Author: Carma Henry

      Black educators are breaking racial barriers in academic leadership. According to People, Dr. Michael Drake has been appointed as the president of the University of California System, making him the first Black person to serve at the helm in its 150-year history.

     It might be true that the more things change, the more they remain the same. But it is also true that to be forewarned is to be forewarned.  I am hoping that with the virus having laid bare the systemic inequality affecting Black lives, those who are interested in equality and social justice know this background, and this time things might be different.

      Democratic nominee Joe Biden and other Democrats could lose their elections in a heartbeat!

     Roger Stone broke the law. In February 2020, Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison. He was found guilty in November 2019 of obstructing justice, witness tampering and five counts of lying to Congress. It was obvious that Stone was involved in working with Russia to help the president win the election. The justice system under President Trump is broken. There are 2 systems, one rich – one poor, one White – and one Black.

     Even before I returned to the United States from my combat tour in Vietnam, I had decided that we were fighting an unjust war. More than 50 years later, watching Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” set off my internal alarm bells, warning against African Americans blindly participating in U.S. foreign policy.

     The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cite several possible reasons that Black Americans are more affected. One is that many of us live in more highly populated areas where it’s more difficult to practice physical distancing from one another. Many of us also live in multi-generational households where it’s easier for younger family members to spread the virus to more vulnerable elderly members. This is especially true for lower-income households with smaller living spaces.

“Under the guise of reorganizing the way they manage the franchise system, the restaurant system across the country, they basically decimated the ranks of the African American leadership and employees,” Caruso said. “That to me is one of the most glaring acts of intentional discrimination that we saw in the case. And we lay those numbers out in greater detail in the complaint itself. But that was very, very, serious discrimination in employment, and it’s over and above a lot of other things that came before and other things that have come after, but that’s kind of a centerpiece of the discrimination against the executive employees, including Domineca and Vicki.”

     “We realized early on that small businesses were taking the brunt of what was happening with COVID-19 and the economic slowdown that occurred,” said Jenny Flores, Wells Fargo’s head of small business growth philanthropy.

     Sparking the interests were several important topics and a host of celebrity guests, including livestream interviews and performances by Deniece Williams, Anthony Hamilton, Carlos Santana, Cindy Blackman Santana, Sandra “Salt” Denton, Boyz II Men’s Shawn Stockman, and journalist Jemele Hill.

     I get that and understand the symbolism of packed heat. A gun says: We mean business. But that symbolism stops as soon as the trigger is pulled. What the armed protesters could wind up with is a bitter present-day civil war and the blood-stained illusion of change.