richardmurray

My final preaching on black leadership in the usa  in AALBC hopefully

Who are the Leaders of the Black Community? - Black Literature - African American Literature Book Club (aalbc.com)

MY THOUGHTS

I said all this before in this very forum but I am too lazy to find and cite myself. so i apologize for preaching

Quote

Who are the Leaders of the Black Community?

The Black community has a global existence which is intramultiracial, various regional existences<caribbean/south asia/africa/> each intramultiracial, an existence under each flag<usa/cuba/brazil/ghana/germany/pakistan/phillipines/australia> most intramultiracial.

This is the same for all  phenotypical races.

Under the USA, the black community is highly intramultiracial: DOS/Jamaican/haitian/colombian/brazilian/nigerian/ghanaian/south african/indian/phillipino/ plus many more. And many of said groups are intramultiracial. 

So, the question who are the leaders of the black community requires specification cause the black community is different based on the geographic scope you are approaching it with. 

To be blunt, what the black community in nigeria need is not the same as in jamaica or the same as in phillipines. 

So my answer is specific to the black community in the usa. I repeat , the following is specific to the black community in the usa.

Now to answer, the black community in the usa doesn't have a leader as a group or individual. But, in defense , this is all communities in the usa. The USA multiracial quality is so high no group or community has a leader, as every community or group in the usa has within it tribes or factions that just can't work together based on what they truly want. Ala even the white community in the usa is fractured. The reality is some whites want a return to a form of white power in the usa as well as a different posture of the usa in international affairs that other whites for various reasons don't want and no middle ground exist.  It is that simple. 

The same to the black community in the usa, which has historically always been multivided in unbridgeable chasms, always, from the very start of the usa. The only problem is black people who knew this didn't teach this to black children, they lied about the nature of the black community in the usa for their own agenda.  Thinking foolishly that over time the truth can be undone. The truth always wins in the end.

Quote

Over the years there have been many conversations on this forum about how Black people should pool our resources, support our businesses, and control our destiny.  

 

At this point in time I will merely restate what I said in this forum, apologize for not citing myself. 

Black people in the usa need to focus on their tribes in the village and get said tribes to be efficient in that way. As I always say to Black elephants <republicans> or Black militants or Black donkeys<democrats> or Black socialists or Black garveyites or Rastafarians or Black baptists or Black catholics or others  <I know nearly every black tribe being in nyc>  They talk so much about what other black people need to do but never seem to be able to do something within their own tribe. 

For example, the Black Elephants go on and on about financial responsibility and yet I can't recall the black elephants showing the rest of the black community their great acumen for financial responsibility to help the black community in the usa. Another example,  Black Donkeys go on and on about voting but and yet  I can't recall the black elephants showing the rest of the black community how effective voting will be to help black community in the usa. 

Black people in various tribes in the village in the usa  love complaining about what the whole community isn't doing while their tribe is doing nothing.  Wealthy black entertainers couldn't even unite and make it where BET/Motown/Philadelphia international are black owned global media brands. 

Quote

In the past, civil right organizations lead the charge in organizing successful boycotts and getting important legislation passed. Today these organizations are a shell of what they once were -- toothless.  

Well, the NAACP was white jew financed and served its purpose. And black financiers pre civil rights act had many of their financial revenue streams destroyed by the inevitable result of the civil rights act. Absent money, most organizations are like the people above complaining about what the community isn't doing while they do nothing.

Quote

Social media is seen by many as the modern way to mobilize Black people.  I've always lamented the fact that we hitch our wagons to platforms we do not own or control and claim it as a tool to support Black people.  This was always a flawed strategy. "Black Twitter" was a recent example of this.  I'd go farther and say that the entire social media universe not only does not serve Black people; it is harmful to us.

 do most in the black community want potent <note I didn't say positivit> effective leadership ? yes. Do most individuals in the black community think they are that leader ? no. in absence of potent effective leadership are people in the black community making false leaders? yes. 

But all communities go through this. Now their is a historical issue here. 

