Jun 052023
 

Yesterday, My drive was pretty uneventful except for some pretty heavy rain on the way down. It didn’t last long, but it gave the wipers a challenge on their highest setting while it lasted, and affected visibility. We played four games of Scrabble, not competetively, but with the aim of using allt he letters legitimately – and succeeded on all but thelast one. We were left with 8 vowels between us and the poard so tight that there was really no place to put any of them. He returnes all greetings. Today, both short takes are from substack – I apologize for that, but both of them include Tulsa (the Greenwood massacre) in their contents, and that anniversary is already a few days old.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The Good in Us – Black Wall Street
Quote – Since the end of the Civil War, the thing most likely to incite white violence against emancipated Black citizens was their success. Giving Black Americans full rights, beyond the freedom that had so grudgingly been granted to them after the Union prevailed, proved to be a bridge too far for many whites—even Northern Republicans…. In retrospect, it seems self-evident that the driver behind the essential re-enslavement of Black people after Reconstruction was Black prosperity.
Click through for full column. Even before I realized how horribly many massacres there have been in the US, I had begun to realize that, although the impulse for anyone in a marginalized group is to demonstrate their own worth, that is often unsuccessful at best and dangerous at worst. But she says it better than I can.

Letters from an American – June 1, 2023
Quote – In other economic news, the Biden administration today announced actions designed to address racial bias in the valuation of homes. This sounds sort of in the weeds for administration action, I know, but it is actually an important move for addressing the nation’s wealth inequality…. Homeownership is the most important factor in creating generational wealth—that is, wealth that passes from one generation to the next—both because homeownership essentially forces savings as people pay mortgages, and because homes tend to appreciate in value…. There is a reason that the administration has centered its housing policies on June 1. This is the anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre,
Click through for full article. I’m very glad the Biden administration is doing this. I hope they stay on it when it comes to actually making it happen. For more than 150 years we have trusted people to do the right thing and, frankly, that doesn’t work.

Food For Thought

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