The publisher has decided to take a short vacation from writing for the next 2 months and will return in our July 1st issue. In the meantime, we are reprinting some of his Af-Am bits from past years that remain very relevant that you might have missed.

These two bits were taken from the June 1, 2022 issue of POV
WHITENESS AS A COLLECTION OF HABITS
The comments by Savala Nolan in a Time article (February 14/February 21, 2022) on White folks titled “Antiracists Can’t Work Alone,” were revealing. She wrote: “I think of whiteness primarily as a collection of habits and behaviors premised on the assumption that dealing with race is optional, and can be done on whatever terms suit you. Behaving as if you are exempt from things that are “racial” is one way this manifests. Another way is the habit of doing things that give you the feeling or appearance of caring about racial justice without having to pay much of a cost. I sometimes think this explains a chunk of white votes for Barack Obama—It let some white voters feel progressive on race—but didn’t require them to reckon with or personally sacrifice anything. I also wonder if these white habits explain the popularity of movies and television depicting Black pain; they allow some white viewers to feel grief and even cry over the horrible workings of the racial hierarchy, without having to do anything about that hierarchy.” There is much more to the article worth reading. She concludes with, “If we want to transform how we do race in this country, it’s time for white folks to increase the heat on one another.” Amen!

“THE GI BILL WAS ONE OF THE WORST RACIAL INJUSTICES OF THE 20TH CENTURY…”
New York Times’ Alan Rappeport wrote: “the original GI Bill, signed into law June 1944, was hailed as a transformative measure by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It provided veterans with loan guarantees for a home mortgage, money for college or vocational school, and unemployment compensation. The bill helped over 4.3 million veterans – mostly Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, and other working-class European immigrants – to buy a home.
Between 1944 and 1953, GI Bill mortgages accounted for nearly one-third of all new US home loans, with a present-day value of $340 billion. Nearly 8 million veterans used the education benefits to attend college or vocational school. The bill enabled them to become doctors, dentists, teachers, engineers, accountants, and other professionals as well as to train as electricians, plumbers, builders, and other skilled trades. As they moved to suburbs, these veterans accumulated wealth, boosted the economy, and drove mid-century American prosperity.
The GI Bill did not explicitly exclude the 8 million Black Americans who fought in World War II and Korea. But in practice, the Bill’s benefits were almost entirely restricted to whites, by making it one of the worst racial injustices of the 20th century.” (White supremacy, as too many White folks want to believe, didn’t end with slavery.)

These two bits were taken from the August 1, 2022 issue of POV
“THE PRESIDENT WHO STOOD STILL”
If you haven’t yet heard about the above-titled editorial in The Wall Street Journal trashing former President Donald J. Trump, you should look it up on the Web and read it. It is the first major departure of a Ruppert Murdoch organization media outlet from the Trump “Big Lie” that has left so many foolish Trump acolytes convinced that he actually won the 2020 election and that President Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. It seems that the Journal’s departure resulted from the disclosures made by the January 6th Committee’s recent revelations about Trump’s behavior during the 187 minutes the U.S. Capitol was under siege by a violent group of White Supremacists. Not only did Trump sit in the West Wing dining room of the White House watching the violence on television and doing nothing to stop it, at one point during the insurrection, he tweeted a message saying that Vice President Mike Pence “didn’t have the courage” to stop the electoral count, which only added to the rioters’ frenzy. The Journal introduced its editorial with the following: “No matter your views of the Jan. 6 special committee, the facts it is laying out in hearings are sobering. The most horrifying to date came Thursday in a hearing on (former) President Trump’s conduct as the riot raged and he sat watching TV, posting inflammatory tweets and refusing to send help.” As we all now know, Pence fulfilled his Constitutional obligation by completing the electoral count in the late hours after the rioters left the Capital. The Journal concluded its scathing article against Trump by concluding: “Character is revealed in a crisis, and Mr. Pence passed his Jan. 6 trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his.” (Saturday/Sunday, July 23-24, 2022)

WHAT WE HAVE IN THIS COUNTRY IS MUCH MORE THAN A POLICE PROBLEM
How many bullets does it take to kill a Black man who may have committed minor traffic “equipment violations?” The answer, of course, should be “none.” Yet, five Akron Ohio police officers fired 90 bullets at an unarmed Jayland Walker leaving him dead with 60 wounds. The county medical examiner recovered 26 bullets from his body. She found 41 entry wounds and five wounds from bullets that grazed him and five wounds in his back. Walker had injuries that would cause death to his heart, lungs and arteries. The medical examiner also found that Walker was unarmed and had no drugs or alcohol in his system.
“Minor traffic violation?” Black folks know what that means! It’s a license for police to harass, interdict, sometimes arrest, and too often kill us for the culturally invented “crime” of driving while Black.”
There is not an explanation in the world that could justify such a violent death at the hands of the police, who claimed Walker fired a gun out of the window of his car as they pursued him. Police claimed they found a gun on the seat of his car after they executed him. And there will be those (likely many) White folks who will accept this explanation as a justification for such an unwarranted gross over-reaction by the police while most Black folks will justifiably question whether Walker ever fired a shot while suspecting the gun police claimed was Walker’s was planted to cover for their absolutely unjustifiable, gross over reaction.
To start with, why initiate a police chase involving multiple officers rather than simply writing down his license plate and summonsing him to court? Reasonable people should agree that adding a charge of “failure to stop” beats firing ninety bullets and executing Walker or even creating the circumstances under which it might happen.
And we now know that the 8 Akron, Ohio police officers responsible for Walker’s death will not be charged in his death because “A special grand jury in Ohio declined to indict the Akron police officers who shot a 25-year-old Black man dozens of times, killing him, after a car chase and foot chase last year. The grand jury concluded the officers were legally justified in their use of force against Jayland Walker, according to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.” (CNN, April 17, 2023.) Some things never change!

These two bits were taken from the September 1, 2022 issue of POV
TRUMP ISN’T GOING AWAY
“Trump’s resilience seems puzzling. Why does a sizable chunk of the Republican Party remain in his corner, when those voters could back a more disciplined candidate who shares the former president’s policies and attitude? The question assumes that voters are logical and that charismatic leadership is easily transferable. Neither assumption is true. The connection between populist tribunes and their followers is personal rather than intellectual. The leader becomes a symbol of resistance against everything the crowd despises.” (Boston Sunday Globe, August 7, 2022)

DON’T BLAME THE UNEDUCATED
“In fact, scholars have found that highly educated Americans are central to the political polarization that is fracturing our country. They are less likely than the average American to communicate with people who don’t share their views and more likely to view their political adversaries with hostility. Their views are often inaccurate and their political reasoning is often poor – precisely the characteristics that education is supposed to counteract.” (Boston Sunday Globe, August 7, 2022) ■