Bury the flag of treason: After the Marines banned displays of the pro-slavery Confederate flag, Sen. (and Army vet and former Veterans Affairs official) Tammy Duckworth urged the other branches of the U.S. military to follow suit. On Tuesday, the Navy announced it would prohibit the Confederate flag "from all public spaces and work areas aboard Navy installations, ships, aircraft and submarines." Retired Army Major General Paul Eaton, a former commander of Fort Benning in Georgia, urged the Army to rename that base and nine other Army installations named after Confederate generals. "Bad policy that such important Army posts be named after traitors. Time for change," Eaton wrote. The idea was shot down—for now—by the White House.
In other news: The Senate unanimously confirmed Gen. Charles Q. Brown to be the next Air Force chief and the first African American leader of a military service. Brown is the second African American officer to sit on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after former Chairman Gen. Colin Powell. Brown, who experienced racism in his career, told CNN that he understood the importance—and difficulty—of tackling racial animus in the military at this momentous time. "I'm thinking about how full of emotion I am, not just for George Floyd, but for the many African Americans that have suffered the same fate as George Floyd."
The Tulsa Massacre: The decision of President Trump to host a campaign rally at the site of one of America’s worst massacres of black people—initially choosing a day dedicated to African American freedom—has, perhaps inadvertently, educated millions of people about a horrible chapter in the nation’s history. The president, facing criticism for his timing, delayed until Saturday his rally in Tulsa, originally scheduled for Friday, a day known as Juneteenth. Tulsa was the site of the killings of an estimated 300 African Americans by a white mob in 1921, a massacre that was hidden from generations of Americans. Last year, many learned of the massacre for the first time when the hit HBO series Watchmen re-created the event.
Speaking of Juneteenth: Nike, Twitter, the New York Times, and Vox Media are among companies that are making Juneteenth a paid day off, CNN reports. Nike CEO John Donahoe announced the holiday as one among many steps the company was taking in response to the nationwide protests. Juneteenth honors the day in 1865 on which, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Union soldiers landed in Galveston, Texas, and announced that enslaved African Americans were free.
Wrong question: Don’t ask if these George Floyd protests are like 1968, writes historian Thomas Sugrue. Instead, he suggests in a Nat Geo article, look at the spasms of American violence against African Americans in 1919-21 and 1943. “But more than ever before, today’s demonstrations are markedly interracial,” Sugrue writes. “It suggests a new phase of opposition that is uniting groups who did not have much in common for most of American history.” How might these protests end? Much depends on what the government does, writes ethicist Peniel E. Joseph for Nat Geo. “Americans of all backgrounds have a generational opportunity,” Joseph writes, ”to choose love over fear, King’s “Beloved Community” over “Law and Order,” investing in racially segregated and economically impoverished black neighborhoods over punishing, containing, surveilling, and imprisoning black people.”
| | | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment