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Activist artist Dread Scott creates in a language of searing simplicity. His work subverts American iconography to reveal the brutal injustices embedded in our nation’s marrow. 

Scott’s first major piece, “What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag?” was on view at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1989, when Scott was just 24 years old. The participatory installation featured a photomontage of American flags in various circumstances ― draped atop the coffins of soldiers and lit aflame by South Korean students.

A genuine American flag lay across the floor. Viewers, then, were invited to write down their thoughts on the proper way to display the flag, and potentially step on the flag during the process. President George H. W. Bush called the work “disgraceful,” which signaled to Scott that he was doing something right. 

More recently, Scott erected a black flag reading “A Man Was Lynched By Police Yesterday” outside of Jack Shainman Gallery in Manhattan. The artwork was an updated version of the banner that hung outside the headquarters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1936, re-installed after Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were shot and killed by police in the summer of 2016. 

The flag is now on view at San Francisco’s Guerrero Gallery as part of the exhibition “Past, Present, Future,” a show squarely aimed to address the current political moment, a reversal of progress for those who have spent their lives marginalized, silenced and oppressed. Along with the flag, Scott will also show a piece entitled “IMAGINE A WORLD / WITHOUT AMERICA,” named after a quote by Bob Avakian, leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. 

“I first read it in 1989 and it stuck with me,” Scott told The Huffington Post. “I began to think of it it as a provocative thought experiment.”

The piece features a map of the world, the perspective shifted so that the United States is dangling off the image’s edge, barely visible and ostensibly irrelevant. The piece dares Americans to put their own nationalism in check and imagine a radically different world where they are not the focus. 

For decades, Scott has made blistering artwork that refuses to let America avert its gaze. In this current political climate, when years of progress are in danger of being reversed, his unapologetic work needs to be seen. We reached out to Scott to discuss. 

How would you describe the way art and activism coexist in your work? 

I generally keep my art and activism somewhat separate. Typically my art isn’t bringing people to a demonstration or seeking particular demands, which my activism typically is — including when I encourage people to be part of a movement for revolution, a revolution to get rid of this entire system and replace it with one that would meet the needs of humanity as a whole.

That said, for much of the last three decades, my work has been addressing some of the big questions confronting people. As art, which I show in major museums, in galleries and on street corners, the work is engaging the viewer and encouraging him or her to think about these questions. I began doing this when I was an undergrad.

In the 1980s that wasn’t what you were taught to do with art, and my initial works tried to keep my political ideas and my art separate. But the more I looked at the world and discovered artists ― Leon Golub, Hans Haacke, Roy DeCarava, Alexander Rodchenko and others who were bringing their politics into their art ― I searched for ways to do that with my concerns and aesthetic. 

It’s crazy to think you made the work “What’s the proper way to display a U.S. flag?” when you were only 24 years old. What was your reaction when the president commented on your work? 

When President Bush Sr. called my work “disgraceful,” my response was: “The President knows about my work and doesn’t like it. Good.” It meant that the work was engaging in a discussion on a national level about an important question. And if the head of this empire didn’t like what I was doing, it was an indication that the work was powerful and that it clearly stood with the people I cared about and the people that Bush wanted to continue to oppress and exploit.

The way you folded viewers’ reactions to that piece into the work, it reminds me almost of a proto-social media experiment. Do you think there is any danger in giving a stage to those who respond to your work with such hate and negativity? 

Giving voice to white supremacist and vitriolic defenders of America can be a problem. But in the context of the “What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag?” I think that they became part of the dialogue I initiated and they look like the racists and warmongers that they are. The context is important. 

You’ve spoken about the importance of widespread exposure, in terms of ensuring an artist’s work extends beyond a small, uniform subset of people. Has the internet changed how your work is processed and responded to?

The internet has enabled some of my projects to reach a wider audience and be seen by people who wouldn’t otherwise see it and also to be studied by students who would not have this level of access if they had to look for a monograph on me or hope that their professor had actual slides. I’m happy that works like “A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday” spread in many ways in social media and people far outside of the art world were able to see it and share it. My video, “Anti-Campaign Ad,” was seen by over 10,000 people in a month and that would not have been possible without the internet ― unless it was shown at a major museum, which would never happen within days of it’s creation.

You’ve mentioned, in previous interviews, critiques of your work that frame you as a “shock artist.” Can you talk about the difference, if there is one, between shocking work and challenging work, and where you see yourself fitting in?

I don’t make work to shock. This is a profoundly polarized world and if you make work that looks at important questions people are bound to be passionate about it. When the police kill 1,100 people each year, making work that calls out these murders will bring joy to people under the gun of the police and people who don’t want a society where the state gets away with murder after murder after murder. Murder by police should be very controversial, but unfortunately these murders are the status quo, and it is making art about it which some view as shocking.  