Many black leaders in the past, ala Frederick Douglass, embraced the idea of hyper individualism. Individualism in its most intense form, is against communal growth. The idea is the individual do for self, regardless of community. why blakc leaders in the past support this? Individualism is the answer to getting a multiracial populace to operate absent biases. Race will never leave humanity , calling yourself a name is a racial act, but bias is when people favor based on race. Individualism lessens biases ability to bind groups by the focus on the individual.

To that end the black community through guidance of some black leaders side the external white manipulation have embraced the individualism.

Quote

In the past, any organization that has shown a sign effectively mobilizing Black people from the Universal Negro Improvement Association to The Black Panther Party even the Nation of Islam, was actively undermined by our government.

 

Yes, any organization that functionally demanded some level of black segregation was an enemy to not only the federal government , who started the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the original KKK who had plans on making a shadow government in the usa,but organizations like the naacp financed by white jews. 

Quote

Obviously, our current lack of organization is not only a consequence of direct attacks against our organizations, but several hundreds of years of violent and legalized oppression.

and our own manipulations to ourselves.

Quote

Today are we completely rudderless as a people?  Who, or what organization, could initiate a Montogomery Bus Boycott today? Are we so happy today that a boycott is completely unnecessary?  Which organization could do what the NAACP Legal Defense Fund did to win Brown v. Board of Education, or are we happy that "race" can no longer be used to help reverse hundreds of years of being prevented from learning to read, while benefits to white people like legacy admissions continue?

Yes, in modernity, black leaders to the community in the usa, are absent. But, a why exists. It isn't unimportant how intramultiracial the black community is. Yes, all humans are humans. Yes, all black people are black people but people or humans all too often do want different things in the subtlely. The Sons of Odin want jobs and wealth but they wouldn't mind depriving blacks. Do Black Christians really want to embrace the black lgbtq+ community? I say no.

Most Black people are not happy in the usa, but most black people have accepted the individual mantra, that black leaders often utter. Black people talk community, but most of us don't feel community, most from each of us feel one against the world. Again, Community has to be exhibited, not just talked about. 

In the usa, The leaders of the black community today or a tomorrow have to lead effectively, but have to be able to give a hand to the doubtful blacks who are convinced correctly that black leaders don't uplift but merely tell other blacks to lift themselves. Black people have seen way too many black leaders help themselves and tell other blacks to lift themselves up by bootstraps to be convinced even with one great showing that a leader is actually trying to help left their bootstrapless selves  up.

In 1731, Benjamin Franklin won the contract to print £40,000 for the colony of Pennsylvania, producing a stream of baroque, often beautiful money.Credit...Department of Special Collections, Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame

What Benjamin Franklin Learned While Fighting Counterfeiters

Long before there were Benjamins in circulation, the founding father was all about experimenting with printing techniques as he worked on securing colonial printed currency.

By Veronique Greenwood

July 17, 2023

When Benjamin Franklin moved to Philadelphia in 1723, he got to witness the beginning of a risky new experiment: Pennsylvania had just begun printing words on paper and calling it money.

The first American paper money had hit the market in 1690. Metal coins never stayed in the 13 colonies long, flowing in a ceaseless stream to England and elsewhere, as payment for imported goods. Several colonies began printing bits of paper to stand in for coins, stating that within a certain time period, they could be used locally as currency. The system worked, but haltingly, the colonies soon discovered. Print too many bills, and the money became worthless. And counterfeiters often found the bills easy to copy, devaluing the real stuff with a flood of fakes.

Franklin, who started his career as a printer, was an inveterate inventor who would also create the lightning rod and bifocals, found paper money fascinating. In 1731, he won the contract to print £40,000 for the colony of Pennsylvania, and he applied his penchant for innovation to currency.

During his printing career, Franklin produced a stream of baroque, often beautiful money. He created a copper plate of a sage leaf to print on money to foil counterfeiters: The intricate pattern of veins could not easily be imitated. He influenced a number of other printers and experimented with producing new paper and concocting inks.

