Had a great time, but I still missed y'all last weekend
Commentary by Chitown Kev
If it’s not the site going wacky and mercurial, it’s my left arm doing the same so this will be brief.
I missed the Black Kos contingent at Netroots. I knew that most everyone wouldn’t be and, if I am honest, it did give me a chance to attend more sessions than I would otherwise but still...I mean, who was I gonna have a proper Harold’s Chicken confab with...speaking of which…
I ran into DK Campaign Director Paul Hogarth as he was on his way to the Harold’s Chicken across the street on Wabash. He noted the grimace on my face and asked about my reaction. I told him that the quality of Harold’s varies by location: South side Harold’s is usually (but not always) pretty good. I tend not to trust downtown and North side Harold’s and consider them suspect (although the Howard Street Harold’s is pretty good).
Finally, I needed a snack and tried the Harold’s and it was pretty good. Tried it twice, as a matter of fact.
I attended as many of the sessions on disinformation that I could but my favorite session was about combating cynicism in Black communities. First of all, the panel acknowledged that there were good reasons for Black communities to be cynical, especially as Black communities tend to be approached at the time (right before the election!) about the same stuff with no follow-up taking place in our communities after the election (as if we don’t have diners and barbershops in our communities)
I can't remember offhand the name of the Georgia-based groups that did the polling and canvassing showing that, indeed, our community is diverse; younger Black folk in rural Georgia don’t vote with the same frequency or, even, with the same priorities as the older Black folk living in Atlanta. Moreover, these same trends in voting are also observable in every other ethnic group.
So these groups were able to very specifically targeted with applicable messaging and follow-up; the most impressive part of their presentation was their successful efforts to keep people more informed than the average voter.
I complimented the panelists after the session and asked if they had done any polling based on religion. I’m now what they would call a legacy Black voter but in my younger days, I would easily tire of any political message being delivered by a pastor. Any pastor. And I know young people— and a few older people, in fact— that are cynical about Black politics because of that factor. The panelists felt me but I had the feeling that they hadn’t done much research into that and it is entirely possible that the numbers that could be engaged on a more secular basis are too small to make much of a difference.
And then I had a harrowing experience Saturday morning.
I volunteered for the early shift working the registration desk and since that was slow, I was reassigned to direct the flow of people from the lower-level sessions to the Ballroom where the keynote was to take place. One session went a little overtime and I noticed that there was some orange juice sitting on the table. I took a glass and drank it, thinking that it was rather flat and old-tasting.
Finally the session let out and some came to the back and said, “If you would like more mimosas...”
What?
I’ve never had a mimosa so I wouldn’t even know what they would taste like and…
I made a couple of calls within 10 minutes of the incident. Talked with a Kossack that knows I’m sober. And I stopped panicking.
I mean, being around drinking people don’t bother me at all but there were no labels on the table indicating what was being served. Then again, maybe I just gots to be more careful.
Anyway, I hope to see some of you or all of you in Baltimore next year for Netroots and...my birthday!
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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This month, President Joe Biden and his administration have been touring the country to make the case that his economic agenda — coined Bidenomics — is working for everyone. Following the most recent economic report and jobs numbers, it may be difficult to assess the state of the economy for Black Americans.
Despite the Black unemployment rate reaching its lowest level in United States history in April at 4.7%, last week, the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics reported that rate spiked to 6% in June.
The jump in unemployment for Black Americans raised questions as to whether the economy is as strong as the Biden-Harris White House is touting. Economic data shows that when an economy is on the upswing, Black workers are the first to be hired. But when an economy weakens, they are the first to be fired or laid off.
When theGrio asked whether the administration was concerned about the latter prospect, Joelle Gamble, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, said the data is less worrisome when peeling back the layers.
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Co-founded in 2004 by Baszucki and Erik Cassel, Roblox attracts over 66 million people to its platform every day and is a behemoth in the world of children’s gaming. Roblox encompasses millions of social online games and provides software that allows anyone to make them. Games like the pet simulator Adopt Me! and the role-playing adventure Brookhaven RP have received over 30 billion visits each.
During the pandemic as schools and gathering spots shut down, young people embraced Roblox as a way to play and socialize with their friends. As usage skyrocketed, Roblox expanded its workforce, which went from 830 full-time workers in 2020 to 2,100 at the end of last year. Revenue jumped from $924 million to $2.23 billion over the same period.
The company now embodies the massive economic opportunity and cultural influence of the video-game industry. But it also reflects some of its most conspicuous shortcomings, particularly around gender and racial diversity. Like many of its peers, both the executives and rank-and-file workers at Roblox skew heavily male, according to internal metrics Roblox shared with Bloomberg. Roblox said it has no targets around hiring or promoting diverse employees.
Over the years, Baszucki, who is worth $3 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has taken a hands-off approach to diversity at the company, according to several people who have worked with him. Like a lot of technical leaders, he has a meritocratic view of culture that the best workers will rise to the top without the need for pro-active institutional intervention. Roblox said that to this day he personally approves each company hire.
“What’s the definition of the best people? It’s subjective,” said Genie Harrison, an attorney who represented several women who sued Riot Games over allegations of discrimination, resulting in a $100 million settlement this year and an agreement by the video-game company to pay for a diversity and inclusion program. “Whatever the decision-makers’ definition of best person is will automatically deselect some people.”
