On The Vine: Joy to the hood

Black joy.

Two words honestly that shouldn’t even go together. Those two words, existing there on your screen, are together a battle cry of defiance.

Out of the sweltering air of the antebellum south. Out of the jaws of police dogs and clutches of Jim Crow. Out of the redlined housing projects and out of a system constructed by men hell bent on keeping Black folks three-fifths their equal.

Black joy.

It shouldn’t have happened, but 400-plus years of struggle and still my people found it. Joy.

Let’s celebrate that.

Around the block

This Black History Month we’re highlighting joy. Tell us: What does Black joy mean to you?

This past year — and the one before that and years and years prior — was tough on us. Traumas, anxieties and frustrations waiting around damn near every corner, and I think I’ve picked up on something ... that doesn’t necessarily go away.

So we want to do something a little different for Black History Month this year. We want to highlight and celebrate the moments of joy — Black joy.

As friend of The Vine Cortlynn Stark writes:

That trauma makes an impact. It can make it hard to get out of bed in the morning. Hard to go to work. Hard to simply exist in this world.

That’s why celebrating our joy matters.

Black joy is anything and everything we want it to be — you can’t put it in a box.

Black joy is unlimited...

Tell us — using the form — what Black joy means to you. Please submit a photo that shows what Black joy looks like in your life. We will collect these responses and publish them in an upcoming package about how Black joy is experienced in Kansas City. We won’t publish a response without speaking with you first. We want to make sure that we’re including voices from across the metro area, so please share this with your friends and family.

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Kansas City police use force against Black people more often. Their own data shows it

It took 11 months to obtain and sift through more than 600 Kansas City police records. The result, this piece of journalism highlighting a glaring racial disparity: in a city that is 28% Black, 57% of the instances of excessive use of force were against Black people.

The Star’s Katie Moore reports:

They don’t care about Black life.

That’s what Roderick Reed, 54, believes about the Kansas City Police Department after witnessing officers slam a woman’s head into the ground and kneel on her neck as she cried out...

In a city that is about 28% Black, more than 57% of the use of force incidents from 2019 to July 2021 were against Black people, according to previously unpublished police data obtained by The Star.

The records contain more than 600 entries reflecting police use of force. More than 330 were against Black people.

They include fatal shootings of unarmed Black men as well as cases that did not result in death and often don’t make the news, but have left people injured and with more distrust — and disdain — for the police department.

However the number of total incidents was likely more as some confrontations, including a deadly 2019 police shooting, were unaccounted for.

Beyond the block

Advocacy groups ready to lobby Biden in push to nominate nation’s first Black woman Supreme Court

Stephen Breyer, who’s served as a liberal stalwart on the United States Supreme Court for 27 years, has announced his plan to retire, paving the way for President Biden to tap a successor who could serve for decades to come.

It’s also an opportunity for the president to fulfill a campaign promise, “making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court.”

April Ryan reports for theGrio:

Groups are ready to lobby President Biden to keep his bold campaign promise.

April Reign, the co-founder of Sista SCOTUS, told theGrio that immediately following the news reports of Breyer’s impending resignation, “President Biden has shown leadership …in this instance and in nominating Black women throughout the federal judiciary, and we’re very appreciative of that.”

There is a field of qualified Black women that have a pedigree to fill the job. Some of those names on Reign’s list are thought to be on the president’s short list, including United States circuit judge at the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who served as a former law clerk for Justice Breyer and Sherrilyn Ifill, the outgoing head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

The nation’s oldest civil rights organization, The NAACP, saluted Justice Breyer for some of his decisions on the court in some landmark rights cases but wrote in a statement, “Our Supreme Court desperately requires balance. The Court was already predisposed against civil rights. Then Donald Trump, aided by the Senate which broke all traditions and customs, installed three justices who have taken it in an extreme direction that threatens our civil rights for a lifetime.”

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Hype joy

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