Burton knows everyones name. He can throw down a lifetime ban without rancor. He lectures customers who end up admitting that they should know better. He can sense when trouble is brewing and can eject misbehaving customers with just two words: No. Out.

But whenever a customer needs a favor or some special consideration, its Dannys decision. Perhaps a customer is hungry but has no money to buy food, or needs an address to apply for a job. If they can help, Danny usually says yes.

Hey, man, your soup is ready, he told a customer who borrowed some hot water for ramen.

A few minutes later, a customer in a Chicago Bulls jersey handed Burton a dollar. Danny had treated him to a Coke the other day, and he wanted to pay back the favor.

The stores goodwill is often repaid, Danny said. In a crinkled spiral notebook under the register, he has a rudimentary micro-loan program in which customers who are respectful are allowed to run a tab if theyre short a few cents. The amount they can borrow increases to almost $100 if they pay back on time, and if they are respectful.

One day, a woman named Stephanie rolled in a generator and, in a standing deal with the shop, plugged it in to recharge it. Stephanie is the blocks de facto mayor, a woman in her 50s who holds court from a tent on the corner across from Dannys store.

Shes known to some as the Harriet Tubman of skid row, helping to supply tents, food and phone charges to her neighbors. She appreciates what Danny is trying to do, but she says helping people is harder than just being kind, because kindness can run out.

I will help a person every now and then, if its one time or two times, Stephanie said. But if you keep coming back every day, gimme gimme gimme, thats no good.

One day, I asked Danny why he seemed determined to do things the hard way. Lending money to a population of largely homeless addicts cant be profitable. Nor is offering free power and water.

Is it harder? Is it actually harder? I would question that, Danny replied. Do you actually feel better when you have nicer, shinier things, or is there a kind of spiritual emptiness that comes with that?

One day a man ambled through the markets doors, playing the blues on his guitar. He offered no introduction beyond theatrically raised eyebrows and a teasing smile, and he swayed and hammed it up until people started laughing and dancing in line.

The impromptu concert doesnt help them make rent or payroll, but in some ways, it is what the employees work so hard for.

His name is Danny, said Danny, smiling proudly. Hes here like every week.

Changing his parents store has helped Danny realize that his job was not to transcend or disavow the history that has loomed over his life, but to carry it forward.

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How a skid row store faces the tensions in Black-Korean history by discussing its bleakest chapters - Los Angeles Times

The more a congressional investigation reveals about the Jan. 6 insurrection, the more outrageous it is that anyone would try to compare it to the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the nation after George Floyd was murdered.

Its not even apples and oranges. Its apples and tractor trailer parts.

And the fact that an American football coach could still be employed after trivializing the violent assault on our government as nothing more than a dust-up says so much about whats wrong with our country right now.

In the days before the Jan. 6 hearings started, Jack Del Rio, the defensive coordinator of the Washington Commanders, weighed in with a controversial tweet.

Would love to understand the whole story about why the summer of riots, looting, burning and the destruction of personal property is never discussed but this is ??? the coach wrote.

Then he doubled down in remarks to reporters after a team practice.

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Peoples livelihoods are being destroyed, businesses are being burned down no problem, Del Rio said. And then we have a dust-up at the Capitol, nothing burned down and were gonna make that a major deal?

Del Rios specialty is defense, but he sounded more like the offensive coordinator.

Del Rio apologized, was fined $100,000 and deleted his Twitter account, straight out of the lack of accountability playbook.

But the damage was already done.

Add Del Rio to the growing list of big mouths who wrongly assume that exercising their First Amendment right to free speech means saying anything they want without consequences.

Dust-up, he said. Nothing burned down.

Because the one revisited last week by the congressional committee shows an angry lynch mob hellbent on literally hanging Mike Pence, the vice president of the United States, whose fuse-burning boss did all but tie the noose.

Maybe our supporters have the right idea, then-President Donald Trump told staffers at the time, according to U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the vice chair of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6.

What insurrection did Del Rio see?

Because the one revealed in new, behind-the-scenes footage during the hearings showed frenzied rioters and traitors relentlessly assaulting police officers, threatening elected leaders and storming the venerable halls of government.

Shots were fired in the Capitol, where elected officials were huddled under their desks. Insurgents were walking door to door shouting, Where the f--- are they, and Trump won that election.

It was carnage. It was chaos, Cheney said. It was just hours of hand-to-hand combat, hours of dealing with things that were way beyond any law enforcement officer has ever trained for.

At least the Black Lives Matters demonstrators were protesting something real, not some voter fraud lie concocted by the Contriver-in-Chief.

George Floyd died, with a police officers knee in his neck. He was on the ground in handcuffs. Everybody saw it.

Donald Trump lost an election. Nobody stole it from him. He sicced a mob on America, and everybody saw it.

We will never give up, Trump said that day. We will never concede. It doesnt happen. If you dont fight like hell youre not going to have a country anymore.

Apples and oranges. Its more like apples and costume jewelry designs.

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Black Lives Matter and the truth about Jan. 6 - Greensboro News & Record

Back in May, Patrisse Cullors, an activist and one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter Movement, took to Instagram to explain what had taken place outside of her home. According to her, Candace Owens, a conservative influencer, showed up in her neighborhood. Cullors claimed that Ownes, accompanied by a camera crew, was "demanding" that she come outside and answered her questions.

It didn't take long for Owens tosee Cullors crying on camera-- which urged her to issue a response. The political commentator defended her actions and labeled the co-founder as a liar, claiming her narrative was false and that she had no idea she was inside her home at the time.

Not only did Owens speak on the issue, but she also released camera footage of what took place that day. In the clip, Owens kept her composure while talkingto the security guard and she even offered tovacate the premises.

