Westside Story Newspaper – Online The News of The Empire – Sharing the Quest for Excellence
Publisher’s Commentary by Wallace J. Allen, IV
This resource was supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library via California Black Media as part of the Stop the Hate program. The program is supported by partnership with the California Department of Social Services and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs. To report a hate incident or hate crime and get support, go to https://www.cavshate.org/
In late August I attended the Ethnic Media Conference in Sacramento, California. It was a Conference consisting of California based ethnic owned media, including members of California Black Media, the organization that Westside Story Newspaper and Empire Talks Back Radio belong to.
The Stop the Hate theme of the Ethnic Media Conference was an acknowledgment of the power of organized complaining and reporting. The Trump Administration made false claims associating Asian people with the origins of the COVID pandemic which generated a national increase in anti-Asian hate incidents and hate crimes! The Asian community’s outcry and organized response to the hate, attracted national news coverage and empathy, and created political will.
The process of reporting and documenting the incidents of hate, as well as the crimes of hate, had a powerful impact in California. Enough for the State to, between 2021 and 2023, create and allocate about $200 million to the California vs Hate, Stop the Hate Program, which funded among other things, the statewide Stop the Hate campaign in ethnic media.
My overall response to the splendid information filled Conference is one of pride for several reasons. I am proud to point out that the conference was co-chaired and organized by a San Bernardino native, Regina Wilson, the daughter of Cheryl and Hardy Brown, of the Black Voice News organization. The Black Voice News organization created an additional point of pride in that it received an award for outstanding writing! The IE was further highlighted via the Inland Valley News which was recognized for its outstanding community outreach. I am particularly pleased to note that those two newspapers are each now being published by second generation family members. Paulette Brown-Hinds is publishing the Black Voice and Ta-Lese Morrow is publishing the Inland Valley News, the newspaper founded by her father, Tommy Morrow.
The importance of this publishing legacy is that I know the will and ability to tell our Black Story accurately and passionately is secured by the youthful but mature hands of concerned, culturally competent people. These publishers have also witnessed the power of telling the story enough to see that racism and hate have been so normalized that we have all tended to look past the generational hate and institutional racism that generated and maintains the ‘Black State of Emergency’!
I was reminded of the benefits of complaining about hate and racism. We effected the whole of the Civil Rights Movement on reporting and protesting the evils of racism and hate… The Asian Community took a page out of our book, the page that says it pays to complain! But you have to know how to collect and keep! We have rights as a result of The Movement, but they are not complete and they are under constant threat. Equitable treatment for Black Folk is not a given, even in the full light of anti-hate intentions…
Several years ago, in 2022, Black People, though only 6% of California’s total population, were 30% of the State’s hate crime victims. Black Folks are and have always been statistically the most hated residents of California proven by the highest number of reported incidents…
According to an article written by Felicia Mello and Published by Cal Matters in September 2023, “The state’s latest Stop The Hate grants bring its non-law enforcement anti-hate spending to more than $200 million since 2021, more than any other state, advocates say.”
Since the statistics show that 30% of State hate is targeting Black Folk, it would make sense to assume that 30% of the State’s anti-hate budget would also target anti-Black hate… Right? Wrong! New hate, is the cause of the attention and new hate is the recipient of the bulk of the California vs Hate budget!
I do know that the Department of Social Services is providing direct services to victims of hate incidents and hate crimes if the victims ‘complain’ by reporting the event on the Stop The Hate hotline, 888-8-NO-Hate! However, that service is provided after the hate!
I know of a number of Black Folk who over the course of life have encountered and endured hate incidents and crimes… However, I am very challenged to remember anyone who has ever made a formal complaint! Is that similar to your experience? If Black Folks in general do not report hate and yet, 30% of hate crimes & incidents reported in California are against Black Folks, what would the percentage be if all anti-Black hate crimes & incidents in California, were reported? I think we can agree that in general, Black People have normalized, gotten used to and generally expect a certain amount of racism and hate and therefore have somewhat normalized it!
