By William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen, Newsweek — The COVID-19 crisis only heightens the urgency of black reparations. Long overdue, they are now more essential than ever. Mounting statistics confirm disturbing evidence of racial disparities in reported coronavirus deaths. In Wisconsin, perhaps the state with the most extreme ratio of black morbidity, black people represent 6 percent of the population and 40 percent of the deaths. Those…
Vantage Point Radio May 11, 2020 — On this WBAI fund drive edition of Vantage Point, host Dr. Ron Daniels aka The Professor talks with guest Nana Gyamfi and callers….
A Black Community Resource Directory BlackCommunityResource.com is a directory sponsored and managed by the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW). Find and share resources from your state in the…
When the shuttered economy reopens, how many black Americans will be left out in the cold? By William M. Rodgers III — As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened in April, many…
How modern disaster relief has hurt African American communities By Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, The New Republic — Ethel Freeman became famous in death, even though no one knew her name. For months, she was one of the many nameless people who lost their lives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s deadly intersection of race and class. Her son, Herbert Freeman Jr., had successfully rescued the 91-year-old retired school employee from…
By Dr. Sharon L. McDaniel, BACW Board President — We are strong. I know we will come through this together. Whereas now there is despair, desperation and death, there will someday soon be recovery, renewal and life. I anticipate things will change. Perhaps online grocery shopping and virtual doctor visits will grow in popularity. We may also see a higher occurrence of daily hand-washing as a result of our new habits. But who is the “we” who will get through COVID-19 together? More importantly, will “we” all get through this in the same way? While a collective impact brings us together, does that same collective impact separate us more?
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — A little less than four years ago, the president tried to get Black votes with the question, “What do you have to lose.” The coronavirus…
By Sarah Bean Apmann, GVSHP — According to historian Christopher Moore, the first legally emancipated community of people of African descent in North America was found in Lower Manhattan, comprising much of present-day Greenwich Village and the South Village, and parts of the Lower East Side and East Village. This settlement was comprised of individual landholdings, many of which belonged to former “company slaves” of the Dutch West India Company. These former slaves, both men…
By Liz Theoharis — My mom contracted polio when she was 14. She survived and learned to walk again, but my life was deeply affected by that virus. Today, as our…
A Statement by the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) — The novel Coronavirus Pandemic has revealed the longstanding disparities in health conditions for African Americans in the United States. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she was “shocked” and “disturbed” upon learning that black Chicagoans, who make up 30 percent of the city’s residents, accounted for 70 percent of the fatalities. “Those numbers take your breath away,” she declared. These…
Research center needed urgently to address Trans-Generational Epigenetic Injury By Kamm Howard National Co-Chair of N’COBRA and NAARC Commisioner Transgenerational Epigenetics is a new field of science, about 15 years…
By K. Sabeel Rahman, Demos — The escalating COVID-19 pandemic impacts all of us, but for Black and brown people in particular, the combined health and economic devastation is truly…