While the issue took place weeks ago, Owens, seemingly, isn't done talking about it. Recently, she appeared on Akademiks'Off The Recordpodcast, a show centered around entertainment, music, and culture. AK reminded the 33-year-old of the incident, to which she responded, "I would never be a person that would show up and be banging on somebody's door."

When speakingabout how she wound up outside of the property in the first place, Owens admitted that it had been a mistake. "There was a bunch of properties that we were visiting," she started, "and I was actually confused when I walked up to it. I thought that... was the community house-- we went to that one right after. They're both just mansions in L.A."

The Connecticut-born activist alsoexpressed her initial reaction to seeing Cullors weeping on social media. "She was on Instagram fake crying, pretending that she had survived some attack, and I'm like, 'Are you kidding me? I couldn't have been nicer,'" she stated.

Check out the clip below.

Excerpt from:

Candace Owens Talks Pulling Up To BLM Mansion & Patrice Cullors' Reaction - HotNewHipHop

This spring marks two years since Louisville, KY, police killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor. Officers shot 36 rounds of ammunition into her home in a bungled raid serving a no-knock warrant, realizing later that the suspect they were looking for was already in custody. The police who shot her could have intervened to save her, but they didnt; in Kentucky, as in most states, police are not obligated to deliver medical aid to people theyve shot or maimed.1

In concurrence with the lynching of George Floyd, Breonnas death sparked nationwide uprisings and prompted vigorous debates about the polices role in public safety. Coalitions like the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) and organizations like Black Visions brought attention to abolitionist arguments that the only way to prevent deaths such as Mr. Floyds and Ms. Taylors is to take power and funding from police and reinvest those resources into other public safety measures.

Breonnas shooting was unusual in that, unlike most police shootings of Black women, it garnered significant media attentionalthough some argue only after the avalanche of news about the death of Mr. Floyd.

Police in America have killed 366 people so far this yearroughly three people a day according to data from Mapping Violence, a nonprofit research group. Their victims include Black women, amongst them Tracy Gaeta, a 54-year-old grandmother who was shot to death on February 22 in Stockton, CA. Ms. Gaeta backed her car into police officer Kyle Riberas police vehicle. In return, Ribera fired 30 rounds into Ms. Gaetas car, killing her. Although Ms. Gaeta was unarmed, Ribera was unrelenting, stopping briefly to load more bullets into the chamber of his gun then continuing to unload his weapon.

Black female victims of police violence also include children like 16-year-old MaKhia Bryant, who was killed last spring in her hometown of Columbus, OH, after police officer Nicholas Reardon was dispatched to quell a fight among foster youth. Within seconds of arriving, Reardon shot MaKhia. As police often do to Black people, Reardon justified his use of excessive force by attributing superhuman attributes to the adolescent; he claimed that MaKhia appeared bigger than him so he didnt think mace or other non-lethal approaches would be effective.2

This kind of excessive force by police isnt the exception when it comes to deadly encounters with Black women. Its the norm. Yet, while media attention of police shootings of Black men has increased dramatically thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement, the grievous violence Black women suffer at the hands of police continues to attract little to no media attention.

Rather, at present, Black boys and men remain the face of police brutality and state-sanctioned violence in the US. Their deaths and the organizing that follows have given rise to powerful mass uprisings for racial justice and Black liberation. Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Eric Garner, Mike Brown, George Floydwe know their names. This is important. Black women and girls deserve the same recognition, rage, and people-powered response. As professor Brittany Cooper smartly asks, Why does it remain so difficult for outrage over the killing of Black women to be the tipping point for national protests challenging state violence?

The relative invisibility of Black womens experiences of policing in the US is a product of Black womens social positionality: Black women sit at the intersection of patriarchal misogyny and anti-Black racism. Patriarchy deploys ideological and physical violence to objectify and repress women in the interest of male dominance, denying womens fundamental humanity. Anti-Black racism, an essential part of the racial capitalism that structures US (and global) society, involves, as a professor of African American studies Dr. kihana miraya ross explains, societys inability to recognize our humanitythe disdain, disregard and disgust for our existence.

Existing at this intersection means Black women are doubly disregarded, and they are plagued by both hypervisibilitythe experience of being overly scrutinized when our bodies are stereotyped or commodifiedand invisibilitywhere violence against us is ignored or disregarded. This dualism makes talking about state-sanctioned violence toward Black women and girls hard, and it makes communicating about and organizing for a world that keeps us safe even harder.

The fight to defund the police and reimagine public safety is part of a larger, long-term social justice strategy to divest structural resourcesi.e., tangible recourses such as money, member networks, and organizational power3from harmful institutions such as the police, and to reinvest those resources into common-sense approaches to public safety. However, money isnt the only currency organizers must rest from the powerful. They must also take ownership of symbolic resources, which shape how we valueor fail to valuethe lives of Black women and girls, including transgender women and girls.

Such resources include words, signs, images, music and even bodies [which] shape our perceptions of reality and invite us to act accordingly.4 Social movements use these symbolic resources to expose patterns, cultivate compassion, recruit members, inspire collective action, and build public will for sweeping social changes. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter is a symbolic resource, as was Emmitt Tills open-casket. Tills mother, Mamie, believed people should see what is often concealedthe ghoulish manifestations of white supremacy.

As we lay the foundation for new public safety infrastructure in the United States, the control and distribution of symbolic resources, including narratives, can be deployed to make the invisible visible. For Black women and girls that means exposing the underlying network of intersectional, systemic narratives, stereotypes, and myths that result in our hypervisibility, invisibility, and dehumanization in life and death.

Narratives are collections of stories, refined over time, through which we make meaning of the world. Narratives and stories differ. To quote the Narrative Initiative, What tiles are to mosaics, stories are to narratives. The relationship is symbiotic; stories bring narratives to life by making them relatable and accessible, while narratives infuse stories with deeper meaning.5 Such meaning frames our worldview and understandings of our daily experiences, including our relationships with others, peoples behaviors, social structures, and global events. In sum, narratives are the foundation of our ideologies and belief systems, which shape our actionsand theyre powerful.

In all societies, multiple, competing narratives circulate, but some narratives are hegemonicor dominantcentering the desires, beliefs, and values of dominant groups. Hegemonic narratives deploy science, law, and cultural difference to devalue and dehumanize certain groups of people, normalizing inequality and exploitation. These beliefs are then reinforced in social institutions, including churches, schools, and the media, and in interpersonal interactions.

Throughout US history, hegemonic narratives have portrayed Black people as inherently inferior, deviant, and shiftless. One such narrative appeared in the widely circulated1965 Moynihan Report. Rather than focus on systemic employment and wage discrimination, the report argued that single-parented households and the breakdown of the nuclear family led to a culture of poverty in Black communities. This narrative of Black pathologysingling out Black people as the source of our own, and the countrys, social problemshas old roots and persists today.

Anti-Black narratives are gendered, meaning they target Black women and men in different ways. In particular, they have consistently stereotyped Black women as sexual deviants and unfit mothers. Such narratives have accumulated power over time and hold sway over our capacity to empathize with Black women and our perceptions of who does and does not deserve to benefit from public safety measures.

Today, for example, more than a third of Black women experience some form of sexual violence in their lifetime. Yet according to a Brandeis University study, prosecutors file chargesagainst just 34 percent of attacks reported by Black woman, compared to 75 percent of attacks reported by white women.6 According to research by the African American Policy Forum, the police are often perpetrators of sexual violence against Black women.7 Former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, for example, raped and/or sexually assaulted at least 13 Black women over several years.

In a future where public safety includes the welfare of Black women and girls, we have to interrogate how narratives of sex and race determine who is considered part of the public and from what and whom they need to be kept safe. As NYU history professor Jennifer Morgan, author of Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic, writes, you need so many lenses to see all the different ways in which we are still grappling with the legacies of hereditary racial slavery in this country that you cant just look at it from one perspective. Youre going to miss so many other ways that this is being made manifest.

The narratives circulating around Black women in America contribute in essential ways to the hypervisibility and scrutiny Black women experience when alive, and to the erasure and invisibility Black women like Ms. Taylor, Ms. Gaeta, and MaKhia share in death. As professor Cooper writes about police killings of Black women, in a world where the pains and traumas that Black women and girls experience as a consequence of both racism and sexism remain structurally invisible and impermeable to broad empathy, these killings recede from the foreground quietly.8

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The narratives that shape how we valueor fail to valueBlack women and girls have their roots in slavery; over time, they have accumulated immense power. To justify slavery, European and white settler experts exploited sciences growing influence, developing theories that argued that Black people were the result of an evolutionary diversion. According to such scientific racism, while white people evolved thanks to their environments and inherent biological traits, Black people remained evolutionary stagnant or regressed, resulting in a host of inferior qualities, including laziness, stupidity, hypersexuality, and deviancy. In other words, Black people were more akin to beasts of burden than people, and it was justifiable if not laudable to treat them as commodities from which enslavers extracted value.

The slave plantation was essential to the national and global economy, and it took shape within a patriarchal society that reduced women of all races to mens sexual objects and breeding machines. While white womens sexuality was policed to ensure the purity of the white race, Black womens reproduction became a brutal business enterprise designed to perpetuate the institution of slavery. Stated otherwise, the first role of Black women in US society was not that of a mother, let alone citizen, but as producers of an enslaved labor force.

While white women bore responsibility for transferring superior whiteness to their offspring, Black women bore responsibility for passing down inferior Blackness. As professor of law, sociology, and civil rights, Dorothy E. Roberts, writes in her classic book, Killing the Black Body,

For three centuries, black mothers have been thought to pass down to their offspring the traits that marked them as inferior to any white person. Along with this biological impairment, it is believed that black mothers transfer a deviant lifestyle to the children that dooms each succeeding generation to a life of poverty, delinquency, and despair. A popular mythology that portrays black women as unfit to be mothers has left a lasting impression on the American psyche.

In other words, according to hegemonic narratives, Black people were to blame for their own problems, and this blame resided in particular with Black women, the producers of Black children.

After emancipation, this myth that Black women wereby virtue of their reproductive powerthe source of Black inferiority continued to permeate US culture, and stories of bad Black mothers were ubiquitous. Eventually, these stories gave rise to the welfare queen narrative, according to which Black women took advantage of social programs, misappropriating the tax dollars of hardworking Americans. Given that anti-Black racism barred many Black women from accessing public services, this narrative, which had no factual foundation, rendered Black female welfare recipients hypervisible. It also burdened Black women with the stereotype of the welfare queen who, as the Frameworks Institute writes, is portrayed as a pathologically greedy, lawbreaking, deviant, lazy, promiscuous, and Cadillac-driving Black woman who cheats the system and defrauds the American people.9

For much of US history, law enforcement meant implementing laws designed to subjugate Black people and uphold white supremacy. The first slave patrols, created in the Carolinas in the 1700s, were made up of volunteer white men who hunted enslaved escapees and squashed rebellions led by enslaved people to free themselves. Such policing continued in southern states through the end of the Civil War.

