Black immigrants are growing in numbers, but in the U.S. many often feel invisible

2023/06/06 Leave a comment

Of interest:

How you describe Hadley Park might depend on where you stand.

If you enter from the southeast corner, you’ll see a sweeping, tree-lined expanse — verdant in the summer, golden in the fall. Look northwest, and there’s the campus of Tennessee State University — a century-old historically Black university. Turn around, and you’ll see I-40, one of the highways separating North Nashville (traditionally, Black Nashville) from the rest of the city. Look down, and you’ll see ground that used to grow crops, back when Hadley Park was a plantation. Ground that used to stage tanks, during the Vietnam War. Ground where now, every summer, bare feet dance and libations spill out during the annual African Street Festival.

“This space is representative of Black Nashville in a lot of ways,” says Learotha Williams, as he walks through the fields. Williams, a public historian at TSU, says the park has meant many different things to different communities. Recently, there have been discussions about what to call it, since the park was likely named for John Hadley, the man who once owned the land and the people who worked on it. So, Williams says, “It’s a space of contested memories. A space that is transformative in many ways and is still undergoing a transformation.”

As is Nashville more broadly. All around the city, there are grand old buildings that were once plantation houses, overlooking fields where Black people tended cattle, milled grain, grew tobacco.

Nowadays, people don’t like to point that out all the time, says Williams. When you visit some of those former plantations, the presence of enslaved people “has been all but erased, to the point where they don’t even define them as being ‘slaves’ anymore. They call them servants.”

Williams describes this dynamic as a sort of “collective amnesia.” He understands there are people who may not want to dwell on the most painful parts of Nashville’s history. But skipping over that history is unhealthy, he says, “because the past gives you some identity. It connects you to a group, or to an event that can give you some idea about where you are currently, or how you get down and why you get down the way you get down.”

Williams has spent his career taking note of histories that are at risk of being buried — in Florida, where he’s from; in Georgia, where he’s worked; and now in Tennessee, his home for many years. Like with those plantation houses. If you look closely at the bricks they’re built from, you’ll see indentations that look suspiciously like fingerprints. “Because that’s what they are,” Williams says. “Fingerprints of the guys that made the bricks and laid them.” Reminders, almost imperceptible, that Black people were there — they lived, they toiled, they created and they survived.

In the generations since, Black people have continued to come to Nashville in waves. They came in search of freedom during the Civil War, when troops erected a Union stronghold at Fort Negley. Then again during the Great Migration, when folks from Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi sought work a bit farther north. And during the Civil Rights Movement, when young people saw the city as a battleground in the fight for integration.

More recently, a different cohort of Black folks have made Nashville, and other parts of Tennessee, their home — people who are emigrating. People from Somalia to Rwanda, Sudan to Ethiopia, Nigeria to Haiti have put down roots in Nashville. In total, 12% of the city is made up of immigrants, a large proportion of whom moved to the city after the year 2000.

But like previous generations of Black Tennesseans, Black immigrants sometimes have to fight to make their presence recognized.

Feeling invisible

Black immigrants all over the country have been referred to as “invisible immigrants.” Their numbers throughout the United States are growing significantly — today, 20% of all Black Americans are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. But they are rarely centered in national conversations around immigration policy. And even in smaller interactions, many Black immigrants talk about the ways that their cultures, identities and histories are sometimes rendered invisible — or worse.

Layla Ahmed is a political organizer and recent college graduate who grew up in Nashville; her family emigrated from Somalia. She says she enjoys asking people what they know about Somali culture but is disheartened, time and again, to hear people’s answers. Pirates, they usually say. “And maybe hunger. War. Terrorism.”

Duretti Ahmad is also from the Nashville area. She was born in the U.S., but her family is Ethiopian, and ethnically Oromo. She grew up connected to a sizable East African community, but as a student at Vanderbilt University, she said she’s sometimes made to feel like she’s alone. In most of her classes, she says, she rarely expects to see someone who shares her background: “Maybe [there will be] a Black person, but for it to be a Black Muslim woman? It’s like, wow, that’s a stretch.”

Maranjely Zapata lives in Knoxville, on the east side of Tennessee. She moved there from Honduras about eight years ago, when she was a teenager. Recently, she says, she had a conversation with someone who asked her where she was from. Her answer shocked him. “He was like, ‘There are Black people in Honduras?’ And my jaw just dropped. I was like, there are Black people everywhere. But some people really don’t know that.”

Interactions like that make Zapata want to talk about her identity even more — to educate people about Garifuna culture, and about Blackness more generally. But not everyone feels empowered to do that.

Niyokwizigigwa Athumani is a high school student living on the other side of the state, in Memphis. He was born in Rwanda and came to the U.S. as a young child. When he told other kids that he was African, he was bullied for it. “So I don’t really know what my cultural identity is,” he says. To try and fit in socially, he had to minimize that part of himself — to the point that he lost a part of himself: “I know I’m African and everything, but I want to be more.”

“I was hiding from my story”

Claude Gatebuke is also from Rwanda, but he came to Nashville three decades ago. Like others, he’s had plenty of experiences with his identity being dismissed, ignored or minimized.

Gatebuke was 16 when he started school in the U.S. Back then, he says, many of his friends had no idea he was Rwandan. “I mean, they knew I was from another country,” he says, “but they didn’t know which country I was from.”

And he wasn’t exactly rushing to correct the record. Gatebuke and his family had just been forced to flee the violence overtaking their home. So if his new friends weren’t asking questions about his past, he says, “I was OK with that. Because I was hiding from my story.”

Gatebuke had grown up a pretty carefree kid. Then, the war started. He remembers the night in April of 1994, when his mom got a call telling her that the president’s plane had been shot down. “And my response was, oh my God, I hope the president didn’t die, because if he died, we’re not going to be able to finish [my] soccer tournament.”

Soon, Kigali erupted in chaos. Gatebuke says panic swept through the city — and with it, violence. “Rwanda is a beautiful country — blue skies and everything. But during that time, the sky was covered with a big dark mushroom. And the stench, the mix of smoke, and decomposing human flesh made you want to throw up. I mean, I want to throw up now, thinking about it.”

