Tag: Black Voices

At only 8 years old, Nia Mya Reese has already mastered the art of caring for another human being. So much so that she’s written a best-selling how-to book on it titled How To Deal With and Care For Your Annoying Little Brother.

It all began last year with a first-grade class assignment for students to write a descriptive piece on something they have learned to excel in. 

Nia Mya ― who lives in Hoover, Alabama ― chose her “downright annoying” 5-year-old brother Ronald Michael as the subject for the assignment, she told CBS News.

“Nia Mya shared that she was a great big sister to an annoying little brother,” her first-grade teacher, Beth Hankins, told CBS. 

Her mother, Cherinita, then advised Nia Mya to extend the assignment into the summer. 

Nia Mya said it only took a few days to place all of her big sister expertise, including how to make learning enjoyable, in the book, which became available on Amazon last November. The book has since been branded with the website’s coveted best-seller tag. Hoover Mayor Frank V. Brocato even came by Nia Mya’s latest book signing.

When asked by CBS about her biggest takeaway from the experience, Nia Mya replied: “I learned to follow my own dreams.” 

You can watch more of CBS’s interview with Nia Mya below: 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

In a rare joyous moment amid the pure dismay of Hurricane Katrina, an Air Force pararescuer saved a 3-year-old girl and her family from the floods in 2005. After the rescue, the little girl gave the man a huge hug that was captured in an iconic photo.

The moment left a lasting impact on both LaShay Brown and Master Sgt. Mike Maroney. The duo reunited a decade later and have kept in touch ever since. Maroney has visited LaShay, now 14, and her family in Mississippi, and they speak on the phone weekly, according to People. He even taught her how to swim.

LaShay said Maroney’s support has inspired her to join the military one day. She said she doesn’t know which branch yet, but Maroney supports her.

“I am proud of her no matter what she does and will support her in everything she does,” he told People. “I think she understands service and I believe that she will do great things no matter what she chooses.”

Maroney also inspired LaShay to join the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps at her high school.

“It was very interesting and a challenge, and because I had never done it before,” she told People. “I knew if I joined I would have help from Mike along the way if I needed it, or was confused about anything.”

Maroney, who will retire from the Air Force this month because of an injury, will accompany LaShay to her JROTC ball on Saturday. He said that he’s going because LaShay and her family “mean as much to [him] as [his] own.”

Maroney, who was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder when he rescued LaShay, set out to find the teen in 2015 with the hashtag #FindKatrinaGirl. He said that he looked at the photo of the two while he was deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to get him through difficult times.

When they were reunited on “The Real,” he told LaShay how much her hug meant to him.

“That small gesture, it helped me through bad days and dark days,” he told her. “You have a beautiful smile and it stuck with me and it’s helped me and has meant a lot to me. So I’m indebted to you. You rescued me more than I rescued you.”

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Fashion has a long way to go until it reaches true inclusivity, but something exciting is happening: Several shoe designers have responded to women’s cry for stylish shoes for wide feet. And we’re pretty much doing cartwheels over it. 

These aren’t the same uninspired sandals we’re used to seeing in extended width sizes. These strappy numbers are truly current ― each pair looks exactly like the shoes we pine for, but would often struggle to find in our size.

Well, your day has come. The shoes are here. Take a scroll, add ‘em to your cart and then click your heels together. You’ve finally got a foot at the table.

— 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

Jussie Smollett is taking President Donald Trump and his administration to task in his new video, “F.U.W. (F**ked Up World).”

Directed by Smollett, the black-and-white visual clip features the openly gay singer-actor highlighting the various injustices around racial prejudice and the fight for religious, human and LGBTQ rights.

“This is not a single. It’s not a song to promote the series. It’s an artistic expression,” Smollett said in a press release for the song. “My view of this sick cycle, an era in which we must fight our way out of before it’s too late.”

“This view of unity is something they may never understand,” he added. “That is why it is up to us. Train your daughters and sons to be soldiers of love, despite and in spite of this F**ked Up World.” 

