“Because of the lack of care that I received that day, I almost miscarried three times,” said Grigsby. “After hours had passed, and they finally attended to me, they stabbed me in the back over 13 times with an epidural needle in the back while I was in labor because they were trying to ease me out of the pain. They told me that they had to poke me so many times because I would not hold still.”

Shamare Grigsby, owner of Alluring Array Doula Services by Shae. Photo courtesy by Shamare Grigbsy

In the aftermath of the epidural, Grigsby struggled with back issues that lingered for years.

“I felt that I was dismissed that much because I was young and inexperienced, and it hurt,” she said.

Shortly after her experience at Spring Branch Medical Center, and the delivery of her twins, Grigsby became interested in the birthing process and ultimately found her passion as a doula. She was determined to be an ally for other Black women who could find themselves in similar situations. Grigsby now owns Alluring Array Doula Services by Shae, a doula company that caters to clients who live in Houston and Austin, Texas.

“I feel like I made it out alive for a reason, and I wanted to be able to use that reason to help drive the outcome of disparities that Black mothers face during labor by giving them confidence and peace of mind throughout the birthing process,” said Grigsby.

Although multiple studies have shown that Black women in the United States have experienced tangible improvements in healthcare during the last century, the health disparities they endure remain. These health disparities are mostly a substantial reflection of the inequalities experienced by Black women on an array of socioeconomic factors.

According to the CDC, Black mothers are three times more likely to die from childbirth or pregnancy-related causes than white mothers. About two-thirds of maternal mortality numbers in the U.S. are preventable.

Doulas say that empowering clients to advocate for themselves through coaching and emotional support leading up to pregnancy and delivery can significantly improve their birthing experiences and health outcomes.

For Jessica Easter, a Certified Birth Doula and owner of Tennessee-based Abounding Grace Birth Services, LLC, a doula is essential to the birthing process, especially when the birthing mother feels a high level of stress and anxiety.

“In my work. I try to make sure that my clients feel well-supported and informed about the entire process. I give them evidence-based information to make sure that they feel ready and confident for the birth,” said Easter. “By doing this, I hope to help them to be able to advocate for themselves when they are in labor.”

Easter’s current client base is 95%, African-American women. She said her passion for her work is rooted in her determination to prevent women from having traumatic birth experiences. She believes that all women, especially those of color, need the proper maternal support before, during, and after birth. For Easter, her work’s mission is to mitigate maternal health disparities by educating, encouraging, and empowering women to make informed birth decisions while maintaining the necessary physical, mental, and emotional support that they need to have a positive labor experience.

“Through my work, I feel like I am making a difference in the lives of women who may feel as though they are not being heard or taken seriously as far as their pregnancy and delivery are concerned,” said Easter. “So far, I have not had any incidents of clients being ignored or dismissed because I try to make sure that they have all the tools and emotional backing that they need.”

Like Easter, many Doulas are committed to giving their clients and their loved ones peace of mind by educating them with evidence-based techniques that can set them up for success. Many of them serve as unwavering allies to their clients by encouraging them to ask probing, critical questions of their medical providers when they do not understand a situation and remaining firm and relentless in their quest for an accurate and reasonable answer.

Black doulas like Shonte’ Terhune-Smith, a health educator, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and founder of YOLO Breastfeeding Services, say that having the presence and guidance of a doula in the delivery room can be significantly soothing. That calming presence, according to Terhune-Smith, can also be empowering and liberating to Black mothers, especially those who have experienced discrimination in predominantly white medical spaces in the past.

“I feel like most Black women seek out the help of a Doula because they have felt mistreated in the past, and this has left them feeling helpless and without a voiceless to the situation,” said Terhune-Smith. “That is why I try not to advocate for them, but instead, I try to amplify their voices so that they can feel heard. By doing this, I feel like I am empowering them.”

Before becoming a lactation expert and Doula, Terhune-Smith worked for WIC, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, but she did not like the government program’s approach to addressing the needs of Black women.

“I created what I thought should be out there by starting my doula business,” said Terhune-Smith. 

Despite the bleak reports about Black births and historical healthcare disparity, Terhune-Smith believes there is hope and that Black doula services are more important now than ever.

“More Black women are starting their doula businesses to partner with Black birthing mothers, and this is a plus,” said Terhune-Smith. “A lot of people are more vocal about the injustices that Black women face in healthcare and are pushing for doula services to be included in health insurance coverage plans, and the government is passing laws like the PUMP Act, so there is some hope.”

The Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act, also known as The PUMP Act is a Bipartisan Bill that was recently passed by the House of Representatives to ensure Breastfeeding Rights for Working Moms. Terhune-Smith also believes that while Black doulas contribute their quota to alleviate the healthcare disparity Black birthing mothers face, the government can also expedite the process.

“If the government is going to invest in Black healthcare issues, they also need to invest their resources in those who are doing the brunt of the work,” said Terhune-Smith.

The post Black doulas are challenging rampant healthcare disparity appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Wellington’s racial reckoning can be traced back to a moment in time when she had likened a white actress on TV to her mother, expressing that they were both white women. At that moment, her mother, the older Wellington, gently took her hands and explained that although her skin tone was very light, she was a Black woman. In her recently-published article “Choosing Blackness,” a piece in an anthology series for The Philadelphia Inquirer’s “Wildest Dreams” project, Wellington details the incident, describing it as a moment where her 5-year-old self was initially confused at the realization, but also, eventually relieved. 

Now sitting in on a Zoom call with Journalism students from New York University where she is being interviewed, Wellington, an NYU Alumni herself and a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer, answered questions about race in America, Black identity, and her journey as a Black female reporter. It has been one week since her article was published as part of a landmark series on Black identity, and the NYU class she is speaking at is called Reporting Black America. 

Behind her, attached to an austere gray-colored wall, is a wide, black picture frame with clippings of two newspaper articles inside it. Surrounded by the picture frame are various paintings, greeting cards, handmade drawings, and a few pieces of 8.4 x 11 paper stapled together. 

In the article, Wellington writes that the startling realization of her mother’s Blackness shaped how she would grow up to define herself as a Black woman in America, and inspired her to go on a search to gather information about her family’s background.

“At the end of the day, my mother is a Black woman, and she taught me how to be a Black woman, and I am happy that she made that choice,” she said.

In the process of digging into her past, Wellington discovered that her maternal grandfather, James L. Wilkins, who she often affectionately called Daddy Wilkie, grew up in an era where many Black people who looked white, made the unequivocal decision to absolve themselves of their Blackness and identify as white because of the influence of the Jim Crow racial caste system. In “Choosing Blackness”, Wellington aptly describes her grandfather as “someone who had porcelain skin and eyes that alternated between blue and green — depending on the color tie he was wearing.”

 Of course, tracing her ancestry and heritage meant that Wellington would uncover the bitter traces of slavery and the stamp that it left on her side of the family for generations.

“In the 1400s when Black people originally came to this country as slaves, some of the white men would sleep with the Black slaves, eventually making them pregnant, and while the Europeans originally said that children of born into that system would assume the identity of their fathers, in reality, it was economically better for the children to remain slaves, and identify as Black and that is what happened,” she said

During the Zoom call, Wellington candidly spoke about her experiences as a Black reporter.  She details her start in journalism by sharing that she had initially gotten her foot in the door after she applied to an internship through the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), and got in. Her career progressed from there.

When Bianca Brutus, an NYU senior at the College of Arts and Sciences, asked if she had ever experienced colorism, she paused shortly, before agreeing that she had.

“I grew up in New York in the 80s and 90s, and some of my earliest memories, are of people telling me that I did not look like my mother, but instead, they would say that my sister looked more like my mother because she was a couple of shades lighter than I was, even though we had the same nose and eyes,” she said.

Although she acknowledged that colorism was rampant within the Black community, she  expressed that it was a long-standing derivative of racism that had been foisted on Black people right from the days of slavery.

“I have been privileged to see a change,” she said of colorism. “I was born in 1973, and I shouldn’t even say that out loud, but the 70s, 80s and early 90s were characterized by people defining themselves as Black, no matter what percentage of Blackness they had in them, and I think that was a product of culture and society.”

While she acknowledges the damage that racism caused in the Black community, Wellington said that the concept of racial classification was not created by Black people, but by the environment that they found themselves in.

“Race is a construct, and from what we know,” she said. “Black people did not create this construct, but it affected them and eventually produced colorism. People are different, and while there are some biological differences like the presence of melanin and different bone structures, how we work as humans is pretty much the same.”

According to Wellington, the years following the Civil Rights movement did a lot to soften the impact of colorism, but there is still a gray area that exists when discussing Black culture, and what part of it white people get interconnected in, especially through the performing arts.

“You have someone like Rachel Dolezal who is a white woman but chose to identify as Black, and the issue is that she got to assume that identity without truly experiencing the pitfalls of it, and then you have Teena Marie, who was often confused for a Black woman, but the difference was that she was very clear about her whiteness,” she said.