Eventually, like more than a million others, Gatebuke and his family made the decision to flee from the genocide. That journey was its own trauma. At one checkpoint, Gatebuke says he was separated from his group and told to dig his own grave. By some miracle, Gatebuke made it through, eventually. The journey continued. Eventually, Gatebuke’s family reached Congo. Then, Kenya. Later, they made it to Nashville, where Gatebuke’s father was living as a student.

So there was good reason Claude wasn’t bringing up his past every day in the high school cafeteria. But that decision to stay quiet was complicated. He wasn’t just avoiding painful memories. He was also worried about the reaction he might get. He remembers once trying to share his story with a high school English teacher. It didn’t go well. Gatebuke says the teacher’s response was “‘I’ve never heard this before — this isn’t the official narrative.’ He said, ‘No, this can’t be true.'”

At the time, Gatebuke didn’t understand why he was being shut down. He thought it might be partly because his English was “really bad” back then. And partly because, back in 1996, information about the Rwandan genocide was not as widely available as it would be in years to come. But looking back, he says, he thinks his race was a factor. “Because I’m just not sure that somebody from Ukraine today would come and tell a story and somebody would say, ‘This isn’t what’s happening.'”

Gatebuke says that after almost three decades of experiencing life in the U.S. as a Black man, he finds himself better able to connect the dots between that moment and a broader social dynamic.

“For many years, [African Americans have] talked about things like police brutality, racial profiling, you know. All of those things that I experienced, that I lived through, and that are traumatic. And America didn’t believe it until phone cameras came along, and then America acted like, ‘Oh, this is bad. This just started.’ But the only thing that started was filming it.”

The incident in high school was just one moment in a long, painful tradition, he says. “The dismissing of a story because the person just happens to be from a background that isn’t associated with credibility? That is a thing in America.”

Williams, the historian, echoed the sentiment. He said that Black people have been speaking out about violence they’ve experienced at the hands of police and the state, from Frederick Douglass to Fred Hampton to Freddie Gray. The violence, he says, “is not an aberration. It’s a feature of our society. Just the same way that the denial that it has occurred is a feature.”

So, Williams says, Black communities “have been residents of the city since its founding. But oftentimes it feels like we are some of its most unwelcomed residents. At times, some of its most despised residents.”

And, he says, “In many ways, we’re still kind of invisible.”

Connecting through storytelling

But many Black Tennesseans are finding ways to feel seen — if not by the broader society, then at least by each other. One of the most powerful tools for that has been storytelling.

Nkechinyelum Chioneso is an assistant professor of psychology at Florida A&M University. She says that when people with related histories share their experiences with each other, “it allows private pain to come out into the public domain. And when it’s in the public domain, you then develop the ability to have a more critical lens about what it is you’re experiencing. And you begin to see that it’s not just me — it’s not my deficiency.” That understanding, she says, is an opening to look at the broader external dynamics that have shaped a group’s experiences — and to begin to reshape them.

Chioneso, who has written about how storytelling can lead to community healing, argues that forming connections and resisting oppression are both critical elements of resisting racial trauma.

And they’re both methods that some Black immigrants in Tennessee have started leaning toward organically.

Like Layla Ahmed. As a college student, she decided to do a project on the trope of the Somali pirate. In doing that research, she learned more about her own culture and identity, and the forces that push certain communities into certain roles. She’s since used that knowledge to start telling a different story about Somali people. “I wouldn’t say I’m confrontational,” she says, “but I like talking with people and dismantling their beliefs that they already have.”

After graduating from college, Ahmed began working at the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition. There, she digs deep into the resistance part — her work is largely about organizing voters to resist discriminatory immigration policies.

Storytelling — and resistance — have also transformed Gatebuke’s life. When he was in college in the late 1990s, Gatebuke says he was still mostly ignoring his feelings — “I was a lost, broken Black boy.”

But one day, he stumbled upon a children’s biography of Frederick Douglass. That story changed the way Gatebuke thought about his own. He says he was fascinated by Douglass’ story, but it also made him ashamed. Someone with so little had used his words to fight against slavery. Meanwhile, Gatebuke felt like he was often just floating through life without engaging too deeply.

So he decided, slowly, to change that. By sharing his story more publicly — with some friends, then at local campus events — Gatebuke thought he might be able to help people better understand how war upends people’s lives — children’s lives. Talking was terrifying at first.

But the more he opened up, the more he met people who connected with what he was saying. Maybe they were from a different background, but they had stories, too.

And that storytelling has ballooned into something even greater. Gatebuke now runs the African Great Lakes Action Network, an organization founded on the idea that sharing testimony is crucial in the fight for justice. And he recently co-edited a book called Survivors Uncensored, where he and more than a hundred other Rwandans shared their testimony. He hopes that even more people will share their stories.

“Their story doesn’t have to be like mine,” he says. “But there are many of us who have healed by sharing and by sharing our stories … and the price of not doing it is so much heavier than the pain of actually getting it done. And why carry the burden?

Source: Black immigrants are growing in numbers, but in the U.S. many often feel invisible

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Black men were likely underdiagnosed with lung problems because of bias in software, study suggests

2023/06/03 Leave a comment

Of note (I have done the pulmonary function test as part of my cancer treatments but was completely unaware of the algorithms involved but I could sense the difference between two tests about a year apart):

Racial bias built into a common medical test for lung function is likely leading to fewer Black patients getting care for breathing problems, a study published Thursday suggests. 

As many as 40% more Black male patients in the study might have been diagnosed with breathing problems if current diagnosis-assisting computer software was changed, the study said. 

Doctors have long discussed the potential problems caused by race-based assumptions that are built into diagnostic software. This study, published in JAMA Network Open, offers one of the first real-world examples of how the the issue may affect diagnosis and care for lung patients, said Dr. Darshali Vyas, a pulmonary care doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The results are “exciting” to see published but it’s also “what we’d expect” from setting aside race-based calculations, said Vyas, who was an author of an influential 2020 New England Journal of Medicine article that catalogued examples of how race-based assumptions are used in making doctors’ decisions about patient care.