In addition to combating the race baiting, bigotry, xenophobia and “alternative facts” of the current administration, the nearly four-minute clip also shows a mask of Trump being shattered by a man in a wheelchair.

According to the “Empire” star, the mask is a representation of the “false idea of patriotism.”

“That mask is a representation of this idea of white male privilege,” Smollett explained to The Associated Press. “It’s so much bigger than him. It’s what he represents, and it’s because of that representation, that’s why he’s the president of the United States currently. It’s our opportunity to take those masks off and shatter them, so that’s what I did.”

Check out the video to Jussie Smollett’s “F.U.W. (F**ked Up World)” in the clip above.

— 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

Women’s rights activist Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International, has worked with some of the world’s most resilient women ― women who have experienced the horrors of war, survived extreme poverty, bravely spoken their truths and transcended their pasts. Inspired by these indomitable spirits, Salbi wrote a poem that appears in If You Knew Me You Would Care, a book she collaborated on with renowned photographer Rennio Maifredi.

In the above video from “SuperSoul Sunday,” Salbi reads her powerful poem aloud as Maifredi’s striking images showcase the strength and goodness in these female survivors. 

What if I’m not sadness?

What if I’m not grief?

What if I’m not my victim’s story,

Nor am I my pain?

 

What if they are all part of me,

But not fully me?

What if I am just me?

 

What if I’m joy without reason,

Happiness in all seasons?

What if I am love for all?

What if I laugh for no reason and all reasons?

What if they are all part of me?

 

What if I don’t hate my enemy?

What if I forgive?

What if I see without judgment,

Love without reasons?

What if I give and receive without worry?

What if I can be all, and still be me?

 

What if this is it?

What if this is perfect?

What if I don’t doubt?

What if I just believe?

 

How would life be if I let it be?

How would I be if I accept fully me?

What will I be if today I am free?

What if this is the new story?

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— 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

Last year, the state of Texas gave anti-abortion organization Heidi Group $1.6 million to provide every health care service to women except abortions. Eight months later, the Heidi Group appears to have fallen flat on its promise. 

This week, the Associated Press reported that the organization has failed in its million-dollar endeavor to “strengthen small clinics that specialize in women’s health” but that don’t offer abortion. And this report comes at a particularly important moment: The GOP’s proposed alternative to the Affordable Care Act would defund Planned Parenthood, something House Speaker Paul Ryan called part of “a conservative wish list” at a press conference last week.

The AP reported that the Heidi Group, which is part of the state’s Alternatives to Abortion plan and whose funds subsidize Crisis Pregnancy Centers throughout the state, “has done little of the outreach it promised, such as helping clinics promote their services on Facebook, or airing public service announcements. It hasn’t made good on plans to establish a 1-800 number to help women find providers or ensure that all clinics have updated websites.” 

The Texas state government’s logic behind the Heidi Group initiative was that women’s health care ought to be provided separately from abortions. The issue, though, is that Crisis Pregnancy Centers don’t employ medical professionals or provide medical services.

CPCs are women’s centers funded by anti-abortion groups (like Heidi Group), with the implicit aim of convincing women not to have abortions. Though many CPCs claim to offer a full range of services to pregnant women, the nearest thing that many CPCs have to medical professionals are sonogram nurses. 

Unlike Planned Parenthood and other health care providers, CPCs do not offer STD tests, Pap smears, contraception advice or implantation, cancer screenings or prenatal care. 

What CPCs do offer is faith-based counseling (often from volunteer counselors, not certified psychologists or psychotherapists) and short-term, quick-fix help often in the form of diapers and baby beds. CPCs are often located within walking distance to abortion clinics, and often place volunteer anti-abortion protestors outside of those clinics to hand out fliers and pamphlets to patients encouraging them not to go to their appointment. Many of them also have misleading names that could easily be confused with the names of actual abortion clinics, like Pregnancy Resource Clinic in Phoenix, Az. or Women’s Care Center, a chain of CPCs in Indiana. 

