A letter to donald trump supporters

By Wendell Griffin

June 8, 2024   

Dear Neighbors,

I write you in the aftermath of the May 30 New York state court jury verdict that found Donald Trump guilty of committing 34 felony offenses of falsifying business records in order to conceal a conspiracy to interfere with the 2020 U.S. presidential election. I write as a fellow citizen of the United States, native of the American South, African American pastor in the religion of Jesus, honorably discharged former U.S. Army officer, retired state court trial and appellate judge, husband, father, and grandfather. Above all, I am your neighbor.

We hold differing views about the role of government. However, I hope we agree that falsifying business records is wrong.

I hope we agree that people should not lie, cheat, or entice others to do so.

I doubt that you routinely entrust your personal affairs to people who lie, cheat, and steal.

I doubt that you encourage your children to cheat in sports, on their schoolwork, or in other endeavors.

I suspect that you do not view people who lie, cheat, and steal to be honorable, decent, or commendable.

You do not trust people who habitually lie, cheat, and steal to care for your children, service your automobiles, or manage your finances.

Many of you profess to hold religious beliefs. Yet, you are Donald Trump’s most determined followers.

Perhaps you embrace Trump’s values and consider them necessary for national leadership. 

Perhaps you disapprove of Trump’s values,  but consider his celebrity and character necessary for achieving your social, political, and cultural goals. I do not know.

However, you and I know that a guilty verdict means that a person is not innocent of a criminal charge, as a matter of law.

A jury found Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony charges. He is now a convicted felon, regardless of what we think about his political values and views.

A convicted felon is legally disqualified from serving in the U.S. military.

A convicted felon is legally disqualified from working for the U.S. Postal Service.

A convicted felon is legally disqualified from being hired as a public-school teacher.

A convicted felon is legally disqualified from receiving a student loan.

Convicted felons are not allowed to enter Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Cuba, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Macau, New Zealand, South Africa, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and United States.

If Donald Trump were an immigrant, he would be legally barred from entering the United States.

He would be legally barred from becoming a citizen, voting, and owning a firearm in the United States.

Yet, you are determined to elect Donald Trump President of the United States.

You are unwilling to accept convicted felons as voters, but are determined to entrust a convicted felon with the power to preside over the nation.

You are unwilling to allow convicted felons to live in public housing (other than jails and prisons), or even in private housing on your street. However, you are willing to have him live in the White House.

You refuse to license convicted felons to work in many professions of trust, but insist that Trump is trustworthy despite having been convicted of 34 instances of falsifying business records for the purpose of influencing an election.

You refuse to license convicted felons to own a rifle, shotgun, or handgun. Yet you are willing to entrust Donald Trump with authority to command the entire U.S. military arsenal, including nuclear weapons.

You believe that naked, authoritarian, deceitful, cruel, and cold-blooded power wielded by a wealthy white convicted felon poses no threat to national security, unity, justice, and global peace. Your sense of right and wrong begins and ends in ruthless devotion to white supremacy, and especially white male supremacy.

I have never held that belief. I will never share that belief.

The nation and world deserve better than that.

Above all, God deserves better than that.

Sincerely,

Wendell Griffen

Your Neighbor

Pastor, New Millennium Church

Little Rock, Arkansas

CEO/Owner, Griffen Strategic Consulting (http://griffenstrategicconsulting.com/)

J.D., 1979, University of Arkansas School of Law

B.A., 1973, University of Arkansas

Race Relations/Equal Opportunity Officer, 43d Support Group, Fort Carson, Colorado (1975-1976)

Graduate, Defense Race Relations Institute (now Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute – DEOMI), 1975

The time for pious words is over. Allan Aubrey Boesak

Writing is how I fight. James H. Cone

By Deborah Springer Suttlar

Black people are living in a constant state of “Deja vu.”  We face the same challenges from our past. In the following poem, Mother to Son by Langston Hughes, the roadblocks are just as relevant today as in 1922. 

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. 

It had tacks in it,

And splinters, 

And boards torn up, 

And places with no carpet on the floor-

Bare. 

But all the time 

I’se been a-climbin’ on, 

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners, 

And sometimes goin’ in the dark 

Where there ain’t been no light. 

So, boy, don’t you turn your back. 

Don’t you set down on the steps  

‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. 

Don’t you fall now- 

For I’se still goin,’ honey, 

I’se still climbin,’

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

The poem reminds us that we must persevere. Our fight for equality and privileges as American citizens is a lifelong struggle. Discriminatory treatment remains an unpleasant fact for us. “Living While Black” remains a continuous journey of oppression, suppression, and legalized enslavement.

We are witnessing the backlash from the “Woke Movement.”  “Woke” is the awareness of racism in all facets of our society, and this call for social justice has invoked such hatred and a united effort to sabotage the movement. The current elimination of (DEI) Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs in schools, colleges and businesses proves they continue to ignore, then eliminate efforts which would rectify past racist policies. Too many Americans want to be absolved of any responsibility to correct systemic discrimination. They prefer to highlight the Holocaust in Germany. 

However, America has their own Holocaust like tragedies. The tragedies such as the Indigenous/ Native American people being removed from their lands, placed on reservations, and denied citizenship. We have the Race Massacres of entire Black communities (Elaine, AR) which were destroyed due to racial conflicts. This list goes on regarding the atrocities non-white people have encountered trying to live as American citizens. 

The most egregious part, this racism stems from religious propaganda promoted during the slavery era, The ‘Slave Bible” was a manufactured bible to instruct slaves into the belief they were born to be enslaved because of their skin tone. Afterwards, laws were enacted against the formerly enslaved to deny equal citizenship the right to vote. the right to read, right to education, right to housing, and the right to employment. The fight for access to voting continues as the Voting rights Act of 1965 has been diluted to prevent assured access to the ballot. 

Now, we have book bans to prevent the black viewpoint from being read or studied. Racist then took another cryptic angle with “Stand your Ground” laws. These laws give preference to white persons’ dominance of any area in which they stand. The sinister thought behind it, “they believe they have the right” of ownership anywhere they stand. These are the experiences of “Living While Black.” This is the reason the acts of violence against us, by us, make life and living even more difficult.

However, we must remember, formerly enslaved people believed in a just, loving God and lived lives emulating that belief. Do we still believe, or have we succumbed to the powers that oppress us? Do we recognize this same evil has disguised itself as something good and offers false hope of prosperity? The evil of today has presented itself in idolatrous ways to court us into a false sense of security. We may not see it until it is too late because we look for individual prosperity instead of “all for one and one for all.” The fight for equality has not ended. Prosperity is not of God if its’ origin is not from God.

Living While Black is a perpetual state of survival. We are currently on life support. We have lost the love for each other and the sense of community we had when we were enslaved. But we cannot stay still. All is not lost; we still have time to connect to the source of the true power which gives us unconquerable strength. Mr. Langston Hughes left us a memory which today remains a reality for us. We are connected and we must fight the good fight. As Congressman John Lewis told us, we must make “good trouble.” Which means we cannot give up nor can we settle.

Let us remember, God has given us the power to persevere despite the circumstances. Living while Black is not easy, but we will live.

Frederick Douglas – “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

            Alice Walker – The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

Deborah Springer Suttlar is a longtime community activist and supporter of public education. 

By DAHLEEN GLANTON

This article originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune  on Nov. 11, 2019. 

Donald Trump has embarked on a halfhearted campaign to recruit African American support in 2020. Even a president who shuns reality knows it’s ridiculous for Republicans to spend a lot of energy on black voters.

And for Trump, it’s worthless.

Perhaps that is why his "Black Voices for Trump” rally in Atlanta on Friday seemed so disingenuous. Maybe that explains why he began his speech with a racial joke, even bungling the name of the group he was there to tout.

What do you prefer, he asked the handful of supporters, “Blacks for Trump” or “African Americans for Trump?” It was condescending and gratuitous. And it was troubling to see a president make light of what to call the race of minorities who helped build this country.

The event was the latest confirmation that Trump doesn’t give two cents about African Americans. “Black Voices for Trump” is nothing more than a campaign stunt to show moderate white voters who might be on the fence about his reelection that he is not the racist people say he is.

He’s just not that into black people, and more importantly, he doesn’t understand black voters.

“We’ve done more for African Americans in three years than the broken Washington establishment has done in 30 years,” he said. It’s a theme he repeats every time he’s around black people.

Not only is it patronizing, it’s annoying. And black people aren’t buying it. Eighty-one percent of African Americans think Trump has made things worse for people of color, according to a recent poll by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

He doesn’t get how disrespectful it is to keep telling black people, “Look at everything I’ve done for you.” It promotes the stereotype that the blacks are looking for a handout and their vote can be bought and sold to the highest bidder. It sounds like he’s saying blacks don’t really deserve to be treated like other Americans, but he has been good to them anyway. And for that, he seems to think they owe him something.

There are plenty of reasons Trump garnered only 8 percent of the black vote in 2016, and those reasons have only been amplified since he has been in office. A recent ABC News poll showed Trump with a 7 percent approval rating among African Americans. Eighty percent of African Americans “strongly” disapprove of him.

When it comes to what they value in America, black people are no different than the majority of white people. Blacks are just as sick and tired, maybe even more so, of him using race to pit Americans against each other. Blacks cringe just as much as whites when they hear about children being separated from their parents at the border.

They gag just as hard when he repeats one of the more than 13,000 lies or misleading claims he has made as president. And like many other Americans, blacks are convinced that he is corrupt and unfit to hold office.

Still, there were a couple of hundred African Americans who showed up for him in Atlanta. Turns out, they are no different than his staunchest white supporters — they swallow his Kool-Aid with as much gusto.

It didn’t seem to matter that Trump was spewing lies and exaggerating. This small group of supporters sucked it all up, showering him with chants of “Four more years!” just like the people at his much larger, overwhelmingly white rallies do.

Some black people, it seems, are tone-deaf too. They don’t care that those chants of “USA!” and “Make America Great Again” are really about turning back the clock and re-creating the America that existed when African Americans could be killed for trying to vote.

The good thing, though, is that the majority of African Americans are just as smart as most white Americans when it comes to Trump. They know a lie when they hear it and they can spot a con man when they see him.

Most African Americans tune him out when he brags about lowering the black unemployment rate. They know that the black unemployment rate decline actually began under Barack Obama.

If African Americans should thank anyone, it should be Obama for bringing about the most dramatic drop in black unemployment following the recession that his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, helped create.

African Americans suffered disproportionately during the recession, reaching a peak of 16.8 percent unemployment in March 2010. By January 2017, when Obama left office, black unemployment had dropped to 7.7 percent.

While it is true that the unemployment rate for African Americans reached a historic low of 5.4 percent in October, the decline follows a downward trend that began in 2011. The incremental drops since Trump took office do not come near the 9 percentage points it fell under Obama’s watch in the White House.

No one is complaining about the availability of jobs. But exactly what kinds of jobs are being created and who is landing the best ones? Certainly not African Americans.

According to a recent Gallup poll, African Americans still hold a disproportionate number of low-income jobs. And twice the number of African Americans had what is considered to be a bad job, compared with whites — 25 percent versus 13 percent. A stunning 31 percent of African American women held bad jobs.

That means African Americans still earn significantly less than whites, resulting in an overall lower quality of life. Trump wouldn’t dare to delve into this difficult territory. He has no idea what to do about wage inequality and has no viable plan to ensure that black workers receive the training and support needed to compete for high-paying jobs.

It is easier to simply toe the Republican Party line. His answer for growing the economy is to take money out of the hands of hardworking African Americans and put it into the pockets of wealthy white Americans through tax cuts.

On the campaign trail, his go-to question for blacks is, “What the hell do you have to lose?”

For most African Americans, the answer is no different than it is for most white Americans. What’s at stake are affordable health care, a woman’s right to choose, responsible gun laws and a compassionate nation that can hold up its head with dignity.

If Trump can figure out how to get those things for African Americans, he just might have a chance of earning their support. 

dglanton@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @dahleeng

Photo Credit (The Hill) 

BY CHARLOTTE ALTER/CLARKSDALE, MISS. 

Time Magazine
 

August 26, 2023

Ashley just had a baby. She’s sitting on the couch in a relative’s apartment in Clarksdale, Miss., wearing camo-print leggings and fiddling with the plastic hospital bracelets still on her wrists. It’s August and pushing 90 degrees, which means the brown patterned curtains are drawn, the air conditioner is on high, and the room feels like a hiding place. Peanut, the baby boy she delivered two days earlier, is asleep in a car seat at her feet, dressed in a little blue outfit. Ashley is surrounded by family, but nobody is smiling. One relative silently eats lunch in the kitchen, her two siblings stare glumly at their phones, and her mother, Regina, watches from across the room. Ashley was discharged from the hospital only hours ago, but there are no baby presents or toys in the room, no visible diapers or ointments or bottles. Almost nobody knows that Peanut exists, because almost nobody knew that Ashley was pregnant. She is 13 years old. Soon she’ll start seventh grade.

In the fall of 2022, Ashley was raped by a stranger in the yard outside her home, her mother says. For weeks, she didn’t tell anybody what happened, not even her mom. But Regina knew something was wrong. Ashley used to love going outside to make dances for her TikTok, but suddenly she refused to leave her bedroom. When she turned 13 that November, she wasn't in the mood to celebrate. “She just said, ‘It hurts,’” Regina remembers. “She was crying in her room. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she didn’t want to tell me.” (To protect the privacy of a juvenile rape survivor, TIME is using pseudonyms to refer to Ashley and Regina; Peanut is the baby’s nickname.)

The signs were obvious only in retrospect. Ashley started feeling sick to her stomach; Regina thought it was related to her diet. At one point, Regina even asked Ashley if she was pregnant, and Ashley said nothing. Regina hadn’t yet explained to her daughter how a baby is made, because she didn’t think Ashley was old enough to understand. “They need to be kids,” Regina says. She doesn’t think Ashley even realized that what happened to her could lead to a pregnancy.

On Jan. 11, Ashley began throwing up so much that Regina took her to the emergency room at Northwest Regional Medical Center in Clarksdale. When her bloodwork came back, the hospital called the police. One nurse came in and asked Ashley, “What have you been doing?” Regina recalls. That’s when they found out Ashley was pregnant. “I broke down,” Regina says.

Dr. Erica Balthrop was the ob-gyn on call that day. Balthrop is an assured, muscular woman with close-cropped cornrows and a tattoo of a feather running down her arm. She ordered an ultrasound, and determined Ashley was 10 or 11 weeks along. “It was surreal for her,” Balthrop recalls. "She just had no clue.” The doctor could not get Ashley to answer any questions, or to speak at all. “She would not open her mouth.” (Balthrop spoke about her patient's medical history with Regina's permission.)

At their second visit, about a week later, Regina tentatively asked Balthrop if there was any way to terminate Ashley’s pregnancy. Seven months earlier, Balthrop could have directed Ashley to abortion clinics in Memphis, 90 minutes north, or in Jackson, Miss., two and a half hours south. But today, Ashley lives in the heart of abortion-ban America. In 2018, Republican lawmakers in Mississippi enacted a ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The law was blocked by a federal judge, who ruled that it violated the abortion protections guaranteed by Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court felt differently. In their June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion that had existed for nearly half a century. Within weeks, Mississippi and every state that borders it banned abortion in almost all circumstances.

Balthrop told Regina that the closest abortion provider for Ashley would be in Chicago. At first, Regina thought she and Ashley could drive there. But it’s a nine-hour trip, and Regina would have to take off work. She’d have to pay for gas, food, and a place to stay for a couple of nights, not to mention the cost of the abortion itself. “I don’t have the funds for all this,” she says.

So Ashley did what girls with no other options do: she did nothing.

Clarksdale is in the Mississippi Delta, a vast stretch of flat, fertile land in the northwest corner of the state, between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. The people who live in the Delta are overwhelmingly Black. The poverty rate is high. The region is an epicenter of America’s ongoing Black maternal-health crisis. Mississippi has the second-highest maternal-mortality rate in the country, with 43 deaths per 100,00 live births, and the Delta has among the worst maternal-healthcare outcomes in the state. Black women in Mississippi are four times as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications as white women.

Mississippi’s abortion ban is expected to result in thousands of additional births, often to low-income, high-risk mothers. Dr. Daniel Edney, Mississippi’s top health official, tells TIME his department is “actively preparing” for roughly 4,000 additional live births this year alone. Edney says improving maternal-health outcomes is the “No. 1 priority” for the Mississippi health department, which has invested $2 million into its Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies program to provide extra support for new mothers. “There is a sense of following through, and not just as a predominantly pro-life state,” says Edney. “We don’t just care about life in utero. We care about life, period, and that includes the mother’s life and the baby’s life.”

Mississippi’s abortion ban contains narrow exceptions, including for rape victims and to save the life of the mother. As Ashley's case shows, these exceptions are largely theoretical. Even if a victim files a police report, there appears to be no clear process for granting an exception. (The state Attorney General’s office did not return TIME’s repeated requests to clarify the process for granting exceptions; the Mississippi Board of Medical Licensure and the Mississippi State Medical Association did not reply to TIME’s requests for explanation.) And, of course, there are no abortion providers left in the state. In January, the New York Times reported that since Mississippi's abortion law went into effect, only two exceptions had been made. Even if the process for obtaining one were clear, it wouldn’t have helped Ashley. Regina didn’t know that Mississippi’s abortion ban had an exception for rape.

Even before Dobbs, it was perilous to become a mother in rural Mississippi. More than half the counties in the state can be classified as maternity-care deserts, according to a 2023 report from the March of Dimes, meaning there are no birthing facilities or obstetric providers. More than 24% of women in Mississippi have no birthing hospital within a 30-minute drive, compared to the national average of roughly 10%. According to Edney, there are just nine ob-gyns serving a region larger than the state of Delaware. Every time another ob-gyn retires, Balthrop gets an influx of new patients. “These patients are having to drive further to get the same care, then they're having to wait longer,” Balthrop says.

Those backups can have cascading effects. Balthrop recalls one woman who had to wait four weeks to get an appointment. "That’s unacceptable, because you don't know if she’s high risk or not until she sees you," the doctor says says. Her patient "didn’t know she was pregnant. Now the time has lapsed so much that she can’t drive anyplace to terminate even if she chose to."

Early data suggests the Dobbs decision will make this problem worse. Younger doctors and medical students say they don't want to move to states with abortion restrictions. When Emory University researcher Ariana Traub surveyed almost 500 third- and fourth-year medical students in 2022, close to 80% said that abortion laws influenced where they planned to apply to residency. Nearly 60% said they were unlikely to apply to any residency programs in states with abortion restrictions. Traub had assumed that abortion would be most important to students studying obstetrics, but was surprised to find that three-quarters of students across all medical specialties said that Dobbs was affecting their residency decisions.

“People often forget that doctors are people and patients too,” Traub says. “And residency is often the time when people are in their mid-30s and thinking of starting a family.” Traub found that medical students weren’t just reluctant to practice in states with abortion bans. They didn’t want to become pregnant there, either. And so Dobbs has compounded America's maternal-health crisis: more women are delivering more babies, in areas where there are already not enough doctors to care for them, while abortion bans are making it more difficult to recruit qualified providers to the regions that need them most. “People always ask me: ‘Why do you choose to stay there?’” says Balthrop, who has worked in the Delta for more than 20 years. “I feel like I have no choice at this point."