Even after emancipation, southern plantation capitalism relied on cheap Black labor. So, although the 13th amendment technically freed some four million Black people in 1865, southern states swiftly implemented Black Codesa combination of harsh vagrancy and contract lawsto keep Black people indentured. The police were responsible for enforcing these laws.

In 1868, the 14th amendment was ratified, and Black Codes were abolished, theoretically granting Black people equal protection. However, Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation quickly took their place. Black people were forbidden from living in predominately white neighborhoods. Theaters, restaurants, pools, and even water fountains were segregated. Black people who violated these rules risked violent interactions with police, resulting in unjust arrests, beatings, or death.

As Jim Crow evolved so too did the violent and lethal relationship between police and Black women. During slavery, hegemonic constructions of Black womanhood invisibilized Black womens humanity, propagating stories that justified our rape and forced reproduction. Such stories alleged that Black women were easy and responded eagerly towards any sexual advance. During Jim Crow, the stereotype of the promiscuous Black woman converged with growing anxieties that promiscuous women destroyed families and communities. Increasingly, cities passed laws against public-disorder, including vagrancy and prostitution. In her book, The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification, Anne Gray Fischer argues that the police who enforced these laws targeted Black women, whom they viewed as both sexually deviant and likely to produce a new generation of criminals. According to Fischer, sexual policingthe targeting and legal control of peoples bodies and presumed sexual activities10disproportionately impacted Black women, as did the mass misdemeanor policing that followed in its wake.11 In other words, by virtue of racist patriarchal narratives, Black women were hypervisible to police, with often violent results.

As the cases of Breonna Taylor, Tracy Gaeta, and MaKiah Bryant reveal, today, when Black women interface with police, the outcomes are still violentand sometimes fatal. According to reporting from the Washington Post, Black people are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans, and Black women are fatally shot at rates higher than women of all other races. Since 2015, police have fatally shot 247 women. Of these women, 48 were Black, accounting for 20 percent of the women killed.12

Though pervasive, however, police violence against Black womenand to a more severe degree against Black transgender womenremains structurally hidden. This means that when you look at the most obvious places these stories and experiences should be documented and contended within the media and policy documentstheyre absent. This invisibility is a product of long-standing narratives that rupture empathy and compassion with Black women and exclude Black women from the public.

Narratives are part of the activists toolbox of symbolic resources, and indeed, the Black Lives Matter movement has changed many of the narratives around Black people, crime, and policing. The movement has embraced a framework of narrative power, whereby social movements take advantage of political opportunities to construct counter narratives that disrupt hegemonic thinking and expand collective perceptions of what is socially, economically, and politically possible. Narrative power goes beyond a cursory understanding of a problem, using symbolic resourcesincluding ethical storytellingto radically shape the rules and norms by which we live.

This type of analysis has its roots in Black feminism. A framework that insists on the simultaneous eradication of racism, sexism, and classism, Black feminism articulates Black womens experiences where the feminist and civil rights movements failed to do so, making the invisible visible through intersectional analysis and storytelling. Indeed, Black feminism inspired intersectionality, the recognition that many of us hold concurrent identities that impact our lives. Today, Black feminism continues to expand as a framework, as organizers and thinkers like Charlene Carruthers build on it by making explicit the influence of queerness in the politic of reimaging society away from patriarchal sexism and anti-Black racism.13

The Black Lives Matter movement has followed in the footsteps of Black feminists. In a recent interview with Jacobin Radio, historian Donna Murch argues that through the use of symbolic resources, the Black Lives Matter movement delegitimized narratives of Black pathology that were used to justify the wars on poverty and drugs and the militarization of police in Black communities. In turn, the movement put the blame for Black suffering where it belongson the staterecasting Black pathology as state-sanctioned violence, which includes any forms of harm produced, promoted, and/or institutionalized by the state to the detriment of Black women, their families and communities. Through decentralized organizing, policymaking, electoral justice, a narrative power strategy, and other tactics, M4BLan ecosystem of Black-led organizationsis using symbolic resources to reframe how we understand Black suffering in America and offer a vision for how to reduce it.

Increasingly, organizers and scholars are also intervening into the erasure of Black women and girls. One such intervention is the #SayHerName camping launched by the African American Policy Forum in 2014. #SayHerName is a symbolic resource that provides communities routinely excluded by mainstream media institutions with a platform from which to speak our truths and replace narratives that reflect a single subjective angle with those that include our voices, stories, and lived experiences.

BYP100s She Safe We Safe is another campaign to put an end to violence against women, as well as gender non-conforming people.She Safe We Safe uses counternarratives to call for the reallocation of funding from the police to community-run programs that address gender-based violence in Black communities. In 2021, in collaboration with Times Up, me too international launched We, As Ourselves, a narrative power campaign to make visible the stories of Black survivors of sexual violence and to reshape the narrative around sexual violence and its impact on Black survivors. These are critical interventions by Black-led organizationsand we need more.

The humanity, freedom, and self-determination of Black women and girls are directly connected to the symbolic resources and power we have to define the problems we are working to solve. Who we collectively agree has the power to define both these problems and their solutions matters. In the next part of this series, Ill explore the elements of the narrative power framework. In the third and final piece, imagining were in the near future, where what was once invisible is now common sense, Ill explore how we use symbolic resources to reimagine public safety for Black women and girls.

Link:

To Build a Public Safety That Protects Black Women and Girls, Money Isn't the Only Resource We Need - Non Profit News - Nonprofit Quarterly

The term gaslighting, as you might already know, refers to a particular type of emotional abuse where someone is made to question the validity of their experiences, feelings, and beliefs.

When this form of manipulation is used specifically to undermine or minimize someones experiences of racism, its called racial gaslighting.

