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I have a complicated relationship with Alabama because Alabama is a complicated place. Though I’ve lived less time there than anywhere else in the world that could be considered home (fall of 1993 through spring 1997 and only two summers, ever), it is also the state where I went to high school and where my parents live and where my father is from. I love driving from Atlanta (another location that is home for similar life and family reasons) to Huntsville, Ala., because the route my family often takes is very scenic and because I love seeing the “Alabama the Beautiful” sign as you cross from Menlo, Ga., into Mentone, Ala., on Georgia State Road 48 that becomes Alabama State Road 117. Alabama, actually, is quite beautiful.

But the state isn’t just its lands; it is also its people and its history, and Alabama is a state fraught with the worst of both. When outsiders think of Alabama, many think of racist white people, slavery and all-around, good ‘ol American racism, and they aren’t entirely wrong. I lived in northern Alabama, home of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center and less popularly known Cummings Research Park, the second-largest research park in America (and the fourth largest in the world), specializing in research and development in a vast array of industries, from aerospace to biotechnology. It is by far the most educated part of the state and no other part comes close and yet, Confederate flags are never far away and cotton fields decorate the fringes of the city. Huntsville is still in Alabama, even if it doesn’t have the same “feel” as what people think of the rest of the state.

Still, I like it there. I like being at my parents’ house and listening to the outdoors. They don’t live in the red-clay outdoors of my father’s youth but in a city that still manages to quiet down in the evenings. I love visiting my father’s childhood town, where I used to play with my cousins and walk for miles a day just to go get something from the actual, factual country store, just to walk miles back to the house because we had nothing else to do and all of our time was ours.

Time has always moved slower in Alabama to me, no matter what part of the state I’ve been in. And that’s always been a good thing. My family is all through the state, from the north to the south, the east to the west. We are Alabama, but the good parts. Not the parts that hate black people and bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham or the reason Montgomery had to hold a bus boycott or Bull Connor and his ilk or the people who made Bloody Sunday a part of civil rights history in Selma on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965.

And we’re definitely not the people from Alabama who decided that a woman has no right to her own body. I’m not surprised that Alabama passed into law HB 314, the “Human Life Protection Act,” a measure banning nearly all abortions in the state except in cases where the mother’s health is in peril. The super conservative government of the state wants to take down Roe v. Wade because why should a woman make a decision for her own life? I’m not surprised the state of Alabama is happy to take on that battle.

This is a state where judges (and future state chief justices) fight for the right to post the 10 Commandments in courtrooms despite the separation of church and state being a tenet of the very Constitution white people love so much. The right to bear arms? Absolutely! It’s in the Constitution. The stewards of government respecting the rights of its citizenry? Eh...as long as it doesn’t impede on the desires of those stewards. In Alabama, Jesus is white, the only religion is Christianity, and we’re all Baptists or Methodists. And the Bible says thou shalt not kill. So you shalt not—unless the people you kill don’t deserve the same rights you have, which is almost nobody but white men in power, apparently. In Alabama, the female governor signed away her own right to choose her own destiny. In Alabama, who is entitled to rights is a moving target for everybody but white men in power. Even the rights of their wives are up for debate.

In Alabama.

My nephew is a junior at the same high school in Madison, Ala., that I graduated from. At this point next year, he’ll be a few weeks away from graduating and beginning a new chapter in his life. I want him so far away from Alabama that he’ll lose his accent. I want him to get out and experience life in new places. He wants to be a pediatric neurosurgeon, and though his top choice, the University of Alabama-Birmingham, has one of the best medical schools in the country, so do others. I’d love for him to go to an HBCU like Morehouse College (for obvious reasons) or Howard University (because it’s in Washington, D.C., where I live). I’ve asked him to research and apply to at least one other top-tier school because his grades are amazing and many of those schools can relieve your whole financial burden pending household income. He’s thinking about Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Mostly, though, I just want him to leave Alabama. It’s not only because I want him to experience life; it’s also because I want him to try out a place where the state hasn’t spent its entire existence trying to tell everybody who isn’t a white man that they don’t matter. I know many southern states fit that bill, and even though Georgia isn’t much better (I know), as we say in the A, once you leave Atlanta, you hit Georgia. And he’d be in Atlanta with family. I just want him to be in a place that loves him more than Alabama will ever pretend to. That might not be a totally fair reading of the state, but I’ve read a lot of books and I’m not that far off.

And yet I still have told a family I know who is moving to Huntsville that it’s a nice place, in Alabama. I love the state and always will, but a large part of that love is personal nostalgia and my own family history. It might be Alabama, but to me, it is also Tuskegee, Alabama A&M, Miles, Stillman and Oakwood. It is Muscle Shoals. We roll big body ’Lacs and Caprices. And red dirt and Mason jars. And like much of black history in America, it’s full of survival and overcoming injustice. It’s a hotbed of the civil rights movement. It is Chambers County and the town of Five Points, where my family is from. It’s Madison. It’s my best friend and where he met his end, but also his mother and son. It’s my family and the lives they’ve carved out successfully and happily. It’s love. But the hate part is ingrained in the fabric, too.

And again, Alabama is beautiful. I’d wager that all of us from there who have sat on a porch or ruined a white shirt in the red dirt or driven through the state from Huntsville to Mobile would say the same. It’s ours. Even if everybody else thinks Alabama is a place to go and die at the hands of some KKK member, we know that’s not true. We also know that it isn’t a state for everybody, including some of us. It’s not a state for me and hasn’t been in the 22 years since I left. I enjoy visiting but Alabama has often been quite clear that I don’t belong there long term.

