#DorianStrong
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver Velez
Watching the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Hubert Minnis, in press conferences — before and during Hurricane Dorian wreaking its havoc on the Caribbean nation of approximately 390 thousand people — had me in tears.
Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said Sunday that it was the "worst day of my life" to address the public and said Hurricane Dorian was a storm they had never seen in the country's history. He said that many people had remained behind in the country and that there were some in the western area who refused to leave, adding he can only hope "this is not the last time that they would hear my voice."
Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said Monday, Sept. 2, 2019 that Hurricane Dorian had killed at least five people in the Abaco Islands.He said their mission now is search, rescue and recovery and said many homes and businesses have been "completely" or "partially" destroyed. Minnis asked people to open their homes to help those who have been left without a home
Messages on social media, have been heart wrenching:
Some of the same people we watched step up for Puerto Rico — are on the case for the Bahamas:
Frankel had some harsh words for asshats:
How to Help
Thank you to Pakalolo, for posting Videos trickle out of the northern Bahamas; Donation links
Following the storm and its impact of Bahamians hasn’t been easy. Much of the early reporting from U.S. sources was focused on the storms path to the mainland — and on the evacuation of tourists. Little was said about the people of the Bahamas, or the long and strong ties with our own black community.
First — lets look at a map.
The Bahamas, known officially as the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is a country within the Lucayan Archipelago, in the Caribbean. The archipelagic state consists of more than 700 islands, cays, and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, and is located north of Cuba and Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, southeast of the U.S. state of Florida, and east of the Florida Keys. The capital is Nassau on the island of New Providence. The designation of "the Bahamas" can refer either to the country or to the larger island chain that it shares with the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The Bahamas has an estimated population of 391,232, of which 25.9% are 14 or under, 67.2% 15 to 64 and 6.9% over 65...The most populous islands are New Providence, where Nassau, the capital and largest city, is located; and Grand Bahama, home to the second largest city of Freeport.
Race/ethnicity
According to the 99% response rate obtained from the race question on the 2010 Census questionnaire, 90.6% of the population identified themselves as being Black, 4.7% White and 2.1% of a mixed race (African and European). Three centuries prior, in 1722 when the first official census of the Bahamas was taken, 74% of the population was native European and 26% native African.
It is not surprising that many of the efforts to help have been coming from Florida, where there is a large Bahamian-American community.
Bahamians began visiting the Florida Keys in the 18th century to salvage wrecked ships, fish, catch turtles and log tropical hardwood trees. A Bahamian settlement in the Keys was reported in 1790, but the presence of Bahamians in the keys was temporary. Early in the 19th century some 30 to 40 Bahamian ships were working in the keys every year. After 1825, Bahamian wreckers began moving to Key West in large numbers. Today, the largest Bahamian American populations are in Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Miami, and New York.
Bahamians built and still reside in the oldest inhabited neighborhoods in Miami like Coconut Grove and Lemon City. Bahamians represented 1/3 of the vote to incorporate the area into the new city Miami
Bahamians were among the first Caribbeans to arrive to the mainland US in the late nineteenth century. Many went to Florida to work in agriculture or to Key West to labor in fishing, sponging, and turtling. Two main factors that contributed to increased Bahamian migration were the poor economic climate and opportunities, as well as the short distance from the Bahamas to Miami. Southern Florida developed Bahamian enclaves in certain cities including Lemon City, Coconut Grove, and Cutler. In 1896, foreign-born blacks compromised 40 percent of the black population, making Miami the largest foreign-born black city in the US aside from New York.
Two people of Bahamian ancestry, left an indelible mark on Black American history — the brothers James Weldon, and J. Rosemond Johnson — who gifted us with Lift Every Voice and Sing, known today as the Black National Anthem.
Actor Sir Sidney Poitier, is probably the worlds best known Bahamian islander. Poitier is an American citizen, by birthright.
Sidney Poitier was the youngest of seven surviving children, born to Evelyn (née Outten) and Reginald James Poitier, Bahamian farmers who owned a farm on Cat Island. The family would travel to Miami to sell tomatoes and other produce. Reginald also worked as a cab driver in Nassau, Bahamas. Poitier was born in Miami while his parents were visiting. His birth was two months premature and he was not expected to survive, but his parents remained in Miami for three months to nurse him to health. Poitier grew up in the Bahamas, then a British Crown colony. Because of his birth in the United States, he automatically received American citizenship.
Other people of note with Bahamian ancestry are musician Lenny Kravits, his weatherman cousin Al Roker, Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, and W.E.B. Du Bois —whose grandfather Alexander was born on Long Cay.
Do what you can to help — please.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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A new book explores the false—yet oddly ubiquitous—belief that black men fought for the South during the Civil War. Slate: Dismantling the Myth of the “Black Confederate”
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Spend any amount of time talking about slavery on the internet, and you’ll eventually encounter the claim that there were “black Confederates” that fought for the South. “Over the past few decades, claims to the existence of anywhere between 500 and 100,000 black Confederate soldiers, fighting in racially integrated units, have become increasingly common,” writes historian Kevin Levin in his new book, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth.