The weeks went on, and Ashley entered her second trimester. She wore bigger clothes to hide her bump, until she was so big that Regina took her out of school. They told everyone Ashley needed surgery for a bad ulcer. “We’ve been keeping it quiet, because people judge wrong when they don’t know what’s going on,” Regina says. She’s been trying to keep Ashley away from “nosy people.” For months, Ashley spent most of the day alone, finishing up sixth grade on her laptop. The family still has no plans to tell anybody about the pregnancy. “It’s going to be a little private matter here,” Regina says.

Ashley has ADHD and trouble focusing, and has an Individualized Education Program at school. She had never talked much, but after the rape she went from shy to almost mute. Regina thinks she may have been too traumatized to speak. At first, Regina couldn’t even get Ashley to tell her about the rape at all.

In an interview in a side bedroom, while Ashley watched TV with Peanut in another room, Regina recounted the details of her daughter’s sexual assault, as she understands them. It was a weekend in the fall, shortly after lunchtime, and Ashley, then 12, had been outside their home making TikToks while her uncle and sibling were inside. A man came down the street and into the front yard, grabbed Ashley, and covered her mouth, Regina says. He pulled her around to the side of the house and raped her. Ashley told Regina that her assailant was an adult, and that she didn’t know him. Nobody else witnessed the assault.

Shortly after finding out Ashley was pregnant, Regina filed a complaint with the Clarksdale Police Department. The department's assistant chief of police, Vincent Ramirez, confirmed to TIME that a police report had been filed in the matter, but refused to share the document because it involved a minor. Experts say the Clarksdale Police Department's decision to wait until after Ashley delivered to collect DNA evidence is not unusual.

Regina says that another family member believed they had identified the rapist through social-media sleuthing. The family says they flagged the man they suspected to the police, but the investigation seemed to go nowhere. Ramirez declined to comment on an ongoing investigation, but an investigator in the department confirmed to TIME that an arrest has not yet been made. With their investigation still incomplete, police have not yet publicly confirmed that they believe Ashley’s pregnancy resulted from sexual assault.

Regina felt the police weren’t taking the case seriously. She says she was told that in order to move the investigation forward, the police needed DNA from the baby after its birth. Experts say this is not unusual. Although it is technically possible to obtain DNA from a fetus, police are often reluctant to initiate an invasive procedure on a pregnant victim, says Phillip Danielson, a professor of forensic genetics at the University of Denver. They typically test DNA only on fetal remains after an abortion, or after a baby is born, he says.

But almost three days after Peanut was born, the police still hadn’t picked up the DNA sample; it was only after inquiries from TIME that officers finally arrived to collect it. Asked at the Clarksdale police station why it had taken so long after Peanut's birth for crucial evidence to be collected, Ramirez shrugged. “It’s a pretty high priority, as a juvenile,” he says. “Sometimes they slip a little bit because we’ve got a lot going on, but then they come back to it.”

Ashley doesn’t say much when asked how it felt to learn she was pregnant. Her mouth twists into a shy grimace, and she looks away. “Not good,” she says after a long pause. “Not happy.”

Regina’s own feelings about abortion became more complicated as the pregnancy progressed. She got pregnant with her first daughter at 17, and was a mother at 18. “I was a teen,” says Regina, now 33. “But I wasn’t as young as her.”

Regina had considered abortion during one of her own pregnancies. But her grandmother admonished her, “Your mama didn’t abort you.” Now Regina felt caught between her family’s general disapproval of abortion and the realization that her 13-year-old daughter was pregnant as the result of a rape. “I wish she had just told me when it happened. We could have gotten Plan B or something,” Regina says, referring to the emergency contraceptive often known as the “morning-after pill.” “That would have been that.”

Balthrop often sees this kind of ambivalence. Clarksdale is in the heart of the Bible Belt, and many of her patients are Black women from religious families. Even if they want to terminate their pregnancies, Balthrop says, many of them ultimately decide not to go through with it. Since the Dobbs decision, however, Balthrop has seen an increase in “incomplete abortions,” which is when the pregnancy has been terminated but the uterus hasn’t been fully emptied. Medication abortions— abortions managed with pills, which are increasingly available online—are overwhelmingly safe, but occasionally can have minor complications when the pills are not taken exactly as directed. “They're having complications after—not serious, but they'll come in with significant bleeding, and then we still have to finish the process,” Balthrop says, explaining that they sometimes have to evacuate dead fetal tissue.

According to Balthrop, Ashley didn’t have complications during her pregnancy. But she didn’t start speaking more until she felt the baby move, around her sixth month. “That’s when it hit home,” Balthrop says. “She’d complain about little aches and pains that she had never had before. That’s when her mom would come in and say, ‘She asked me this question,’ and the three of us would sit and talk about it.”

How did Ashley feel in anticipation of becoming a mother? “Nervous,” is all she will say. Toward the end of the pregnancy, she was terrified of going into labor, Balthrop recalls. Most of her questions were about pushing, and delivery, and how painful it would be. She was focused on “the delivery process itself,” Balthrop says. “Not, ‘What am I going to do when I take this baby home?’”

The Clarksdale Woman’s Clinic, where Balthrop practices, is across the street from the emergency room at Northwest Regional Medical Center, where Ashley first learned she was pregnant. The clinic is large and welcoming, with comfortable chairs and paintings of flowers on the walls. The staff is kind and efficient, the space is clean, and it helps that the three ob-gyns on staff are Black, since most of the patients are Black women. The clinic’s strong reputation attracts patients from an hour away in all directions. It is a lifeline in a vast region with few other maternity health options.

Even for healthy patients, it can be dangerous to be pregnant in such a rural area. “We have patients who walk to our clinic. They don't have transportation,” says Casey Shoun, an administrative assistant at Clarksdale Woman’s. Some can get Medicaid transportation, but it’s notoriously unreliable. The trip can be hard even for local residents: the roads leading to the clinic don’t have good sidewalks, and temperatures in the Delta regularly reach 100 degrees in the summer.

Shoun says the clinic gets patients who are six months pregnant by the time they have their first prenatal appointment. “We've had patients who go to the hospital, and they've already delivered,” Shoun says. Balthrop recalls one woman who went into labor about seven weeks early, and had to drive 45 minutes to get to the hospital. She was too late. “By the time she got here, the baby had passed already,” Balthrop says.

Clarksdale Woman's is equipped to handle routine appointments for a healthy pregnancy like Ashley’s. But a pregnant woman with any complication at all—from deep-vein thrombosis to diabetes, preeclampsia to advanced maternal age—will have to make a three-hour round trip drive to Memphis to see the closest maternal-fetal-medicine specialist. The most vulnerable patients are often the ones who have to travel the farthest for pregnancy care.

One morning in August, as the clinic filled, Balthrop allowed TIME to interview consenting patients in the waiting room and parking lot. One of them was Mikashia Hardiman, who is 18 years old and pregnant with her first child. Hardiman had just had her 20-week anatomy scan, and learned that she has a shortened cervix, which means her mother now has to drive her to Memphis to see a specialist.

Jessica Ray, 36, was 13 weeks pregnant with her third child. Three years ago, when she suddenly went into labor with her second child at 33 weeks, she drove herself 45 minutes to the hospital and delivered less than half an hour after she arrived. Ray knows the travel ordeals ahead of her: because she had preeclampsia with her first two pregnancies, she’ll have to go see the specialist in Memphis each month. “You have to take off work and make sure somebody's getting your kids,” Ray says.

Balthrop, who has three kids of her own, has long considered moving to a different region with a better education system. "I feel like I can’t," she says. "I would be letting so many people down."

But the clinic is under serious financial strain. Between overhead, malpractice insurance, the increasing costs of goods and services, and decreasing insurance reimbursements, Balthrop and her colleagues can barely afford to keep Clarksdale Woman's open. They’re considering selling the practice to a hospital 30 miles away. If that happened, Balthrop says, babies would no longer be delivered in Clarksdale, a city of less than 15,000. Some of her patients would have to leave the Delta—possibly driving an hour or more—to get even the most basic maternity care.

For the patients who already struggle to make it to Clarksdale, that would spell disaster. "They just wouldn't get care until they show up for delivery at the hospital,” says Shoun, the administrative assistant. “Imagine if we weren't here. Where would they go?"

Ashley started feeling contractions on a Saturday afternoon when she was 39 weeks pregnant. She called Regina, who came home from work, and together they started timing them. They arrived at the hospital around 8 p.m. that night. An exam revealed Ashley was already six centimeters dilated. Her water broke soon after, and she got an epidural. She delivered Peanut within five hours. Ashley describes the birth in one word: “Painful.”

For Regina, the arrival of her first grandchild has not eased the pain of watching what her daughter has endured. “This situation hurts the most because it was an innocent child doing what children do, playing outside, and it was my child,” Regina says. “It still hurts, and is going to always hurt.”

Ashley doesn’t know anybody else who has a baby. She doesn’t want her three friends at school to find out that she has one now. Regina is working on an arrangement with the school so Ashley can start seventh grade from home until she’s ready to go back in person. Relatives will watch Peanut while Regina is at work. Is there anything about motherhood that Ashley is excited about? She twists her mouth, shrugs, and says nothing. Is there anything Ashley wants to say to other girls? “Be careful when you go outside,” she says. “And stay safe.”

There is only one moment when Ashley smiles a little, and it’s when she describes the nurses she met in the doctors’ office and delivery room. One of them, she remembers, was “nice” and “cool.” She has decided that when she grows up, she wants to be a nurse too. “To help people,” she says. For a second, she looks like any other soon-to-be seventh grader sharing her childhood dream. Then Peanut stirs in his car seat. Regina says he needs to be fed. Ashley’s face goes blank again. She is a mother now.  

This Article originally appeared on August 14, 2023 in TIME Magazine  She Just Had a Baby. Soon She'll Start 7th Grade. | Time 

 Photo Credit (Lucy Garret)

Creative Common  

May 29, 2023

Nell Greenfieldboyce

Scientists are studying police camera footage to understand why some car stops of Black men escalate and others don't.

When a police officer stops a Black driver, the first 45 words said by that officer hold important clues about how their encounter is likely to go.