You need to get rid of a system and economy that are based on exploitation if you want to get rid of exploitation.

Your “A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday” piece was adapted from a flag made in the 1920s. Do you believe our society has made true progress in terms of racial justice [since then]? 

The means in which people are oppressed and exploited has changed over the past 240 years, but there is a real continuum between a society that was founded on slavery and genocide and a society that imprisons 2.3 million people, 1 million of whom are Black. Ending slavery took a war. The ideas that rationalized slavery continued under Jim Crow and an economy that fed off the labor of the enslaved continued to brutalize the descendants of the enslaved. After the tremendous fight and sacrifice of the Cilvil Rights and Black Power movement, Jim Crow was replaced by what Michelle Alexander has dubbed the New Jim Crow.

So there are changes, but ask the parents of Tamir Rice or Mike Brown whether much has changed since the ‘20s. Ask Muslims who have had hijabs ripped from their heads or Latino students barred from their own school by white students yelling “White Power” and “Trump Trump Trump” if racism has ended or changed much.

Many have spoken about Trump’s election as a backlash to the strides made in terms of social justice over the past few years. Can you talk about how you see the relationship between the past, present and future ― and whether the brutal cruelties of the past can ever be left behind?

I don’t think that Trump’s election is a backlash based solely on ideas or revenge, but rather what the ruling class in this country sees as a way forward in a world where they face many challenges, including many problems they have created. They are trying to continue to dominate the world and are facing challenges from old rivals and new ones. And those white people that are being used by Trump to consolidate his power, many of them want the unfair advantage that white supremacy afforded them for generations, that has been slightly undermined since the ‘60s.

In short, if there are jobs or cheap bank/government loans, they want to go back to a time when those advantages definitely go to white people first without question. And repression should go to black people and Latinos first. And along with all of this this, many want to put women back in the 1950s or 1850s as well.

But it’s not a backlash, but rather what’s going on in the economy, where based on the international competition, the U.S. and most other industrialized powers no longer can create the middle class existence for broad sections of society that was important to Western societies for the past 40 years. And in America, this system is going back to some of its key pillars ― white supremacy, patriarchy and Christian fundamentalism ― to negotiate the waters of continuing domination of the world.

But I have no interest in the expansion of the U.S. empire or its continued domination of the planet. The cruelties of the past, and present, can only be gotten rid of through revolution. You need to get rid of a system and economy that are based on exploitation if you want to get rid of exploitation. If you want to end racism, you need to get rid of the system that was founded upon it and that has it woven into its very fabric, including its founding documents. Democracy and freedom in the U.S. was conceived of based upon owning human beings.

The legal and political framework embodied in the constitution includes slavery. Slavery was not an aberration, mistake or “original sin”, but something that was integral to U.S. democracy. You can’t get to a society without exploitation if your vision of that is bound to a document where the freedom of some necessitated the enslavement of others. So I think that it’s possible to leave the cruelties of the past behind, but only if you make revolution to get rid of a system that needs these cruelties. 

How have recent technologies ― including the internet, social media, cameras, video, etc ― contributed to this relationship between past, present and future? Do you see them playing a positive or negative role in the fight for racial justice?

Technologies are not positive or negative. The same internet that helped the Arab Spring is used to spy on people all over the planet. It all depends whose hands it’s in. Will the Googles, Apples and Facebooks of the world build Muslim databases or will they refuse to do so? Will they build strong encryption into all technology and enable social justice activists and others to keep government snoops out of their data and prevent them from learning their connections through metadata? Or will they comply with government orders to build in back doors and turn over data, and not even inform people about secret laws and orders?

The Freedom Riders broke the law and challenged social order. Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning may have have broken the law but their kind of courage is what is needed on a widespread level, including by corporations to stand up to tyrannical governments.

“Dread Scott : Past, Present & Future” runs until March 5 at Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Viral hashtag challenges are the internet’s thing. They usually involve people dancing or freestyling, but a new challenge urges folks to pay homage to black history.

Students at colleges across the country have been using their creativity to celebrate black history with the #BlackHistoryDoorChallenge. The challenge began on January 25 when Louisiana State University student and social media influencer Shawn Taylor tweeted a photo of his dorm room door decorated with the faces of prominent black figures. He urged students to follow suit. Taylor’s tweet has been shared thousands of times since then.

And all Black History Month long, students at historically black colleges and predominantly white institutions alike have been doing just that. They’ve put their own unique spin on how they’re showing off their black pride with various figures, quotes, facts and artwork.

Take a look at some of these dope designs from the #BlackHistoryDoorChallenge.

Way to do it for the culture, class!

H/T Blavity

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Sex toys are starting to look less and less like, well, sex toys.