“Proponents assert that entire companies and regiments served under Robert E. Lee’s command, as well as in other theaters of war.” Look, believers say (directly or subtextually): The Confederacy can’t have been so bad for black people. Otherwise, why would they have defended it?
Levin’s book explains how this myth came about—while neatly dismantling it. We spoke recently about actual Confederates’ perspectives on black soldiers; why former “body servants” attended Confederate reunions during Jim Crow; and how the World Wide Web gave this story legs.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Rebecca Onion: I can see from following your Twitter that you sometimes engage with people who believe in this myth. And you’ve been researching it for a decade or so. What are the major pieces of evidence that people most often bring to you as “proof”?
Kevin Levin: If you’re browsing online, there are literally hundreds if not thousands of websites dedicated to promoting this myth. And on many of them, you’ll find photographs of enslaved men in uniform, which are easily interpreted as “proof” of the existence of black Confederate soldiers. Certainly there are plenty of newspaper accounts, mainly from Northern newspapers published during the war, that seem to suggest black men were fighting as soldiers. There are photographs taken after the war of some of these former “body servants” attending Confederate veterans’ reunions and monument dedications. Sometimes you’ll hear or read references to pensions given to black Confederate “soldiers,” which in fact were for former camp slaves or “body servants.”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
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The primary purpose of BLAA is to promote and foster the sport of Archery among individuals and nationally towards amateur sports competition, groups, neighborhoods and underprivileged areas where there is a lack of exposure to archery. The Root: Aiming for Diversity: Meet the Organization Giving Black and Brown Communities a Shot at Archery
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The Black and Latino Archery Association (BLAA) is one of the few archery organizations geared toward promoting the sport to black and Latinx neighborhoods, where there is usually a lack of exposure to the sport. It also provides a place where people of color who already practice archery can do so on a competitive level.
Chris Cotto, the organization’s vice president and co-founder, told The Root, “I’ve had kids tell me they don’t know what archery is. And to me that that’s just so disheartening. That really hurts, that in my own community kids don’t even know the word ‘archery.’”
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There is no bottom. Slate: Trump Reportedly Didn’t Want to See Anything “Difficult” in Visit to African American History Museum
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President Donald Trump is the kind of man who manages to make even a visit to a museum about African American history about him. When he went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2017, Trump seemed particularly transfixed by an exhibit that explored the role the Dutch played in the slave trade. That made Lonnie G. Bunch III, who was the museum’s founding director, optimistic that the president was interested in what he was seeing. Trump quickly proved him wrong.
“The president paused in front of the exhibit that discussed the role of the Dutch in the slave trade,” Bunch, who is the newly appointed Smithsonian secretary, writes in his upcoming memoir, according to the Washington Post. “As he pondered the label I felt that maybe he was paying attention to the work of the museum. He quickly proved me wrong. As he turned from the display he said to me, ‘You know, they love me in the Netherlands.’ All I could say was let’s continue walking.”
Pool/Getty Images
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Country fans still struggle to embrace the artist, no matter how massive “Old Town Road” gets. Vox: Lil Nas X’s lone CMAs nod is faint praise from country music’s biggest award show
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The 2019 CMA Award nominations, announced on August 28, contain a single nod for Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road”: The version of the song featuring Billy Ray Cyrus is up for the Musical Event of the Year category, which recognizes what the CMA considers stand-out collaborations. And therein lies the rub.
Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP/Shutterstock (10320042j)
Any CMA Award nomination is an honor within country music, and “Old Town Road” has undeniably been a huge musical event this year. But this specific nod comes with a certain amount of baggage that seems to undermine the power of the voting body’s recognition. CMA voters reportedly opted not to consider “Old Town Road” for larger categories, like Single of the Year. As a result, some critics have questioned whether the Country Music Association considers Lil Nas X one of its own, or is dutifully recognizing an indisputable cultural moment — calling his absence from other categories a snub.
According to the organization’s official awards criteria, the Musical Event of the Year trophy is supposed to go to a song featuring “two or more people either or all of whom are known primarily as a Country artist.” Billy Ray Cyrus, of “Achy Breaky Heart” fame, has long been recognized as a country artist. And it appears that Cyrus’s involvement in the nominated “Old Town Road” remix was what qualified the song for the category, or for any CMA Award at all, at least in the mind of voters.
Not only is Musical Event of the Year a smaller honor than Single of the Year and other big-deal categories at the CMAs, it’s often not presented during the award ceremony itself. Instead, Good Morning America has announced the category’s winner as a pre-show exclusive every year since 2014. The Country Music Association has yet to say whether it will continue this approach for the 2019 ceremony, which is set to air November 13 on Country Music Television.