Now, in a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of physicists has revealed new details about the composition of the ink and paper that Franklin used, raising questions about which of his innovations were intended as defenses against counterfeiting and which were simply experiments with new printing techniques.

The study draws on more than 600 artifacts held by the University of Notre Dame, said Khachatur Manukyan, a physicist at that institution and an author of the new paper. He and his colleagues looked at 18th-century American currency using Raman spectroscopy, which uses a laser beam to identify specific substances like silicon or lead based on their vibration. They also used a variety of microscopy techniques to examine the paper on which the money was printed.

Franklin influenced a number of other printers and experimented with producing new paper and concocting inks.Credit...Department of Special Collections, Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame

Some of what they observed confirms what historians have long known: Franklin’s paper money contains flecks of mica, also known as muscovite or isinglass. These shiny patches were most likely an attempt to combat counterfeiters, who would not have had access to this special paper, said Jessica Linker, a professor of American history at Northeastern University who studies paper money of this era and was not involved in the study. Of course, that didn’t stop them from trying.

“They come up with very good counterfeits, with mica pasted to the surface,” Dr. Linker said.

In the new study, the researchers found that the mica in bills for different colonies seems to have come from the same geological source, suggesting that a single mill produced the paper. The Philadelphia area is notable for its schist, a flaky mineral that contains mica; it’s possible that Franklin or printers and papermakers associated with him collected the substance used in their paper locally, Dr. Manukyan said.

When they examined the black ink on some of the bills, however, the scientists were surprised to find that it appeared to contain graphite. For most printing jobs, Franklin tended to use black ink made from burned vegetable oils, known as lampblack, said James Green, librarian emeritus of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Graphite would have been hard to find, he suspects.

“So Franklin’s use of graphite in money printing is very surprising, and his use on bills printed as early as 1734 is even more surprising,” Mr. Green said in an email.

Could using graphite ink have been a way to differentiate real money from fakes? Differences in color between graphite and lampblack are likely to have been subtle enough to make that a difficult task, Mr. Green said. Instead, we may be looking at another example of Franklin’s creativity.

“It suggests to me that almost from the start he was using his money printing contracts as an opportunity to experiment with an array of new printing techniques,” he said.

To understand more clearly Franklin’s intent, more analyses of printed documents from the era would be helpful, said Joseph Adelman, a professor of history at Framingham State University in Massachusetts.

“The comparison I would most like to see would be Franklin’s other publications,” Dr. Adelman said. “To really test this theory — does Franklin have this separate store of ink?”

In future research, Dr. Manukyan hopes to collaborate with scholars who have access to larger collections of early American paper money. These techniques can be quite valuable in the study of history, Dr. Linker said, if scientists and historians can work together to identify the best questions to answer.

“I have questions about a whole bunch of inks. There’s a really weird green on some of the New Jersey bills,” she said, referring to money printed by a Franklin contemporary. “I would love to know what that green ink was made of.”

URL

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/science/benjamin-franklin-counterfeit-currency.html

A prehistoric model at the Crystal Palace Park in London gets a sprucing up in 1930. Credit...Fox Photos/Getty Images

A Victorian Dinosaur Park Finds Its Way in the 21st Century

Statues of extinct animals peek out from the trees, delighting onlookers in this London park. But don’t expect them to be scientifically accurate.

By Claire Moses

Reporting among the dinosaurs in Crystal Palace Park in London

July 14, 2023

Imagine: It’s 1854. The concept of evolution won’t be introduced for another five years or so. The word dinosaur is only about a decade old. There are no David Attenborough documentaries teaching you about extinct animals.

Now imagine yourself as a resident of Victorian London, walking into Crystal Palace Park in the southeastern part of the city. There you encounter dozens of three-dimensional dinosaurs and ancient mammals you could have never imagined, made of clay, brick and other available building materials. They are arranged in small groups, poking out from behind trees and bushes, some of them towering over their human visitors out for an afternoon stroll.

Except you don’t have to imagine too hard, because those statues are still there, some 170 years later. They’re a little worse for wear and are no longer considered scientifically accurate. But they delight visitors all the same. And this month, thanks to conservators, scientists and a group called the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, their Paleolithic picnic party grew a little, with the addition of a new statue — well, a recreation of an old statue — to replace one that disappeared in the 1960s.