Racial gaslighting mostly affects People of Color, according to Jason Cunningham, LMHC, a therapist at Alma.

One of the earliest mentions of racial gaslighting occurs in a 2016 research paper by Professor Angelique Davis and Dr. Rose Ernst. This study highlighted the ways individual acts of racial gaslighting can contribute to white supremacy at large.

Racial gaslighting can be intentional or unintentional, explains Heather Lyons, a licensed psychologist and owner of the Baltimore Therapy Group. But regardless of whether someone actually intends this manipulation or not, racial gaslighting can still lead to mental and emotional harm.

Learning to identify it when it happens can help you handle it more effectively. Heres how to recognize racial gaslighting and what to do about it.

Racial gaslighting is unfortunately very prevalent, says Dontay Williams, a licensed professional counselor and CEO of The Confess Project. It happens in the education and healthcare systems, at workplaces, and in the mainstream media.

The spectrum of racial gaslighting can range from direct statements like, Not everything has to be about race to subtler comments like, Are you sure thats what really happened? explains Krystal Jackson, LPC, founder and clinical director of Simply Being Wellness Counseling.

A few examples of racial gaslighting in various contexts:

If a teacher attempts to undermine the ongoing impact of racism, that can be considered racial gaslighting, says Shontel Cargill, a licensed marriage and family therapist and Regional Clinic Director at Thriveworks.

For example, they might say something like, Yes, slavery happened, but thats in the past, or We shouldnt focus on just the faults of [problematic historical figure].

Say one of your colleagues repeatedly calls two Asian American employees by each others names.

When you call this out, your colleague says, I dont mean to be rude. Its just because they look so much alike, you know?

This response shifts the conversation to your colleagues intention, not the impact of the microaggression an indirect or subtle discriminatory slight against members of a marginalized group.

In short, Lyons says, they miss the point that these interactions can have severe emotional and professional consequences.

Cargill offers another example to consider: A co-worker who dismisses your experience with racism by saying something like, Stop playing the race card.

Maybe your partner makes a racially insensitive comment and you confront them about it, pointing out why the remark is problematic.

They say, Dont be so sensitive it was just a joke. That also counts as racial gaslighting, Lyons says.

Racial gaslighting can also show up in friendships, according to Cargill. Maybe you have a friend who says things like, I dont see color. This misguided attitude minimizes and dismisses the racism, discrimination, and microaggressions People of Color face on a regular basis.

Video footage of George Floyds death clearly shows a white police officer kneeling on Floyds neck for over nine minutes while he pleaded about breathing difficulties, Williams points out. However, officials initially claimed his death was an accident.

This contradicted what we had watched, says Williams. Its a clear example of a situation where reality was dismissed in the context of race.

Another example of racial gaslighting? The All Lives Matter movement. This racist rebuttal to the Black Lives Matter movement effectively dismisses the issue of racism, even prompting some Black Lives Matter supporters to reconsider their beliefs.

Racial gaslighting can negatively affect your physical and mental health, not to mention your sense of identity, safety, and self-worth. As a result, it can have a far-reaching impact on your job and school performance, relationships, and other aspects of your life.

A few of the potential consequences include:

When it comes to race-related microaggressions, research has found that the denial of racism in other words, gaslighting remains a very common theme. Researchers call this type of microaggression a microinvalidation.

In one small 2020 study, Black college students on predominantly white campuses reported numerous microaggressions. These experiences caused distress and confusion, but they also led students to question their own perceptions of events.

Racial gaslighting can be harmful because you need to trust yourself to feel safe, says Jackson.

As a result of racial gaslighting, you might find it more difficult to recognize instances of racism in the future.

A 2019 review found that microaggressions may cause feelings of:

Racial gaslighting reinforces systemic racism, thus perpetuating racial trauma that often leads to long-term effects on mental health, says Cargill. Furthermore, the accumulation of stressors such as racism, discrimination, colorism, microaggressions, intergenerational trauma, and more race-related stressors may lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

But experts have found plenty of other potential impacts:

Williams notes these effects are particularly problematic, given that People of Color remain notoriously underserved when it comes to mental health resources. This often makes it more difficult to access professional support when coping with experiences of racism, racial gaslighting, or any other mental and emotional health concerns.

A 2013 review linked perceived racism to lower psychological well-being and self-esteem in addition to physical health concerns like:

If others fail to believe and validate your experiences of racism, you might feel even more distressed or disoriented as a result, which can worsen the potential physical impact.

Gaslighting, in general, effectively keeps victims isolated and entrapped so perpetrators can control them further. Experts say racial gaslighting similarly fuels racism.

Racial gaslighting allows white groups to assuage their guilt and shirk responsibility while continually laying blame at the feet of those their privilege harms the most. The effect is a rigged inequitable society that calls itself fair and just, Cunningham says.

Racial gaslighting reinforces systemic racism, in part, because it can trigger deep feelings of self-doubt.

You might, for instance, catch yourself thinking, No, I mustve heard that wrong, or Maybe I am just too sensitive. As a result, you might feel less confident in your ability to acknowledge racism when you witness or experience it, and more hesitant when it comes to calling it out.

Perhaps a co-worker uses racial gaslighting to shut down your observations that in the last 5 years, only white people have received promotions at your company. Consequently, you may decide not to mention those concerns to your human resources department.

Its a denial of systems of oppression that turns the conversation from creating change to creating exhaustion, says Lyons, explaining that racial gaslighting puts you in a position where you have to argue your point, rather than work together to fight racial injustice.

Gaslighting decreases your ability to detect abuse in the future, which allows the behavior to continue. In a nutshell, thats what makes it so psychologically damaging.

