czvasser

Author: czvasser

As a kid, I grew up in Morrisania, in the Bronx and learned to grow food in the Crotona Park victory garden. That ultimately led to a green career including 20 years at the Bronx Zoo and more than 30 years in non-profit management. I learned to cook at my grandmothers knee before I was 10 years old and still love it. My love basketball and I referee boys, girls High School Varsity and recreational basketball. I write, I write, I write. I was an English major with a thought of going into journalism. Hmm, but I still write everyday.

May 1, 2016 czvasser Fried Chicken

Black Like Me?

Black Like Me? by Andrew Grant-Thomas

My Mellow 4/23/16: Great article. Connecticut, especially New Haven, is considered by many to be one of the most racist places in America. You were truly lucky, but it’s clear you have you share of “other-side-of -the -coin” stories. Yes, beneficial treatment is from the same poisonous tree. Tokenism is a perfect example. We’ll let one in that meets our criteria and standards and he/she will suffice for the entire community and assuage our feelings of guilt and impropriety. That’s just wrong.

I’m surprised you didn’t mention skin color. lighter colored blacks have always enjoyed some of the better treatment you mentioned. They also often benefit from the non-black sounding names and the more educated speech patterns. A friend of mine who was a top quarter miler and attended an ivy league school on scholarship learned from his coach to be a better runner he had to learn “to embrace the pain. Pain was going to come. Learn to understand it, work with it and through it”. I agree. We need to embrace race.

May 1, 2016February 23, 2017 czvasser Afroticity

The Criminalization of Black Girls in the Classroom

The Criminalization of Black Girls in the Classroom by Alexia Underwood

My Mellow 5/1/16: Great article. This issue critically affects our community. My daughter, while a HS student, was arrested. Under most circumstances, the incident would have been ignored but the system allowed three girls to be arrested, to spend the night in jail and be suspended from school for two weeks. Without the appropriate supports, for a lot of girls, that incident could have been the beginning of a terrible down spiral.

Limiting education and, subsequently, criminalization of Black people is an important part of the Plan of Oppression (PoP). America has moved from on-the-books separate but equal laws to over-policing and over-incarceration that disenfranchises the Black community. Over-policing and over-incarceration replace intimidation and murder and the PoP continues to demonstrate under it Black Lives Don’t Matter. Just as limiting education and incarceration robs black men of decent jobs and the ability to support families and can lead to criminal careers, it also limits choices for women and creates situations that foster sexual abuse and leads to careers in the sex trade especially since young, black women are highly desirable.

Black is the Color of My Life from Fried Chicken & Philosophy