Vol. 50 No. 34
December 12, 2019 -December 18, 2019
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them and these will continue till they have resisted either with words or blows or words or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress. —Fredrick Douglass (1849)
Chicago Rapper Juice WRLD Dead At 21
Publisher’s Corner Email: sbamericannews@gmail.com Clifton Harris Editor in Chief Publisher of The San Bernardino AMERICAN News
Black Law Enforcement Speaks Out on Proposed Menthol Ban
National News
Local/National News
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Chicago Rapper Juice WRLD 21-year-old rising Chicago rapper Juice WRLD was pronounced dead this morning, Sunday, December 9, 2019, after experiencing a medical emergency at Chicago’s Midway International Airport. Juice WRLD, born Jarad Anthony Higgins and known for topping the album charts this year with his acclaimed work Death Race for Love, was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead as first reported by TMZ. The Cook County medical examiner confirmed Higgin’s death to the New York Times.
Emergency crews arrived at Midway International Airport around 3:30 A.M. after Higgins experienced an unknown “medical issue”, according to the Chicago Fire Department and the Cook County medical examiner’s office. It was later confirmed by the Chicago Police Department that Higgins suffered a medical emergency shortly after getting off a private jet. An autopsy has yet to be performed, but Higgins reportedly suffered a seizure just seven days after celebrating his 21st birthday.
“A 21-year-old male suffered a medical emergency and was transferred to [Advocate Christ Medical Center] in Oak Lawn where he was pronounced dead,” a rep for the Chicago Police Department told Rolling Stone Magazine. The authorities would not identify the male as the investigation was still pending. No cause of death was provided. In just two years, Juice WRLD was able to make his mark on the music industry, landing three chart-topping albums. After his breakout single, All Girls Are the
Same, he madehis 2018 album debut with Goodbye & Good Riddance, which wowed fans with the unexpected Hot 100 hit Lucid Dreams. Following that he released a collaborative mixtape with fellow rapper, Future. This mixtape, WRLD on Drugs, peaked at Number 2 on album charts. Upon learning of Higgins’ death, fellow musicians took to social media to pay homage to the young talent, who had a very promising career ahead of him. Please keep his family in your prayers at this time.
Part 2 - A Quest for Garifuna Visibility in America's Census By Khalil Abdullah/Ethnic Media Services
Gilberto Amaya Washington, D.C. (Ethnic Media Services) - Gilberto Amaya is a descendant of Africans of various tribes captured and transported in the 1700s to St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean. Though intended for the harsh yoke of servitude, they ran the ships aground, then escaped inland where they intermarried with the islands' indigenous Carib and Arawak Indians. Their progeny, also referred to as the Black Caribs, are better known today as Garifuna. After wars of resistance against the British, the Garifuna were captured and forcibly shipped to Honduras. Amaya was born there in. An international development consultant who emigrated to the United States in 1989, he proudly identifies himself as Garifuna, and, as proudly, as black and as an Afro Latino. The Hispanic/Latino population's dramatic growth, captured in the U.S. censuses of 2000 and 2010, did not go unnoticed by America's political class. Amaya remembers the raw opportunism and frantic attempts
of the Democratic and Republican parties to tap into what was perceived as a potential source of voters by the Democratic and Republican parties. Likewise, corporations, awakened to an emerging client base and potential consumer market, solicited Spanish language speakers. "I remember the lawyers all over the region where I live in Virginia running around, struggling with their broken Spanish to reach out to the Hispanic population because it [was] growing so fast." According to the Census Bureau, Hispanics in the U.S. are nearing 60 million, more than 18 percent of the population. By 2050, this cohort is projected to rise to approximately 133 million people and will comprise one-third of American residents. Hispanics are "the nation's largest ethnic or racial minority," the Census Bureau reports, and 10 states already have at least one million Hispanic residents. For many Americans, the terms Hispanic and Latino are interchangeable, but for purposes of the census, Hispanic refers primarily to descendants of forebears from Mexico or other polities once under Spanish rule. Latino describes the populations of Central and South America, or Latin America, but includes Brazil, colonized by the Portuguese. How the descendants of the millions of Africans imported into this once New World defined themselves is rarely addressed. In some countries, Amaya explained, those who owned slaves included them in census