“Crisis pregnancy centers are given millions of dollars in state funding to manipulate and shame Texans considering having an abortion,” Sharmeen Aly, Communications Coordinator of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, told The Huffington Post on Wednesday. “They are not comprehensive health centers and often provide no medical services. Crisis pregnancy centers exist to prevent people facing unintended pregnancies from accessing abortion care and delay their care to the point where they’re not able to access abortion.”

It is unconscionable that [Crisis Pregnancy Centers] continue to receive millions from the state to peddle their baseless anti-abortion agenda.
Sharmeen Aly, Communications Coordinator of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas

Of course, the presence of CPCs isn’t just limited to the state of Texas. 

The 2016 documentary film “JACKSON,” explored what the health care landscape looks like for women in Mississippi, where only one abortion clinic remains. Shannon Brewer, director of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, told HuffPost that what CPCs do to young women is provide a “false hope” that they’ll have support in raising unplanned children. 

“By the time [patients] realize that it’s false hope,” Brewer said, “they’ve already had another baby, and they’re already in the same situation or a worse situation.”

Other states have also had to deal with CPCs, which often outnumber abortion clinics. In Charlotte, N.C., two mobile crisis pregnancy centers park outside A Preferred Women’s Health Center every day to try to get women to pull over before they park at the abortion clinic. The CPC, PRC Charlotte, boasts “no cost” services and “walk-ins welcome” ― traits that many women look for when seeking reproductive health care. PRC Charlotte offers free ultrasounds in their RVs, but otherwise offers zero medical services. 

Some of the pro-choice volunteers outside A Preferred Women’s Health Center told HuffPost in December that PRC Charlotte often uses misleading information, or flat-out lies, to get patients to carry their pregnancies to term.

“Patients have been told that their pregnancy wasn’t ‘attached properly’ and that they would miscarry, so they should cancel their [abortion] appointment,” one volunteer clinic escort told HuffPost. “Another was told that her pregnancy was too far along for an abortion, and that she should cancel, too, even though it wasn’t.”

PRC Charlotte denied these practices, but research has shown that misleading patients is common practice for CPCs, and, back in Texas, Sharmeen Aly agrees.

“These centers use scare tactics and provide scientifically inaccurate information to their patients,” she told HuffPost. “It is unconscionable that they continue to receive millions from the state to peddle their baseless anti-abortion agenda.”

CPCs have become increasingly powerful, with the Heidi Group able to convince the Texas government to give it more than $1 million last year. And in Boise, Id., Brandi Swindell, who started CPC chain Stanton Healthcare, is hoping that CPCs can replace Planned Parenthood altogether. (Though in contrast to the care most CPCs provide ― or rather, don’t provide ― Swindell has said she wants to make STI testing and diagnostic ultrasounds available in her clinics.) 

Swindell told Cosmopolitan last June: “We hope to be much like Margaret Sanger was, a revolutionary of her time… I know, can you believe I’m using her?”

But CPCs still cannot replace the thing that women arguably need most: actual comprehensive health care, provided by licensed medical professionals. And state governments are noticing. 

The Heidi Group’s failure to provide what it set out to provide has been noticed by the commission that provided the group with funding.

Texas Health and Human Services Commission spokeswoman Carrie Williams told the AP that “the bottom line is that we are holding our contractors accountable, and will do everything we can to help them make themselves successful.”

And in Oakland, Ca. last summer, the City Council passed an ordinance requiring CPCs to be transparent about their provided services ― and, perhaps more importantly, what they don’t provide. Oakland Vice Mayor and District 4 City Councilwoman Annie Campbell Washington, who co-authored the ordinance, told HuffPost that her biggest issue with CPCs is their misleading advertising practices.

“I take truth in advertising very seriously. I believe that CPCs are part of a pro-life strategy. They are completely misleading pregnant women who are vulnerable and specifically looking for abortion services,” she said. “If they were marketing their services as ‘We will help you through your pregnancy’ that’s fine. But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re lying to women.” 