Car stops that result in a search, handcuffing, or arrest are nearly three times more likely to begin with the police officer issuing a command, such as "Keep your hands on the wheel" or "Turn the car off." That's according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that examined police body-camera footage of 577 routine car stops involving Black drivers.

Eighty-one of these stops ultimately involved searches, handcuffings, or arrests. That kind of outcome was less likely when a police officer's first words provided a reason for the stop.

"The first 45 words, which is less than 30 seconds on average, spoken by a law enforcement officer during a car stop to a Black driver can be quite telling about how the stop will end," says Eugenia Rho, a researcher at Virginia Tech. 

Amid the recent high-profile killing of Tyre Nichols and other Black motorists after traffic stops, the findings offer a grim sketch of how police stops can escalate and how Black men recognize the warning signs.

Rho and her colleagues focused on Black drivers because this group is stopped by the police at higher rates and are more likely to be handcuffed, searched, and arrested than any other racial group. "The car stop is by far the most common way people come into contact with the police," says Jennifer Eberhardt, a social psychologist at Stanford University. "With the spread of body-worn cameras, we now have access to how these interactions unfold in real time."

All of the stops in this study occurred in a racially diverse, medium-sized U.S. city over the course of one month; the researchers won't identify the city for privacy reasons. "The vast majority of the stops that we're looking at are stops for routine traffic violations, not for other things that are more serious," says Eberhardt.

The scientists controlled for factors such as the officer's gender and race, as well as the neighborhood crime rate. About 200 officers were involved in these stops."It's not really a function of a few officers driving this pattern," says Rho.

The words or actions of the person behind the wheel of the car didn't seem to contribute to escalation.

"The drivers are just answering the officers' questions and explaining what's going on," says Eberhardt. "They're cooperative."

To understand how Black men perceive the initial language used by police officers during a car stop, the researchers asked 188 Black men to listen to recordings of the opening moments of car stops.

It turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, those Black men were highly attuned to the implications of a police officer starting an interaction with a command. 

"When officers began with orders without reasons, Black male participants predicted that the stop would escalate in over 84% of those cases," says Rho.And even though none of the stops in this study involved the use of force, Black men worried about the possibility of force 80% of the time when they heard a recording of a law enforcement officer issuing a command without offering a reason.

America Reckons With Racial Injustice

"In this country, we know much more about fearing Black people than the fears of Black people," says Eberhardt. "Many Black people fear the police, even in routine car stops. That fear is a fear that could be stoked or set at ease with the first words that an officer speaks."

Eberhardt notes that millions of people know about the killing of George Floyd in May of 2020 after police officers pulled him from his car, but far fewer people know what happened in the first moments when he was approached by an officer.

"We analyzed the first 27 seconds of Floyd's encounter with police on that day. And we found that Floyd apologizes to the officers who stand outside his car window, Floyd requests the reason for the stop, he pleads, he explains, he follows orders, he expresses fear," she says. "Yet every response to Floyd is an order."

From the very beginning, police officers issued commands without giving Floyd an explanation — the same linguistic signature associated with escalation in this study. Tracey Meares, a Yale Law professor and a founding director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, reviewed this study and says she found it gratifying to see this kind of social dynamic measured with such precision.

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"It's hard to deny then," she says, noting that some communities are rethinking whether they want armed law enforcement to be involved in traffic violations. "There are stark racial differences in who is stopped and who's not," says Meares, who points out that in the one-month period covered by this study, the city's police officers did 588 stops of Black drivers and only 262 stops of white drivers.  

This story originally appeared on NPR, All Things Considered. 

by Wendell Griffen

May 27, 2023

As of today, the following persons have announced their candidacies for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States in 2024.

· Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina.

· Governor Ron DeSantis from Florida.

· Former South Carolina Governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

· Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson.

· Former President Donald Trump from Florida.

Although he has not yet announced his candidacy, it is likely that former Vice President Mike Pence from Indiana will also seek the Republican Party nomination at some point in the foreseeable future.

These politicians will spend countless hours and millions of dollars between now and 2024 trying to persuade Republican voters that they differ from one another. They will travel across the nation, give speeches, publish books about themselves, and do the other things that characterize US presidential politics. News reporters will follow them and report what they say and do.

People who believe in freedom, truth, justice, and peace should not be fooled by them.

Senator Tim Scott voted to support Donald Trump’s policies 96% of the time during Trump’s presidency. After Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for holding up appropriated US aid to Ukraine in an effort to get the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden, Scott voted against convicting Trump. After Trump was impeached a second time for instigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection against the US Capitol in order to stay in office, Scott again voted against convicting Trump.

Scott obviously hopes that Republican primary voters will be impressed enough about his personal history of an impoverished childhood, “up from poverty” success story, likeable demeanor, and right-wing views to make him their vice-presidential nominee. If that happens, Scott will try to convince Black men to turn away from the Democratic Party – which depends on strong support from Black voters – to support the Republican presidential candidate even if that person is Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson, or Nikki Haley.

Scott and his Republican strategists probably think that authoritarian-minded Black men will join authoritarian-minded white men and women to out-vote socially conscious Black, Latino, Asian, and white voters to defeat President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris if he is the Republican vice-presidential candidate. That is why Tim Scott will parrot the words of Martin Luther King Jr., talk about his impoverished childhood, and deny that the United States is a society infested with racism as often as he can get people to listen to him.

Scott has never condemned Donald Trump’s despicable attempt to extort the president of Ukraine for a personal political “favor” in exchange for aid Trump was legally obligated to deliver but withheld. None of Scott’s flowery oratory excuses his refusal to condemn the lies Trump told and the people Trump incited to attack the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Scott’s stump speeches about the US being a fair-minded society do not change the truth about current and past US racist police practices, voter intimidation and suppression, and politically motivated racist behavior by white US political leaders across centuries.

Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, and Ron DeSantis can talk all they want about their experiences as governors of South Carolina, Arkansas, Indiana, and Florida, respectively. But like Tim Scott, they each refused to support a ban on the sale of the military-styled assault rifles to civilians that have been responsible for the deaths and severe injuries suffered by scores of men, women, and children in the US.

No matter how much Scott, Haley, Hutchinson, Pence, and DeSantis try to distance themselves from one another and Trump, they are, like Trump, sold out to gun merchants of carnage, hedge fund billionaires of corporate greed, and hateful faith, and other bigots who run the Republican Party. Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, and Ron DeSantis share Donald Trump’s homophobic, transphobic, authoritarian, capitalist, and fascist world view. They supported Donald Trump to become president in 2016 knowing his history as a sexual predator, misogynist, racist, commercial cheat, and pathological liar. In that sense, Scott, Haley, Hutchinson, Pence, and DeSantis are not different from Trump. They are merely less notorious examples of Donald Trump’s hateful approach to life and public policy.

In the All in the Family television sitcom, the lead character, played by Carroll O’Connor, was named Archie Bunker. 

Donald Trump is the most glaring example of Archie Bunker-like boisterous bigotry. 

No matter how Scott, Haley, Hutchinson, Pence, and DeSantis represent themselves, they each share Trump’s disdain for truth, justice, freedom, and peace. 

Their campaigns are being pitched to the same voting constituency that elected Trump in 2016.

All of them are in the same hateful “family.” Don't let them fool you.

Wendell Griffen

he/him/his

Author, The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope (Judson Press, 2017)

Wendell Griffen on Cultural Competency (blog)

Justice is a Verb! (blog)

Fierce Prophetic Hope (blog)

Hope fiercely!  Love boldly!

Writing is how I fight.  James H. Cone

Love one another.  Jesus of Galilee

The time for pious words is over. 

Allan Aubrey Boesak

Wendell Griffen is an ordained pastor, retired judge, and published author. His latest work is The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope (Judson Press, 2017)   

Wendell Griffen

Pastor, New Millennium Church

Little Rock, Arkansas

CEO/Owner, Griffen Strategic Consulting (http://griffenstrategicconsulting.com/)

J.D., 1979, University of Arkansas School of Law

B.A., 1973, University of Arkansas

Race Relations/Equal Opportunity Officer, 43d Support Group, Fort Carson, Colorado (1975-1976)

Graduate, Defense Race Relations Institute (now Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute – DEOMI), 1975

The time for pious words is over. Allan Aubrey Boesak

Writing is how I fight. James H. Cone

Photo Credit Whitehouse.gov

                                                                   The time for pious words is over.   

                                                                             Allan Aubrey Boesak 

by Rev. Dr. C.E. McAdoo

April 22, 2023

“When we all get to Heaven,” is a song sung in many churches. Not to be so precise, but this song is sung in most Black churches. 

A couple of disclaimers: first, I have not been to heaven to know what goes on. Secondly, I do appreciate the song, I just feel itis not on firm theological grounding. 

A little more background on the song, the writer, and the time it was written. The song was written in 1898, by Mr. Eliza Hewitt. He was a close friend to the great Christian songwriter, Fanny Crosby. The song was dedicated to the Sunday School children in Philadelphia. Mr. Eliza’s religious thrust came from the Bible, in 1st Thessalonians 4:17. His song as written on the internet, captured the spirit of the Adventist movement lead by Baptist minister William Miller, (known as the leader of the Millerites Great Disappointment of October 22, 1844). 

Just like all songs, this song came from a base of ideas, The key focus at the time was projecting that Christ was coming back in 1844 and “we” would all be in heaven. That did not happen then, and unless it happens before this article is read, it is not happening now, (April 2023).

The “Two Wallets” heading are not just idle words. There are two stories about Two Wallets lost and found. One was lost on a Food Pantry Day, found, and returned in one hour. The other is for Reverend Dr. Vincent Harris, lost at Walmart and not found for twelve or more hours. Yet, when found by the baggie container, all was there intact, the same as my wallet. 

So, why such a big spiel about the song and the wallets. From a perspective of my understanding of where God is placing us today, I feel we need to leave heaven for God’s sake and do what we can here on earth, on a second-by-second basis. There is no need to give someone their wallet back in heaven, (my understanding). I further feel that God will not need our “good works” in heaven. 

C.H. Dodd, a prolific Protestant theologian was noted for his studies and concept of “Realized Eschatology.” In short, as found on the internet, he is known for promoting “realized Eschatology,” the belief that Jesus’ reference to the Kingdom of God, meant a present reality, rather than a future apocalypse. 

I am not picking on this song, but I want to reference some of its lyrics, in terms of waiting for something we do not know, and doing things we can do now. I want to cover mansions, shouting, traveling and streets of gold. I am not conscious of what kind of home/house you live in today. I do want to encourage us to look at our present situation of living, as living in a mansion. 

Now, take that concept and say to yourself, “I don’t have to wait until I get to heaven to live in a mansion.” It’s also nothing to me with mansion moving and mansion updates. With these mansion references and all I shall talk about, there is the Thank you Lord, thank you Jesus, Thank you God through Jesus Christ for all. To me, thes houting reference is social justice. In God’s Kingdom, there will not be: “this is me again,” struggles of climate change, with honesty, with Racial equality, LGBTQ+ rights, affordable health care, hunger, gun violence, body autonomy, or refugees and others. So, since we are in the realized moment, I feel Godis pressing on us to do something about those things right now, - how? Start with those closest to you. 

I credit my son with the close concept. All our circles are different. Take a hard look at your circle and begin now to shout out what you feel God is calling you to do. At one time in life, I struggled with numbers, but now to the Dr. King’s mantra, “If I can help somebody, then my living is not in vain.”   This is our ‘how,’ pass it on! 

I am going to put traveling and gold streets together. It has been suggested that when going to worship or work, that you travel a different way. I know with so much fear in today’s world, I am not suggesting this for males or females to do it alone. I am pullingthe idea out there that when we look at other roads, we can ask ourselves, “is this where I want my mansion or where my family should have their mansion (home)?” 

The other good part of traveling and streets of goldis that you see that side of the world for yourself and not having someone tell you about it. I did not mention finance or money in the song, but it’sthere. The line is “onward to the prize before us.” 

Since money will not be a factor in heaven, we need to get our share that God has for us here and now. We need to get in and stake it in such a way that we have it for our families. So, when we put realized Eschatology glasses on, we see that in the world at this moment in time with God, through Jesus Christ with us, we can live in all kinds of abundance. 

Reverend Smith said in 1968, “Our time under God is now realized at last.” 

God Bless You,

Mac

Rev. Dr. C.E. McAdoo is a retired District Superintendent with the United Methodist Church.

Photo Credit -McAdoo Family

Mel Lowe is a columnist for Talk Black Arkansas. Readers may contact him via e-mail at mel_lowe  @talkblackarkansas.com  

 by Deborah Springer Suttlar  

March  25, 2023

The word Woke is defined by Wikipedia.org as an adjective with the meaning of “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.” This definition also states that the word Woke encompasses a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism and has also been used as shorthand for American Left ideas. Such ideas involve identity politics and social justice as the notion of white privilege and slavery reparations for African Americans. Evil and superior thinking whites are horribly mistaken and misleading when identifying Woke from a “white prospective of entitlement.” Some others try to leverage their own viewpoints about Woke to impose their ideas as coming from the left, as identity politics and calling it a “notion” of white privilege only to end up with a deceitful white man’s version of Woke.

I agree with the Wikipedia definition which explains why many white people cannot handle Woke. Many whites remain in denial and don’t understand that they do not validate our existence, their treatment of us, our heritage, or our history. The majority of those who don’t know us try to define who we are and what we are. I often ask myself, “Are all of the good and reasonable White folks dead or just in hiding”? It appears that we have very few White people willing to come out and do the right thing. I must say “right” because those of us who believe and follow the words of Christ know the difference between what is good and what is wrong. The fact of what is good and evil has not changed. You either do what is right or you do what you like and call it right.

We know the concept of White Supremacy, or the true term White Entitlement will continue in this world. Some do not want it to die. Too many white folks are unwilling to stand up for what is right, and others believe that they are entitled to manage our lives in the most immoral and unethical way. 

There is a slogan posted throughout our cities, by the government, that says “If you see something, say something.” So, to all the good folks who are hiding, I say “Come out, come out from wherever you are and wake up.” Stop being like the ostrich with his head in the sand because that sandbox may end up in your backyard one day.

Recently with the rise of Republican legislation enacted to curtail our civil rights, voting rights/voting access, sexual orientation, and the reproductive rights of women, we have witnessed the power of white entitlement to make those decisions. 

Make no mistake about what is being done. These actions prove why Woke is the right response to this evil. However, Woke was never intended for everyone’s acceptance. Woke was intended for enlightenment which is apparently oblivious to those who choose to misrepresent it for their purpose to continue racism, prejudice and hate that we live with. 

Woke is recognizing that God is not white, white people are not superior to any other race and they do not validate us. Also, the lies and omission of many people in history books did occur. Columbus discovered a continent that was already inhabited. Slavery is responsible for the prosperous economies of most of the world. The Civil War was fought to continue slavery. Africans and people of African descent are not inferior. God made people of all shades, and all will equally stand before him. In fact, God has no color and American dominance is not mentioned in the Bible.

The reason white people cannot handle Woke, is because they cannot handle the truth of our accomplishments or how we have risen out of bondage. Woke also exposes Jesus’ true faith and Humanity toward non-white people.  

As the song by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes entitled Wake Up Everybody says, “Wake up everybody, no more sleeping in bed, no more backward thinking, time for thinking ahead.” This song was written in 1975 and the lyrics and meaning still apply. 

We are Woke and we are not going back. The Republican Regime efforts to take us back won’t work because their battle is against the word of God. It is impossible to come through God to defeat truth.  Let us not forget the power of our God. The liars and oppressors are the slaves now.

John 8:32, ”and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Deborah Springer Suttlar is a community activist and longtime supporter of public schools. 

Deborah Springer Suttlar is a longtime community activist and supporter of public education.  

by Rev. Dr. C.E. McAdoo

The Black Family Pledge 

Because we have forgotten our ancestors, 

our children no longer give us honor. 

Because we have lost the path our ancestors cleared kneeling in perilous undergrowth, 

our children cannot find their way. 

Because we have banished the God of our ancestors, 

our children cannot pray. 

Because the old walls of our ancestors have faded beyond hearing, 

our children cannot hear us crying. 

Because we have abandoned our wisdom of mothering and fathering, 

our befuddled children give birth to children they neither want nor understand. 

Because we have forgotten how to love, the adversary is within our gates, and holds us up to the mirror of the world, shouting, “Regard the loveless.” 

To do all good things, knowing that we are more than keepers of our brothers and sisters. We are our brothers and sisters. 

In honor of those who toiled and implored God with golden tongues, and in gratitude to the same God who bought us out of hopeless desolation. We make this pledge. 

Dr. Maya Angelou May 14, 1986 

I pray we are moved by what we see and what we read. “The Black Family Pledge” is a timeless model for all families. This month and every month, I feel it is needed in our Black community. 

The Pledge speaks for itself. I ask that when you get this article, you read this Pledge for seven days in a row. After reading it for seven days, I would like to ask those from a Christian perspective to pray over it for three days. For those not Christian, I would ask you to reflect on it for three days. After these ten days, I would ask you to share it with seven other people. These would be family as well as friends. 

The Picture of Dr. King and Jesse and Mahalia Jackson are the reflection of us all. 

In Mahalia Jackson, we see the use of our talents to touch the world. We all have talents. We must use them to the greatest extent. 

Dr. King was a multi-list of humanity exposing. Behind all of what and who he was, it was not about Civil Rights. It was about “Human Rights.” We all have that within us. The understanding is that we are all human and should live and treat people as they are human and family better next. 

I want to keynote some parts of a speech I gave at a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a few years back: (“Power, Money, Community, Reality and Uplifting our Challenges.)." 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was moved by the power of God. (When I gave this speech, I asked at this point, for the lights to be turned off). Moving on I said, “did you notice in the dark we had no direction?” 

Dr. King’s lighted path was to lead us to political power. 

Within the eyes of Jesse Jackson and for all of us, let’s start something lasting. He developed operation “Bread Basket”; this was a feeding program. May our goal in all our communities be that there is no family hunger. The race before us is in hunger, race, policing, education, social well-being, mental health and others. 

So, we have our programs to develop. As a backdrop and introduction to a positive to community, social welfare power, religious power and economic power. But somebody cut off the light, like now, and we as a nation and communities made a detour. It cut back on your King light, your family light, your community light, your God light, and got meaningful direction for today and the future. 

For Blacks, the economic numbers and the amounts are astronomical! I will not place them here as an absolute direct amount. The Census data shows where we spend our money. I once again share this as an estimate of $1.6 six trillion dollars, spent by Blacks per year. The top four areas are housing, transportation, tobacco and smoking supplies. These are followed next by: Insurance Pension and health care and others. Money is not a Black community problem. The problem is how we budget this 1.6 trillion. (Good news, I have written a book about institutional budgeting that can be used on a personal basis. It’s entitled, “Budgetitis.” It cannot be ordered online, but an address is listed at the end of this article). 

Now we are here at the  “come to Jesus”, and the “the truth shall set us free moment.” It is time to help our pre-teen, teens and single and married black girls and women who get pregnant…. and not expect the man that got them pregnant not to help. 

It is time to start crying when we read obituaries and see a number of boys and men’s names, knowing that was a multiple casualty. We see one with the mother’s last name knowing that cannot be a reality. The men that help produce that child had a last name. 

It’s time we acknowledge they are here and with all the negative still support these families. It’s time to treat our families the best we can. I am not claiming to be an angel but in a good United Methodist mentality, we can. We are heading toward perfection, but not there yet. 