The park in 1911.Credit...Getty Images

The statues, built by the 19th century artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, are part of a reconstructed geological walk through time, starting 260 million years ago. They were the first of their kind, much to the admiration of the public at the time.

“It was educational for the Victorians,” said Adrian Lister, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in London. “It was revolutionary.”

The sculptures by Mr. Hawkins, who was one of the best-known natural history sculptors at the time, were supposed to educate and entertain visitors near the Crystal Palace, an exhibition space that had been built for London’s Great Exhibition of 1851. After the exhibition, that palace moved to the area to which it gives its name today. (The statues have outlived the actual palace, which burned down in 1936.)

An illustration of the “Extinct Animals” model room at Crystal Palace in 1853. It shows models of dinosaurs being prepared for a display organized by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins.Credit...Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images

The statues popularized science, bringing the idea of extinction and changing environments to regular people, not just the upper classes, said Ellinor Michel, an evolutionary biologist and the chair of Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. “This was the birthplace of large-scale ‘edu-tainment,’” said Ms. Michel, who also lives nearby.

The statues do not reflect the extinct animals based on what we know today. Within decades of their construction they were out of date, Ms. Michel said, because of new scientific discoveries.

But accuracy isn’t the point, Ms. Michel said. “Science moves and science self improves,” she said.

Of the 38 original statues, 30 remain, and they show every bit of their almost 170 years.

The statues are made from whatever materials were available at the time, and as a result, are plagued by issues like rusting iron. While they’ve been maintained over the years, some look weathered, and at least one of them is missing a head.

“They weren’t built to last that long,” said Simon Buteux of Historic England, an organization that advises the government on England’s heritage. “We’ve got a huge problem of conserving them.”

What’s important to maintain, Mr. Buteux said, is the original feeling of how revolutionary these statues were in the 19th century.

“It was fresh, it was new, it was cutting edge,” he added. “That’s what we want to capture.”

One of the few known images of Palaeotherium magnum, from 1958.Credit...Crystal Palace Foundation

No one knows quite what happened to the original Palaeotherium magnum, which disappeared from the park in the 1960s. An herbivore that was loosely related to horses, the statue looked something like a horse with stumpy snout.

Seven other statues are also missing. The circumstances surrounding most of the disappearances are “giant mysteries,” Ms. Michel said.

Bob Nicholls, an artist who focuses on prehistoric animals, proposed bringing back the Palaeotherium magnum to the park. The Friends of Crystal Palace Park Dinosaurs then secured funding that helped make his recreated Palaeotherium magnum a reality. The new statue was installed in the park in early July.

To recreate what Mr. Hawkins imagined the herbivore might have looked like, Mr. Nicholls turned to the few available photographs of it from the 1950s and ’60s.

It took him about six weeks to build the new statue, which is hollow inside and made of fiberglass, a durable material. He’s happy with how it turned out, he said: “It’s got a silly face.”

“The new sculpture draws attention to the importance of the site in the history of science,” Mr. Lister, the paleobiologist, said.

About half a million people visit the statues annually, according to the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. And they continue to inspire awe, with parents taking pictures of their children in front of them and lingering by the large statues.

On a recent sunny afternoon, Jenny Steel, a local resident who walks through the park multiple times a week, was on her way to admire the newest addition. “They are quite larger than life,” she said.

Just a bit further along the walk, Ian Baxter, who has lived in the area for 50 years, was sitting on a rock near the statues with his poodle, Rory. Back when he was a teenager, he said, he used to climb into the hollow structures. Today, he looks at them from the other side. “I like the dinosaurs,” he said. “Of course I do.”

Another local resident, Gabriel Birch, said he visits the park at least once a month.

“We come here for the dinosaurs,” he said. “My three-year-old thinks they’re real.”

Claire Moses is a reporter for the Express desk in London. 

URL

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/14/world/europe/crystal-palace-dinosaurs-london.html