Inequality gets even more entrenched when a person of colour reaches the top

Yasmin Alibhai Brown in The Independent

Black anger is being directed against Barack Obama. Not before time. Millions of African-Americans came out to mark the historical moment of his election in 2008. They praised the Lord, and wept with disbelief and joy. The whole of Africa burst into song. His inauguration was among the most watched global events ever.

In his victory speeches, Obama invoked Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, and Martin Luther King. Real freedom  would come, he said – so too justice and unity. Today his black supporters can claim, with some justification, that he failed to deliver. Badly. Deplorably.

African-Americans are still more likely to go to prison than to university, to be victimised by police, courts and various state institutions, to be poor and ignored by Washington, to have neo-natal mortality rates twice as high as white babies, to have lower life expectancy, and so on and on.

They are out on the streets again, with brothers and sisters of other races, all across the US – in Washington, New York, Baltimore, Denver, Arizona, everywhere, now shedding tears of rage. ’Tis come to this? How and why? Because five unarmed black males have been killed this year by white police officers.

In July, Eric Garner – father of six, suspected of selling black market cigarettes – was pushed to the ground by a NYPD policeman, and held so tight that he died. A video of the incident records him saying; “I can’t breathe”. In August, Michael Brown perished after he was shot a dozen times by a Darren Wilson  in Ferguson, Missouri. Apparently the teenager had refused orders to walk on the pavement and that led to an altercation. Grand juries decided not to indict the policemen involved.

In November, in Cleveland, Ohio, Tamir Rice was killed by 26-year-old Timothy Loehmann, an officer deemed unfit for duty in 2012. Rice, a schoolboy who loved basketball, had a toy gun in his hands. His family are suing the police. The same month Akai Gurley, 28, was brought down in a darkened stairwell, by police who claim it was an “accidental discharge”. A grand jury will examine this incident.

And finally,  last Tuesday, Rumain Brisbon, who had four children,  was killed by officers in Phoenix, Arizona. Police said they thought the bottle of pills he was holding was a gun. Stevie Wonder wonders how this is possible. I wonder that he wonders.  Living on the hills of fame and fortune, it must be hard to know what is being done to your people way down below.

Seems it is even harder for the President. In February 2012, when Trayvon Martin, 17, was shot dead by a neighbourhood watch co-ordinator in Florida, Obama did at least identify with the pain of the parents and community: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon”. (The police officer was, needless to say, acquitted. ) Today Obama makes, makes tepid, middle-management noises about the responsibilities of law enforcers. No fire or fury in his belly any more. Like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, he is now a caretaker of white power.

Obama’s self-belief must be crashing as the accusations build up. Black congressman Charlie Rangel  is  forthright: “Having a black president has not solved the problem at all. ...the colour of one’s skin determines how lives are going to be and whether they live at all.” New York University academic Frank Roberts goes further: “We had hoped he would be Moses; he turned out to be the pharaoh. We have a lame duck president who does not have a moral conscience.” Or as an angry young black man put it: “Obama is a bummer”.

Perhaps it was foolish to expect too much from him.  He has pushed through health care reforms, but that’s it folks. Remember all that loose talk about post-racial America? It actually stopped the fight, disabled the struggle so lethally that today R&B star Alicia Keys is able to say, “We absolutely feel disregarded as human beings.”

It seems inequality gets even more firmly entrenched when a woman or person of colour gets to the very top. Margaret Thatcher didn’t do it for feminism and Theresa May won’t either. We have more MPs and peers of colour than ever before and racism is rising again. Once they get to where they want to, even those who used anti-racism to push in, go strangely quiet, seek approval rather than confrontations.

Obama’s presidency represents the perils of entryism. The rough Texan Lyndon Johnson, who pushed through civil rights legislation, did more for African-Americans than Barack Obama. Johnson didn’t give a damn for the establishment, wasn’t intimidated by white opinion. Here, Ken Livingstone pushed equality policies with courage of a kind we do not see in most black and Asian people in power. My heart cracks as I write this. The truth hurts, but can no longer be dodged or excused.

Bethlehem as you’ve never seen it before

Mary, heavily pregnant, and Joseph arrive in Bethlehem. Christ is born in a stable. The angel Gabriel had foretold this birth of the son of God, come down to save humans from temptations and themselves. The first believers followed the brightest of stars to pay homage. Bethlehem is where it all began.

It’s Christmas again. Millions of Nativity scenes are being re-enacted in infant and primary schools all over the world. Parents film these scenes, and rejoice. But do any of them know what is happening to the actual Bethlehem?

I didn’t until I saw a new film, Open Bethlehem, by a Palestinian woman, Leila Sansour. A Christian, she was born and raised there, and then, like many others, went off to the West. Her father’s death drew her back and she found her home town cowed and shattered by aggressive Israeli anti-terrorism measures.

Huge walls are being built, homes and old businesses confiscated, human rights trampled. An old man died broken-hearted after his beloved shop was bulldozed. Church leaders watch helplessly. Sansour’s poignant film is both a recovery of her own memories and a cry against the lock-up of Jesus’s birthplace.

Good people rightly condemn the persecution of Christians by hardline Muslims and Hindus. But as Israel strangles the life out of Christianity’s holiest site, nobody dares speak out. This woman has. Go to her website, join her campaign. It could be the noblest thing you do this Christmas.