For centuries, some doctors and others have held beliefs that there are natural racial differences in health, including one that Black people’s lungs were innately worse than those of white people. That assumption ended up in modern guidelines and algorithms for assessing risk and deciding on further care. Test results were adjusted to account for — or “correct” for — a patient’s race or ethnicity. 

One example beyond lung function is a heart failure risk-scoring system that categorizes Black patients as being at lower risk and less likely to need referral for special cardiac care. Another is an equation used in determining kidney function that creates estimates of higher kidney function in Black patients.

The new study focused on a test to determine how much and how quickly a person can inhale and exhale. It’s often done using a spirometer — a device with a mouthpiece connected to a small machine. 

After the test, doctors get a report that has been run through computer software and scores the patient’s ability breathe. It helps indicate whether a patient has restrictions and needs further testing or care for things like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder or lung scarring due to air pollutant exposure. 

Algorithms that adjust for race raise the threshold for diagnosing a problem in Black patients and may make them less likely to get started on certain medications or to be referred for medical procedures or even lung transplants, Vyas said.

While physicians also look at symptoms, lab work, X-rays and family histories of breathing problems, the pulmonary function testing can be an important part of diagnoses, “especially when patients are borderline,” said Dr. Albert Rizzo, the chief medical officer at the American Lung Association. 

The new study looked at more than 2,700 Black men and 5,700 white men tested by University of Pennsylvania Health System doctors between 2010 and 2020. The researchers looked at spirometry and lung volume measurements and assessed how many were deemed to have breathing impairments under the race-based algorithm as compared to under a new algorithm.

Researchers concluded there would be nearly 400 additional cases of lung obstruction or impairment in Black men with the new algorithm.

Earlier this year, the American Thoracic Society, which represents lung-care doctors, issued a statement recommending replacement of race-focused adjustments. But the organization also put a call out for more research, including into the best way to modify software and whether making a change might inadvertently lead to overdiagnosis of lung problems in some patients.

Vyas noted some other algorithms have already been changed to drop race-based assumptions, including one for pregnant women that predicts risks of vaginal delivery if the mom previously had a cesarean section.

Changing the lung-testing algorithm may take longer, Vyas said, especially if different hospitals use different versions of race-adjusting procedures and software. 

Source: Black men were likely underdiagnosed with lung problems because of bias in software, study suggests

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5 takeaways from AP’s series on health disparities impacting Black Americans

2023/05/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

The Associated Press spent a year examining how racial health disparities have harmed generations of Black Americans. 

From birth to death, Black Americans fare worse in measures of health compared to their white counterparts. They have higher rates of infant and maternal mortality, higher incidence of asthma during childhood, more difficulty treating mental illness as teens, and higher rates of high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s disease and other illness as adults. 

Here are the key takeaways from each story:

WHY ARE BLACK BABIES AND MOTHERS MORE LIKELY TO DIE?

Black women have the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States — 69.9 per 100,000 live births for 2021, almost three times the rate for white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 2021 rate was a significant increase from the prior year.

Black babies are also more likely to die, and also far more likely to be born prematurely, setting the stage for health issues that could follow them through their lives. In 2020, there were 364,487 preterm births in the nation, about 1 in 10. Preterm birth rates were highest for Black infants, 14.2%, between 2018 and 2020. 

Multiple factors contribute to these disparities, according to the CDC and advocacy organizations, such as underlying health conditions. But more doctors and experts have pointed to the role of structural racism that has created inequitable access to health care, implicit bias and discriminatory care. Poor health care or outcomes for Black mothers in turn can create issues for their babies, putting them at risk for future health problems down the road.

WHY DO MORE BLACK KIDS HAVE ASTHMA?

Black children are more likely to have asthma and to be exposed to certain triggers, like mold and air pollution. Their asthma often is more severe and less likely to be controlled. About 4 million kids in the U.S. have asthma. The percentage of Black children with asthma is far higher than white kids; more than 12% of Black kids nationwide suffer from the disease, compared with 5% of white children. 

Some of the high rates of asthma among Black children are tied to genetics — family histories of allergies, and frequent respiratory infections. But much of the disparity lies in the same racist factors that afflict Black peoples’ health from birth to death.

With asthma, especially for kids, where you live makes all the difference. And where you live often depends on your race. Black Americans are more at risk of living in homes with asthma triggers, like cockroaches, dust mites, mold and rodents. Research also shows that air pollution can worsen asthma.

Across America, nearly 4 in 10 Black children live in areas with poor environmental and health conditions compared to 1 in 10 white children. Factories spew nitrogen oxide and particulate matter. Idling trucks and freeway traffic kick up noxious fumes and dust.

The disparities are built into a housing system shaped by the longstanding effects of slavery and Jim Crow-era laws. Many of the communities that have substandard housing today or are located near toxic sites are the same as those that were segregated and redlined decades ago.

HOW DOES RACISM AFFECT BLACK TEENS’ MENTAL HEALTH?

About 50% of Black youth experience moderate to severe symptoms of depression, and about 18% said they were exposed to racial trauma often or very often in their life.

The drivers of the mental health crisis for Black children begin early and persist through a lifetime. Black children’s first encounters with racism can start before they are even in school, and Black teenagers report experiencing an average of five instances of racial discrimination per day. Young Black students are often perceived as less innocent and older than their age, leading to disproportionately harsher discipline in schools.

Black adolescents are far less likely than their white peers to seek and find mental health care. In part, that’s because Black families often distrust the medical system after generations of mistreatment — from lack of access to care to being subjected to racist practices and experimentation. 

The country also has a shortage of providers who understand the roles that racial identity and racism play in shaping young Black people’s mental health. Research and health surveillance data point to a growing mental health crisis among Black youth over decades. Between 1991 and 2019, Black adolescents had the highest increase among any other group in prevalence of suicide attempts — a rise of nearly 80%.

WHAT ROLE HAS HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE PLAYED IN COVID DEATHS OF BLACK AMERICANS?

High blood pressure has played a major role in COVID deaths, and especially in the COVID deaths of Black people. Together, they have created a deadly combination: While it is listed as a contributing factor in 15.5% of the deaths of white COVID sufferers, the figure for Black victims is 21.4% — the highest of any racial group.