She also believes that the government should “absolutely not” be funding CPCs. 

“They’re not providing the services that they claim to be providing,” she said. “They’re misleading women into believe they can get some sort of medical care, which they can’t. They should absolutely not be receiving government funding.”

Local governments in Baltimore, Los Angeles and San Francisco have also put into place legislation meant to combat misleading CPC practices, and now, even in an actively anti-abortion state like Texas, it’s becoming increasingly clear that CPCs are not the answer to expanding women’s access to health care. 

It turns out that the care Planned Parenthood provides to 2.5 million men and women per year is not as easily replaceable as anti-abortion groups want it to be. The Heidi Group’s founder, the staunch anti-abortion advocate Carol Everett, acknowledged her organization’s shortcomings in Texas last week.

“It’s not as easy as it looks,” she said. “Because we are not Planned Parenthood.”

— 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

When it comes to reaching kids, the former first lady still reigns.

On Thursday’s pretaped episode of “MasterChef Junior,” Justise Mayberry triumphed in guest star Michelle Obama’s cooking challenge by making pan-seared shrimp with vegetables from the White House garden.

But the adorable Justise, 11, won something perhaps even better: a sit-down with the then-first lady at the Kids’ State Dinner in July. As shown in an unaired conversation posted Thursday by Fox, Obama did not disappoint.

Asked by Justise what advice she had for young chefs, Obama replied: “There is nothing more important that you can do for yourself than to get an education. Doing your best not just in the kitchen, but you’ve got to be your best in the classroom. I want you all to keep pushing and preparing yourself for college and doing well.”

Obama also told Justise to introduce other kids to vegetables and healthy eating.

Sounds like a good recipe for life, kid.

H/T People

— 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

Last month, my second book, Stakes Is High: Race, Faith, and Hope for America, was published by Chalice Press. Before its official release, I was elated that the book received strong endorsements from academics and activists, alike. Dr. Elaine Heath, the dean of the Divinity School at Duke University endorsed the book by stating, “My hope and prayer is that this narrative of violence against black and brown people in the United States finds its way into homes, churches, schools, and offices of public servants across this nation.” The Reverend Stephen A. Green, national director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Youth and College Division stated, “Captivating and persuasive, Stakes Is High offers a poignant reflection on the social, political, and theological situations of Black people in America.”

Others now have had a month to engage the text. I have been overwhelmed by the positive responses I have received. Stakes Is High is already being added to University and secondary school syllabi, and it is being engaged communally by adult Christian education classes and soon, Masjid youth groups. The book was featured in a Publisher’s Weekly article among new books that “encourage and guide activism”, and editors for Sojourners Magazine have included the book among their four cultural recommendations for April 2017.

Thus far, one of the most personally moving responses came from a white suburban mother who was so moved by the text that she mailed a copy to an incarcerated nephew. Her nephew then shared the text with a Black inmate serving a lengthy prison sentence. After reading Stakes Is High, the Black inmate offered that the book was the first thing that had given him hope in a long time and that he felt as though they had not been forgotten.

Another moving response came from a Muslim mother whose son was recently bullied at his school. A young white classmate approached him and called him a terrorist. Having read my book, she determined that she would also have her grade school sons read the book to increase their awareness of the legacy of racism and hatred in America, to empower them to stand strong in the face of hate, and to encourage them to join the peaceful resistance against these destructive forces in American society. Even my own fourth grader surprised me by saying that he was reading Stakes Is High during his free reading time at school. I inquired what he had learned thus far. He responded, “That racism is real.”