Sexual lifestyle company Unbound recently launched a new sex toy collection that doubles as high-end jewelry. Dubbed “sexual accessories,” the Unbound jewelry collection includes pineapple earrings that can be turned into nipple clamps, a choker that transforms into a whip and even a sleek necklace that holds your lube. One of the standout items is a set of gold bangles that double as handcuffs with the words “There is freedom in restrain” etched on each.

The collection is sexy and practical. But perhaps more notably, it’s cute. Really, really cute. 

Unbound was created by a group of NYC-based women in February 2013 to help women empower themselves through sexual exploration. The company specializes in monthly subscription boxes like the BDSM box (filled with handcuffs, nipple and clit clamps, and more), the G-spot box (comes with lube and a g-spot vibrator) and even a strap-on box. The company also offers somewhat less sexy gift boxes, such as the period box, pregnancy box and the “Ovaries Before Brovaries” box. Their latest offering is their signature jewelry collection. 

As Unbound CEO Polly Rodriguez explained to The Huffington Post, the new collection offers women “a chance to, quite literally, wear their sexuality on their sleeve” and, in the process, have more open conversations about female pleasure and sexuality. 

“The goal of the collection is to further the notion that female sexuality should not be relegated to the shadows,” Rodriguez said. “By offering women an opportunity to artfully display their sexuality in a fashion-forward, thoughtful manner, we hope to encourage a more widespread acceptance of formerly taboo topics in order to encourage frank conversations in the new year.” 

The collection was inspired by and stylized in honor of three historic women: aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, model and actress Twiggy, and Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra. 

As sex toys increasingly become sleeker and prettier ― a.k.a. less and less phallic in their design ― it’s opened doors for many companies to create high-end, luxury sex toy lines. 

In a 2015 article for Fusion, reporter Hannah Smothers described how this shift in design has transformed the sex toy market in the last 10 to 15 years. Smothers wrote:

As sex toys have become increasingly sleek and modern ― taking cues from the minimalistic designs of like Apple and Ikea ― one clear trend has emerged: They no longer look like human penises. In fact, they no longer look human at all ― which, according to designers, entrepreneurs, and sex therapists alike, is a very good thing.

…When sex toys start looking less like severed organs, it gets easier for consumers to take them seriously. And when consumers start to take them seriously, it opens up room for a luxury class of sex toys.  

Companies like LELO and Crave are leading the charge in this arena. LELO offers customers the Ora 2, an oral sex stimulator for women that features gold-colored accents and costs just under $200. And for the women who really want to mix conspicuous consumption with sex, LELO also sells a $15,000 24-karat gold plated vibrator which, as the website reads, is “defined by decadence and elegance.” 

We hope to encourage a more widespread acceptance of formerly taboo topics in order to encourage frank conversations.
Polly Rodriguez, CEO of Unbound

Crave tracks closer to Unbound’s designs. It too has a jewelry line that doubles as a line of sex toys. While their repertoire of sleek jewelry toys is much smaller than Unbound’s, it has a similar look. The Vesper is a chic necklace slash vibrator that users can get customized to feature sexy phrases like “Don’t forget to play.”  

As co-founder of Crave, Ti Chang, told Smothers, part of this high-end trend simply came from more women breaking into the sex and pleasure business. 

“I think the sex toy industry has really had a lot of male voices ― it’s been men designing products for women, so it tends to be very male anatomy centric,” Chang told Smothers. “Like, ‘Oh, it’s sex, she wants a big cock, so we’ll just make lots of different colors of cocks, and to make this really silly, we’ll put a little rabbit on it.’”

With high-end designs from companies like LELO, Crave and Unbound, the sex toy market is innovating, and therefore working to shift the way we approach female pleasure and masturbation. 

Female sexuality should not be relegated to the shadows.
Polly Rodriguez, CEO of Unbound

Rodriguez told HuffPost she wanted to make the Unbound Collection fashion-forward with a subtle nod to it’s other purposes. 

“The collection is intended to be an implicit wink to anyone who notices, and we think that’s incredibly powerful,” she said. “There should be a safe space in between overtly sexual and completely repressed. Women want to own their sexuality, but they want to do it in a way that’s still edgy and fashion forward.”

Simply put, often women know what works best for women. And along with this shift of approach in the sex toy industry, comes more woman-led companies that encourage honest and open conversations about female pleasure.

Luxury sex toys and sexy jewelry represent one small step toward a more feminist approach to female sexuality, pleasure and masturbation. And that’s a step in the right direction.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Two best friends had a heartbreaking conversation about body image and their self-worth.

Produced by The Scene, the video features two best friends, Tiffany and Alyssa, discussing the things they don’t like about their own bodies. But instead of saying what they don’t like about their bodies to themselves, the two women direct these negative body image comments at one another. The result is a powerful commentary on how so many women correlate their size to their self-worth. 

The video was originally published in October 2016, but is making the rounds again after The Scene posted the video to Facebook on Thursday.  