Lastly, Dr. King’s words were a light in a room, a house, a building, a community, the nation and the world, we have our light, so this little light of ours, let it shine! 

Keep enjoying the month. 

Mac......

Rev. Dr. C.E. McAdoo is a retired District Superintendent with the United Methodist Church.

The scientific meaning in its most generic form, color is no more than the sensation 

produced by the effects of light striking the eye. So, color is basically no more than a sensation. 

We must take color a step further. Before we look at color from a purely sociological and 

psychological standpoint, we must realize there is a whole field in the study of color. 

The experts in the field say that there might be some ten million colors. 

We see that the study of color is wide ranging and is very fascinating, but for us, who will not and cannot do the kind of research it would take to go into the depth of studying color, what is color to us? 

I am writing this for general use. Color is a symbol and we have developed certain colors that are symbols. There are certain colors that are symbols for selling things. The brighter colors, the ones we see on various buildings attract customers. There are certain colors which designate certain athletic programs and certain states, and these colors have become symbols of these very states and programs. We know that color is a symbol and an attraction. It attracts us. That is why the experts have studied various colors and know that certain colors attract us more than others.

From a purely sociological standpoint, we see that color is also a symbol when it comes 

to race relations. 

That symbol is basically this: “that the color of your skin is a symbol of who 

you are.” There is no getting around this. I want to make plain to those I am writing this for, 

that being Black in America and being a person of color in America is a symbol of degradation. 

No matter how many degrees you have or how smart you are or whatever your inside may be, 

colors this, affects this. It is a symbol that is used and on the opposite end, quote, unquote, 

white color is also a symbol of just the opposite of what we are. It is also an attraction. 

There seems to be this attractiveness in white color that affects us even within our own race relations with each other. We must see color is not harmful when we look at it from a purely 

sociological, physiological standpoint; because underneath the colors, all the hearts pump the 

same, all the blood vessels look the same, all the everything looks the same, once we pass the color line.

Some of us even feel color is harmful,.... but the truth is color is not harmful. We also see that it is natural to have some color. God in heaven who through His marvelous handiwork put together human beings into a marvelous body; we are made in the image of God, the technical word “being,” all of us, no matter the color. No matter what definition we have been given as far as how we look, it comes from God. 

I think this point really needs to be stressed at the beginning, that God did not make 

anything that was inferior when it comes to one person or another person. So, let us move on 

to this color thing. 

Color is natural. It just happens that we who are people of color happen to have a great 

deal more pigment in our skin. The technical term is melanin. We have more of that in our skin 

and that gives us the color scheme we have. I will talk about this a little later. 

So, color is natural as far as the different attractions and different sensations that we 

receive from our eyes. Yes, there is a difference in each one of us, but that difference is that 

God has made us all individuals and there is nothing bad about any of this. Now what about the 

color of Black folks? 

Well, I do not want to get into anything too controversial here, but I think the 

color of Black folks today that we have in America is the process of many years of breeding and 

intermarriages and there is no such thing as Black people in terms of color. We are many colors, for reasons, including when people genetically have children, they take on the various traits from one another. Unlike other ethnicities, we have not been a very exclusive race, due to our former situation here in America. 

Even overseas where you have no interracial marriages or where you have no slavery, you still have people who are of different colors, but are from one nationality. Whatever the case might be, I think the key I want to look at in this color thing, is that color is a symbol. It is an attraction, it is not harmful, it is natural. 

It is true that we as Black people are many colors. Even today the (scientific) studies are 

increasingly showing that color plays a great part in our interactions. I want my wife and 

children, my nieces and nephews, my mother and father and my brother and sisters to know 

that this is a sociological situation that is happening when people are placing people who are 

darker at the end of the line or calling them more hostile. This is not God’s way or God’s will in our creation. 

We need to make claim for that, because if we can lay claim that God has made no 

junk and God has made something that is productive and beautiful no matter where we are 

put, we shall overcome this current crisis. I want to go into the kind of examples that have 

been happening, but it is almost as if the scriptures have come to pass. The stone which was 

rejected has become the Cornerstone.

Sometime those very children, men, and women who have been put in the back of the line and bus for various reasons, because their color has come out to help bring back dignity to the various folks who put them there. 

Color is a reality in America. There are people, particularly young Black women, who are 

very dark, and are self-conscious because the other Black women and White women that have 

fairer skin seem to have the advantage educationally and romantically. I don’t want any of my 

folks to grow up thinking that just because their color is not as fair as someone else’s, that this 

has nothing to do with who they are, and what they have to offer the world. The color thing 

needs to be put into a perspective which young Blacks will understand when they see things 

going on. 

When you see this one child in class, when you see a person on the job; when it seems to be 

the one that people are pushing for.  You might just want to ask, why him, why 

her, and stand up for your rights. Be able to say, we came from the stock, and he or she is 

no better than you. And not necessarily in terms of other Black people, but in terms of White people too ....generally speaking. 

I think it is important that we stress this and use it as a theme for what we are trying 

to do to get folks to understand.... that color is a reality in America and needs to be dealt with. 

Rev. Dr. C.E. McAdoo is a retired District Superintendent with the United Methodist Church.

**The above passage was written by Rev. Dr. C.E. McAdoo on behalf of Concise Consulting & Related Services. If this article speaks to you, please feel free to order his latest best-selling book, Nobody Jumped Off the Boat: We are all in this together. Orders can be made by calling 501.779.0649 and or contacting us at conciselr@gmail.com 

by Joy C. Springer

Members of the House and Senate Education committee met the week of  (June 6 and June 7, 2022) to receive reports (studies) from the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE)  and the Bureau Legislative Research (BLR) regarding the adequacy of education of in Arkansas. 

The adequacy study statute, Arkansas Code Annotated Section 10-3-2102 requires that the biennial study to “assess, evaluate and monitor the entire spectrum of public education” as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of any program implemented by a school district, an education service cooperative, the ADE, or the State Board of Education.”  

In addition, the same statute calls for a review of the Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability Act (AESSA) and the state’s standing under Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). AESSA requires Arkansas students to participate in the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NEAP) and ACT Aspire, statewide student assessment. 

The goal is to have all, or all but the most severely disabled students perform at or above proficiency on these tests. The state’s ESSA plan includes the 12-year goal of having 80% of Arkansas students demonstrate grade-level proficiency. In other words, students must demonstrate proficient in reading and math at the respective grade levels. 

What were the results from our students? I am glad you asked. A summary of the NEAP results will follow.  

For the year 2019, the results were as follows for all students who were at or Above Proficient: 

4th grade Math 33%

4th grade Reading 31%

8th grade Math 27%

8th grade Reading   30%

For the year 2019, the results were as follows for all Black students who were at or Above Proficient:  

4th grade Math 13%

4th grade Reading  15% 

8th grade Math   7%

8th grade Reading   11%

For the year 2019, the results were as follows for all students who were at or Above Proficient:  

4th grade Math 41%

4th grade Reading  37%  

8th grade Math  35%

8th grade Reading   35%

These results show that most Arkansas students are not reading on grade level and are not proficient in Math. The achievement gap between Black and white students remains overall at 20 percentage points.  

In 2021, the ACT Aspire results were communicated by BLR. Students were rated as “Exceeding, Ready, Close and In Need of Improvement on the ACT Aspire assessments. Students whose scores fall within the Exceeding or Ready levels are considered on target for college and workplace readiness by the end of high school. Again, the state’s long-term goal is for 80% of the students in Arkansas to score proficient for their grade level by 2030.  

For the year 2021, the results on the ACT Aspire show that the number of students scoring Ready of exceeding in Math is 36% and ELA (English Language Arts at 37%.  

For the year 2021, the results on the ACT Aspire show that the number of Black students scoring Ready of Exceeds for English Language Arts were 17% while their white counterparts scored 45% Ready or Exceeds.  

The BLR nor ADE report on the results for the ACT Aspire in Math were not a part of the report for Black student in comparison to white students.  It goes without reporting by the ADE and the BLR that the achievement gap between Black and white students remains.  

In conclusion of this update, I was not allowed to ask questions regarding the 2022 Adequacy Study. 

The Chairman of the committee communicated that non-committee members would not be allowed to ask questions due to the previous questions that had been asked by committee members and the dialogue had lasted longer than anticipated. Wow!!

The Arkansas Educational Emergency continues!   

Rep. Joy C. Springer represents District 34 in the Arkansas House of Representatives. She serves on the House Public Transportation Committee, the House Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative & Military Affairs Committee, the Joint Budget Committee, and the Joint Performance Review Committee. Mrs. Springer previously served on the Little Rock School Board. 

Representative Joy C. Springer is a long time civil rights activist and supporter of equality in public education.

by Wendell Griffen

I am one of the more than thirty million (30,000,000) descendants of American slavery in this country. Our enslaved ancestors were shipped, sold, robbed, maimed, raped, murdered, and otherwise wronged from 1619, when a Dutch ship named the White Lion arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, until slavery was supposedly ended at the end of the civil war in 1865. 

That entire pattern of behavior happened openly. It happened officially. It was sacralized by preachers and congregations, carried on as part of daily business, and continued across successive generations.  This society has done nothing to compensate the descendants of enslaved persons for 250 years of unpaid labor.  This society has done nothing to compensate the descendants of enslaved persons for 250 years of life theft.  

This society has done nothing to compensate the descendants of enslaved persons for 250 years of rapes, castrations, mutilations, beatings, and murders.  This society has done nothing to compensate the descendants of enslaved persons for 250 years of state-sponsored and sanctioned enslavement of African people.   

It has done nothing to repair the trans-generational harms my ancestors suffered and bequeathed to their descendants. I refuse to forget the debt that is owed for those harms. I refuse to forget that people who prayed and preached about loving God perpetrated those harms. I refuse to forget that my ancestors were forced to endure those harms with a resignation that I witnessed generations later as a child growing up in the closing years of the official Jim Crow era.   