I can think of no greater initial reception to this work, and with the recent release of a free online companion guide to the text authored by a diverse group of pastors and scholars from across the nation, I am even more excited about Stakes Is High’s future engagement. Interestingly enough, the only negative critiques I have received thus far have come from persons who have not even read the book. These are white persons who have judged the book by its cover, and they have taken to social media to express their disdain. Each of them has issued the same criticism: they cannot possibly bring themselves to engage the book due to the use of grammar in the book’s title. Hip hop heads and persons of a certain generation immediately recognized the book’s title as a nod to a seminal cultural artifact, De La Soul’s classic recording from 1996. I consider the song to be an essential part of my personal journey to social awareness and social activism, and it seemed a most appropriate title for a new book addressing the same subject matter in these tumultuous days.

I find the boldness of these people offensive and a gross representation of how some white folk address Black agency in the world. Forget the fact that the book shares the narratives of Black children, women, and men historically and in present day who suffer daily under the unjust oppression of the American enterprise. Forget the fact that in this age of alternative truths, the history of historically Black colleges and universities has been recast as an example of the success of school choice as opposed to being necessarily emergent in a society that made Black literacy illegal and barred Black people from attending white schools. And never mind the fact that slavery has been recast as an instance of immigration for Africans seeking a better life for their descendants in America.

This is the grossest of white privilege, a system empowered by the fatal legacy of notions of white supremacy, one that has always sought to undervalue the voice of others, especially if those voices failed to meet the standard of their Eurocentric notions of respectability. With a few characters haplessly released upon the Internet, they have employed weapons of silence and erasure, suggesting that Black vernacular deems a work unworthy of serious engagement. Undoubtedly, they do so by illuminating a gross hypocrisy. For generations, white people have found our contributions to American culture wildly entertaining, and when at all possible, have sought to colonize and make a commodity out of our culture for their financial gain. Black culture is only acceptable as long as it is entertaining and can be controlled. For some, as soon as our culture strengthens resistance or becomes revolutionary, it is deemed inaccessible, unwarranted, and ignorant.

Stakes is too high to care what some white folk think. It is more important now than ever before that we tell our own narratives, less they be used against us to promote platforms that will further harm our community. Their comfort is not our concern. Although our national obsession has shifted, unarmed Black folk are still being cut down by police. And the promise of the current presidential administration to restore law and order in our inner cities is no less than a national call of open season against Black and Brown people. As Muslim grandmothers and infants are denied entry into our country, and as racists and Anti-Semites continue to be appointed to positions of great influence in our national government, how comfortable or uncomfortable some white people are made with how my community chooses to verbally express our pain and struggle for justice and equality on these shores is inconsequential.

I believe this critique, and other critiques like it, to be a cover for white fragility and white tears. Some white folk have grown weary of our calls for justice now convinced that they are the true victims of history. These are they who believe that all struggles within our community are merely the result of Black pathology, and they fail to see how unjust systems continue to rage against us.

However, you cannot control the agency of my people. Our voice is our resistance. It is not designed for your comfort, nor does it need your approval. It is meant to shake you awake from your slumber that you might join the struggle and challenge notions of white supremacy in the places and spaces to which Black people are often denied access, spaces and places where the stain of notions of white supremacy has been passed down as a birthright to new generations, namely your churches and your homes.

The time is now to resist.

The time is now for movement. The time is now to demand justice and equality for all. Without question, stakes is high. Yet, when it comes to white fragility, white tears, and Eurocentric notions of respectability, ain’t nobody got time for that.

— 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

In one of the most aggressive capital punishment states in the country, a new prosecutor is drawing praise for her refusal to seek the death penalty in any of her cases going forward. But she’s also drawing harsh rebuke from the state’s Republican lawmakers.

State Attorney Aramis Ayala announced Thursday morning that death was off the table for criminal cases in Orange and Osceola counties, which are under her jurisdiction.

“I will not be seeking the death penalty in the cases handled in my office,” Ayala said. “Let me be very clear, however, I will continue to hold people who do harm to this community accountable for their actions.” 

Ayala’s decision means she will not seek death for Markeith Loyd, who is accused of a December 2016 double murder. Loyd, 41, is charged in the slaying of Sade Dixon, his pregnant ex-girlfriend, as well as Orlando police Lt. Debra Clayton, who was shot multiple times. 