“Just a reminder, I love you very much,” Alyssa, an actress who’s battled anorexia, tells Tiffany before they begin. Tiffany is a producer who says she has struggled with body image her entire life. 

For the next minute and a half the women direct their own negative thoughts at one another. “Everyone is skinnier and prettier than you,” Alyssa says. “The people behind you are staring at the way your fat hangs over your bra,” Tiffany replies. 

They continue, telling each other their most negative thoughts: 

“You look so ugly in pictures that I can’t even look at them anymore.”

“He would’ve never cheated on you if you were skinnier.”

“You would be more successful if you lost 15 pounds.”  

“You will never be able to go sleeveless, not even on your wedding day.”

Afterwards, they apologize to each other through tears. 

One week after the original video was shot, Tiffany and Alyssa sat down again to discuss their conversation.  

“Wow I am hurting myself so much, all the time,” Alyssa says. “You just have to always pretend like you’re talking to me,” Tiffany replied. 

At the end, the two hug it out and make a point to treat themselves like they would treat one another. 

The last frame in the video makes an important point, with the screen reading:  “Why do we say things to ourselves that we wouldn’t ever say to (or think about) our best friends? Be a best friend to yourself.” 

If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

When television producer Ray Dotch covered the Ferguson protests and Baltimore riots, his intention was to share the reality of these events with the rest of the world. He was teargassed and pepper-sprayed while doing his job, but, still, Dotch remained committed to getting these important stories out there.

Then, Dotch became part of the story himself: In 2015, Keith Lamont Scott, Dotch’s brother-in-law, was fatally shot in the back and abdomen by a police officer in Charlotte, North Carolina. Dotch became the spokesperson for his family, but still has more to say a year-and-a-half later. He opened up about his perspective on the tragedy during a panel discussion about policing and autism, hosted by Holly and Rodney Peete.

“I found myself angry at … the questions my colleagues were throwing at me about, you know, who he was and trying to humanize him,” Dotch says of his late brother-in-law. “It shouldn’t have been necessary for us to do that. It should just be that African-American men deserve the same justice as everyone else.”

Scott, Dotch says, did not get justice. After a two-month investigation into the incident, the officer who shot Scott was not charged. In terms of what contributes to the police shootings of black men, Dotch believes there’s one major underlying issue that we can’t afford to brush aside.

It should just be that African-American men deserve the same justice as everyone else.

“We are a racist society,” Dotch says firmly. “We just are, and we don’t talk about it. We won’t say it out loud, we won’t call it what it is ― even in reporting on these various stories. You’re supposed to tip-toe around it.

“Until we address the underlying problem, it doesn’t go away,” he continues. “I will still find myself being pepper-sprayed on the street because I was covering a story, because they assume me to be somebody because I’m black. At some point, we have to proactively address it, tackle it and do something about it.”

Dotch also believes that black men’s interactions with police could change if both sides could acknowledge each other’s fear.

“What I think would be really, really helpful from the police’s perspective is to at least acknowledge that, ‘I understand why you would be afraid, because all of this media has painted us in a way ― or, has shown all of these incidents ― that would make anybody who sees it afraid,’” Dotch says. “If we both walk into the scenario and recognize that both sides have a sense of fear, then we’re able to understand and operate in those moments a lot differently.”

For more from this solutions-oriented panel discussion, head to OWN’s YouTube channel.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Last week, a black professor told me he always asks his white students if they have ever heard racism called a sin in the pulpits of their churches growing up. The answer is almost always no. That will be absolutely key to a revival for racial reconciliation and justice — seeing racism as much more than political, but rooted in sin, repentance, morality, and faith. That’s why I wrote America’s Original Sin and hoped it would become a tool for new conversations within and between churches across racial lines. I have already seen how book studies in congregations have become cells for resistance in the Trump era.

In my class at Georgetown University last week, I saw again how the overwhelming facts of racial oppression and discrimination — paired with human stories — can change people. One white student said this to one of her black classmates in the course:

I’ve never known anyone who has been arrested. Not one person, not even an acquaintance of an acquaintance. Incredible as it sounds, knowing you and knowing that your father spent time in prison is the closest connection I have to the prison system.

Her black classmate has shared with us the experience of her father going to prison for 10 years. After minor drug issues — and because of the “three strikes and you’re out” rule — my student said her dad missed her graduation, marriage, and military deployments. He was so dehumanized by the experience of prison, she said she doesn’t know him anymore.

WATCH: Do Black Lives Matter to White Christians? 

Other international and immigrant students in my class spoke personally about their fears of executive orders that could separate them from their families. White students said they couldn’t get their heads around the statistics that one out of every three black men in America will be incarcerated in his lifetime, but they were “infuriated” by it and moved to action.