About 56% of Black adults have high blood pressure, compared to 48% of white people. Three in four African Americans are likely to develop the disorder by age 55.

While only 32% of white adults with high blood pressure have their condition under control with medication, the figure for Black Americans is even lower — 25%.

And it’s likely to get worse: By 2060, the number of Americans battling cardiovascular disease is expected to drastically increase. High blood pressure rates alone are projected to rise 27.2%, or from roughly 127.8 million to 162.5 million Americans.

Among white people, the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and disease is projected to decrease over time. Yet significant increases are projected among people of color, especially Black and Latino Americans.

Like many conditions, genetics do play a part. Experts also blame poor diets, high cholesterol, obesity and smoking — risk factors that often exist at higher rates in Black communities. Also, in recent years, more academics and doctors have called attention to structural inequities that have an outsized impact. Black neighborhoods are more likely to experience a lack of access to healthy foods or be inundated with fast food options.

WHY DO SO MANY BLACK PEOPLE DEVELOP ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE?

Black Americans are more likely than white people to develop Alzheimer’s. About 14% of Black Americans over the age of 65 have Alzheimer’s, compared with 10% of white Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts believe the rates could be even higher.

Health conditions like cardiovascular disease and diabetes experienced in earlier stages of life are known risk factors — both of which are more common among Black and Latino populations. Depression, high blood pressure, obesity and chronic stress are also risk factors. The CDC also acknowledges the impact of “higher rates of poverty, and greater exposure to adversity and discrimination” as risk factors.

Across the board, Black people are also unlikely to receive the health care that white people do — including necessary medication to treat Alzheimer’s and dementia-related disorders. A preliminary study released this year by Mount Sinai researchers found that Black people are less likely to receive dementia-related medications than white people.

Black and Latino populations are expected to rise in coming years, and so are the number of their cases of Alzheimer’s and related disorders. Cases among Black Americans are projected to increase four times over today’s estimates and Latino Americans could increase seven times, according to the CDC.

Some advocates estimate that by 2030, nearly 40% of all Americans living with Alzheimer’s could be Black or Latino. But the projected rise in cases isn’t just tied to population growth.

While evidence exists that certain genetic risk factors could differ by race and be a driver, the large disparities among racial groups can’t be explained just by genetics, experts say.

And the sheer trauma of experiencing racism is also believed to be a contributing factor.

Source: 5 takeaways from AP’s series on health disparities impacting Black Americans

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Report finds democracy for Black Americans is under attack

2023/04/17 Leave a comment

Of note:

Extreme views adopted by some local, state and federal political leaders who try to limit what history can be taught in schools and seek to undermine how Black officials perform their jobs are among the top threats to democracy for Black Americans, the National Urban League says.

Marc Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who leads the civil rights and urban advocacy organization, cited the most recent example: the vote this month by the Republican-controlled Tennessee House to oust two Black representatives for violating a legislative rule. The pair had participated in a gun control protest inside the chamber after the shooting that killed three students and three staff members at a Nashville school.

“We have censorship and Black history suppression, and now this,” Morial said in an interview. “It’s another piece of fruit of the same poisonous tree, the effort to suppress and contain.”

Both Tennessee lawmakers were quickly reinstated by leaders in their districts and were back at work in the House after an uproar that spread well beyond the state.

The Urban League’s annual State of Black America report being released Saturday draws on data and surveys from a number of organizations, including the UCLA Law School, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. The collective findings reveal an increase in recent years in hate crimes and efforts to change classroom curriculums, attempts to make voting more difficult and extremist views being normalized in politics, the military and law enforcement.

One of the most prominent areas examined is so-called critical race theory. Scholars developed it as an academic framework during the 1970s and 1980s in response to what they viewed as a lack of racial progress following the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. The theory centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people in society.

Director Taifha Alexander said the Forward Tracking Project, part of the UCLA Law School, began in response to the backlash that followed the protests of the George Floyd killing in 2020 and an executive order that year from then-President Donald Trump restricting diversity training.

The project’s website shows that 209 local, state and federal government entities have introduced more than 670 bills, resolutions, executive orders, opinion letters, statements and other measures against critical race theory since September 2020.

Anti-critical race theory is “a living organism in and of itself. It’s always evolving. There are always new targets of attack,” Alexander said.

She said the expanded scope of some of those laws, which are having a chilling effect on teaching certain aspects of the country’s racial conflicts, will lead to major gaps in understanding history and social justice.

“This anti-CRT campaign is going to frustrate our ability to reach our full potential as a multiracial democracy” because future leaders will be missing information they could use to tackle problems, Alexander said.

She said one example is the rewriting of Florida elementary school material about civil rights figure Rosa Parks and her refusal to give up her seat to a white rider on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus in 1955 — an incident that sparked the bus boycott there. Mention of race was omitted entirely in one revision, a change first reported by The New York Times.

Florida has been the epicenter of many of the steps, including opposing AP African American studies, but it’s not alone.

“The things that have been happening in Florida have been replicated, or governors in similarly situated states have claimed they will do the same thing,” Alexander said.

In Alabama, a proposal to ban “divisive” concepts passed out of legislative committee this past week. Last year, the administration of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, rescinded a series of policies, memos and other resources related to diversity, equity and inclusion that it characterized as “discriminatory and divisive concepts” in the state’s public education system.

Oklahoma public school teachers are prohibited from teaching certain concepts of race and racism under a bill Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt signed into law in 2021.

On Thursday, the Llano County Commissioners Court in Texas held a special meeting to consider shutting down the entire public library system rather than follow a federal judge’s order to return a slate of books to the shelves on topics ranging from teenage sexuality to bigotry.

After listening to public comments in favor and against the shutdown, the commissioners decided to remove the item from the agenda.

“We will suppress your books. We will suppress the conversation about race and racism, and we will suppress your history, your AP course,” Morial said. “It is singular in its effort to suppress Blacks.”

Other issues in his group’s report address extremism in the military and law enforcement, energy and climate change, and how current attitudes can affect public policy. Predominantly white legislatures in Missouri and Mississippi have proposals that would shift certain government authority from some majority Black cities to the states.

