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Source AFrom “The Case for Reparations”by Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Atlantic, June 2014)The lives of black Americans are better than they were half a century ago. The humiliation of whites only signs are gone. Rates of black poverty have decreased. Black teen-pregnancy rates are at record lows—and the gap between black and white teen-pregnancy rates has shrunk significantly. But such progress rests on a shaky foundation, and fault lines are everywhere. The income gap between black and white households is roughly the same today as it was in 1970. Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New York University, studied children born from 1955 through 1970 and found that 4 percent of whites and 62 percent of blacks across America had been raised in poor neighborhoods. A generation later, the same study showed, virtually nothing had changed. And whereas whites born into affluent neighborhoods tended to remain in affluent neighborhoods, blacks tended to fall out of them.This is not surprising. Black families, regardless of income, are significantly less wealthy than white families. The Pew Research Center estimates that white households are worth roughly 20 times as much as black households, and that whereas only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth, more than a third of blacks do. Effectively, the black family in America is working without a safety net. When financial calamity strikes—a medical emergency, divorce, job loss—the fall is precipitous.And just as black families of all incomes remain handicapped by a lack of wealth, so too do they remain handicapped by their restricted choice of neighborhood. Black people with upper-middle-class incomes do not generally live in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Sharkey’s research shows that black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. “Blacks and whites inhabit such different neighborhoods,” Sharkey writes, “that it is not possible to compare the economic outcomes of black and white children.”The implications are chilling. As a rule, poor black people do not work their way out of the ghetto—and those who do often face the horror of watching their children and grandchildren tumble back.Even seeming evidence of progress withers under harsh light. In 2012, the Manhattan Institute cheerily noted that segregation had declined since the 1960s. And yet African Americans still remained—by far—the most segregated ethnic group in the country.With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage. An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin. The resulting conflagration has been devastating.One thread of thinking in the African American community holds that these depressing numbers partially stem from cultural pathologies that can be altered through individual grit and exceptionally good behavior. (In 2011, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, responding to violence among young black males, put the blame on the family: “Too many men making too many babies they don’t want to take care of, and then we end up dealing with your children.” Nutter turned to those presumably fatherless babies: “Pull your pants up and buy a belt, because no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt.”) The thread is as old as black politics itself. It is also wrong. The kind of trenchant racism to which black people have persistently been subjected can never be defeated by making its victims more respectable. The essence of American racism is disrespect. And in the wake of the grim numbers, we see the grim inheritance.Source BInterview excerpt from “The Kelly File”by Ben Carson (Fox News, October 14, 2015) CARSON: “It’s so typical of political correctness in our country. Of course all lives matter, and all lives includes black lives. And we need to stop submitting to those who want to divide us up into these special interest groups and start thinking about what works for everybody.”From “#BlackLivesMatter misfire”by Ben Carson (USA Today, September 3, 2015)The idea that disrupting and protesting Bernie Sanders speeches will change what is wrong in America is lunacy. The "BlackLivesMatter" movement is focused on the wrong targets, to the detriment of blacks who would like to see real change and to the benefit of its powerful white liberal funders using the attacks on Sanders for political purposes that mean nothing for the problems that face our community.The notion that some lives might matter less than others is meant to enrage. That anger is distracting us from what matters most. We're right to be angry, but we have to stay smart.Of course, the protesters are right that racial policing issues exist and some rotten policemen took actions that killed innocent people. Those actions were inexcusable and they should be prosecuted to deter such acts in the future.But unjust treatment from police did not fill our inner cities with people who face growing hopelessness. Young men and women can't find jobs. Parents don't have the skills to compete in a modern job market. Far too many families are torn and tattered by self-inflicted wounds. Violence often walks alongside people who have given up hope.I grew up in neighborhoods most Americans were told to never drive through. I saw bullets, drugs and death in the same places I played tag and ball with my friends. Both of my older cousins died on the streets where I lived. I thought that was my destiny.But my mother didn't. She changed all of that. She saved my brother and me from being killed on those streets with nothing but a library card.My mother knew what the problems were and she shielded me and my brother from them. I can tell you she wasn't worried about Socialist senators from tiny rural states. "BlackLivesMatter" could learn from her to focus on the real sources of our hopelessness.This is where we should march:Let’s head down to the board of education. Teaching is a tough job and thank God there was a teacher who convinced me that I was not dumb, but our schools are failing and we have no power to abandon them. The actions of rogue police officers take black lives one at a time. Our public school system has destroyed black lives not in the ones and twos, but in whole generations.Let’s go down to city hall. Living behind a door with three deadbolts is not living in freedom. Being too scared to walk around your block at night is not the pursuit of happiness we were all promised.We should go to Washington. For decades they have fought the "War on Poverty." Poverty won. We lost.Over 19 trillion dollars has been wasted, but can anyone identify a single battle won as a result? We certainly have not helped the poor “lift themselves out of the ruts of poverty” as Lyndon Johnson promised — far from it. These programs have been a great American failure.Source CFrom “Freedom”by Beyoncé (Lemonade, 2016)Tryna rain, tryna rain on the thunderTell the storm I'm newI'ma walk, I'ma march on the regularPainting white flags BlueLord forgive me, I've been runningRunning blind in truthI'ma rain, I'ma rain on this bitter loveTell the sweet I'm newI'm telling these tears, "Go and fall away, fall away"May the last one burn into flamesFreedom! Freedom! I can't moveFreedom, cut me loose!Freedom! Freedom! Where are you?Cause I need freedom too!I break chains all by myselfWon't let my freedom rot in hellHey! I'ma keep runningCause a winner don't quit on themselvesI'ma wade, I'ma wave through the watersTell the tide, "Don't move"I'ma riot, I'ma riot through your bordersCall me bulletproofLord forgive me, I've been runnin'Runnin' blind in truthI'ma wade, I'ma wave through your shallow loveTell the deep I'm newI'm telling these tears, “Go and fall away, fall away"May the last one burn into flamesFreedom! Freedom! I can't moveFreedom, cut me loose!Freedom! Freedom! Where are you?Cause I need freedom too!I break chains all by myselfWon't let my freedom rot in hellHey! I'ma keep runningCause a winner don't quit on themselvesSource DFrom “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color”by Kimberlé Crenshaw (Stanford Law Review, 1993)Although racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as “woman” or “person of color” as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling.Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. … Because of their intersectional identity as both women and of color within discourses that are shaped to respond to one or the other, women of color are marginalized within both.In an earlier article, I used the concept of intersectionality to denote the various ways in which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women’s employment experiences (Crenshaw 1989, p. 139). My objective there was to illustrate that many of the experiences Black women face are not subsumed within the traditional boundaries of race or gender discrimination as these boundaries are currently understood, and that the intersection of racism and sexism factors into Black women’s lives in ways that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences separately. I build on those observations here by exploring the various ways in which race and gender intersect in shaping structural, political, and representational aspects of violence against women of color.I [do not] mean to suggest that violence against women of color can be explained only through the specific frameworks of race and gender considered here. Indeed, factors I address only in part or not at all—such as class or sexuality—are often as critical in shaping the experiences of color. ................
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