It also appears that even the Stop The Hate program has normalized the hate in that it is not set up to actually stop the hate but more to provide services to the hate victims… Which is a good thing, but not what it says! When I talk to Black Folks about reporting hate, the basic response is, “What good is that going to do?”
So we appear not be bothered by anything less than blatant deadly police shootings… Police shooting Black People is the ultimate example of the power of institutional racism and hate! The regularity of which is terrorizing and front page…
The generational effects of Institutional Racism is not as noisy, but just as deadly! It creates the ability to deliver legal hate on an automatic system wide basis allowing legal gate keepers to claim ‘clean hands’ as they are only following law and policy… Laws and policies that have generated and maintained a Black State of Emergency!
We may not report to the police, but we do talk about racism & hate to each other, acknowledging, without stating the Black State of Emergency that racism and hate have rendered to Black People in general. Particularly the long term, generational, institutional racism and hate that hides behind the shields of law and tradition!
The Black State of Emergency is described by laws and traditional institutional racism that allows Black infant mortality to be twice that of white infants…That disciplines and suspends Black Students at 3 times the rate of white students… That over populates its jails and prisons disproportionately with Black Men and Women… That packs its unemployment ranks disproportionately with Black Men and Women… and there is more detriment that can be attributed to legal policies that are used to justify hateful and inhumane results! Results that make Black Folks the highest statistical victims of stress, high blood pressure and diabetes! Black Folks are the #-one victims of hate incidents and hate crimes! Black People also have the shortest life spans!
In our diverse society the fact that Blacks lead in so many the negative Vital Statistics, signals the presence a powerful condition that is targeting them! America’s infrastructure of Slavery certainly contributes to that powerful racist echo that still rings loudly in present day policy!
We have been hated for so long, that we have basically normalized it… All of the elements that ring our State-Of-Emergency Bell, are things that we know about and have known about so long that we basically blame ourselves for their existence… We teach our young to ‘kiss-up’ to the police, to increase their chance of staying alive! That should not be normal!
To exemplify institutional racism and hate, I point to the city of Palm Springs and its ‘Section 14 City engineered holocaust… That forgot that Black People were human beings’! Those words paraphrase the Attorney General’s 1968 Report resulting from an investigation of that city burning and demolishing some 200 Black owned homes. The city records boldly admit that it, the city, skipped providing any legal process such as giving notice to the home owners, and proceeded to burn and demolish homes filled with furniture, appliances and personal property! People would return from school and work and find their home destroyed! The city did its dirty deed slowly, terrorizing residents with the suspense of ‘who is next’? There were cases of people being present but not allowed to remove their property from the doomed structures. The city joyfully choose to take the hateful route instead of the legal route!
The Survivors of Section 14, some 1000 plus people, with their attorney, have been negotiating with the city and have received an apology and a settlement offer that while it admits guilt, does not in any real way come close to compensating these victims of an obvious institutional hate crime that is probably not too late to be prosecuted !
It is hard to believe that the state of California is really serious about stopping the hate, when we can see a situation like that which is ongoing in Palm Springs! The crime happened and was recognized by the California Attorney General’s Office as a “city engineered holocaust that forgot Black People are human”, back in 1968, and nothing has happened legally to defend and or support the victims!
This scenario seems to justify the ‘What good would it do to complain’ attitude… However, my Asian cousins have demonstrated and proven to me, that it pays to complain and report hate!
If you GOOGLE Palm Springs Section 14, you will see national and state wide coverage of the ongoing hate crime… If you do so you will have to agree that the Survivors of Palm Springs Section 14 are not suffering from lack of providing information, but from a surplus of normalization.
We will organize a Town hall to meet the Survivors of Section 14 and discuss the effects of institutional racism, the Black State of Emergency and how to really stop the hate! Stay tuned! Fighting hate must become normal!