In many ways, the report mirrors concerns evident in recent years in a country deeply divided over everything from how much K-12 students should be taught about racism and sexuality to the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

Forty percent of voters in last year’s elections said their local K-12 public schools were not teaching enough about racism in the United States, while 34% said it already was too much, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of the American electorate. Twenty-three percent said the current curriculum was about right.

About two-thirds of Black voters said more should be taught on the subject, compared with about half of Latino voters and about one-third of white voters.

Violence is one of the major areas of concern covered in the Urban League report, especially in light of the 2022 mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. The accused shooter left a manifesto raising the “great replacement theory ” as a motive in the killings.

Data released this year by the FBI indicated that hate crimes rose between 2020 and 2021. African Americans were disproportionately represented, accounting for 30% of the incidents in which the bias was known.

By comparison, the second largest racial group targeted in the single incident category was white victims, who made up 10%.

Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director of research with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, said when all the activities are tabulated, including hate crimes, rhetoric, incidents of discrimination and online disinformation, “we see a very clear and concerning threat to America and a disproportionate impact on Black Americans.” 

Source: Report finds democracy for Black Americans is under attack

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

McWhorter: Don’t sleep: Linguistically, Black Americans can walk and chew gum at the same time

2022/05/06 Leave a comment

Of interest:

In March, at the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication, one panel presentation was of particular interest: It concerned requirements in first-year college composition classes and discussed the idea that for students whose home dialect is Black English, or another nonstandard dialect, requiring them to write in standard English is a potentially unjust, if not flatly racist imposition, forcing some students to suppress their true selves in favor of a hegemonic artificiality. This school of thought holds that writing instructors should allow — encourage — such freshmen to write either purely in their home dialect or to engage in “code-meshing,” mixing the home dialect and the standard.

It’s an approach that accomplishes the feat of both underserving Black English speakers and diminishing Blackness.

During the panel’s Q. and A., an attendee presented this question: “What do we do when the resistance to code-meshing, for example, in our writing classrooms, comes from our BIPOC students? I ask because, of my attempts to encourage students to use their home dialects in writing, Black students in particular often resist those practices as setting them up for failure. Which only reflects how ingrained they are in a system that is inherently racist.”

The question and the panelists’ answers were quite revealing, including one from Asao Inoue, a rhetoric and composition professor at Arizona State University, who responded that when he hears that kind of objection from a student, he asks himself:

Is it that I have to say, or I have to create a classroom, and a learning experience, that demeans the linguistic history of that student in order for that student to go into the world and go into unfair racist, white supremacist systems and succeed? … Because if that student says, “You’re setting me up for failure,” what they’re saying is, “I want to succeed in that unfair system. I want to game that system.”

But, Inoue continued:

You’re always still going to be Black, or you’re always still going to be Latinx, or you’re always still going to be something else. … you can mouth the words that are white, but they’re coming from a body that’s something else, and you may be read that way. And so, for me, my goal as an educator is to change the system.

Because, he said:

What they’ve been exposed to is capitalist-inflected [expletive] about education being the way in which we, you, become a nice little cog in the system and you get skills. So you can go out in the world and make Microsoft more money.

While not all writing professors would go that far, in terms of appending a critique of capitalist reality to teaching freshman composition, just the notion that standard English is exterior to Black students’ real selves requires a closer look, because it tracks with worrisome currents in the way we are encouraged to think about race, especially lately.

Few familiar with today’s academic world will find Inoue’s opinions especially surprising. The idea in education circles that standard English functions as an unjust “gatekeeper,” holding back students of color, has been around for a long time. Related has been the idea that at the grade-school level, Black students whose home dialect is Black English should be taught as bilinguals of a sort. Adherents of this philosophy don’t say standard English should be withheld but suggest that standard English and Black English should be presented as different languages, as it were. Recall the “Ebonics” debate that gained national attention in the 1990s.

In 1993, English Leadership Quarterly, a publication of the National Council of Teachers of English, published a piece by two Indiana University of Pennsylvania English professors, Donald A. McAndrew and C. Mark Hurlbert, arguing that:

Writers should be encouraged to make intentional errors in standard form and usage. Attacking the demand for standard English is the only way to end its oppression of linguistic minorities and learning writers. We believe this frontal assault is necessary for two reasons: (1) it affords experienced writers, who can choose or not choose to write standard English, a chance to publicly demonstrate against its tyranny and (2) if enough writers do it regularly, our culture’s view of what is standard and acceptable may widen just enough to include a more diverse surface representation of language, creating a more equitable distribution not only of the power in language and literacy but also, ultimately, of the power in economics and politics that language and literacy allow.

Later, as The Washington Times reported in 1995, the N.C.T.E. discussed eliminating “English” from its name. That year, a delegate to its annual convention said, “If we are to offer diversity, there can be a conversation about language arts, but not about English.”

But in the same way that the idea of eliminating references to “English” strikes most as overboard, the idea that for Black people standard English is something wholly apart is simply inaccurate. For most Black Americans, both Black and standard English are part of who we are; our English is, in this sense, larger than many white people’s. In “The Souls of Black Folk,” W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not … I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension.” On a less exalted level, a great many Black people toggle endlessly between standard and Black English, day in and day out — we code-switch. I always liked how Gloria Naylor was able to get this across, as in this scene from her novel “Mama Day”:

“We ain’t staying long,” Ruby says, pulling up a chair. “But I thought it would be nice for us to meet Cocoa’s new husband.”“It’s a pleasure,” George says.“Doubly mine,” says Ruby. “And this here is my new husband, Junior Lee.”“Pleasssurre.” Junior Lee manages a nod. “Hear you a big railroad man.”“No, I’m an engineer.”

In that exchange, the characters aren’t dipping in and out of what they think of as a cold, alien dialect. They are sounding subtly different notes according to which dialect they render each thought or gesture in. Standard English forms are as much theirs as Black English ones.

Communicating in this way, Black Americans are doing what other people do worldwide, living between two varieties of a language. Swiss people’s formal Hoch Deutsch is almost a different language from the Swiss German they speak informally. The Arabic speaker typically controls both the Modern Standard Arabic derived from the language of the Qur’an and used in formal settings and a local dialect used for real life, like Egyptian or Moroccan.