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Rohan Marley, Son of Reggae Legend Bob Marley, Is Looking to Go Into the Business of Marijuana. North Jersey Record: Bob Marley's son hopes to open medical marijuana dispensary in Montclair
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The son of reggae legend Bob Marley is looking to open a medical marijuana dispensary in Montclair, partnering with Lightshade, a Colorado-based dispensary.
The application by Rohan Marley and Lightshade could be one of several granted by the state. It was recently announced that five cultivation, four vertically integrated and 15 retail dispensary licenses would granted.
Opening a medical marijuana dispensary was made easier in May, even as efforts to legalize recreational marijuana stalled in the state Legislature. The legalization question will be put to voters in November 2020.
If the application is approved, Marley would help with marketing efforts and help with hiring for the Montclair dispensary. Marley's roots in New Jersey and Essex County run deep. He raised his five children in South Orange.
"In Jamaica, my family has long been advocating about the medicinal benefits of marijuana and its many pathways to treatment well before its medical and recreational legalization into the U.S.," Rohan Marley said in a press release.
Bob Marley, who died in 1981, was a devoted adherent of Rastafarianism, a religion that regards cannabis as spiritually important.
John Zidziunas, a Montclair-based labor and employment attorney who is part of the company's venture partnership, said New Jersey is expected to have the highest patient per capita ratios.
Photo: Isaac Brekken (Getty Images for House of Marley)
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Voices and Soul
Fenton Johnson
”Tired”
by
Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
On Sunday, Denise posted her usual Front Page diary for the day, and it being Labor Day weekend, I was looking forward to what she had to say about it, and I was not disappointed. As is my usual wont now, since Duma Donnie Two Scoops sat on the seat of power with his expanding universe of insatiable girth, I shared her diary on social media, which also now includes Facebook.
I didn’t always post much on Facebook, not until that fateful day three years ago. Facebook was mostly for spying on my grandkids before they wised up and hightailed it to tiktok and platforms I won’t catch up to until they are bought up by a digital historical society and given to libraries with old bubble macs and rows and rows and rows of vcr movies. Before Duma Donnie, what was a fairly stupid place to share fairly stupid family vids and jokes and weird gif prayers and dog vids and cat vids and baby vids and really, all the things I abhorred about our “civilized” society when I’d be on a bus for instance, and someone pulled out family pics from their wallet to impose on strangers, became an everyday, common occurrence by simply opening your FB page, and by family, too! But then, something happened. Around the time Trump and his garish Birther Wife escalated down to the lobby of his garish hotel to officially announce his treasonous candidacy, there was a sudden uptick of anti Obama posts on my Facebook timeline that went mostly unopposed. Then, when Trump seized office, pro Trump posts really, really dominated. What was unusual, was that the posts were from family.
Which brings me back to Denise’s treatise on the Black Union Worker on the Daily Kos Sunday Front Page.
An extended family member posted in the thread comment a kind of “white workers live’s matter, too” BS and it sent me off. His contention that Denise focusing on only the Black worker, proves she is a racist. I’m not sure if he actually read her work. He never responded to my inquiries as if he had, but was quick with every RW racist trope as if it was hardwired in his lizard ganglia, including the “some of my best friends are black” and “my kids are mixed race” shield all racists hide behind, without any sense of self awareness. I reminded him my professor dad taught a whole section on the Black Cowboy, did that make him racist because he didn’t mention the Chinese railroad worker enough? How was it that Denise writing an academic work on the Black Labor movement, pertaining to her expertise as a professor of the black diaspora be considered racist? Well, the know-nothings know everything, and the experts are brainwashed snowflakes corrupting the youth. So now I know how he feels about my Dad, Denise and the diaspora. The “civilization” he argued for is nothing but chaos, and I’m tired of it. I’m done. No one, not even family, gets a pass. Not one, and nobody.
But something else happened. Because I opposed this obvious obliviousness, he exposed himself, and more than family noticed. I’m seeing more opposition to this cult. It’s almost like a family intervention. It is true what we always say, “they always reveal themselves.” It’s true. They always do.
Now, let’s do something about it.
I am tired of work; I am tired of building up somebody else’s civilization.Let us take a rest, M’Lissy Jane.I will go down to the Last Chance Saloon, drink a gallon or two of gin, shoot a game or two of dice and sleep the rest of the night on one of Mike’s barrels.You will let the old shanty go to rot, the white people’s clothes turn to dust, and the Calvary Baptist Church sink to the bottomless pit.You will spend your days forgetting you married me and your nights hunting the warm gin Mike serves the ladies in the rear of the Last Chance Saloon.Throw the children into the river; civilization has given us too many. It is better to die than it is to grow up and find out that you are colored.Pluck the stars out of the heavens. The stars mark our destiny. The stars marked my destiny.I am tired of civilization.
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