Following her announcement, Ayala refused a demand from Republican Gov. Rick Scott that she recuse herself from Loyd’s case.

In response, Scott signed an executive order yanking Ayala from the case and reassigning it to State Attorney Brad King of Florida’s 5th Judicial District.

In a statement, Scott said he was “outraged and sickened” by the two murders. 

“These families deserve a state attorney who will aggressively prosecute Markeith Loyd to the fullest extent of the law, and justice must be served,” Scott said.

Scott’s office did not clarify how it will respond to other capital cases that may arise while Ayala is in office. 

The struggle highlights the fault lines in Florida’s fraught capital punishment system, which has been the subject of scrutiny by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

“In just over a year, Florida’s death penalty statute has twice been ruled unconstitutional,” Ayala said. “A new statute was enacted this past Tuesday morning. That’s Florida’s second death penalty statute in less than two years.” 

In January 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hurst v. Florida that the state’s practice of judicial override was unconstitutional. The practice had allowed a judge to ignore a jury’s recommendation of life in prison to instead impose a death sentence. Alabama is now the only state that has judicial override, and it has a bill underway to scrap the practice. 

Following Hurst, Florida still permitted death sentences by non-unanimous jury vote, requiring at least 10 votes rather than 12. Scott signed a bill Tuesday to require a unanimous jury vote in death sentences. 

Ayala’s actions drew praise from groups opposed to capital punishment, including the Equal Justice Initiative, Amnesty International and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Meanwhile, Orlando Police Chief John Mina and state Republicans including U.S. Rep. Bob Cortes and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, slammed Ayala’s stand as “dangerous” and outrageous. 

“State Attorney Aramis Ayala’s decision today sends a dangerous message to residents and visitors of the greater Orlando area — furthermore, it is a blatant neglect of duty and a shameful failure to follow the law as a constitutionally elected officer,” Bondi said in a statement. 

Ayala won election in 2016 in a race that, like all but three state judicial circuit races, was uncontested. 

She explained her decision at the Thursday news conference by saying that, while she understood some law enforcement officers and victims’ families would be upset, her decision was based on evidence, not emotion. She pointed to the repeated legal setbacks endured by Florida’s death penalty system as well as its ballooning cost. 

Sentencing someone to death in Florida costs roughly $2.5 million more than a life sentence of 40 years (the average age of Florida’s death row inmates when they commit their crime is about 30), Ayala said, citing figures from the American Bar Association. 

Ayala also cited research indicating that the death penalty does not make law enforcement safer or reduce crime. Its only certainty is that the obstacles that range from legal challenges to drug shortages make it impossible to promise that the families of victims will get closure.

I am prohibited from making the severity of sentences the index of my effectiveness.
State Attorney Aramis Ayala

“Some are left waiting for an execution that will never occur,” Ayala said. “I cannot, in good faith, look a victim in the face and promise that a death sentence handed down in our courts will ever result in execution.” 

She rejected the idea that automatically taking death off the table eliminates a valuable bargaining chip for prosecutors.  

“One thing that I think is inhumane is to negotiate life,” she said. 

“My duty is to seek justice, which is fairness, objectivity and decency. I am prohibited from making the severity of sentences the index of my effectiveness.”

Ayala said she would “absolutely” change her mind if evidence emerged to demonstrate Florida’s death penalty could be administered quicker, cheaper and error-free. 

“This has been an inconsistent system since I took office,” she said. 

In Denver, Beth McCann, a recently elected district attorney, said in January that she would refuse to pursue the death penalty. In a statement Thursday, she praised Ayala’s decision. 

“The state should not be in the business of killing people. The other issue is the enormous cost and the years — even decades — of litigation involved in a death penalty case. The money the state spends on death penalty cases can be saved to prosecute others,” McCann said. “Life in prison is not a walk in the park. It provides appropriate severe punishment and keeps the defendant off the street, and life in prison with parole is certain and final.”

— 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