In response, Roblox’s spokesperson Fish said the company believes “in the value of having a diverse and inclusive workplace to support our mission of connecting a billion people with optimism and civility.”
The company also provided Bloomberg with internal data showing the percentage of women at the company has grown over the past three years, as has the racial diversity of its workforce.
The spokesperson cited Roblox’s “unbiased system for assessing and selecting the best talent,” which does not involve setting targets for the demographic makeup of the company’s staff. Over two years ago, Roblox introduced an equitable performance-evaluation program that Fish said should ensure “fairness and consistency in the review process.”
Over a dozen current and former employees, most of whom requested anonymity over fear of career repercussions, said Roblox’s efforts have not gone far enough to address their concerns about diversity and the marginalization of women and minorities.
Former Roblox recruiter Brandon Davis, who is Black, said that during his nine months at the company beginning in June 2021, Roblox made little effort to hire a diverse group of candidates unlike other tech companies where he has worked, including Meta Platforms Inc. He said he once attempted to gather colleagues for a photo shoot for the website that would highlight Roblox’s commitment to diversity, but faced challenges rounding up enough diverse employees. “There weren’t enough Black people to make ‘Black at Roblox,’” he said.
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The discovery of a mass grave containing 87 people n Sudan’s Darfur region is yet another atrocity in a brutal, three-month-long conflict in the country and an echo of infamous horrors of Sudan’s recent past.
Just two years ago, Sudan seemed a tentative success story after years of conflict, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, and a decades-long dictatorship. But since April, conflict between the nation’s military and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group has essentially halted Sudan’s hopes for a democratic future, created a humanitarian crisis, and threatened fragile regional stability. A series of ceasefires have failed to contain the violence, which began with rival military leaders battling for control after ousting the civilian transitional prime minister — offering little hope for an end to the brutality.
United Nations investigators announced the existence of the mass grave on Thursday, on the eve of a mediation effort hosted by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Sisi and other regional leaders have convened in Cairo in an effort to keep the conflict in Sudan from spreading and further destabilizing the neighboring countries.
The bodies in the grave include members of a non-Arab-speaking ethnic group called the Masalit, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as others allegedly killed by the RSF forces and allied militia in the region over eight days in June. The dead include seven women and seven children, as well as people who died because they were unable to seek medical treatment for injuries sustained in the violence.
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Scores of religious groups and churches took to the streets of several cities in Malawi on Thursday to denounce same-sex marriage before a constitutional court hearing next week.
The court is expected to sit for two days from 17 July to consider a case brought by Jana Gonani, a transgender woman who was charged with “unnatural” behaviour.
Gonani was convicted in December 2021 by the Mangochi senior magistrate court of an offence contrary to section 153 (c) of the Penal Code. She has appealed to the special court to declare the legislation unconstitutional, arguing that the laws violate citizens’ rights to privacy and dignity. The case is being interpreted by the protesters as a step towards legitimising LGBTQ+ relationships.
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Alabama Republicans took a major step toward openly defying the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, advancing a new congressional map that fails to comply with the court’s landmark Voting Rights Act decision in June. In Allen v. Milligan, Chief Justice John Roberts ordered the state to draw an additional congressional district that gives Black voters a meaningful opportunity to elect the representative of their choice; instead, Republican legislators have drawn a white-majority district that Donald Trump would have handily carried in 2020. Lawmakers passed this map out of committee on a party-line vote, and the GOP-controlled Legislature appears likely to adopt it by Friday.
There is no real chance that the district court which struck down Alabama’s first map will uphold this one. It will be dead on arrival—as Republican legislators must realize. It seems, then, that these lawmakers hope the Supreme Court will decline to enforce a ruling that is barely a month old. Like Louisiana Republicans, who are currently pursuing a similar tactic over a similar racial gerrymander, Alabama legislators think the Supreme Court may walk back its newfound commitment to the Voting Rights Act. More than half a century after the Civil Rights Movement, these Southern states are maintaining their resistance to multiracial democracy and looking to the Supreme Court to play along.
The political subjugation of Black Americans in Alabama today is stark—so stark that even Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh could not deny it. After the 2020 census, the state Legislature enacted a brazen racial gerrymander designed to dilute the votes of racial minorities. It carved up Alabama’s two majority-Black regions, Montgomery and the Black Belt, distributing voters of color into majority-white districts where they would hold little political influence. The Legislature then crammed remaining voters of color into a single majority-Black district. As a result, Black residents controlled just one of Alabama’s seven congressional districts, even though they made up nearly a third of the state’s population.
A three-judge district court—which included two Trump appointees—found that this map violated the Voting Rights Act by denying minority voters an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. In June, the Supreme Court agreed, with Roberts and Kavanaugh joining the three liberal justices to uphold the district court’s ruling. Roberts’ opinion sharply criticized Alabama for its contrived efforts to nullify what remains of the VRA. It gave a full-throated endorsement to the district court opinion, which ordered the state to draw two districts “in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.”
A court can’t get much clearer than that. And yet it was apparently not explicit enough for Alabama Republicans: As the New York Times’ Emily Cochrane reported on Monday, the Legislature’s reapportionment committee adopted a map that has two alleged “opportunity districts”—those in which minority residents have a fair shot at electing their favored representative. The first has a Black voting-age population of 52 percent. The second has a Black voting-age population of 42 percent.
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