FOCUS: #MSWelfare/TANF Scandal • Jackson Water • Abortion • Race & Racism • Policing • Incarceration • Housing & Evictions
“As a sociologist who studies race and ethnicity, I have closely followed these moves by the states,” Rodney Coates writes. “Throughout U.S. history, I see three main periods of legislative disenfranchisement in which legislative bodies have voted to expel members.”
Duvalier Malone believes democracy is at stake due to voter-suppression efforts and suggests that the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act should pass to rightly protect the voting rights of U.S. citizens.
“This historical trauma must be addressed. It functions as a persistent sickness, a deadly virus—in the family, in the African-American community and in the larger society,” Psychologists Taasogle Daryl Rowe and Kamilah Marie Woodson writes. “The establishment of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice begins a long-awaited process of healing from the unspeakable and unacknowledged acts in our history, whose echoes can still be heard today.”
Duvalier Malone encourages the American people to hold our legislators accountable by participating in local, state and federal elections. He believes democracy is at stake and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act must be passed in order to rightly protect the voting rights of the people.
Sixty-six years later, and the fight for justice in Emmett Louis Till’s case continues and remains unsolved. Will there ever be justice? This dark spot in our history is painful enough, but to have our lawmakers and Justice Department silent on this is even more painful.
The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state-funded spy agency charged with resisting integration and civil-rights activity, actively surveilled these civil rights activists and allowed law enforcement agencies to openly violate their constitutional rights in Jim Crow Mississippi. Those were dangerous times that still affect my family today.
Since last week, the date has changed, but policing in America has not. Many organizations will continue to post compelling social-media statuses, touting justice, mourning George Floyd, chanting about small steps and accountability, but George will not applaud. He cannot. Ma’Khia Bryant will not cheer—she cannot. Daunte Wright will not celebrate—he cannot.
My wife recreated the “Clark doll test” of the 1940s, with my daughter as her only participant. In the test, children,in this case my 6-year-old, are asked to answer several questions about a white doll and a Black doll. For context, the creators use their test in testimony during the historic Brown v. Board of Education battle over school integration. My baby said that the Black doll looked like her, and that the same Black doll was both bad and ugly.
Across Mississippi, more than 41 percent of all renters are cost-burdened, defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as paying more than 30 percent of household income toward housing costs and, as a result, having “difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care.” More than one out of every five renter households in Mississippi is extremely cost-burdened, defined as paying more than 50 percent of household income toward housing costs.
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