Browsing: Opinions

   An antidote to murder utilizing a novel approach based on a hypothetical model which resembles the scientific approach used to develop drugs or vaccines sounds intriguing. Let’s assume that society constitutes the laboratory. And the hypothesis reads, “Antidotes Can Be developed to Reduce Specific Types of Murders.” For added clarity and to strategically focus on specific antidotes, murders have  been classified into the  following categories: 1) domestic; 2) gang related; 3) criminal related; and 4) racial (racism) related.

Our experiences inform us that the implementation of a menthol ban will inevitably and undoubtedly create an increased number of stops, frisks, and interactions between law enforcement and members from Black and Brown communities. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, Black and Brown residents in the U.S. continue to have a long and troubled legacy of disproportionately larger numbers of police stops and interactions with the police. The proposed menthol ban will do nothing to quell this troubling reality.

     It is worth noting that recounting the horrors of slavery, remembering heroes of the civil rights movement, along with a few 19th and 20th century inventors, athletes, and entertainers, in no way sufficiently pays proper tribute to the totality of our past. Only by passing down our complete stories and sharing the fullness of our heritage do we properly honor our ancestors and history, a history that long predates the 17th century in North, South and Central America and the Caribbean. We were Africans long before becoming New Yorkers, Jamaicans, Brazilians, Haitians, Cubans, or Puerto Ricans.

     Hopeful Black folk must realize Judge Brown-Jackson’s rise to the nation’s highest court is not the rising tide that will lift all Black boats. She is just the newest member of the exclusive ‘first Black’ fraternity which exists to promote the illusion of Black progress, power, and racial equality.

     The Sunshine Protection Act, which cleared the Senate by unanimous consent last month, would make Daylight Saving Time permanent across the United States.

 America despite its valor and glory remains enthralled in a role of foreign aid and domestic policy which punishes its own people from whom all foreign aid flows. Yes, America deliberately fails to address the social, economic, educational, mental health, and environmental safety needs of its own people. But why does this deliberate hypocrisy exist?