Recommendation to move Confederate mounument to a black cemetray sounds like satire news.

Can we have a talk involving the most ridiculous recommendation ever?

Given our current national and state political climate, there are numerous bad proposals that come to mind. None of them are as offensive and ill-judged as the one made to place part of the torn down Confederate monument inside the old courthouse and the other part in a black cemetery.

I was convinced it was satire journalism, "MSNBC to air Obama's 2004 Convention Speech during Trump's address to nation", Andy Borowitz’s recent column in the New Yorker. You know it’s not true, but it’s funny and insulting enough to make some think it’s true.

Dawn Baumgartner Vaughn’s reporting on the proposals of the committee appointed to determine the fate of the Confederate monument torn down by protestors in 2017, felt like a joke. A terrible joke.  A joke intended to offend black residents. Why would they make such insensitive recommendations?

I wish I could pray and make the truth go away. Can someone snap their fingers and take us back to the day before the committee stood before members of the Board of County Commissioners and City Council. Please, make it go away.

How did this happen?

The recommendation for part of the monument to be placed inside the old courthouse included turning the base into public art. I’m not sure how an artist can legitimately convert a symbol of hate into art. I remember an NPR segment with David Greene, a Scottish business student, that suggested "Much like beauty, art is in the eye of the beholder", but anything connected to the Confederacy is just ugly. That’s my unyielding position on that.

It’s safe to conclude the committee has wasted taxpayers time in waiting for a reasonable solution. We hoped those appointed would come back with answers that would appease the hotheads on both sides of Civil War leanings. The debate on Confederate monuments has left numerous people emotionally dead after banter regarding the merits of Southern pride.

These proposals aren’t a compromise. They add venom to the bite. Did the committee think about the rage related to placing the statue of a Confederate soldier in a black cemetery? How is that better than placing the symbol of white supremacy in front of the old courthouse? Both are bad, but how do members of the committee justify placing the statute in a place that honors the dead?

It feels like white supremacy declaring the power to place you there. I’ll pass.

Durham Mayor Steve Schewel was quick to wash his hands of all responsibility. He told Baumgartner it’s now up to the county commissioners to decide what to do with the committee’s recommendations. It’s smart to walk away before this blows up in his face. Schewel was down with forming the committee, but now he’s only willing to offer free advice.

My advice is for a more proactive position. What’s wrong with declaring this won’t work in Durham. It was politically expedient to put your foot in the mud, but you pull it out when it gets too dirty. Leaving the commissioners on deck to deal with these laughable recommendations is not the leadership we deserve.

I wish it was satire, but this is the type of news that will have people across the nation laughing at Durham like we’re severely stuck on uplifting ridiculous recommendations.

Can we talk about gentrification without lifting reparations as a solution?

I’ve been watching and listening as local politicians, my hometown newspaper and concerned citizens discuss gentrification. Something is missing. The truth is hard to face.

Communities from coast to coast are talking about gentrification. It’s impact in widening the economic gap makes it virtually impossible for many people to obtain housing. There’s a lot of chatter about equaling the playing field. The exchange involving making things better is just talk devoid of conversations related to how gentrification happened and what it takes to fix this horrific mess.

You can’t talk about gentrification without dialogue involving reparations.

People avoid lifting reparations as a credible solution. When asked about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ A Case for Reparation (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/), Bernie Sanders replied it’s  too hard to pass the approval of lawmakers (https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bernie+sanders+reparations+for+slavery&view=detail&mid=A34F00E1FC90C5323C3FA34F00E1FC90C5323C3F&FORM=VIRE

 Sanders’s response reflects the general mood of many progressive thinkers. Gentrification is a problem that requires attention, but legislation aimed at addressing the conditions that create gentrification are too hard to consider.

Anything less than solutions reflective of public policies that shape and maintain “ghettos” dismiss the role race plays in fostering housing disparities. They fail to ponder how systemic racism set the stage for public policies that managed the movement of black people. Gentrification, more than being about economic disparity, is about the hostile takeover of areas once designed to house black people.