responses as an indicator of wealth. After independence, he said, "governments sought to present a whiter face to the world in order to attract European immigrants." The hierarchical color codes denoting mixed blood and status, with "black" at the bottom, were maintained as a social construct, but discarded for purposes of the census. With guidelines set by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the U.S. Census Bureau uses a linguistic panacea of sorts. Hispanics and Latinos are not a race, but rather an ethnic group that can be of any race. The bureau notes that, "in 2000 and in 2010, the Some Other Race (SOR) population, which was intended to be a small residual category, was the third largest race group. This was primarily due to Hispanics identifying with any of the OMB race categories. In addition, segments of other populations, such as Afro Caribbean and Middle Eastern or North African populations, did not identify with any of the OMB race categories and identified as SOR." The 2020 census race categories will be the same as in 2010: white; black or Afro Am; American Indian or Alaskan Native; and then as many as 11 boxes to denote Asian. In order for Garifuna to be recognized in the 2020 census, Amaya will have to write Garifuna or Honduran on the form, under the Hispanic origin, and then also check the box for Black or African Am. Presumably, he will be
counted as both. Amaya estimates that, when adding the Afro Latino population to the black/African American one, their combined percentage of the U.S. total is probably closer to 20 percent. Amaya'sinsistenceon raising the visibility of the Afro Latino presence in America elicits discomfort in some quarters. He said he's been accused of being divisive because he points out that the Hispanic/Latino community's diversity has been understated. Amaya's letter to a Census Bureau director addressed "the concern increasingly voiced by millions in the Afro Latino community, a significant growing segment of the Hispanic population in the United States, which doesn't see itself recognized, equitably represented and sharing the benefits -including representation in government, employment services, among others." Locally, Amaya has been working with the District of Columbia's Complete Count Committee to ensure that Afro Latinos make themselves known in the 2020 census. During the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual legislative conference in September, he was a key organizer of a panel, "The Decade of the Diaspora: A Conversation on the Afro Descendant Experience in Latin America," hosted by Rep. Hank (continued on page 3)
Proposed Legislation Will Have Drastic and Debilitating Impact on Communities of Color Several state legislatures have recently proposed laws which are being directed towards what may only be viewed as a mephitic approach to issues as they relate to youthful use of e-cigarettes and vaping. We stress the concept that these proposed legislative acts would, in fact, be antithetical to healthy, robust and productive relationships between law enforcement and those they are sworn to protect as these new laws would presumably provide law enforcement officers with the authority, indeed the responsibility, to stop, interrogate and arrest persons on suspicion of selling or being in possession of untaxed cigarettes. None of these legislative efforts appear to have considered the obvious detrimental impact on communities of color, where the preferred cigarette is menthol, and approximately 80% of all African Americans who do smoke prefer to smoke menthol cigarettes. They as well seem to have totally disregarded the strong recommendations of the 2009 Federal Tobacco Control Act in reaching out to subject matter experts when developing the actual language of their legislation. To date, there has been no known input from law
enforcement experts, and specifically none from members of any of the nearly thirty organizations representing African American and Latino criminal justice practitioners in the Northern United States who are infinitely aware of the devastating impact of adverse law enforcement interaction in communities of color. And we must not forget the deadly result of law enforcement interaction with Eric Garner in New York for exactly what these laws would prohibit-the illicit sale and possession of untaxed cigarettes. We strongly urge members of the community to revert to their roots as civil rights activists and make their voices heard on this issue. And we demand that legislators reconsider their proposals and the obvious consequences it will have on a community that is now, again, being adversely targeted. The National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is a premier national organization representing the interests and concerns of African American, Latino and other criminal justice practitioners of color serving in law enforcement, corrections, and investigative agencies throughout the United States, and the communities in which they serve.
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