In a candid moment, Wellington acknowledged that Black culture had left an indelible mark on other cultures, and its impact was especially eminent in American white spaces.

“White people have always been a part of the culture,” she said.,“You have people like the Beastie Boys, and Eminem who are rappers, and have embraced a part of the culture, but the problem arises when some white people use elements of the culture without acknowledging its Black history.” 

The students wanted to know what was Wellington’s wildest dream.

“My real wildest dream is to sit my behind at home, work on my novel, and drink wine all damn day,” she said  with a light flip of her dreadlocks.

The post Elizabeth Wellington on “Choosing Blackness” appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Although at that moment, I felt a sense of contentment and solidarity towards the family of George Floyd, something deeper lingered in my mind and hung above my head; the deep-rooted systemic racism embedded in American society and how on earth I would unearth that conversation with my son someday. 

Four months ago, I birthed a son, and while his birth was a life changing experience for me, it was also bittersweet. My son can barely talk now, and he doesn’t know the consequences of his skin color. Still, I am acutely aware that someday, somewhere, as long as there is life in me, I will have to have the difficult conversations with him about the ramifications of wearing a hoodie at night in a suburban neighborhood as a Black man or driving a car that attracts the attention of the police and to say that I fear for that day is an understatement. On the other hand, to pretend that these dangers do not exist in the world would rob him of the right to know of this evil condition in the world called racism.

As a Black mother, I am acutely aware that society demands me to be strong all the time, to take things in stride, and always walk a fine line between remaining composed in the face of racial terrorism and living in an America that has been so wicked to Black lives. If George Floyd’s mother was still alive today, I could not begin to fathom the blinding pain that would shoot through her heart upon having to endure the unjust killing of her son, a son she nurtured and loved a son with whom she was so close. As a mother, I get it.

As I type this, the picture of Emmett Till’s mother crying over his casket plagues my mind and is another bitter reminder of the dangerous poison that is racism. My heart also breaks for the mothers of the Alton Sterlings, Daunte Wrights, Trayvon Martins, and thousands of other Black men and people who have lost their lives in the crossfires of systemic racism and police brutality. No mother should have to explain to their son why thousands of boys that look like him are shot at and killed, year in, year out. Yet, Black mothers across the US consistently bear the brunt of this painful reality. 

I am certain that the hashtag #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd will live on in Cyberspace. When the day comes for me to explain to my son the injustices that have been leveled against Black men for years, I will broach the topic with honesty, grit, and fortitude. Although I wish that I could protect him from the perils of this world, the truth is that I cannot, and that is why Black mothers like me need to recognize that we are faced with a precarious situation: raising Black boys who will thrive in a society that has all of the odds stacked against them. Some day, when my son is older and wiser, I will tell him about George Floyd and his trial, not to scare him or harden his heart, but to make him acutely aware of what it means to be a Black man in America because ignorance is deadly. Being a mother to a Black man in America carries a special type of terror. As I write this article, I am mulling over the many different ways that I will talk to my son about his roots, heritage, and future. For the umpteenth time, I have decided that I will use my words to buttress him against the hate that exists in the world for people that look like him, and above all, I will encourage him to remain his authentic, true Black self.

The post I have a Black son: Here is how I will explain the George Floyd verdict to him someday appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

 Chauvin was charged with second and third degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. He was found guilty on all counts  and faces up to 40 years in prison. Sentencing is scheduled  in eight weeks.

Minneapolis streets erupted with joy.

Tears of celebration at George Floyd Square as the verdict on Derek Chauvin was read, guilty on all charges. #GeorgeFloyd pic.twitter.com/IDMdjfbMvD

— Omar Jimenez (@OmarJimenez) April 20, 2021

Ms. L, a COTA bus driver in Columbus, Ohio, reacts after hearing the guilty charges for Derek Chauvin. Ms. L was listening to the verdict on her phone and pulled the bus over on North High Street when she heard.

Photo Credit: @hanks_t99 pic.twitter.com/0dnArpWnF6

— The Lantern (@TheLantern) April 20, 2021

The verdict comes one day after lawyers on both sides delivered their final closing arguments, which was the zenith of three weeks and over 45 witness testimonies. Thirty-eight  from the prosecution side and seven from the defense. Among the 38 witnesses was the young woman who used her cell phone’s camera to document the now-viral video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, and keeping his knee on his neck even after the paramedics found a pulse-less Floyd laying lifeless on the ground.