Because just as much as I love seeing that “Alabama the Beautiful” sign on the way in, something almost always happens to ensure that I’m equally excited about seeing that Georgia sign on my way out, reminding me that Georgia’s (or anywhere else for that matter) on my mind.

I have a complicated relationship with Alabama because Alabama is a complicated place.

Source: https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/

Last weekend, I was invited to a brunch hosted by Ebele Okobi, who is Facebook’s Head of Public Policy, Africa, and was my de facto tour guide and event planner during my week abroad. There were nine of us there—an African diasporic reunion of black people scattered throughout the globe but settled in London. Among the many conversations we had was a tongue-in-cheek assessment of the variances within the “brands” of racism, which then segued into the ways each country with an African slave-owning history currently reckons with its past. (Brazil pretends it didn’t exist at all, America acknowledges its existence but denies the existence of any sort of foundational residue from it, etc.)

And, well, I’m embarrassed to admit that it was here that I learned, for the first time, of the Congolese genocide, where up to 10 million people were killed during Leopold II’s 23-year-long rule of the Congo Free State, and countless others were systematically raped, tortured, dismembered and displaced.

Perhaps I was taught this in some history class decades ago and just forgot. Either way, that was the most American I felt in my time there.

This sort of cruelty that people with power exhibited towards vulnerable people—a process equal parts systematic, structural, intentional and gleeful—existed wherever colonization did, and still does today. It is not a uniquelyAmerican trait. But it is an American trait, more essential to our construction and our collective zeitgeist than Babe Ruth. There have been stretches in American history, of course, when the central driving force behind legislation and policy and law have been more empathetic and less antagonistic. But in the span of our history, these moments are outliers. Perhaps even anomalies. If America was honest about who and what it is, we’d sell the snapshots and postcards of the men and women smiling during lynchings at the Cheesecake Factory.

I am reminded of this history this week, as the state of Alabama passed a set of abortion-related measures and restrictions that would seem to be pointless (“Why would they do this?” an otherwise sane person might ask) if you hadn’t yet realized that the punishment is the point. This isn’t about preserving “life.” They—the governor who signed this bill, the legislators who created it, the people who voted for them, and the governors, legislators and constituents in each state where similar laws are being drafted up—just want to enact pain. They want to punish women. For possessing sexual agency. For wanting bodily autonomy. For enjoying sex. For not having babies. For having babies. For not possessing what they believe to be the birthright privileges of whiteness and maleness. It’s petty. It’s punitive. It’s vindictive. They want women—particularly women who are black or brown and/or poor—to suffer.

The silver lining here is that this realization can and should be freeing—as any compulsion to compromise, to “reach across the aisle,” to build a bridge, to extend an olive branch, or to find common ground should be set ablaze and stuffed into a cashew-shaped canoe.

You can’t sway a sadist when your pain is their greatest pleasure. You just build more canoes.

Source: https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/

I recently took a trip down to Atlanta for my niece’s high school graduation. Despite the amount of Red Bull I consume (does anybody else think the only reason flavored Red Bull exists is to mix with vodka?), I do not have wings. So I had to fly. There are times when I fly that I’ll spring for an upgrade to either first class if it’s not too, too expensive or just to move up in boarding so I can ensure my bag makes it into overhead cabin space. This time, however, I took whatever the airline gave me, and boy did Delta show its ass.

For one, Delta has done away with boarding zone numbers in favor of a more word-dependent system but in proving that the airline doesn’t keep up with social media or black people, the last zone to board is now called “Basic.” And really, calling it a zone is unfair; this is the point in boarding when the folks at the counter just say “anybody else waiting around who thinks they’re getting on this flight, you can board now.” On my flight to Atlanta, Delta didn’t even say that as apparently the “Basic” zone only included myself and another person, so they actually called our names over the loudspeaker like we had gotten lost in the airport or something. Do better Delta.

Well, buying a “Basic” ticket pretty much put me into a seat towards the back of the plane. And you know what that means. It means I got to sit with the folks who could afford a plane ticket, but also think that they should be able to afford a more expensive plane ticket or an upgrade, so their behavior comports to that fantasy as opposed to the reality of sitting in seat 39B. This creates an unintentionally funny social experiment of annoying people. You know the type—the kind who sit in standstill traffic and honk their horn because if the cars around them would JUST MOVE they’d be able to go about their day just fine. People are dumb. And all of those people are on airplanes, naturally. Here are five of the most ridiculous of them.

1. The person in the last row who somehow decides that as soon as the plane stops they should grab their shit and try to run down the aisle to get as close to the front as possible.

If this is you, stop it. You’re not getting more than two rows ahead and you’re fucking up the feng shui and flow of deboarding traffic. Because if you’re going to do THAT, then you’re definitely going to try to squeeze past others while they grab their bags and not say excuse me, as you fuck up everybody else’s deboarding process.

2. The person who is in row 21 but had to put their bag in the overhead above row 27 but thinks that the whole-ass plane should wait for them to get their bag before row 22 up and gets off the plane.

I saw this yesterday. A woman literally stood in the aisle asking people six rows back to get her bag out of the overhead compartment and pass it down as opposed to waiting like she ended up HAVING to do. Just stop it.

3. The people in the window seats in any rows behind say 10 in coach, who are trying to stretch out and inch closer to the aisle that’s being blocked by, well the people closest to the aisle.

Stop touching me.

4. The folks who try to get out into the aisle for no good reason because they can’t go nowhere and obstruct the people trying to get their bags out because it’s their turn to actually get off the plane.

I realize this whole ridiculous list includes the built-in notion that there is order to getting off a plane. Some of you don’t believe this. Some of you believe you if you can beat the system, then you should beat the system. In very rare instances the system is beatable on a packed plane. But mostly, you are just like the rest of us who ain’t first-class mofos who will need to patiently and chillfully wait to get the fuck up off the plane. Eckspecially if your ass is in the “economy coach” class rows above 30. It’s gon’ be a minute, buddy. Let the folks get their bags, my G.

5. The people in middle or window seats who ask you to get their roller bags from the overhead compartment and pass it to them taking up valuable real estate as they open it up and check to make sure all the shit that was in there when they put it in the overhead space is still there EVEN though literally nobody could have stuck them for their paper without them knowing.

I hate you people. Just perish. Panama says just perish.

Bonus

On my flight to Atlanta, I was in row 35 and had the aisle seat. I was sitting next to two chaps with an affinity for flying planes who spent THE FIRST HOUR of an hour-and-a-half flight talking about famous plane crashes. Bruuuuuuuuh.

Source: https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/

“You’re so different. You’re so articulate. Why do you talk like a white girl? You’re the whitest black girl I know.”

Comments like these beg the question: What makes you black? Is it merely the color of one’s skin? Is it a state of mind? Knowing the lyrics to Cardi B’s songs?

It took me a while to embrace that my blackness was not the stereotype others believed.

In some ways, I am different. I was lucky to be raised in a household where I received all that I needed, with some of what I wanted. My parents encouraged me to spread my wings and move from my native New York to Miami for a job as a prosecutor. Being a black prosecutor was isolating, but I found others like me midway through my career.

I lived in a weird juxtaposition—I was a black female attorney, holding down a teaching job on the side, which allowed me some luxuries in life like a nicer car and the ability to travel. I never took it for granted; but in certain circles, I got pushback.

The message? That I “don’t know the struggle.”

Every black person’s struggle takes a different path but has the same theme. In my legal career, the struggle is respect, being heard, and having the ability to make meaningful change to uplift communities of color. The bias looks the same—while some people of color may be hesitant to embrace you because you’re perceived as “bougie,” certain white folks marvel that you can afford a luxury purse or a high-end foreign car without being tied to illegal activity. I was once at an event when a judge joked to me whether or not my Michael Kors purse was a result of dropping cases as a prosecutor.

No lie.

In doing community work, I often had to work harder to gain the credibility of my fellow people of color because I just seemed “so different.” One day, I was picking up a friend who lived in a poorer area of the city. She sent a young niece to let me know she was running late. I told her no problem. The niece went back to my friend and said, “why does she talk like that?”

“Like what, Sweetie?”

“Like a white girl”

I never was great at the code switch—I just was always me. Besides, I had no code to switch from. The result was working doubly hard in every environment.

Finally, I just stopped.

I always bristle when someone says “well s/he’s black, but you know, not really” or “s/he is the whitest black person I know.” Often this is said by a white person, possibly thinking it’s some sort of compliment, along the same lines of “you’re just so articulate.”

Really? How is that? Because the person doesn’t fit some sort of stereotype? Speak in a certain way? Throw the black power fist in the air for your entertainment?

To me, it’s not just about knowing pop culture or the latest urban wear designer. It’s knowing your history and being authentic to your roots. I’m an African-American woman, born of two immigrant Caribbean parents. If you really want to get down to it—Afro-Caribbean-American. I wear my hair in dreadlocks as a nod to the natural beauty of my own hair texture, not what Hollywood or someone else says is beauty. I can recite every Public Enemy song, but not so much for hip-hop past the year 2000 (I feel the message has been lost—with a few exceptions). I serve my community and humanity at large to the best of my ability. I fight injustice where I can. I see my dark complexion in the mirror and feel proud, strong and beautiful. Being African American presents challenges because of the ignorance of some, but I was given the tools at birth to be a warrior for positive change.

I’m in a place where I believe that the work I do daily reflects my authenticity. The work of fighting for racial equality is too important to get caught up in how I look or sound to others.

This is me.

1. Because reserving an entire section of the store for Memorial Day soirees, crispy cabaret linens, post-prom line-up BBQs and Kenny Lattimore jazz cruise brunches on skinny rivers proves that someone at Macy’s clearly did their research and knows we’re approaching prime “niggas throwing and/or attending parties where you’re mandated to wear all white” party season.

2. Because from now on, I think we should just refer to all displays of all-white clothing in department stores as the “Lattimore.”

3. Because the Lattimore in this Macy’s even has the blackest of mannequins.

4. Because from now on, I also think we should just refer to black mannequins as the “Unsullied.”

5. Because while as grating as it is when someone grants a white person a mythical invitation to “the cookout” as a reward for just not being a terrible person—AND WHY ARE YOU INVITING EXTRA PEOPLE TO COOKOUTS ANYWAY WHEN YOU KNOW THAT THE MEATS ARE ALREADY SPARSE AND ALL YOUR BLACK ASS BROUGHT WAS SOME PRINGLES???—no one would dare extend that offer to a white party.

6. Because the only white people you’ll find at white parties are Uber drivers and Dirk Nowitzki.

7. Because that might be irony but I’m kinda scared to call it that because I’m not quite sure if it is and I don’t want to get irony-shamed.

8. Because this Lattimore even has age and behavioral diversity. You have the awkwardly printed vests for cat daddies and Kappas. The white polo shirts for niggas who have to work the day of the party and won’t be able to go home and change. The ripped Levi’s for fuckboys and Libertarians; the linen shorts for retired fuckboys and Republicans; and a short-sleeved hoodie contraption for Drake and Cory Booker.

9. Because this Macy’s also has a deal where if you buy over $100 worth of clothing, you get an access code to a specifically curated cookout playlist that Macy’s partnered with Spotify and Questlove to create.