The first step, then, to coping with the harmful effects of gaslighting involves learning to recognize it.

After having an experience with racial gaslighting, experts advise taking some time to check in with yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Trust what your body is telling you, Jackson emphasizes.

If the situation feels unsafe, Cunningham advises removing yourself as quickly as possible without engaging any further.

But if you feel comfortable doing so, you can feel free to address the racial gaslighting and why its harmful, Cargill says.

Rather than making an accusation that might put someone on the defensive, you could start by saying, I feel like Im not being heard when you say things like that. Why do you think you have trouble believing what I experienced and felt?

This approach can be disarming because it forces the person to reflect on their unconscious assumptions and instincts.

Just remember, youre in no way obligated to correct or fix someones racial gaslighting.

Its up to you to decide if you want to assist the person or educate them, says Cunningham. Its up to the privileged group to change.

Even if you dont feel up to confronting that person, you may want to share your experience of racial gaslighting. Lyons suggests doing so with a trusted friend or family member someone you know you can rely on for emotional support and validation.

Process the experience with people who understand and dont need education, she says.

Finally, know that racial gaslighting could contribute to emotional distress or other symptoms, including:

But you dont have to deal with these concerns alone.

Cargill recommends finding a therapist, particularly another Person of Color who specializes in racism and trauma, who can help you process and move forward from the experience.

Inclusive Therapists offers a database of mental health professionals you can search and filter by:

Get more guidance on finding and funding therapy as a Person of Color.

Maybe youre wondering whether youve ever been guilty of racial gaslighting yourself.

Its quite possible racial gaslighting can stem from beliefs or biases you didnt know you had, so it often happens unintentionally. It can also be triggered by white fragility. In short, you might end up rejecting someone elses experience to diminish your own guilt around racism.

Its important to first reflect on why you believe your opinion is more valuable than anothers, says Jackson. Self-reflection and the ability to be corrected are important if you want to avoid racial gaslighting. I would encourage you to be in a space of learning and observation, ask questions that are supportive, and take inventory of your own biases.

A few additional tips:

It also helps to maintain some awareness of your internal responses. When someone tells you about racism they experienced, what thoughts or feelings come up for you?

If you first find yourself evaluating the credibility of the claim, Lyons recommends getting curious about why that is.

Maybe you reject the idea because you find it too painful to imagine someone else being hurt, or worry about being lumped in with the bad guy.

Shift your attention to listening and getting curious, Lyons encourages.

Cargill advises getting educated on the who, what, where, when, and why of racial gaslighting, as well as its effects.

The more you know about racial microaggressions and systemic racism, the greater your chances of avoiding words or actions that perpetuate racism or at the very least, recognizing when youve made a mistake.

Also, stay open-minded and willing to learn about all communities and cultures, adds Williams.

Remember, its not your place to decide what experiences people have or havent had, and how they should or shouldnt feel about them especially when you can never fully relate to that groups experiences.

A crucial first step to promoting change is taking the lived experiences of People of Color at face value.

It may feel very uncomfortable to accept and admit to an act of racial gaslighting, but Cargill says accountability is key.

Mistakes are human, and most people mess up from time to time. The best thing you can do is acknowledge your behavior, take responsibility for it, and apologize. Then, take steps to learn from what happened so you can avoid it in the future.

Participating in efforts to address racial inequity and injustice can help you on your quest to educate yourself and unpack your own potential biases, in large part because it exposes you to new perspectives and solutions.

One option Cargill suggests? Joining a diversity, equity, and inclusion committee or council at your school or workplace.

Many employers offer diversity and inclusion training, which can teach more essential skills for identifying and addressing racial inequities and injustices like racial gaslighting.

If your company doesnt offer this training, you can seek it out on your own, or consider proposing it to your HR department.

Racial gaslighting downplays or outright denies the racism experienced by People of Color. This type of manipulation can reinforce systemic racism by leading you to question your thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

If you feel safe calling it out, you can try starting with an I statement about how their words made you feel or asking a question that prompts them to reflect on their behavior. Just know its never your job to educate or correct someone, and you should always prioritize your own well-being first.

After experiencing racial gaslighting, take care to give yourself space to process your feelings, remind yourself of the facts, and seek out whatever emotional support and encouragement you need either from trusted loved ones or a therapist.

Rebecca Strong is a Boston-based freelance writer covering health and wellness, fitness, food, lifestyle, and beauty. Her work has also appeared in Insider, Bustle, StyleCaster, Eat This Not That, AskMen, and Elite Daily.

Read more here:

Racial Gaslighting: Definition, Examples, and Impact - Healthline

Wes Alcenat connected the conversation about the struggle for Black liberation to his research and racism today

The Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, in partnership with the Offices of Multicultural Affairs and the Provost, sponsored a conversation on June 16 with Wes Alcenat, assistant professor of history and urban, American and African American studies at Fordham. The talk, which was held over Zoom, consisted of a dialogue between Rafael Zapata, the universitys chief diversity officer, and Alcenat regarding the Haitian Revolution and its implications on Juneteenth today.

Juneteenth is an annual federal holiday celebrated on June 19 that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved people in Confederate states and the abolition of slavery. Although U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freedom was not extended to enslaved Black people in Confederate territories until June 19, 1865, when troops from the Union arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and announced the executive order. Juneteenth did not become a national federal holiday until June 17, 2021, when U.S. President Joe Biden signed legislation into law.

The talk also focused on the Haitian Revolution, which Alcenat noted is relevant to Juneteenth due to the suppression of Black freedom. He referred to the news of the French Revolution being kept from enslaved Black people in Haiti and the two-year delay of the Emancipation Proclamations announcement to enslaved Black people in Confederate states as examples.

We have to look at Juneteenth as being directly connected to the legacy of the Haitian Revolution (and) this pattern of trying to undermine Black freedom, even as it actually exists on paper, he said.

Haiti, formerly known as the French colony of Saint-Domingue prior to its independence in 1804, was heavily relied on by France and the rest of Europe for its robust production of sugar and coffee. This demand led to the exploitation of Black Haitians, who were forced into indentured servitude on plantations.

When word of the French Revolution reached Haiti in 1791, the enslaved Black people of Saint-Domingue saw an opportunity to revolt, led by Toussaint LOuverture. The Haitian Revolution lasted until 1804 and is the only instance where an enslaved population successfully overthrew their colonizers.

In his response, Alcenat also highlighted the significance of another one of Haitis constitutional principles at the time, which stated that in order for an individual to become a Haitian they would have to first declare themselves Black; this principle set a precedent for Black Lives Matter as a slogan today.

During the talk, Alcenat highlighted the constitutional principles the Haitian revolutionaries were championing in response to the principles of the French Revolution that were not afforded to nonwhite people. One of those principles included the automatic guarantee of citizenship to anyone who was of Indigenous or African descent. Zapata connected this extension of citizenship and freedom from the revolutionaries to Black and Indigenous people from the diaspora and asked Alcenat about what this invitation meant to enslaved people in the United States specifically.

I call it, sort of, Haitian constitutionalism, whereby they constructed what I call a sort of a political reparations project that restored, in essence, symbolically, dignity to those who had previously been the indigenous inhabitants of the island, he said.

Zapatas question touched on Alcenats research, which focuses on the migration of Black people to Haiti throughout the 19th century in the years leading up to the Civil War. In his response, Alcenat also highlighted the significance of another one of Haitis constitutional principles at the time, which stated that in order for an individual to become a Haitian they would have to first declare themselves Black; this principle set a precedent for Black Lives Matter as a slogan today.

What it is saying ultimately is (that) the degraded, the dehumanized, the oppressed, those who are at the very bottom of society, were going to reverse this order, he said. Those who really do know what freedom is, because they also know what non-freedom looks like, are the ones who are going to define what freedom, what liberty is going to mean from now on.

Alcenat went on to describe that the assertion of Black freedom as a principle was the most expansive form of freedom that was allowed. He noted that in the context of a discussion on Black liberation, the conversation warrants shedding ones whiteness in order to identify with those who really know what freedom is because they have lived the experience of not being free.

It was the most universal and capacious way that they could reframe citizenship and freedom while, at the same time, cutting out whatever the moral hazards of race as a construction would be in the process, he said.

According to Alcenat, the Haitian Revolutions legacy recognized the concepts of race only historically without giving any validity to the white supremacist lens.

The second half of the call consisted of a Q&A session with Alcenat. Anne Hoffman, professor of English at Fordham, asked Alcenat about Haitis constitutional principles and whether or not they affected discussions of race in the greater context of history throughout the 19th century. In response, Alcenat noted that recognizing peoples history and what that history made of them needs revitalizing. He also outlined the legacies of the Haitian Revolution and the multicultural American abolitionist movement as an evolution of racial concepts and related their significance to Black Lives Matter today.

According to Alcenat, the Haitian Revolutions legacy recognized the concepts of race only historically without giving any validity to the white supremacist lens. He also added that the American abolitionist movement was the first mass multicultural, multiracial movement to indicate a new concept of what it means to be an American regardless of your shades of color and related this to the Black Lives Matter movement and its significance in defining freedom, Americanism and inclusion.

The point here is those who are the most dead, denigrated, the most despised, the most oppressed, those are the people who are to define what freedom is, he said. Once those people get to define freedom, thats when freedom really becomes universal.

The talk yielded nearly 80 people in attendance and concluded with a conversation between Alcenat and Zapata about what the future holds.

The talk yielded nearly 80 people in attendance and concluded with a conversation between Alcenat and Zapata about what the future holds.

Im still trying to make sense of this post-George Floyd moment, Alcenat said. I am still grappling with these legacies of Juneteenth and of the Haitian Revolution and what we now do in the post-George Floyd moment.

Read more:

Fordham Professor Speaks on Juneteenth and the Haitian Revolution - Fordham Observer

When True Whitaker was in the third grade, she had a school biography project. The assignment was to pick a famous person, do some research, and write a little bit about their life. Pretty normal stuff for an 8-year-old, and, one would think, a rather simple task for a kid whose dad is Forest Whitaker.

It was around the time my dad was shooting The Last King of Scotland, True, now 23, told The Post. My mom, my sisters, my brother and I flew out to visit him in Uganda.

Now for the plot twist: He was having a meeting with Nelson Mandela.

So I got to sit and talk to Nelson Mandela, and I was able to interview Winnie Mandela, who was his wife at the time. Theres a photo of me and Nelson Mandela holding hands and talking, and Im, like, eight years old, she laughed. I wish I was older so I could have really understood the importance how insane and iconic that moment was. Those types of experiences Ill cherish forever.

Such is the life of a celebrity scion, and a refreshingly self-aware one at that. True, the youngest of four children, was raised in Los Angeles by her mother, actress Keisha Nash-Whitaker, and her actor/director/screenwriter/producer dad, who has co-starred in Panic Room, Black Panther, The Butler and countless other films.

I feel like Im half my mom and half my dad. My mom has put a lot of her energy into me. Shes very outgoing, very funny I feel like the comedic side of me has been perpetuated by my mom, said True of Keisha, who split from Forest last year. My dad is funny too, but hes a little more quiet in public spaces. My mom is always on 10, in a good way.