People in these countries and beyond would find familiar Maya Angelou’s observation in “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” couched as completely unremarkable:

In the classroom we all learned past participles, but in the streets and in our homes the Blacks learned to drop s’s from plurals and suffixes from past-tense verbs. We were alert to the gap separating the written word from the colloquial. We learned to slide out of one language and into another without being conscious of the effort. At school, in a given situation, we might respond with “That’s not unusual.” But in the street, meeting the same situation, we easily said, “It be’s like that sometimes.”

To give some credence to those freshman-comp panelists, we might say that Angelou could have turned away from the “That’s not unusual” and that Du Bois could have considered that in real life Shakespeare, Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius might have looked down on him as some kind of “Aethiope.”

But subordinated and even despised people can, over time, with full awareness of the unjustness of racism, embrace even a foreign language, as opposed to a dialect, that is initially forced upon them. They can come to process it as a part of who they are, as people existing at a particular time, amid a dynamic synergy between the then and the now, the us and the them, the imposition and the resilience.

Many Indians, for instance, cherish English as one facet of the expression of modern Indianness, despite its imposition under colonial rule. Not long ago, I took in Netflix’s Bollywood romantic comedy “Love Per Square Foot,” in which the characters speak “Hinglish,” a neat blend of English and Hindi, a common linguistic phenomenon among many people in India and throughout the Indian diaspora. In the movie, there is nary a suggestion that the English feels to the characters like a spritz of cold water on every second sentence from a mustachioed British imperialist. In the same way, Congolese people go back and forth between French, their African lingua francas such as Lingala (memorably featured in, for example, the documentary “When We Were Kings”) and local indigenous languages few have heard of beyond where they are used.

Too often, what we’re presented with as authentically Black is a kind of essentialization. The idea that people’s authenticity stops at their home dialect does not reflect how people operate linguistically or their experience. Foisted on Black Americans, this idea of the standard dialect as a quiet menace, whatever its progressive intentions, is limiting. Even if the idea is not to ban the standard from a curriculum, if standard English is presented with an eye roll as the province of The Man, this is based in a conception of Blackness needlessly smaller than the reality of it.

Linguistically, Black Americans can and do walk and chew gum at the same time, like countless people around the world — and like it.

Source: McWhorter: Don’t sleep: Linguistically, Black Americans can walk and chew gum at the same time

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Immigration comes at a devastating cost to Black Americans

2022/03/12 Leave a comment

Not sure degree to which this concern is relevant given the growth in Black immigration, about 1 in 10 currently, projected to rise to about one-third by 2060 (Key findings about Black immigrants in the US – Pew).

Congress continues to relentlessly push immigration policies that’ll make Black Americans poorer.

That’s not their stated goal, of course. But that’ll nevertheless be the end result of their proposal to amnesty millions of illegal immigrants and boost the level of legal immigration. The lasting effects of uncontrolled, mass immigration on Black Americans are plainly obvious and have been well-documented throughout our country’s history. So how can any Black politician in good conscience advocate for a more expansive immigration policy that would continue to do us harm?

Don’t listen to those who say we supporters of immigration reduction want to put an end to it or that we’re “anti-immigrant.” They’re only trying to shut down the debate. For decades I have worked to help welcome and assimilate immigrants in Miami, a city with one of the largest foreign-born populations in the U.S.

Source: Immigration comes at a devastating cost to Black Americans

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Why Many Black Americans Changed Their Minds About Covid Shots

2021/10/15 Leave a comment

Of note, both the hesitancy and the means taken to overcome it:

By the time vaccines for the coronavirus were introduced late last year, the pandemic had taken two of Lucenia Williams Dunn’s close friends. Still, Ms. Dunn, the former mayor of Tuskegee, contemplated for months whether to be inoculated.

It was a complicated consideration, framed by the government’s botched response to the pandemic, its disproportionate toll on Black communities and an infamous 40-year government experiment with which her hometown is often associated.

“I thought about the vaccine most every day,” said Ms. Dunn, 78, who finally walked into a pharmacy this summer and rolled up her sleeve for a shot, convinced after weighing with her family and doctor the possible consequences of remaining unvaccinated.

“What people need to understand is some of the hesitancy is rooted in a horrible history, and for some, it’s truly a process of asking the right questions to get to a place of getting the vaccine.”

In the first months after the vaccine rollout, Black Americans were far less likely than white Americans to be vaccinated. In addition to the difficulty of obtaining shots in their communities, their hesitancy was fueled by a powerful combination of general mistrust of the government and medical institutions, and misinformation over the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.

But a wave of pro-vaccine campaigns and a surge of virus hospitalizations and deaths this summer, mostly among the unvaccinated and caused by the highly contagious Delta variant, have narrowed the gap, experts say. So, too, have the Food and Drug Administration’s full approval of a vaccine and new employer mandates. A steadfast resistance to vaccines in some white communities may also have contributed to the lessening disparity.

While gaps persist in some regions, by late September, according to the most recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a roughly equal share of Black, white and Hispanic adult populations — 70 percent of Black adults, 71 percent of white adults and 73 percent of Hispanic adults — had received at least one vaccine dose. A Pew study in late August revealed similar patterns. Federal data shows a larger racial gap, but that data is missing demographic information for many vaccine recipients.

Since May, when vaccines were widely available to a majority of adults across the country, monthly surveys by Kaiser have shown steady improvement in vaccination rates among Black Americans.

How the racial gap was narrowed — after months of disappointing turnout and limited access — is a testament to decisions made in many states to send familiar faces to knock on doors and dispel myths about the vaccines’ effectiveness, provide internet access to make appointments and offer transportation to vaccine sites.

In North Carolina, which requires vaccine providers to collect race and ethnicity data, hospital systems and community groups conducted door-to-door canvassing and hosted pop-up clinics at a theme park, a bus station and churches. Over the summer, the African American share of the vaccinated population began to more closely mirror the African American share of the general population.

In Mississippi, which has one of the country’s worst vaccination rates and began similar endeavors, 38 percent of people who have started the vaccine process are Black, a share that is roughly equal to the Black share of Mississippi’s population.

And in Alabama, public awareness campaigns and rides to vaccination sites helped transform dismal inoculation rates. A store owner and county commissioner in Panola, a tiny rural town near the Mississippi border, led the effort to vaccinate nearly all of her majority Black community.

Today, about 40 percent of Black Alabama residents — up from about 28 percent in late April — have had at least one dose, a feat in a state that has ranked among the lowest in overall vaccination rates and highest in per capita deaths from Covid-19. About 39 percent of white people in the state have had one dose, up from 31 percent in late April.

Health officials and community leaders say that those who remain unvaccinated have pointed to concerns about how quickly the vaccines were developed and what their long-term health effects might be, plus disinformation that they contain tracking devices or change people’s DNA. The damage wrought by the government-backed trials in Tuskegee, in which Black families were misled by health care professionals, also continues to play a role in some communities, helping to explain why some African Americans have still held out.

“It’s less about saying, ‘This racial ethnic group is more hesitant, more unwilling to get vaccinated,’ and more about saying, ‘You know, this group of people in this given area or this community doesn’t have the information or access they need to overcome their hesitancy,’” said Nelson Dunlap, chief of staff for the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine.

When the U.S. Public Health Service began what it called the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” 600 Black men — 399 with syphilis and 201 without the disease — were told they would be treated for so-called bad blood in exchange for free medical exams, meals and burial insurance. In reality, treatment was withheld. Even after penicillin was discovered as an effective treatment, most did not receive the antibiotic.

The experiment began in 1932 and did not stop until 1972, and only after it was exposed in a news article. The surviving men and the heirs of those who had died were later awarded a settlement totaling about $10 million, and the exposure of the study itself eventually led to reforms in medical research. Still, the damage endured.

“Few families escaped the study. Everyone here knows someone who was in the study,” said Omar Neal, 64, a radio show host and former Tuskegee mayor who counts three relatives in the study and who wavered on a vaccine before finally getting one, his mind changed by the rising number of deaths. “And the betrayal — because that is what the study was — is often conjured whenever people are questioning something related to mistrusting medicine or science.”

Rueben C. Warren, director of the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care at Tuskegee University, said the study served as a real example in the long line of medical exploitation and neglect experienced by Black Americans, eroding trust in the government and health care systems.

“The questions being asked about the vaccine should be understood in the larger context of historic inequities in health care,” Dr. Warren said. “The hope, of course, is they finally decide to get the vaccine.”

A national campaign led by the Ad Council and Covid Collaborative, a coalition of experts, tackled the hesitation. This summer, a short-form documentary including descendants of the men in the Tuskegee study was added to the campaign.

When Deborah Riley Draper, who created the short-form documentary, interviewed descendants of the Tuskegee study, she was struck by how shrouded it was in myths and misconceptions, such as the false claim that the government had injected the men with syphilis.

“The descendants’ message was clear that African Americans are as much a part of public health as any other group and we need to fight for access and information,” she said.

In Macon County, Ala., which has a population of about 18,000 and is home to many descendants of the Tuskegee trials, about 45 percent of Black residents have received at least one vaccine dose. Community leaders, including those who are part of a task force that meets weekly, attribute the statistic, in part, to local outreach and education campaigns and numerous conversations about the difference between the Tuskegee study and the coronavirus vaccines.

For months, Martin Daniel, 53, and his wife, Trina Daniel, 49, resisted the vaccines, their uncertainty blamed in part on the study. Their nephew Cornelius Daniel, a dentist in Hampton, Ga., said he grew up hearing about the research from his uncle, and saw in his own family how the long-running deception had sown generational distrust of medical institutions.

Mr. Daniel, 31, said he overcame his own hesitation in the spring because the risks of working in patients’ mouths outweighed his concerns.

His uncle and aunt reconsidered their doubts more slowly, but over the summer, as the Delta variant led to a surge in hospitalizations across the South, the Daniels made vaccination appointments for mid-July. Before the date arrived, though, they and their two teenage children tested positive for the coronavirus.

On July 6, the couple, inseparable since meeting as students on the campus of Savannah State University, died about six hours apart. Their children are now being raised by Mr. Daniel and his wife, Melanie Daniel, 32.

“We truly believe the vaccine would have saved their lives,” Ms. Daniel said.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/us/black-americans-vaccine-tuskegee.html

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Spokesman: Israel to deport dozens of African Hebrews

2021/04/28 Leave a comment

Strange story and history:

Dozens of members of a polygamous, vegan sect in Israel have received deportation orders from the government, the group’s spokesman said Monday, despite much of the community having received permanent residency under arrangements with Israel.

The community, which numbers around 3,000 people, is comprised of Black Americans whose founders moved to Israel in the 1960s and believe they are descendants of an ancient Israelite tribe. Most live in the southern desert town of Dimona.

Prince Immanuel Ben-Yehuda, spokesman for the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, said the Interior Ministry had given notice to at least 46 families that they must leave the country within 60 days, calling it a “shock to the system.”

The African Hebrew Israelites began arriving in Israel in 1969, following Ben Carter, a Chicago steelworker who renamed himself Ben Ammi Ben Israel and claimed to be God’s representative on earth.

But Israel wasn’t sure what to make of the newcomers, who arrived on tourist visas, adopted Hebrew names and a West African style of dress. The government was unsure whether they qualified for citizenship under the country’s “Law of Return,” which is granted to almost any Jew who requests it.

The Interior Ministry granted many members of the community temporary residency in 1992 and permanent residency status in 2003. Many members study in Israeli schools and serve in the military.

“For quite some time, we’ve had a number of members of the community with different levels of immigration status, some of us have full citizenship, some taken permanent residency, some have temporary residency, and some have no status whatsoever,” said Ben-Yehuda. He said the community has been working for years with Israeli authorities to sort out the legal status of those without permanent residency.

The Population and Immigration Authority said in a statement that in 2003, 1,200 African Hebrew Israelites were found eligible for residency, and that in the years afterward the office received other requests from people who were not members of the community.

“All those who were not included in the list of community members and didn’t meet the criteria received a negative reply and in effect are residing illegally in Israel for a long period and must leave according to the law,” the authority said in a statement. It added that those who had received deportation letters were entitled to appeal.

Ben-Yehuda said the community would appeal the decision. “We’re here because we chose to be here to build this country and give our energy to the improvement and the betterment of this nation, so it’s quite a bit disheartening in that respect,” he said.

Source: Spokesman: Israel to deport dozens of African Hebrews

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White Americans Are Still Confused About Racism – Here’s “The Talk” We Need To Have | Citizenship and Social Justice

2017/11/28 Leave a comment

This is a really well thought out and argued piece by Jon Greenberg:

Growing up and now living in the predominately white city of Seattle, I’ve known and worked with countless White Americans. I have yet to meet one White American who has given or received “The Talk.”

You know, the one that primarily Black American families have to have with their children to keep them safe from the police – because of their race: “Keep your hands open and out in front of you, shut your mouth, be respectful, say ‘sir.’” The one you can now witness through this powerful video:

White Americans have the privilege to grow up without “The Talk,” but that doesn’t mean they should grow up without a talk.

Perhaps because too many White Americans never get one, they too often get race so wrong.

For one, a recent survey reveals that a startling number of White Americans – 55% – believe that they are the targets of discrimination. Other studies (here and here) have corroborated such high percentages. Important to note about this recent survey is that “a much smaller percentage” of those White Americans say that they actually experienced the discrimination.

Before you start blaming Trump supporters for these results, a pre-election poll of 16,000 Americans revealed that Clinton supporters, too, have some serious work to do. For example, 20% of Clinton supporters described Black Americans as “less intelligent” than White Americans.

Racism is a problem all across the board for White America, even in “progressive” places like Seattle.

Maybe this deep misunderstanding of racism explains why too many White Americans don’t lift a finger to stop it. Literally. Most White Americans – 67% – refuse to even click to share articles about race on social media.

We White Americans are long past due for a “Talk” of our own. I’ve even readied some talking points for you.

Before I lay them out, I’d like to note that I’m hardly the first to compile such a list.

However, given white peoples’ attitudes and inaction on racism, another article certainly can’t hurt and could even help. Compare my list to this one, this one, or this tasty one. (It will only help me make my point.)

It’s worth adding to this wealth of existing information because many White Americans still hold on to what they think are legitimate reasons to dismiss information about systemic racism against people of Color.

You may think such reasons are valid, too. You might believe that the evidence of systemic racism is “anecdotal,” argue that sources are “out of date,” or feel skeptical about information from op-eds or radical lefty publications.

So you should know that, for this one article, I’m sticking with numbers, not stories. Also know that, for the most part, I’m citing publications only from the last few years and from mainstream news publications, government or academic studies/data, or coverage of such studies/data from mainstream news publications. As much as possible, I’m staying clear of left-leaning sources like The Huffington Post, which initially covered the Trump campaign in its Entertainment section.

While reading, keep two key numbers from the Census in your head:

  • 62: the percentage of this country that is White American (not Latinx)
  • 13: the percentage of this country that is Black American

If access to institutional power were spread proportionally, 13% of Black Americans and 62% of White Americans would make up any given institution.

Key points:

  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion about education. The narrative of our educational system as leveler of the playing field doesn’t hold up with a racial lens.
  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion about employment and poverty. The narrative of hard work leading to riches doesn’t hold up with a racial lens.
  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion of a system that, according to Ava DuVernay, evolved from slavery. The narrative of our system as a “justice” system doesn’t hold up with a racial lens.
  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion about this country as a meritocracy. That narrative of education as a pathway to social mobility doesn’t hold up with a racial lens.
  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion about housing discrimination – past and present. The narrative of housing as part of the American dream doesn’t hold up with a racial lens.
  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion about health care. The narrative of doctors fulfilling their Hippocratic Oath doesn’t hold up with a racial lens.
  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion about the media we consume. With a racial lens, the narratives of some people barely exist.

via White Americans Are Still Confused About Racism – Here’s “The Talk” We Need To Have | Citizenship and Social Justice

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Shootings raise unanswered life-or-death question for black men in America: Neil Macdonald

2016/07/11 Leave a comment

Good column by Macdonald:

In the racially electrified fog of fear and rage following the events in Dallas Thursday, one question remains conspicuously unanswered: If you are a black man in America, how are you supposed to cope?

President Barack Obama has no real answer, nor do the members of Congress who bowed their heads in memory of the slain Dallas police officers, nor does Dallas’s anguished police chief, a black man himself.

The deadly consequences of carrying while black
#SayHisName: Americans react to videos of police killings
The only advice black Americans seem to get is to respectfully submit when some cop calls them out on the street, or looms at the door of their car, or shows up at their home, no matter how terrified they may be.

‘Comply, comply, comply’

For heaven’s sake, don’t give the officer any lip, or try to run away, even if you aren’t guilty of anything, and no matter how abusive the cop may become.

Because if you are black, that policeman is far more likely to gun you down, or choke you to death, or Taser you, or beat you into a coma.

“Comply, comply, comply,” Philando Castile’s mother says she used to tell him. “Comply — that’s the key thing in order to try to survive being stopped by the police.”

‘When is it going to stop?’: Philando Castile’s family speaks out1:10

Perhaps Alton Sterling’s parents gave him the same counsel. It’s as common for black parents to have that talk with their kids as it is for white parents to warn about talking to strangers.

But of course supine compliance does not guarantee survival at the hands of police if you are black in America (or, to be honest, if you are Indigenous in some parts of Canada, but that’s a separate discussion).

Philando Castile was evidently complying with the Minnesota policeman who’d pulled him over for a broken tail light this week when that policeman opened fire through the driver’s window. The police force has not said otherwise.

And a day earlier, Alton Sterling was pinned down, hands free of weapons, when two Louisiana cops shot him in the back and chest.
After the Castile killing, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton stated the obvious: “Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers, were white? I don’t think it would have …”

There is simply no question that your race can determine whether you live or die at the hands of police in America. If you are black, you are several times more likely to be killed.

Benefit of the tiniest doubt

And, chances are, your killer will walk away, unpunished, and likely consoled by his fellow officers for having had to go through such trauma.

Source: Shootings raise unanswered life-or-death question for black men in America: Neil Macdonald – Politics – CBC News

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