Another white student told the story of two close friends from high school, an interracial couple who were walking around the Washington, D.C., monuments one day when they were stopped by a white police officer. The officer asked the young woman, “Are you all right?” Confused, she answered, “I’m fine.” Hostile questions came at the young black man, “Are you on any substances?” Startled, he said no. “Do you have any substances on you?” The answer was, again, no, but he was still subjected to a harsh and humiliating search that found nothing, and they were let go. His white girlfriend, who was never searched, had marijuana in her purse.

These “parables” about racism in America are truths that must be told, so that they might set us all free — as the gospels promise. These are the stories that get told in every book cell, study group, or class that deals with racism in America. And they are key to both resistance and change.

I always knew that the release of America’s Original Sin would be painful. The 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin pushed me to write it, but that act of violence was soon followed by yet more killings of young black men and women, one after another — something that had already been happening but was never as visible or as exposed in the larger society as it has now become with the rise of social media and cell phone video. Then, just before the book was published, Dylann Roof murdered nine African Americans during their weekly prayer meeting at Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, S.C. These devout Christians invited Roof into their Bible study — which clearly moved him for a while — and yet he acted on his white supremacist ideology and shot them anyway.

And now the paperback edition of America’s Original Sin is being released this week in the wake of the most vitriolic American presidential campaign in modern history.

Especially painful to me as a white Christian and evangelical is that white Christians — especially white evangelicals — made up the core of Donald Trump’s support.

As Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute explained right after the election, it’s striking to look at a map of the states with the highest percentage of white Christians next to a map of the states Trump won and note how well they match up — especially states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which had voted reliably for the Democratic nominee for the last several presidential election cycles. In fact, as Jones’ colleague Daniel Cox points out, in spite of the popular narrative that Trump’s victory was a function of a swell in support from white working-class voters, “the proportion of white Christians in each of the 50 states is more strongly correlated with support for Trump than is the proportion of white residents without a college degree in the state.”

That racial divide is nothing new, of course. But in this new age of Trump, many people of color are losing hope for an America that values diversity — and them — and are losing trust in white Christians who loudly claim not to be racist but who clearly decided that Trump’s racial bigotry was not a disqualifier for their vote. White Christians ignored Trump’s bigotry with no seeming understanding of or empathy toward families of color. Further, when white people dismiss the real fears that parents of color have for their children after this election, it painfully reveals the distance of the white majority from people of color in America and the realities of their daily lives.

WATCH: A Letter to My Trump-Voting Family

What in the world do we do about that? I say go right to the sin of racism and ask what repentance from our racial sins would mean — at the heart of our congregations. It’s time for a serious study of the history of racism in America and the narrative that must be changed. It’s time for much more direct proximity between white Christians and Christians of color. It’s time for uncomfortable but honest listening and conversations with one another. It’s time to change our relationships and racial geography, time for prayer, and, most of all, for action to change our practices and our policies. Studying racism in the era of Trump will be an act of reconciliation and resistance.

I actually believe that Donald Trump’s election makes a new and national conversation on racism even more important and more possible. Trump’s election provides both a great danger and a real opportunity to finally deal with race in America.

In our homes and in our churches, we must answer the question: “What should white Christians and white churches do in the Trump era?” Repent of the sin of racism. That means to study, learn, and change our relationships in order to act in changing our practices and policies of racism.

The only answer to the racial divide among Christians — evangelicals in particular — is to go much deeper into what racial equity and healing will require. America’s Original Sin was written for such a time as this. It is a book written to and for white Christians and white churches — to help lead them to new conversations with black and brown Christians and their churches. It could be that studying racism in congregation after congregation, and especially between congregations across racial lines, could be a fundamental building block for genuine racial reconciliation in America.

Racial reconciliation will be an act of repentance and resistance in the Trump era.

Jim Wallis is president of Sojourners. His book, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America, is available now.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Creating healthy Black futures requires attention and action to protect the environment in the spaces we call home. The environment greatly influences health status and outcomes, especially for communities of color where many are already overburdened by experiences of injustice that have health, social, and economic consequences. For a healthy future, we need environmental practices and health policies that strengthen our ability to be and stay healthy.   

Unfortunately, the current political climate doesn’t bode well for the environment or our health. In the first two weeks of this new U.S. presidential administration alone, Trump has advocated for the Dakota Access Pipeline to move forward, lead the ongoing Republican denial of climate change, met with pro–land transfer groups who advocate selling federal land currently used for public purposes, and attempted to silence and halt the normal activities of the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies tasked with protecting and promoting human health. The administration’s very first executive order, which seeks the “prompt repeal” of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), would effectively eliminate financial access to healthcare for millions of Americans and increase racial disparities in health insurance coverage which are currently declining. This is a lose-lose scenario for communities of color and Black folks who are likely to be hit the hardest.

This whirlwind of activity is ripping through the human rights of global citizens like a tornado and leaving in its wake a landscape in which environmental and human harm are common and government sanctioned.