I now live in an unofficial Jim Crow era of mass incarceration, political, economic, and education disempowerment, wealth and health disparities that are traceable to the enslavement of my ancestors. America refuses to admit the debt it owes descendants of formerly enslaved Africans. Preachers, religious educators, politicians, and ethicists refuse to admit that a debt is owed. Meanwhile, they want descendants of formerly enslaved Africans to think and talk with them about “racial reconciliation.”  I will not do so.  People who will not admit the transgenerational harms suffered by my people from American slavery lack the moral competence to talk with me about racial reconciliation. Instead, I will continue to indict, denounce, and condemn this society for its refusal to admit and pay the debt owed the thirty million descendants of American slavery. I will also challenge my Black co-descendants to do likewise.   

I will remind them what Randall Robinson mentioned in his book titled The Debt:  What America Owes to Blacks. The issue here is not whether we can or will win reparations.  The issue is whether we will fight for reparations, because we have decided for ourselves that they are our due... …  Let me try to drive the point home here:  through keloids of suffering, through coarse veils of damaged self-belief, lost direction, misplaced compass, shit-faced resignation, racial transmutation, black people worked long, hard, killing days, years, centuries—and they were never paid.   

The value of their labor went into others’ pockets—plantation owners, northern entrepreneurs, state treasuries, the United States government. Where was the money? Where is the money? There is a debt here. ...  Jews have asked this question of countries and banks and corporations and collectors and any who had been discovered at the end of the slimy line holding in secret places the gold, the art, the money that was the rightful property of European Jews before the Nazi terror.  

Jews have demanded what was their due and received a fair measure of it. Clearly, how blacks respond to the challenge surrounding the simple demand for restitution [reparations] will say a lot more about us and do a lot more for us than the demand itself would suggest.   

We would show ourselves to be responding as any normal people would to victimization were we to assert in our demands for restitution that, for 246 years and with the complicity of the United States government, hundreds of millions of black people endured unimaginable cruelties—kidnapping, sale as livestock, deaths in the millions during terror-filled sea voyages, backbreaking toil, beatings, rapes, castrations, maimings, murders.   

We would begin a healing of our psyches were the most public case made that whole peoples lost religions, languages, customs, histories, cultures, children, mothers, fathers... And they were never made whole.  And never compensated.  Not one red cent.  [Randall Robinson, The Debt:  What America Owes to Blacks, (Dutton, 2000, the Penguin Group, pp. 206-208)   

To this day, America refuses to admit its debt. Instead, American policymakers and thought leaders add insult to the injuries caused by slavery by bragging about “the rule of law.”  In the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War that ended in 1865, three amendments were added to the U.S. Constitution. The 13th Amendment was ratified in 1866 and outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for criminal conduct. In 1868, the 14th Amendment was added. It guarantees equal protection of the law and prohibits deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was added which guaranteed the right to vote for all persons born in the United States, an apparent effort to extend voting rights to formerly enslaved men (no women were granted voting rights until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920).  However, no provision was made in the U.S. Constitution - or in any other law - to repay the formerly enslaved persons or any of their descendants for 246 years of forced labor carried out under "the rule of law."  

The formerly enslaved population was given no land, no property, no money, and nothing else as restitution for deprivations they had been forced to endure under the "rule of law." The nation that enacted a Homestead Act in 1862 and settled white farmers on free frontier land taken from Indigenous people gave no land to formerly enslaved Black people.   

The "rule of law" hypocrisy goes further.  On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, a law that called for $1 million reparations to be paid for emancipated Africans who had been enslaved in the District of Columbia – but the money was to go to the white people who enslaved them, worked them without pay, and kept the proceeds from their work. I have not found proof that the emancipated Africans received a penny.  

The District of Columbia Emancipation Act also included up to $100,000 to resettle formerly enslaved persons – but the resettlement was to be in Haiti and Liberia, not in the United States.     Under "the rule of law," millions of formerly enslaved people were left homeless, landless, and penniless by the society that sanctioned their enslavement for 246 years. As if that plight was not sufficiently woeful, the people who enslaved them were restored to land on which they had toiled and produced wealth.  The voting rights guaranteed to formerly enslaved Black men became worthless when state after state passed laws that mocked their emancipation.  One day after the 13th Amendment was ratified which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime, South Carolina enacted a law that required Black "servants" to enter into labor contracts with White "masters," to work from dawn to dusk, and to maintain a "polite" demeanor. Violation of that law - by failing to make such a "contract" or by failure to maintain the required demeanor - subjected the "servants" to criminal sanctions which could result, upon conviction, in the loss of voting rights and return to involuntary servitude.  The "rule of law" made a mockery of the 13th Amendment.   

This history is a fraction of the harms, injuries, and indignities inflicted upon formerly enslaved Black people according to "the rule of law" in the United States. Perversely, it is never mentioned when economists, politicians, lawyers, judges, and religious leaders discuss wealth inequity in my country. Instead, white capitalists and their Black sycophants blatantly question the industry and innovativeness of people whose marginalized ancestors designed cities, revolutionized the arts, developed life-saving medical procedures, and invented machines that transformed life in countless ways. 

The shameless "rule of law" hypocrisy goes even further.   Formerly enslaved Africans in the United States were defrauded of voting rights by various devices. I cherish to this day the 1963 receipt for poll taxes paid by my parents and recall the names and faces of Black people in my rural southwest Arkansas community who picked cotton to make enough money to pay the taxes so our elders could vote. Now, the descendants of those elders are openly disenfranchised by voter suppression schemes.    

Three generations after the U.S. Civil War ended a season of racial violence occurred in the United States that historians term the Red Summer of 1919. White mobs terrorized and murdered Black neighborhoods at will and without fear of prosecution. The Red Summer concluded in Arkansas, my home state, near the rural community of Elaine in southeast Arkansas, when hundreds of Black men, women, and children were massacred by a white mob and federal troops (who traveled from Little Rock aboard a troop train accompanied by Governor Charles Brough) over the course of several days beginning on October 1, 1919.   

No white person was arrested for or charged with committing any of the murders, planning the massacre, or participating in it.   Land, livestock, and farm implements that belonged to the massacred people and their terrorized survivors were not restored to their descendants. The Elaine Race Massacre of 1919 transformed a community of industrious, enterprising, and upwardly mobile Black people who owned some of the most fertile land in Arkansas into some of most impoverished people in the United States. This happened in my home state under "the rule of law."   

To this day, the descendants of massacred, plundered, and terrorized Africans have not received restitution or reparation for American slavery and its consequences. It speaks volumes about the moral and cultural competence of "rule of law" cheerleaders when a travesty of this magnitude has not been addressed by White lawyers, judges, legal scholars, legislators, prosecutors, governors, religious leaders, columnists, or other influential leaders.   

They will not mention it when talking and writing about the U.N.'s International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. I will not forget that omission. I will not treat it as inadvertent or mistaken.   

 will not be silent about the debt America refuses to pay.
 

Wendell Griffen is an ordained pastor, and published author. His latest work is The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope (Judson Press, 2017)   

 by Dr. C.E. McAdoo

A quick United Methodist theological perspective. The United Methodist has been frowned upon because some people think that we are only baptized by sprinkling. In a United Methodist doctrine, we baptize by immersion, pouring, and sprinkling. I felt that this would be a good lead-in to this week's article. To be baptized in black is more than one way; it is more than one attitude or understanding. My nephew and I were recently talking, and the subject of racial identity came up, and he stated that “I have been baptized in black.” And “BOOM,” my light went on. Let me delve inside myself as a point of personal privilege. I want to do a quick deep dive into my personal black baptism. I will ask you who read this article to do the same for yourself. I will list these time periods, not necessarily in chronological order, because some of my black baptizement overlaps. I will list them quickly:

● Lebanon, TN

● Bluebird Road

● Lemmons Corner School

● Market Street School

● Lebanon High School

● Philander Smith College

● United States Army

● Carlisle, AR

● Little Rock, Arkansas, and many other points around the world.

I grew up in a dry county and segregated town. I lived on a street that had eight bootleggers on it. In Lebanon, African Americans were relegated to about four communities and two sets of housing projects. Yet, before there was public housing; there was community black baptizing. Growing up, I never knew anyone who was homeless or lived on the street. Good, bad, and indifferent, somebody took them in. That is the kind of community baptizing that we did. I went to a two-room school that was “all black.” In school, we supported one another. 

A note of educational reference for those who may not know, years ago, many African American teachers were not college graduates, particularly women. What would happen is, our teachers had been the most brilliant pupils in the twelfth grade, and the county offered them a job. In the city schools most of the teachers had college degrees. I am not sure about the exact program, but they would have to go to school each summer at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial (now Tennessee State University) or in Arkansas, Arkansas Agriculture Mechanical and Normal (now University of Arkansas - Pine Bluff) to receive college credits. This is where my educational and theological baptism intersect. 

Miss Young (who never married) was my first, second, third, and fourth-grade teacher. She was a United Methodist. Mrs. Bailey (the wife of Mr. Roy Bailey; the organizer of the Wilson County Black History Committee) was my fifth-grade teacher. My Blackness and my Black theological undergirding were done six days a week. The committee that Mr. Bailey was a part of, published a 331-book entitled “In Their Own Voices: An Account of African Americans in Wilson County”. I grew up surrounded by Black entrepreneurs and businesspersons of all professions, in addition to historical superstars. Deford Bailey was the first Black Grand Old Opry performer, members of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Military Men, and the Lebanon Clowns Baseball team were some of the notable celebrities. 

This intersection of my teachers and my fellow church members kept me “Black-A-Tised.” This early Black-A-Tization enabled me to be a trailblazer. I was one of the first three African American students to graduate from all White Lebanon High School. With my brother and my sister being HBCU students at Tennessee State University, I was headed to a Black college. That school was Philander Smith College (Little Rock, Arkansas). 