True has inherited a lot of traits from her father, too: My wit and my empathy. I feel like hes taught me and my brother and sisters to approach life with a sense of understanding and openness to different types of people in this world to embrace different types of people, with different energies and from different walks of life.

Ive always been really close with both of my parents. Sometimes a little too close, maybeI feel like I share everything with them. Even if its like, Oh, Dad, I followed a cute guy [on social media] today! added True, who is single. Its literally just anything and everything. But I love that I feel like I can just be myself and not be scared of being judged by my parents. Im really grateful for the close relationship weve always had.

Another thing that runs in the family is a penchant for film and television. At 18, True moved from LA to New York City to pursue a degree in creative writing from NYUs Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

I feel like I took every creative writing course they had to offer, to figure out what part of writing I really wanted to hone in on. She graduated last year, and lives in New York.

Writing has always been an emotional thing for me. Whenever I felt overwhelmed with joy or sadness or any other type of emotion, Ive always turned to writing. I feel like sometimes when I speak Im not as concise as I could be when Im writing. It gives me a different sense of power, so Ive always loved it.

And yes, shes also interested in acting.

I acted in the last season of Godfather of Harlem, starring my dad. I had a character named Sandra. She was definitely a challenge, but I loved every second of it and, hopefully, because its shooting right now, shell come back, she said of the Epix series.

Although she didnt have any scenes with her father, True recalled the first time she saw him on set which was also her very first day of filming.

I didnt even know he was there at first. But when we wrapped, I walked off the set, and a guy came up to me and was like, Oh, you just missed your dad. I was like, What? I guess he was secretly watching with a little monitor somewhere.

Hes very supportive, she laughed. When I went back up to my dressing room, I found him in there with balloons and a bottle of Champagne, congratulating me. It was really special, of course, to be able to do that with my dad.

Ultimately, True hopes to continue both acting and writing professionally. In fact, since graduating from NYU, shes been working on a treatment for a TV series with playwright, screenwriter and director (Almost Christmas, First Sunday) David Talbert, who is also one of her mentors.

Im a trillion drafts into my series. Im hoping in the next few years you guys will see and be able to feel and hear my voice and understand the things that I care about, she said. Anything I work on will be something that means something to me.

While it remains to be seen whether shell star in the show if it gets made, she plans to continue pursuing other acting opportunities.

Ive been doing a lot of auditions. Im signed at William Morris [Agency], and I love my agent hes been giving me a lot of opportunities, she said. So hopefully thatll pick up soon, because Im really passionate about acting.

Whitaker is also passionate about social activism, as is her father. (Forest is an official advocate for the UNs Sustainable Development Goals, UNESCO Special Envoy for Peace and Reconciliation, and the founder of Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative.)

No matter who I am, what family I came from, what my dad does, or what success he has, anywhere I go, I am a Black woman. So I will face the challenges that this country presents us due to its horrible history. As a very tall, dark-skinned Black woman, I feel my Blackness everywhere I go. Even when I go into a store, sometimes I feel like I have to either buy something or keep my hands in plain view, she explained. Im always gonna feel the weird microaggressions. But I also have a sense of power, of course, being a Black woman. I want it to be known that we deserve this type of recognition and success, to be able to live in the way that Ive lived. Im so proud that my dad, as a Black man, has been able to give this life and this legacy to us, a Black family.

Trues Instagram bio reads Black Lives Matter / Protect Black Women!, and in between family photos and selfies, youll find photos from marches and protests.

I stand up when I see things in the world happening that I think are wrong, she said. We need to put a little peace into the world, put some love and care into it.

Trues Instagram also features photos and videos from the most glamorous side of her life like debutante balls, red carpets, and celeb-studded nights out but she insists that her day-to-day reality is pretty normal.

I just try to work on my writing, and I spend time with the people that I love. Obviously, if theres an event that Im invited to, its sick to go and I love to be included. I always love to be thought of! But I wouldnt say Im doing it that often.

In fact, youre more likely to run into her at a karaoke bar.

My sister and I, actually. In our own time, we, like, practice. Well perfect a song, and then well just hop into a karaoke bar. Well be harmonizing, doing way too much, showing off our skills. We literally did it the other dayit was so much fun, True said.

Their current song of choice is an oldie but goodie, from 2007: Potential Breakup Song by Aly and AJ. Theyre kind of having a resurgence, so were embracing that.

Photos: Tamara Beckwith/NY Post; Stylist: Heather Blair; Hair: T. Cooper/crowdMGMT using Cricket Company; Makeup: Markphong Tram/ABTP using Maybeline; Location:PHD Rooftop at Dream Downtown.

Read the original here:

Meet Forest Whitaker's daughter True, a Hollywood star in the making - New York Post

Nationwide protests against police brutality, spurred on by the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, took place throughout the summer of 2020 and served as the inspiration for Black Lives Matter Plaza.

Beginning in late-May, thousands of peaceful protesters took to the streets of DC to join in the outcry. On June 1, 2020, peaceful demonstrators many of whom were from DC were met with violence and tear gas by federal forces between Lafayette Park and St. Johns Church, near the current site of the plaza.

Four days later, the Black Lives Matter mural was unveiled across the plaza where protesters had gathered, commissioned by Mayor Bowser and completed by the DC Public Works Department with the assistance of the MuralsDC program.

Bowser also announced the official renaming of the segment of 16th Street NW, which was made permanent by the DC City Council in October 2020.Black Lives Matter Plaza is a permanent installation in Washington, DC.

Continued here:

Guide to Black Lives Matter Plaza | Washington DC