REQUIRED READING
// YGBQ ECONOMICS //
Large income gaps persist between men — but not women.
Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for BLACK BOYS
The New York Times
White boys who grow up rich are likely to remain that way. Black boys raised at the top, however, are more likely to become poor than to stay wealthy in their own adult households.
Most white boys raised in wealthy families will stay rich or upper middle class as adults, but black boys raised in similarly rich households will not.
// YGBQ HEALTH | WELLNESS //
Jennings taking part in Sturdevant’s support group in May. Participants were asked to look in the mirror & say something positive about themselves.
AMERICA'S HIDDEN HIV EPIDEMIC: GAY BLACK MEN
The New York Times
LAST YEAR, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, using the first comprehensive national estimates of lifetime risk of H.I.V. for several key populations, predicted that if current rates continue, one in two African-American gay and bisexual men will be infected with the virus. That compares with a lifetime risk of one in 99 for all Americans and one in 11 for white gay and bisexual men.
// YGBQ ECONOMICS //
250 years of slavery. 90 years of Jim Crow. 60 years of separate but equal. 35 years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
The CASE for REPARATIONS
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic
America was built on the preferential treatment of white people—395 years of it. Vaguely endorsing a cuddly, feel-good diversity does very little to redress this.
Liberals today mostly view racism not as an active, distinct evil but as a relative of white poverty and inequality. They ignore the long tradition of this country actively punishing black success—and the elevation of that punishment, in the mid-20th century, to federal policy. President Lyndon Johnson may have noted in his historic civil-rights speech at Howard University in 1965 that “Negro poverty is not white poverty.” But his advisers and their successors were, and still are, loath to craft any policy that recognizes the difference.
// honoring OUR YGBQ ANCESTORS //
LORRAINE HANSBERRY
A Raisin in the Sun + Young, Gifted & Black PLAYWRIGHT, JOURNALIST & ACTIVIST
"I am a writer. I am audacious enough to think of myself as an artist.
Though it is a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly dynamic To Be Young, Gifted, & Black!
LORRAINE HANSBERRy (with NINA SIMONE), YGBQ ARTISTS & ACTIVISTS, c. 1963
// honoring OUR YGBQ ANCESTORS //
NINA SIMONE
High Priestess of Soul // "to be Young, Gifted, & Black" SINGER/SONGWRITER/MUSICIAN & ACTIVIST
“To Be Young, Gifted & Black” — an ode to Lorraine Hansberry by Nina Simone, June 1969.
Interview & recording session: Live at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA.
// honoring OUR YGBQ ANCESTORS //
JAMES BALDWIN +
BAYARD RUSTIN
JAMES BALDWIN - ACTIVIST/WRITER - the fire next time, GIOVANNI’s ROOM, IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (JENKINS, 2019)
BAYARD RUSTIN ORGANIZER OF 1963 MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR JOBS FREEDOM & ADVISOR TO DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.