Gentrification demands real talk regarding how spaces created for black housing is deemed less valuable than where whites live. The terminology of ghetto suggests an intentional decision to cage black people into limited space. Gentrification is about altering the value of black space due to the ejection of black residents.

Gentrification is about the history of redlining, urban renewal and the documented discrimination in granting black soldiers VA loans for housing. It’s about how black people are denied the accumulation of family wealth by virtue of what has, and continues to be, deprived by the application of policies rooted in systemic racism.

Th argument involving reparations is transcendent of talk about paying black folks for their ancestor’s enslavement. Reparations is also about ondoing the wealth gap created by public policies intended to limit the progress of black people while stimulating wealth for white homeowners. Naming the history sways our understanding involving what is required to repair this vicious cycle of oppression.

Reparations is the word many progressives avoid. It’s too hard. It shifts the narrative of a class war. It implants the damage of systemic racism in the middle of a platform that seeks universal health care, free and affordable public education, increasing the minimum wage, raising taxes on the 1% and expanding social security. It forces deep consideration on how gentrification is made possible due to policies that limit the accumulation of black wealth.

Anything short of this discussion places band-aids on a complex issue. We fail in promoting polices executed to create alternative housing for those who need it the most. Gentrification is about an expanding homeless population. Gentrification is about mounting housing cost. All of that is true, but all that fits within the context of a long history of policies that intentionally kept black people poorer than whites.

The solution is reparations, but few people want to talk about that.

I’ve been watching and listening as local politicians, my hometown newspaper and concerned citizens discuss gentrification. Something is missing. The truth is hard to face.

Communities from coast to coast are talking about gentrification. It’s impact in widening the economic gap makes it virtually impossible for many people to obtain housing. There’s a lot of chatter about equaling the playing field. The exchange involving making things better is just talk devoid of conversations related to how gentrification happened and what it takes to fix this horrific mess.

You can’t talk about gentrification without dialogue involving reparations.

People avoid lifting reparations as a credible solution. When asked about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ A Case for Reparation (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/), Bernie Sanders replied it’s  too hard to pass the approval of lawmakers (https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bernie+sanders+reparations+for+slavery&view=detail&mid=A34F00E1FC90C5323C3FA34F00E1FC90C5323C3F&FORM=VIRE

 Sanders’s response reflects the general mood of many progressive thinkers. Gentrification is a problem that requires attention, but legislation aimed at addressing the conditions that create gentrification are too hard to consider.

Anything less than solutions reflective of public policies that shape and maintain “ghettos” dismiss the role race plays in fostering housing disparities. They fail to ponder how systemic racism set the stage for public policies that managed the movement of black people. Gentrification, more than being about economic disparity, is about the hostile takeover of areas once designed to house black people.

Gentrification demands real talk regarding how spaces created for black housing is deemed less valuable than where whites live. The terminology of ghetto suggests an intentional decision to cage black people into limited space. Gentrification is about altering the value of black space due to the ejection of black residents.

Gentrification is about the history of redlining, urban renewal and the documented discrimination in granting black soldiers VA loans for housing. It’s about how black people are denied the accumulation of family wealth by virtue of what has, and continues to be, deprived by the application of policies rooted in systemic racism.

Th argument involving reparations is transcendent of talk about paying black folks for their ancestor’s enslavement. Reparations is also about ondoing the wealth gap created by public policies intended to limit the progress of black people while stimulating wealth for white homeowners. Naming the history sways our understanding involving what is required to repair this vicious cycle of oppression.

Reparations is the word many progressives avoid. It’s too hard. It shifts the narrative of a class war. It implants the damage of systemic racism in the middle of a platform that seeks universal health care, free and affordable public education, increasing the minimum wage, raising taxes on the 1% and expanding social security. It forces deep consideration on how gentrification is made possible due to policies that limit the accumulation of black wealth.

Anything short of this discussion places band-aids on a complex issue. We fail in promoting polices executed to create alternative housing for those who need it the most. Gentrification is about an expanding homeless population. Gentrification is about mounting housing cost. All of that is true, but all that fits within the context of a long history of policies that intentionally kept black people poorer than whites.

The solution is reparations, but few people want to talk about that.