Environmental racism is the problem. Environmental justice can be the solution.

During and after the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, a predominantly Black city where the water supply was changed as a cost-saving measure, we saw how environmental sabotage can have negative health, social, and economic consequences for those affected. In late 2014, it was discovered that the water was unsafe to drink due to bacteria and high lead levels. As of January 2017, lead levels were reported to be within the federal limit, but Flint residents rightly remain skeptical. Flint wasn’t the first time economic gains have been sought at the expense of Black health and lives. But, it should be the last.

Dr. Robert D. Bullard, father of environmental justice and Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University, wrote in an email to the author: “If a community happens to be Black or of color, poor or physically live on the ‘wrong side of the tracks,’ it is likely to receive less or no protection. In the real world, some people have the ‘wrong complexion for protection.’ Black communities, black health, and black lives have never mattered. That is why the civil rights and environmental justice movements were born.”

Environmental racism – discrimination where communities of color are forced to live in close proximity to and more exposed to environmental hazards – is the problem. Environmental justice – the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in environmental action and policy – can be the solution.

Our health and lives are at stake.

The deaths of twelve people are suspected to be connected to the contaminated water in Flint. Human life is the highest cost of environmental sabotage, but there are other grave health consequences. Lead poisoning is dangerous for people of all ages and can cause pain, mood changes, seizures, hearing loss and difficulties with memory and cognition.

Maternal and child health is an area where environmental issues and health collide with tragic effects. Lead poisoning, and other environmental toxins, can cause reproductive challenges such as low sperm count and increased risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, or pre-term birth. Black families are already disproportionately more likely to experience miscarriage, stillbirth, pre-term birth, low birth weight, and maternal and infant mortality than their white counterparts. For example, Black mothers are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white mothers. These disparities are thought to be due in part to the chronic stress of simply living while Black in America.

Environmental, reproductive, and economic justice are all critical for healthy Black futures.

Researchers at Brown University describe the combination of chronic stress caused by racism and exposure to environmental toxins as a “double jeopardy,” where chronic stress may make people more susceptible to adverse health effects even with lower exposure to environmental toxins. A 2010 report by The Bronx Health Link compiles information on how various environmental toxins – from air pollution and lead to pesticides and flame retardants – are connected to maternal and child health outcomes, and calls out the disproportionate exposure to toxins that Black and Latino families living in the Bronx experience. For these reasons, environmental justice is highly relevant specifically to reproductive justice as well.

When considered in conjunction with the possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act, environmental justice becomes even more important because of the potential economic ramifications. How will people get the care they need to mitigate the harm caused by environmental sabotage? While the Affordable Care Act has expanded health insurance coverage to millions of Americans, Black people are still more likely to lack health insurance coverage than white people. Rolling back the Affordable Care Act would only make things worse. For many people, accessing healthcare without health insurance is simply unaffordable.

Moreover, illness from environmental toxins has economic consequences, which include medical bills and expenses from ongoing treatment, lost productivity and wages from time spent at home sick themselves or caring for sick family members, and possible unemployment. Rolling back access to healthcare is never a good idea, and it certainly isn’t now. Instead, the government should be seeking to improve financial access to healthcare. Here’s to wishful thinking.

Still, the fight for health and environmental justice must continue. These dark and dire times require it. Efforts like Black Lives Matter are helping to move the needle on environmental justice even in the face of opposition. In a solidarity statement, Black Lives Matter connected the crisis in Flint to state violence and named the environmental racism taking place. They also proposed specific action for elected officials to take to redress various environmental injustices taking place around the country.

Black Lives Matter is also resisting in solidarity with Native American advocates protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, recognizing we have to protect what is sacred to communities of color whether it be our land or our bodies that are directly affected.

Environmental, reproductive, and economic justice are all critical for healthy Black futures.

Now is the time to ramp up our collective action to protect our futures and those of our children, grandchildren and descendants to come. As Dr. Bullard aptly states, “Efforts to dismantle environmental, health and civil rights laws must be resisted at all cost. We must fight with laser focus to protect the most vulnerable in our society – our children – since they can’t vote, demonstrate, march or file lawsuits. We must prepare our young people for this fight, because it’s their future that’s at stake.”

We have a future, and despite these dark times, we know it is bright.

This post is part of the Black Futures Month blog series brought to you by The Huffington Post and the Black Lives Matter Network. Each day in February, look for a new post exploring cultural and political issues affecting the Black community and examining the impact it will have going forward. For more Black History Month content, check out Black Voices’ ‘We, Too, Are America’ coverage.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

The new Bachelorette, Rachel Lindsay, is flawless.