They might be living in caves, but it's not the homeless who are hiding

Our urban skins get ever thicker to the soaring numbers of people living on the streets. My solution? Keep building up that sense of comfortable numbness

Grace Dent in The Independent

Homeless men and women close to Stockport, Greater Manchester have been found living in a cave system, huddled in sandstone hideyholes amongst rubbish and food scraps, close to whatever they use as a toilet. Imagine an otherwordly scene from Lord of The Rings, but instead of Hobbits and  quests to overcome the dark lord Sauron, actual human beings like you and me and the simple quest to stay alive.

Wellspring, a local homeless charity, say that compared to rough sleeping in the town, the cave-dwellers at least find their new home safe and dry. Britain’s homeless problem burgeons, becoming more complex year on year. Plain facts: the financial crisis of recent years has driven up unemployment to 7.8 per cent. Meanwhile, the cost of living has risen along with house prices, and numbers of homeless people have rocketed. In London homelessness rose by 16 per cent in 2012-13, meanwhile parts of Greater Manchester saw rises of as much as 40 per cent.

When I saw pictures of the cave people in the greater Manchester area, my immediate gut-reaction was to write about them – because no one in modern Britain should live in a cave –  but within minutes I questioned whether it was really a story at all. Deep down, who would actually care? Perhaps it’s not the ever-plummeting level of squalor in which we permit human beings in Britain to live that’s of most interest here. What’s interesting is the ever-effective numbness of “the haves” – myself included when faced with “the have-nothings”.

In truth, I often spend a few moments – for the sake of my sanity – trying not to care remotely about the homeless. That girl who sits on the pavement near my house, staring at the floor, day after day, holding a paper cup for change, she’s not homeless really is she? No, most probably she’s part of a begging gang. I can ignore her. I’m very busy. And the skeletal man on crutches who sits in the Tube doorway, sometimes weeping, well I’ve seen him get on the number 158 bus so he must be going somewhere. That’s it, not homeless. Guilt absolved. And that crowd of men and women drinking themselves to death publicly, like a ghoulish piece of performance art, erecting their cardboard bedroom in the doorway of my local library, well, what can actually be done for them? Nothing, I think. In fact part of me is irate at them for messing up the aesthetic splendour of a newly stonewashed building. And will no one think of my house price?

At one point such fetid thoughts would never have crossed my mind, but the downturn has been long, the homeless keep multiplying, and our urban skins become ever thicker. So like most bleeding-heart liberals I am pained by the cave people of Stockport, but am yet to go into full St Francis of Assisi mode, and fling open my own front door.

Instead, I sit patiently waiting for “something to be done”, such as the industrious hammering up of the “affordable homes” that several Governments in my lifetime have promised. Obviously, in truth, builders and councils have no true interest in building dirt-cheap accommodation. That’s why flyers for luxury two-bedroom executive apartments, for £250,000, flood my letterbox daily. Neither do I envisage a full-throated “Golly, we were wrong” return to public housing by the Conservatives – or Labour having any muscle to do anything, especially as these days socialists love owning homes too.

Broadly speaking, I would say the Government has no real concern or plans for the rising numbers of rough sleepers, as the impoverished don’t fit in with ideals of enterprise or self-interest. Obviously, several ears may have pricked up when an advertising agency experimented with making homeless people  into 4G hotspots, in Texas, last March, but attention dwindled soon after. Furthermore I hold no hope of the homeless wangling their way onto half-buy schemes, of which the paperwork is more flummoxing and the cost more expensive than a regular mortgage. Do I have any solutions? One-bedroom stackable pods, built by charities (aka The Nimby armageddon)? Wide-scale homelessness “boot camps” where thousands of jobless graduates, trained in social care, help people in a life quandary? OK, that’s a bit kumbayah isn’t it? And, now I’ve written it down, perhaps a tiny bit Third Reich too. So, indeed, my current approach to homelessness is to build on my ongoing, ever-comfortable numbness, possibly leading one day to my simply stepping over a corpse on the way to ASDA mumbling “Oh, what a shame! Something must really be done.” If anything, Stockport’s cave people might be making a point. They’re isolated from help, but at least they’re avoiding our hand-wringing and ultimate hypocrisy.

A low-carb diet may help clear your complexion

Relaxnews
Wednesday, 10 August 2011

 

While a low-carb diet is credited with providing a slim waistline, it may also improve acne.

On August 8, WebMD News reported that low-carb eating can help clear up acne by controlling glucose levels, which can promote a healthier complexion.

People with acne may have what is called hyperinsulinemia, which is characterized by excess levels of insulin in the blood. "Foods that are low in the glycemic index (GI) may contribute to the hormonal control of acne," said Alan R. Shalita, MD, chairman of the department of dermatology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York in an interview with WebMD.

"I would encourage patients with acne to moderate the amount of carbs that they eat and not to overdo dairy," which can also cause acne, he added.

Selecting foods lower on the glycemic index means avoiding blood sugar spikes with white rice, sweets, and white flour breads and opting for fresh foods, such as vegetables, meat, and fruits.

Shalita also debunked the myth that chocolate triggers blemishes, noting that for people who do react to chocolate, it is more a result of the sugar and fat in the candy.

If you have mild to moderate acne, Shalita recommends applying an over-the-counter salicylic acid cleanser followed by a benzoyl peroxide leave-on product to help dry the skin.

"If you don't respond, see a dermatologist," he said.

Other treatments for more severe acne include some oral contraceptives and oral or topical antibiotics.