10. Because I totally made that last one up but you believed it was true because if the Lattimore exists then anything’s possible.

Source: https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/

My daughter is now 10 years old. This means in eight years she’ll be off to Spelman College in Atlanta to become the best she can be at the best HBCU in the country. I remember announcing on this here website that her mother was pregnant. Oh, how time flies. While my daughter can go wherever she wants—and I will be fine with whatever she decides to do with her life as long as it’s what she wants to do—if you ask her right now, she’ll tell you Spelman. Look at gawd.

This means I need to make her HBCU-ready. Or at least make sure she ain’t like waaaaaay too many folks I know who went to HBCUs who weren’t up on various parts of the game. It was quite illuminating. One thing that I learned at Morehouse College is that even though it’s a black school, so many of our experiences were vastly different. I know we are not a monolith but you’d think some things translated across the African-American diaspora. Well, since I’ve found that to be untrue, I will ensure that my children are prepared to not be outsiders to any of the more standard facets of black culture so that there will be no blackness shaming up in nobody’s dorm as niggas break out the decks of cards. Here are seven black-ass things I will make sure my chirrens are up on.

1. How to play Spades

My kids will not be the ones who don’t know how to count books or even understand how the game is played. They will know how to play Joker-Joker-Deuce-Deuce, know proper Card Slap Etiquette and how to score. Basically, one weekend a month, my home will be a Spades camp. Feel free to send your kids if you don’t know how to play. I will accept cash or money orders and I’m not going back and forth with you niggas about it. Also, Uno.

2. How to do the Electric Slide

At no point will they be outsiders at weddings, funerals, cookouts, family reunions or random warm, sunny days on the yard. Where there are two or more gathered in the name of blackness, a line dance is threatening to break out.

3. The significance of Frankie Beverly & Maze’s “Before I Let Go”

Black staple. Call it the Urban Swingline. See what I did there? My chirrens will know how to bust out the Electric Slide to this song AND KNOW this means its time to go at the club, or it’s time to really enjoy yourself at the cookout. But most importantly, they will know the best time to unleash the song. Dracarys! Do you see what I did there?

4. Cameo’s “Candy” for the same reason as “Before I Let Go”

And because Beyoncé really does care about the people, she put them both together in one song so everybody can win at the same damn time. By the time my kids are in college, presumably at HBCUs, I believe Bey’s version will be the pre-eminent version.

5. At least the whole first verse to “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”

I know maybe one person who knows the entire second and third verses of this song. Most of us just hum. But anybody making you sing past the first verse is a masochist anyway, so as long as they have the first verse down we Gucci and I’ve done my job.

6. The black classic movies

Brown Sugar, Coming to America, The Color Purple, Love Jones, Love & Basketball, The Best Man, Boomerang, Boyz N The Hood ... I could keep going. There will be watch sessions of them all. Multiple times. Won’t be nobody talking about, “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN LOVE JONES!” to my kids. No siree, Bob.

7. The Autobiography of Malcolm X

This will happen. Because it must happen. Because it will always be one of the most important books ever. They will also read Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and pretty much as many of the books on my black shelves as possible.

I know there are as many different ways to be black as there are black people on the planet. But my kids won’t be deficient in any of the aforementioned ways dammit.

Source: https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/

A new court order could potentially affect thousands of migrant families separated at the southern border before the government’s “zero tolerance“ policy was announced in 2018. A federal judge responded Friday (March 8) to the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) motion to order the government to accurately account for allmigrant family separations, including those that took place beginning as far back as July 2017, NPR reports.

Back in June 2018, Judge Dana Sabraw of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California ordered the Trump administration to terminate its family separation policy and demanded that 2,300 children be immediately returned to their families. On Friday, Sabraw granted the ACLU’s request to expand the class action lawsuit to include the thousands of additional separated families that were revealed earlier this year. As Colorlines previously reported:

The United States Department of Health and Human Serivces’ (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a watchdog report on Thursday (January 17) indicating that thousands more children were separated from their parents at the border than what was previously understood…authorities are reportedly not sure what happened to many of the children.

The OIG report prompted the ACLU to “include the parents of those children in the same group as those affected by zero tolerance, whose reunification [Judge Sabraw] ordered last summer,” according to NBC News. 

Sabraw agreed with the ACLU in his most recent ruling and officially “defined the additional class members as all migrant families separated between July 1, 2017, and June 25, 2018,” NPR reports. “The hallmark of a civilized society is measured by how it treats its people and those within its borders,” the judge wrote in his 14-page order. “That [the Trump administration] may have to change course and undertake additional effort to address these issues does not render modification of the class definition unfair; it only serves to underscore the unquestionable importance of the effort and why it is necessary (and worthwhile).”

NPR obtained a statement from ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt regarding Sabraw’s ruling: “The court made clear that potentially thousands of children’s lives are at stake, and that the Trump administration cannot simply ignore the devastation it has caused,” he said. 

As Colorlines previously reported:

Scott Stewart, a lawyer from the Department of Justice, argued it would be a huge challenge for the government to track the families separated as far back as July 2017,” insisting it would, “dramatically change the complexity of this case from the government’s perspective.”

But as Sabraw insisted in his court order: “Although the process for identifying newly proposed class members may be burdensome,” he said, “it clearly can be done.”

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

In response to the White House instituting what has been called a “gag rule,” Maryland hopes to be the first state to opt out of the federal Title Xprogram to protect its abortion providers from restrictive measures and funding cuts.