First of all, look at her: She’s got an incandescent smile, gorgeous features and a great body. Then, consider that the 31-year-old Dallas native is a successful lawyer. Not convinced? Watch her appearances on Season 21 of “The Bachelor” ― she’s warm, funny, bubbly and down-to-earth. Not only does Nick Viall, the current Bachelor, love her; her competitors do as well. She’s stayed out of house drama, and even acted as a calming influence on the instigators. Putting aside what may have been left on the cutting-room floor, Rachel appears to viewers bathed in a warm glow of goodness and grace.

Rachel is the first black lead of a “Bachelor” show, and both her selection and the manner of the announcement ― so early she’s still a contestant on the “The Bachelor,” meaning ABC spoiled their own show ― has broken with long-established norms of the franchise. 

But Rachel isn’t just a self-described “historic” pick by ABC because of her race. She’s notable for her extreme perfection. She’s not the first lawyer or the first warm, nurturing woman or the first conventionally stunning Bachelorette ― but she is all of those things at once, a rare complete package.

The show has often been mocked for mostly featuring women from just a few, stereotypically feminine professions: dental hygiene, yoga instruction, event planning. The Bachelorette rarely works in a competitive industry that requires a postgraduate degree. Though there’s certainly nothing wrong or inherently unimpressive with being a dance instructor, a real estate agent or a bridal stylist, the titles don’t carry the unquestioned cachet that a high-status profession like “lawyer” does in our society.

Of course, the 10th Bachelorette, Andi Dorfman, was also an attorney. But whereas Andi could come off as abrasive thanks to her ability to seize control of confrontational moments and eviscerate her opponents ― in fact, her breakout moment on “The Bachelor” was an unforgiving cross-examination of Juan Pablo Galavis, her purported romantic interest ― Rachel is soft-spoken, sweet and seems to find the best in everyone. In the midst of a feud between resident embodiment of white privilege Corinne Olympios and biracial mental health counselor Taylor Nolan, Rachel sat them both down and expressed that she wanted the best for both of them. “I think you’re both misunderstood to some extent,” she said. Could she be any more generous and open-minded? 

Even Rachel’s style is utterly unobjectionable. Kaitlyn Bristowe, Bachelorette 11, was funny, charming and gorgeous, but her tattoos and open sexuality differed from the show’s usual, blandly wholesome vibe. Rachel’s demureness and fresh, clean-cut look make her the classic girl-next-door crush. 

In addressing questions about the show’s lack of diversity in the past, host Chris Harrison has insisted, “We’ll never pick anybody [as the lead] for any other reason other than they are the best person for the job. Period.” 

So, what does a black woman have to do to be viewed as the best person for the job of Bachelorette? Be flawless according to every relevant (and deeply problematic) metric, of course.

None of this is surprising. Black women have long been held to higher standards to receive equal recognition, even in romantic contexts. Betraying even an iota of ego, outrage or irritation can doom a black contestant on the show, even if the same behavior might have been read as “spunk” or “personality” coming from a white woman. On “The Bachelor,” the onus tends to fall on black women to prove that they’re soft and womanly enough to be worthy of love ― all too often, instead, they’re boxed into a stereotypical “angry black woman” corner or ignored altogether. As Vulture’s Ali Barthwell wrote about Rachel’s selection:

Feminist movements led by white women have tried to create distance between white women and the roles of girlfriend, wife, mother. Black women, meanwhile, have tried to reclaim these roles and, in turn, the full spectrum of womanhood. This is because of how routinely black women are criticized in terms of their womanhood. Black women are angry and unladylike. Their bodies are vulgar and lack grace.

Nowhere is this more true than on “The Bachelor,” which offers us black contestants as tokens but rarely takes any care to depict them as desirable. Harrison was particularly tough on last season’s Jubilee Sharpe, a beautiful veteran with a tragic past who flinched in the face of a barrage of microaggressions that isolated her from the group. “Jubilee has a lot of work to do on herself,” Harrison told The Daily Beast after her departure from “The Bachelor.” “You can see from the episode she’s got a lot of issues.” Jubilee’s primary crimes were making self-deprecating jokes and withdrawing from the rest of the group after they became persistently critical of her offhand jests ― transgressions that are fairly standard for women on “The Bachelor,” and perhaps easy enough to forgive as a lovable flaw if the contestant meets a perceived standard of white femininity.

It’s past time for a black lead on “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette.” That the show’s creator smugly played up its decision as “historic” (which it is mostly in the context of its own show’s aggressively white history) grates in particular, though, because the franchise clearly waited until they found a black woman of unimpeachable character, kindness, beauty and credentials, a truly exceptional woman, to take the risk of casting a black lead. That’s not new, revolutionary, brave or historic. It’s business as usual.