In my four years, we matriculated through a standard college curriculum, yet it was something about how the school embraced me in Blackness. What they did more than anything was to let me know that they were preparing me to be a world citizen. When I volunteered for the military, I was placed in charge of an Arkansas platoon, and I was the only African American in the platoon. That leadership experience was from Little Rock, Arkansas to Fort Polk, Louisiana. I mention that only to note that Black-A-Tization in an equitable setting enables you to be the best that you can be. My military career was one of affirmation that my Black baptism translates into solid military protocol. 

I initially considered writing about Black nuances and seeing the world from a Black perspective. I have tried to show you that being baptized in Black enables you to live life from a balcony perspective. I believe that baptism enables us to rise above and see the world from a broader scope. Being baptized in Black has nothing to do today with the location. It has everything to do with our balcony perspective, in light of our social, religious, educational, and personal situations. 

Dive in, take a dip...the water is still here.

Rev. Dr. C.E. McAdoo

 

by Deborah Springer Suttlar   

Black people live in a perpetual mode of survival. We seemingly, live among a majority of people who are spiritually bankrupt, culturally ignorant and invoke privileged indifference.  We witnessed the rise of a wealthy racist sexual predator who became president of a professed “Christian nation.”  A nation which achieved its wealth and status in this world from slavery and discrimination against people who were not classified as white. The very foundation of its faith was based on false biblical interpretation to support slavery, encouraged segregation, fostered discrimination, and deny equal rights to females. We are proof that their claims of Christianity are a lie. The very laws they enact reflect the truth. This country appears to be spiritually bankrupt.  

The current laws enacted to deny meaningful and easy access to voting and gerrymandering are purposefully designed to disenfranchise people who have been historically discriminated against. It is a devious attempt to derail citizenship rights and equal representation for Black people in this country. The cultural ignorance exhibited reflects a desire to marginalize people who for generations have been denied equal access to privileges afforded to only white people. 

Now, they want to hide the truth of their acts of racism by hiding the historical proof of their actions.  The laws to exclude the Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project are about covering their sins and lies in the current history books. They hide because not only are they unwilling to face the truth, but they cannot defend their acts without exposing their wrongs. Our history and our lives are the proof, and they want to deny us the opportunity to address it and reveal it for what it really is. Lies are hard to defend without more lies. T

hey desire to remain culturally ignorant because the truth will expose them, and they do not want to atone or acknowledge anything. We are not “one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. We are divided on purpose, without liberty or justice for everyone.  We don’t need to be legitimized by a people who are illegitimate by the fact they don’t accept what they are. They have no rights to us or about us. In reality, they are taking liberties regarding our lives in which they have no right. It is an attempt to negate our contributions in history, cover up sins, and minimize our relevance in this world. 

You would think that a nation of “godly people” would be afraid to go against truth. But then, we realize that they have a history and a reputation for doing just that. Even the laws they enact today will be evidence of their calculated racism. They will not be able to continue to hide it and it will only be proof of the truth. We represent the living proof of their actions.  We can no longer afford to sit back as a spectator and allow anyone to deny privileges which have already been promised to humankind. It is our responsibility to teach our children our own contributions in history and define who we are. 

We must take the time to properly educate and train our own. We have no choice but to move forward and take all the necessary steps to ensure that our children have the spiritual knowledge to understand their divine status. The fight is against powers that have no spiritual standing, and we must profess that. We cannot allow genocide by systemic racism through the American legislative, executive, and judicial branches of a corrupted government. Our children are worth the fighting for, and we must fight.  

This privileged indifference is a racist attempt to make our lives and our contributions seem inconsequential. Our Black lives matter and our history is intertwined in the history of this country. We contributed in every aspect to the livelihood of this country through slavery, as workers without equal pay and soldiers fighting for freedom without equal citizenship rights in America. We helped to build this country and there is a continued effort to deny our contributions in American history. 

We cannot allow this privileged indifference under the guise of white entitlement to continue.  James Brown song says it all, “I don’t want nobody to give me nothing, open up the door, I’ll get it myself.” Although they continue to block the doors, we will continue to fight and knock every door down. We will remain in perpetual survival mode because the struggle continues for the vulnerable, they created.  

As Ghandi said, you can measure a society but how they treat their most vulnerable.    

Deborah Springer Suttlar is a community activist and long-time supporter of public education.   

©Wendell Griffen, 2021

July 16, 2021 

Most people probably cannot name more than three of the nine justices on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). How many can you name?

Most Arkansans are unable to name the judges from Arkansas that now serve on the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit of the United States. Can you name the Arkansas judges?

Most Arkansans cannot name the seven justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court. They cannot name the twelve judges on the Arkansas Court of Appeals. Sadly, many people do not know the names of the judges that oversee courts in the places they live, work, play, and worship. The justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, circuit courts, and district courts are elected by popular vote. Yet many people do not know who they are, what legal matters they decide, or how well they interact with the community at large. They know even less about how well they interact with communities of color.

Judges decide legal disputes ranging from adoptions to zoning (A to Z) each week. They decide whether to believe witnesses. Since I became a judge in 1996, judges have decided whether laws enacted to require photo identification to vote are valid. Judges decide whether to approve requests for search warrants, whether items found and seized by police can be used as evidence, and whether to approve guilty pleas and impose punishments in criminal cases. It is amazing we are so uninformed about who these people are and how they function.

Ignorance is not bliss. The Supreme Court of the United States, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has been turning back the clock on voting rights since 2013. The Arkansas Supreme Court sided with opponents of public education when it threw out challenges to the 2015 state takeover of the Little Rock School District. These and other court decisions affect how we live. In cases involving capital punishment judges determine whether people will live or die. 

I hope this article will spur you to learn more about the judges who serve where you live. What do these people know about the lives and concerns of people like you? What has been their living experience and relationship to people of color? Make it your business to know these things. Discuss these issues with your family, neighbors, and community leaders.

Invite judges to speak to your social groups about issues that matter to you. They should not decline the invitation. Ask judges – and the people who run for election to become judges – about racial profiling, mass incarceration, Black Lives Matter, voter suppression, and discrimination against people of color, women and girls, LGBTQ persons, financially distressed persons, and immigrants. Pay attention to how well or poorly judges and judicial candidates answer your questions. 

Do not believe a judge or judicial candidate who tells you he or she cannot discuss controversial social issues. Judges and judicial candidates can discuss controversial social issues. They cannot discuss pending cases. They cannot make promises or pledges about how they will decide cases. But those limitations do not prevent judges and judicial candidates from answering questions about reparations, affirmative action, racial profiling, domestic violence, mass incarceration, environmental justice, landlord-tenant disputes, or other subjects if their comments do not involve actual cases.

We deserve to know the people whose decisions affect our lives. Those people – judges – should want us to know who they are and the things that affect how they do their work. It is up to us to gather and share that knowledge. 

Wendell Griffen

he/him/his

                                                                   The time for pious words is over.   

                                                                             Allan Aubrey Boesak 

America has hidden the truth and perpetuated the myth of superiority through imperialism causing the spiritual, academic and social deformity of a nation. This country relishes on the celebrations of their victories and an attitude of greatness. However, we have never justly or truthfully admitted our own historical wrongs. Although we do acknowledge the” Holocaust,” which was carried out by racist and self-professed white supremacist in another country. The truth is that we have never adequately morally or legislatively addressed the horrors of Slavery here in America. There has never been a genuinely sincere effort toward reconciliation with regards to the human beings who were subjected to generations of slavery in America.

The lie regarding the purpose of slavery, the true benefactors and the cause of the Civil War is the reason this country is undergoing a racist political impasse of epic proportions.  Should a lie about slavery be retracted to salvage the integrity of a nation or should a lie remain to protect the reputation of a nation?   The consequences of living a lie means it becomes your destiny. 

There are factions of people in this country who will never acknowledge the true reasons for slavery.  We now have generations of people who were intentionally miseducated about the impact of slavery and accept a lie as truth. Others are engaging in deliberate acts to prevent the truth about slavery  from being revealed.   Then there are the victims of slavery who have never experienced the promised resolutions from the experience of slavery, or given adequate reparations for its evil implementation. We also have former descendants of slaves who remain chained by a lack of knowledge regarding their divine birthright and are disillusioned because they see no hope.  While many of us remain determined to reveal the truth at all cost.

Reconstruction never materialized post slavery as ordered. The Civil Rights of former slaves and people of African descent have historically been continually derailed through executive, judicial, legislative or state laws with racist intensity. A country which celebrates its own freedom from British ownership every year, (4thof July) has never justly recognized or provided adequate restitution for the institution of slavery it inflicted upon people of African descent in America.

The lie continues to fester in the minds of the oppressors and those who have made it their reality.  Lies progressing to the point that we no longer want the truth known because the lie is convenient and ingratiating. We’ve built this country on a prostituted lie, claiming fame and superiority over other countries. Could we really be proud of our lies?

America is now being exposed for the lie. The 1619 Project brings the truth and the fact that Slavery was instituted to build America. While some continue to pronounce that this is “their country,’ we know that too is a lie. We also know that a land invaded was not discovered and the people who were actually indigenous to this country are the first Americans. None of us were invited and those bought through slavery paid a great price for our citizenship.

Truthfully, other people such as the Spanish, Mexican, Pacific Islanders and Africans were in this country prior to most of the Anglo Saxons who claim this country as “theirs” and arrived much later than the 1619. What a bitter truth to accept when you have become the lie.

The fact is, none of us are owners of what God has given to all of us. He has no favorites. We also know that “truth is liberating.” You would think that Americans would want to truly be free. 

America must come to terms with the “lie” regarding the origin and the history of this country as it relates to slavery. We must address the errors of our past and work toward building a future for this country based on truth, justice and equality for all people.   

Apartheid in America will not be an option and people of color will fight for the divine inheritance which was given to us by God. Only God gives the abundance of life and we were given the spirit of truth and courage because it is a shield from the ones who work against God and tell the lies. 

Deborah Springer Suttlar