In February, the Trump administration announced that health care organizations like Planned Parenthood that provide abortion referrals will no longer receive federal family planning money under Title X. On Saturday (March 16), the Maryland House of Delegates passed a bill that aims to end the state’s inclusion in the program. It now faces a vote with the state Senate. If passed, reports ThinkProgress, the law will require Maryland’s governor to use state money to fund the family planning program.

Established in 1970, Title X provides $286 million in funding for programs that provide services like birth control and mammograms, and screenings for breast cancer and cervical cancer. Under the new federal regulation, providers will be able to discuss abortion with patients, but they cannot specify where one can be obtained. Clinics will no longer be obligated to counsel women on all available options if they are pregnant—meaning they can omit abortion from conversations. Previously, a clinic could not receive federal funding unless all options were discussed. In addition, providers who offer abortions must perform the procedure in a separate facility from other services.

Earlier this month, 22 states, including Maryland, filed lawsuits to block the rule from being implemented. Maryland is, however, the first state to use legislative action to push back against the new rule. 

Reports Think Progress:

The Maryland Department of Health receives between $3 million and $4 million dollars annually from the federal government under the Title X program, [Planned Parenthood of Maryland lobbyist Robyn] Elliott said. The state doles out these federal dollars to various providers, including eight Planned Parenthood clinics. Should the administration’s rule barring abortion providers from participating in Title X take effect, the state would no longer be able to dispense federal dollars to these clinics.

Maryland’s population is nearly one half people of color, with Black residents making up 30.8 percent of the state and Latinx accounting for 10.1 percent. And based on national numbers, women of color are disproportionally more likely to receive care that is funded via Title X.

The bill’s sponsor, Representative Shane Pendergrass (D), told ThinkProgress, “We want to make sure Marylanders who get family planning services under Title X have access to the very same methods as people with private insurance. It’s that plain and simple…. Because of the federal rules, they will no longer have that access under Title X. So it’s time to walk away from the federal Title X dollars.”

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

In an effort to foster what it calls “self-sufficiency,” the Trump administration is looking to bring major changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. As a result, an estimated 755,000 people could lose benefits. Two new studies show the detrimental impact that would have not only on individuals but the nation’s economy, too.

When President Donald Trump released his budget proposal for 2020 on March 11, it included a cut of $220 billion over the next decade for SNAP. This is in addition to a rule announced in December to impose stricter work requirements for those seeking hunger relief through SNAP.

A new study from think tank Mathematica published last week (March 14) examines the characteristics of those who would be impacted by this rule change and found it would hit those with the lowest income hardest. The study analyzed the 1.2 million SNAP recipients and determined that 88 percent live in “deep poverty,” which the study defines as at or below 50 percent of the poverty level; close to 80 percent live alone; 11 percent worked; and the average monthly SNAP benefit was $181 per person.

According to the study:

Under the proposed rule, an estimated three-quarters of these SNAPparticipants would be newly subject to a three-month limit on their benefits, according to USDA. Some of them would increase existing work to an average of 20 hours per week, find work or meet the work requirements by participating in an employment and training program or workfare (unpaid work through a state-approved program). However,USDA estimates that two-thirds (755,000 people in 2020) would not meet the additional work requirements and would therefore lose eligibility after three months.

A study from another think tank, the Center for American Progress (CAP),analyzed the impact on the entire United States’ economy. It determined that the proposed budget cut, if passed, would lead to a loss of 178,000 jobs by 2030, as a result of reduced consumer spending. It looked at last year’s job market and determined that every 1 billion spent by SNAPrecipients helped support 12,748 jobs. Adds Mother Jones, “CAP estimates that taking away benefits could shrink the GDP by $18.3 billion over the next ten years.”

There are 16.4 million households and more than 34 million people who rely on SNAP benefits in the United States, according to data from the U.S.Department of Agriculture. White Americans are 38.9 percent of that group, Black Americans are 24.9 percent and Latinx are 11.8. AsColorlines previously reported, food insecurity and SNAP participation are disproportionately high among queer and trans people of color.

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

As wealthy New York families drove east to the Hamptons over the holiday weekend, the Shinnecock Indian Nation protested their presence via billboard, The New York Times reported.

Standing six-stories high, the billboards sit on the main highway that all drivers heading to the Hamptons must use. While the signs reportedly show ads for watches and reminders to drive safely, among other things, the Shinnecock tribal seal sits atop the billboards, 60 feet in the air. The message is simple: the Hamptons actually belong to the Shinnecock Indian Nation.

The jurisdiction doesn’t allow billboards, and state officials reportedly pushed back with legal action against the Shinnecocks. The Times reports that a state judge issued a temporary restraining order to halt construction on the two electronic signs. But the tribe, which is native to the land now called Long Island—including the ground on which the billboards sit—is standing its ground.

“We don’t recognize their authority on our sovereign lands,” Bryan Polite, the tribe’s chairperson, told The Times. The tribe expanded on that point in a statement posted to Facebook today (May 28). From that statement:

The state’s lawsuit against Shinnecock officials is a thinly veiled attack on the Shinnecock Nation and our right of self-determination. Throughout our history, our lands and economic future have been taken from us by the state and the surrounding community. Our goal is simply to generate revenue to provide for our people. The state has a long history of bulldozing Indian lands and Indian people to get what it wants. We will fight against the most recent effort to attack our tribal sovereignty.

The Shinnecock Nation sees the start of summer as the perfect time to protest, and the highway as the best venue to get the word out. It also sees the billboards as a way to create much-needed revenue for the tribe.

“We’re taking advantage of the opportunity because of the fact that billboards are not allowed in the Hamptons. On our land, we feel we had a captive audience with the highway traffic,” Lance Gumbs, vice chair for the Shinnecock Indian Nation, told Newsday.

As of now, Newsday reports that the tribe has no plans to remove the billboards.

Iconic author Toni Morrison has earned a lifetime’s worth of awards and honors for her contributions to literature, and today (May 22) she is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Gold Medal for Fiction. The Gold Medal—the organization’s highest honor for excellence in the arts—is awarded to artists who have achieved eminence via their entire body of work.

Morrison’s eminence cannot be overstated. At age 88, the author has penned 11 novels that confront race and culture head-on, including 1987’s “Beloved,” which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In a thesis that argued for the best literature ever produced, The New York Times praised the book, writing that in “less than 20 years after its publication, [“Beloved” has] become a staple of the college literary curriculum, which is to say a classic.”

In addition, Morrison, who is also the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, Emerita, at Princeton University, has also been awarded with the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Nobel Prize in Literature, among many other distinguished honors.

In honor of the storyteller, who is also an Academy member, the Academy wrote that, “Toni Morrison has, over the years, shaken us out of the ruts of our ordinary perspective. She has allowed us to walk through various shades of the national experience, always incisively, provocatively, generously.”

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

The Department of Education (DOE) announced Monday (May 20) that it will expand the Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, which allows people experiencing financial hardship and incarceration in certain states to receive need-based Pell Grants for college-level courses.

While the government bans incarcerated people from receiving federal financial assistance, the Second Chance Pell Experiment, which the DOE launched in 2015, allows people detained in the 26 participating states to apply for Pell grants, which are financial awards for undergraduate students experiencing financial hardship. They are funded by the government and generally do not have to be repaid.

According to the DOE, there are currently 64 schools and 26 states taking part in the Second Chance Pell Experiment. Vera Institute of Justice writes in an emailed statement about the expansion that the wider scope of the program will allow “new cohorts of colleges and universities to participate and more students to enroll in postsecondary programming while in prison.” Nick Turner, president and director of Vera Institute, said in the statement, “The U.S. Department of Education’s decision to expand Second Chance Pell is an important validation of the power of postsecondary education to disrupt mass incarceration.” Turner added, “[The experiment] has proven that when barriers to postsecondary education in prison fall, enrollment rates rise, which produces better outcomes for all.”

As Colorlines previously reported, Pell Grants for incarcerated people would, “ultimately benefit students, workers, employers and states.” The Vera Institute points out that “the success of Second Chance Pell and a body of research evidence shows postsecondary education in prison reduces recidivism rates and prison expenditures while increasing public safety and economic opportunity for people after they return to the community.”

Turner says this expansion is the next step, but there is still a fight ahead. “It’s our hope that Congress will show the same commitment to expanding access to postsecondary education in prison by taking the critical step of repealing the federal ban on Pell grants for people in prison outright,” he said. “Access to postsecondary education in prison has a verified track record of creating safer communities, cutting costs and increasing economic opportunity for people and their families post-release.”

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

Since April 2016, the United States Department of the Treasury has said that freedom fighter and abolitionist Harriet Tubman would replace former president Andrew Grant on the front of the $20 bill, as Colorlines previously reported. But yesterday (May 22), Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed that the redesign will not happen while President Donald Trump is in office.

In a C-Span video of Mnuchin testifying on the international financial system before the House Committee on Financial Services, Representative Ayanna Pressely (D-Mass.) explained the efforts of grassroots organizations to update the country’s currency so it reflects the nation’s diverse population and pioneers. Pressley noted that when former Secretary Jacob Lew announced in 2016 that Tubman would be the face of the new bill, he also confirmed that final design concepts would be unveiled in 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

Clearly frustrated by the lack of updates on the project, Pressley asked Mnuchin, “Do you believe that representation matters in American politics and imagery? Do you believe that people, other than White men, have greatly contributed to this country and its history?”

Though Mnuchin said he agreed that others have made contributions to this country, he also said, “The $20 bill will now not come out until 2028. The $10 bill and the $50 bill will come out with new features beforehand,” adding that the redesign will be made by a different secretary altogether. “I have not made a decision to execute on a redesign.”

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

Nearly 160 years after the Clotilda brought the last kidnapped Africans to the shores of the United States, researchers have located the ship’s remains.

In the years since the Clotilda arrived on Alabama’s shores in 1860, with 109 stolen West Africans below deck, researchers have long believed the ship was the last one of its kind to make the voyage. But where was it? Yesterday (May 22), the Smithsonian Magazinereported that the ship has been located along the Mobile River, near Twelvemile Island.

The search for the ship started in 2017, following talks between the descendants of Africatown’s founders and Smithsonian curator and National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Slave Wrecks Project (SWP) co-director Paul Gardullo. Founded in 1860 during Jim Crow and Reconstruction, Africatown was built by a group of West Africans who were brought illegally to Mobile via the Clotilda; the import of people for the purpose of enslavement was outlawed in 1807.

Rumors that the ship was still in Alabama ramped up in 2018, when a reporter with Alabama’s Advance Local thought he’d found the remains; but that wreck was deemed too large. The Alabama Historical Commission (AHC), National Geographic Society and SWP conducted a week-long survey to determine the Clotilda’s whereabouts with little luck. That same year, Gardullo jumped in to include members from Africatown in the process.

“This was a search not only for a ship. This was a search to find our history and this was a search for identity and this was a search for justice,” Gardullo told the Smithsonian. “This is a way of restoring truth to a story that is too often papered over. Africatown is a community that is economically blighted and there are reasons for that. Justice can involve recognition. Justice can involve things like hard, truthful talk about repair and reconciliation.”

And the timing couldn’t be better. This past February 2019, more than 200 descendants of Africatown’s founders gathered in Alabama for the first time, National Geographic reported. Last year, Zora Neale Hurston posthumously published “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’,” which tells the story of Cudjo Lewis, one of the enslaved people on that final voyage.

The Clotilda was authenticated by a group of researchers, led by the AHC and the maritime archeology group SEARCH Inc., which specializes in diving for historic shipwrecks.

For residents of the small Mobile community, this is great news. “So many people along the way didn’t think that happened because we didn’t have proof. By this ship being found we have the proof that we need to say this is the ship that they were on and their spirits are in this ship,” Lorna Gail Woods, the descendant of an Africatown founder told Smithsonian Magazine. “No matter what you take away from us now, this is proof for the people who lived and died and didn’t know it would ever be found.”

Source:https://www.colorlines.com/

The Pentagon has agreed to a request from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to build temporary tent housing for up to 7,500 adult migrants, The Washington Post reports. Children are not currently expected to be housed in the spaces.

According to The Post, Major Chris Miller, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, released a statement late Wednesday (May 22) explaining that the migrants will be “processed by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and turned over to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).” Miller also emphasized that “military personnel will not operate the [temporary] facilities and will only erect the tents,” he said. “Operating the facilities remains the responsibility of DHS.”

Pentagon officials plan to build the tents along the “Tucson and Yuma sectors in Arizona and near the Tornillo, Donna, Laredo and Del Rio ports of entry in Texas,” according to The Post. The scope and cost of the project will reportedly be determined in the next couple of weeks, along with a timeline for completion. 

The request for temporary housing is linked to an increase in the number of migrants apprehended by agents at the southern border. The Post reports:

The flow of migrants over the southwestern border with Mexico has been spiking, straining an already stretched system for processing and housing those who are apprehended. The influx has led to what officials are describing as an emergency due to the overwhelming number of people in custody.

CBP reports that it detained 109,144 migrants in April 2019 alone. That is the largest number of people to attempt to cross the southern border in a single month since 2007.

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

On Wednesday (May 22), the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) introduced a new rule that would weaken protections for transgender people at homeless shelters. The new rule allows federally funded shelters to deny transgender people entry on the basis of religious beliefs. It would also force trans women to share bathrooms and sleeping quarters with cisgender men.

The rule is the latest move by President Donald Trump’s administration to eliminate Obama-era transgender protections, including a 2016 regulation titled “Equal Access in Accordance With an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs.” Last year, in a slew of anti-trans policies, Trump signed a memorandum that banned transgender people from serving in the United States military. He also signed a “religious liberty” executive order that advocates say opens the door for more trans discrimination. In October, The New York Times reported the Department of Health and Human Services’ intention to change the legal definition of gender in a way that would write transgender peolpe out of existence in the eyes of the law.  

In the summary of the latest policy proposal, HUD officials wrote:

The proposed rule permits shelter providers to consider a range of factors in making such determinations, including privacy, safety, practical concerns, religious beliefs, any relevant considerations under civil rights and nondiscrimination authorities, the individual’s sex as reflected in official government documents, as well as the gender which a person identifies with. 

On Tuesday (May 21), while testifying before the House Committee on Financial Services, HUD Secretary Ben Carson told the committee that his agency had no plans to change the HUD Equal Access Rule. “The rules from 2012 and 2016 adequately provide for fairness for all communities,” Carson said. “They’ve not been removed. We have not changed any of the rules.”

Per The Washington Post, the HUD website has removed links to resources that inform emergency shelters how to best serve transgender people and follow agency regulations. The agency has also upended policy proposals that require federally funded shelters to post notices that provide information on LGBTQ+ rights and protections. 

Trans people already face disproportionately high rates of homelessness. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, one in five transgender people have experienced homelessness. Black and Native American trans people have reported the worst outcomes in discrimination in employment, police and street violence, healthcare access and homelessness. Trans youth of color, especially Black youth, experience disproportionately higher rates of homelessness. In a 2014 survey, providers for youth with no homes reported that Black LGBTQ+ youth made up 31 percent of the youth they serve, despite comprising just 14 percent of the general population for their age group. 

In the last year, 70 percent of transgender people ​​​​​​who attempted to enter a homeless shelter were removed or physically or sexually assaulted because of their gender identity, the National Center for Transgender Equality told The Post.

On the 65th anniversary of the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility senior fellow Roseann Liu breaks down why it’s imperative to call out racism when advocating for fair school funding.

Sixty-five years ago, the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, representing plaintiffs, argued that segregated schools violated the equal protection of the law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the U.S.Constitution. The justices agreed. The unanimous 9-0 decision declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and ordered school districts to desegregate. Civil rights activists celebrated this decision.

But for many students today, Brown represents the unfulfilled promise of equal educational opportunities.

Although school integration reached its peak in the 1970s, it began to decline in the early-1990s, when districts were released from court oversight. Today, school segregation levels have returned to those of the 1960s.

But desegregation was never the end goal. Robert L. Carter, a leading NAACP attorney on the case, wrote in Derrick Bell’s “Shades of Brown: New Perspectives on School Desegregation”: “the fundamental vice was not legally enforced racial segregation itself; this was a mere by-product, a symptom of the greater and more pernicious disease—White supremacy.”

Civil rights lawyers continue to advance racial equality in education, but now through other means: school funding. While few school segregation lawsuits exist today, school finance cases have been filed in 46 out of 50 states since 1973, with active lawsuits in 14 states.

Instead of claiming that “separate is inherently unequal,” school funding lawyers are now fighting for “separate but truly equal.”

Despite the fact that current school funding schemes overwhelmingly disadvantage students of color, plaintiff lawyers do not often argue that school funding discriminates based on race; even rarer are decisions that rule in favor of plaintiffs based on this argument.

Claims of racial discrimination in school funding are conspicuously absent from lawsuits.

This can be traced back to plaintiff lawyers shifting their strategy in the late-1980s, moving away from the claim that school funding is inequitably distributed based on equal protection clauses, to the claim that state funding is inadequate to provide students with a basic education guaranteed to them by state constitutions. That is, instead of re-slicing the pie, “inadequacy” claims seek to growthe pie.

When I interviewed lawyers about this change in strategy, they cited their concern that a racial discrimination claim would be seen as divisive. In contrast, inadequacy claims could bring together poor White districts and poor districts of color in the fight for more state money. These optics were thought to improve their chances of winning.

The move was largely successful. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, when equity claims were made based on equal protection clauses, plaintiffs lost 66 percent of these cases. Since 1989, when lawyers shifted to inadequacy claims, effectively sidestepping claims of racial discrimination, plaintiffs won almost 60 percent of these cases.

These outcomes are no doubt a victory to students of color. And yet the legal strategies that led to these wins are out of step with growing evidence about racial bias in school funding that has been spotlighted recently. Nationally, non-White school districts receive $23 billion less than White school districts. In Pennsylvania, the least-White school districts get about $2,000 less per student than the state’s fair funding formula says it should have, while the most-White districts get around $2,000 more per pupil than determined by the formula.

By passing on race claims, lawyers also pass up the opportunity to build effective legal arguments about racially unjust school funding schemes. And since legal strategies set precedents for future cases, forgoing race claims not only effects the immediate suit, it also limits strategies for generations to follow.

Civil rights lawyers have the difficult task of crafting viable legal claims that will prevail in court. While avoiding the “third rail” of a race claim may improve chances of winning the case at hand, this comes at the cost of building the knowledge and legal strategies to successfully argue that school funding is racially biased.

School funding lawsuits represent a new terrain on which battles to achieve racial equality in education are fought. As this generation’s lawyers carry the torch, let them be inspired by the boldness of their predecessors, and be willing to call out the institutional racism that exists in education today.

Roseann Liu is visiting assistant professor in the Department of Educational Studies and senior fellow at the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility at Swarthmore College. She is writing a book on race and school funding in the United States.

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

This Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Sung Yeon Choimorrow—executive director of National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum—says AAPI women need to step into their power.

Being an Asian woman in America is complex. There are stereotypes we face by dint of being Asian: myths perpetuated about being subservient, obedient and model minorities. There are the notions others inflict on us from their own lens: nativism in the phrase “go back to China” (even when we’re American, even when our families have been in the United States for generations, even when we’re not Chinese) and sexualization by men who hit on us because they have “an Asian fetish.”

There are the typical biases, and then there are the surprising ones: as an Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) woman, much of the racism and microaggression I experience actually arises in response to moments when I exercise my voice and take up space.

Well-meaning and “open-minded” White people will say things like “you’re so articulate!” or “it’s so refreshing to see an AAPI woman who speaks her mind!” without realizing that they are reinforcing the very stereotypes they think they are bucking. These are the “compliments” I receive as an AAPI woman—backhanded compliments that serve more as insults. Added to this mix are the battles we face just as women, creating a double-bind for those of us with hyphenated identities.

This Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, it’s time for some truths about the AAPI community and about AAPI women. We are actually overwhelmingly progressive, and a key part of the women of color voting bloc. AAPI women have been at the forefront of the resistance to the Trump administration, and continue to challenge the status quo. Women still make less than men, still don’t have mandatory paid parental leave and still live in a culture that normalizes sexual harassment and rape. We fight alongside other women on these policy fronts every day, while also countering issues specific to AAPIwomen—like fighting U.S. militarism and anti-immigrant policies that have led to so many of the most damaging sexualized and exoticized stereotypes about us.

At National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF), where I serve as executive director, we live by two mottos. The first is “not your model minority” and the second is “be seen, be heard, be fierce.” These mottos instantly resonate with many of the AAPIwomen I encounter because we all experience a double invisibility in America. As women, we fight to be seen as equal to men in the workplace, with regard to our own bodily autonomy and in policy spheres. As AAPI women, we fight to be seen as powerful individuals who are in no way meek, submissive or fetishized.

AAPI women experience these biases and stereotypes about our culture, our heritage, the national origin of our families and our gender, at an intersection. Perhaps the best encapsulation of what we face came the other day, as I was boarding a flight. Looking at my name on the boarding pass, a gate agent laughed and said, “I’m not even going to try and pronounce that!”

I pronounced my name for her and made her say it three times until she finally got it right. I’m sure she expected that I, an Asian-American woman, would keep my head down and let the joke pass, maybe even politely laugh along. But I wasn’t going to let this stereotypical expectation of me—and the refusal to even attempt to pronounce my name—slip by without a fight.

As the incredible actress Uzo Aduba’s mother once explained to her, if White people can learn to pronounce Dostoyevsky, they can learn to pronounce Uzoamaka. This story is yet another reminder of who people think is worth extra effort, and who is not. Who is visible, and visibly powerful, and who is not. AAPI women like me are stepping up to take back this power and stand in the spotlight. We are worth the extra effort.

It takes courage and resilience to fight invisibility despite living at the intersection of so many biases. But here’s a truth about the AAPIcommunity: our voices are loud and our fierceness transcends stereotypes. We’re here to take up space—our collective fight depends on it.

Sung Yeon Choimorrow is the executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, the only multi-issue, progressive, community organizing and policy advocacy organization for Asian American and Pacific Islander women and girls in the United States. Follow her on Twitter @schoimorrow.

Source:https://www.colorlines.com/