By any measure, Rachel Lindsay is a major catch. She was the obvious choice for the next Bachelorette, based on what we’ve seen so far in the series. Will the men cast for her be similarly diverse, perhaps leading the series to snowball in a more colorful direction, or will she date the same mostly white assemblage as usual? That we don’t yet know. Will ABC ever cast a black woman with visible tattoos, a career as a hairstylist or a spiky personality as an object of universal desire? We’ll have to wait even longer to find that out. But as we’re enjoying Rachel’s journey to find true love, it will be worth remembering that ABC’s push for diversity on the franchise is far from done. On the contrary: It’s barely started.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

During Black History Month, few black New Yorkers think White House is reaching out

“He breaks my heart. My feelings are hurt,” said 38-year-old Carolynne McCoy. “Trump is separating people. That’s not what the U.S. stands for.”

“Donald Trump doesn’t like black people, Trump doesn’t care for black people,” the sales associate from East New York, in outer Brooklyn, continued. “He doesn’t care for Black History Month. And I certainly don’t believe that he believes in Black Lives Matter.”

“I see people being more aggressive. It’s our national leader being racist, so what’s to stop the average man from being that way?” McCoy asked.

“I try to avoid conflict, confrontation, but I feel a tense situation on the subway,” she described the mood on public transportation in New York City. “[Normally] it’s like, you stay in your lane, I stay in mine. Now people feel like they can rear their ugly heads more.”

In Trump’s hometown, African-Americans remember the legacy of discrimination that has long tainted the Trump real estate empire, and were shocked by the uptick in overtly racist incidents in the month following Election Day. Even so, many want to keep an open mind about the prospects of his administration, while retaining realistic expectations for the next four years.

Yet they’ve been unnerved by speeches ostensibly about black issues — to predominantly white audiences — with a superficial, patronizing tone used to address poverty and crime. Moreover, a dizzying sequence of executive orders has caused increasing fear among minority populations across the board.

And during yesterday’s press conference, amid countless other verbal assaults that enraged liberal-minded Americans, the president asked an African-American journalist to set up his appointment with the Congressional Black Caucus. A subsequent Twitter exchange shed light on the fact that Trump had as yet ignored — perhaps unsurprisingly — the CBC’s previous attempt to convene such a meeting.

With Ben Carson the only African-American in the cabinet and a mere handful of black advisors around the periphery of Trump’s political circle, the new commander-in-chief has made scant efforts to foster much diversity.

In his remarks at the start of Black History Month, Trump set off a firestorm of controversy for suggesting that abolitionist icon Frederick Douglass was still around. “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice,” he said.

This week, a black member of Trump’s transition team argued to a room full of executives that the new cabinet was actually as diverse as Barack Obama’s first.

Besides consistently gloating about the size of his electoral victory, the president himself has been thanking black people for staying home in the November 8 election. For the record, 88 percent of African-Americans who went to the polls picked Hillary Clinton, five points lower than the percentage who pulled the lever for Obama in 2012.

‘What he puts into action’

One Queens stay-at-home mother is a former community liaison willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, for now.

Thirty-three-year-old Charlie-Monroe Brown, said, “Everyone is their own individual. I’m interested in seeing what he’s about. I don’t know him. I want to see what he puts into action.”

“Black History Month is important, but not the same as it was before. Trump is about what’s important to him,” she summarized. “But you can’t say, ‘He doesn’t care about black people’.”

On the one hand, many African-Americans see the political prescriptions for policies that they don’t particularly like. However, beyond the specifics of health care, education, and immigration, there are symbolic matters that may bother voters even more.

“Trump has no sincere regard for Black History Month,” said Baraka Smith, 47, a Brooklyn resident and firefighter. “It’s pretty obvious he doesn’t take it seriously, with the whole thing implying that Frederick Douglass was still alive.”

“It started off as Negro History Week to dispel the racist myth that Africans haven’t contributed to civilization. That’s the stated purpose, not a pop culture celebration.”

“Donald Trump wants to make America like it’s the 1940’s again, with second-class citizens,” he said, before articulating his stance on what many activists see as the continuation of the civil rights struggle in the contemporary era — a fault line that could at any point be inflamed due to the proliferation of angry rhetoric on both sides.

“A lot of people are equating Black Lives Matter with a terrorist organization,” Smith said of many Trump supporters. “From what I understand, it’s not anti-police, but about holding them accountable. You can’t go around murdering people.”

Christian and Iko, two 17-year-old high school students who attend Summit Academy in Red Hook, but reside in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn, said that their government class addressed the notion of checks and balances on the executive branch. It is within this context that their teacher explained limitations on implementing the Republican leader’s agenda.

“It shouldn’t affect us [negatively] just to have a white president, but it’s good that he hasn’t done much — compared to what he said he was going to do,” said Christian. “I think most people don’t care outside of school. They brush it to the side.”

McCoy, the sales associate who works at Atlantic Terminal, concluded that her concern at the local level was “more a politics thing than an ethnic thing. It doesn’t matter where you’re from.”

She reduced the main problem to “economic racism, [which] blocks me from getting what I want, from moving forward in life. It’s about money, control, power.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices