Black “Maternals” Yoked to the Wheel of Group Survival
Joy James, a professor of political, feminist and critical race theory at Williams College, believes the burden of day to day survival politics in Black American communities is borne largely by women that she describes as “captive maternals.” “A lot of the captive maternal function is to provide emotional labor and support while stabilizing the structure that you think is the only option,” said James, author of FULCRUM: The Captive Maternal Leverages Democracy.”
Asa Hilliard’s Concept of “Africanized” Education
Although famed educator Asa Hilliard died in 2007, his advocacy of “Africanized” teaching and thinking continues to gain adherents. De Reef Jamison, professor of African American Studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says Hilliard drew on the work of West African revolutionary Amilcar Cabral. “Both argued that Africans’ ability to maintain their unique cultural forms, which are based in the past, grows out of the people’s present struggles to advance their group.” Jamison wrote a recent article titled, “Asa Hilliard: Conceptualizing and Constructing an African-Centered Pedagogy.”
Arsenic and White Corporate Profits
The highly toxic herbicide and multi-purpose poison arsenic was key to the production of cotton in the United States and Mexico, and in the process sickened and killed a multitude of Black and brown agricultural workers, said Jayson Porter, a PhD candidate in history at Northwestern University. Arsenic “helped build the U.S. empire” and paved the way for the so-called ‘Green Revolution’ and large-scale cash crop farming, as well as the bioweapons used to decimate Vietnamese plant life and people, said Porter.
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Shannon Jones is a member of the Spirit of Mandela’s Peoples' Senate Coordinating Committee.
The Supreme Court has always been a political institution. Racism, political expediency, and outright corruption have always dictated its decisions.
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