History should remember the incredibly 17 year old Darnella Frazier who had the strength and composure to capture the murder of #georgefloyd on video. Without her video there may never have been #justice.

— Valerie Jarrett (@ValerieJarrett) April 20, 2021

Chauvin’s encounter with Floyd ignited a wave of protests across the country that triggered racial discord and conversations regarding defunding the police and enforcing police reform. During the  duration of the trial,  heavy security and barricades were placed outside the courthouse in expectation of civil unrest and protests resulting from the verdict.

The trial of officer #DerekChauvin into the murder of #GeorgeFloyd last year starts on 8th march In #Minneapolis court house heres a video clip of all the barracades they’ve put up hit link https://t.co/GUQKDeHjXU#BLM #DerekChauvinTrial #GUILTY pic.twitter.com/sU0vT9DAco

— #Innzopinion (@Graham1974Shane) March 2, 2021

 During the trial, Chauvin’s lawyer Eric Nelson honed in on three arguments: Floyd died as a result of the drug overdose Fentanyl and heart disease; the crowd that gathered around the scene distracted Chauvin and caused him to lose his composure and that Chauvin was within his rights of using his police academy training to restrain Floyd. But the jury was not swayed.

Derek Chauvin used ‘reasonable force’ with George Floyd: defense lawyer https://t.co/gY618hi5sZ pic.twitter.com/3R1IODLED3

— New York Post (@nypost) April 19, 2021

New York congressman Jamaal Bowman tweeted that the verdict does not solve the racism that plagues policing.

We’ve known Chauvin was guilty since the second we saw him murder George Floyd on film — but we also know of the racism inherent in our carceral and policing systems.

This verdict doesn’t change that racism, or the work ahead needed to transform those systems to serve us.

— Jamaal Bowman (@JamaalBowmanNY) April 20, 2021

While many are satisfied with the verdict, questions still remain of the future of policing.    On April 11,  Daunte Wright, 20, was gunned down by Minneapolis police  in what they called “an accidental discharge”. Wright was stopped because his tags’ registration had expired . He also had an outstanding arrest warrant.

An individual is being held to account. That’s not the same as the whole system being held to account.

This trial is meaningful, but not total. Justice remains malnourished when it comes to police use of force. There’s still work to be done.

But still, grateful for the verdict.

— Erik Reagan ✊🏻✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿 (@ErikReagan) April 20, 2021

The post Derek Chauvin convicted of murder in the death of George Floyd appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

On December 21, 2020, I woke up around 12:15 a.m. with a painful ache in my abdomen. This ache rapidly spread across every part of my body but managed to remain concentrated around my belly. At the time, I was nine months pregnant and nine days away from my due date. Months before that day, I had taken multiple trips to the OBGYN office and was informed that my baby was developing steadily. Towards the later months of my pregnancy, the process of carrying a baby became increasingly difficult. In the 28th week of my pregnancy, I got diagnosed with gestational diabetes, a condition that affects how cells use glucose sugar in pregnancy and causes high blood sugar. To avoid further complications, doctors encouraged me to measure my blood sugar with an AquaLance Lancets device four times a day. As the weeks continued to progress, I measured my blood sugar often and followed a healthy diet plan, but most of the questions that I directed towards my healthcare provider were either met with passive aggression or barely vaguely answered. 

As a Black woman and an immigrant of African descent, I was operating under the belief that the U.S healthcare system was second to none. I tried to ignore the dismissiveness that I was subjected to and tried to remain as healthy as possible throughout my pregnancy in the months that followed.

After four hours of tossing and turning in bed, I told my husband that the pain was beyond excruciating, and at about 4:30 a.m., we climbed into our Toyota RAV4 SUV and headed for the hospital, about 30  minutes away from our apartment in Allendale, Michigan. When we arrived, I was transferred to a wheelchair and wheeled down the halls towards a hallway whose entrance read “Admissions.” Three hours later, I was in the labor room, getting prepped for labor. The nurses injected me with an epidural to help me endure the stinging pain of childbirth, and seven grueling hours later, I gave birth to my son at 2:39 p.m., and he weighed 8 pounds and 3 ounces. I took a breath of relief as I was wheeled to another room upstairs to recover, but the worst was yet to come. Four hours later, at about 6:17 p.m., I finally held my son in my arms for an extended time, and I was immediately overcome with inexplicable love as he fell asleep in my arms. Before long, my husband came to stand beside us and immediately froze.

My bed was drenched in blood that I didn’t feel leaving my body, and my husband immediately called for a nurse who came into the room and calmly said she would call the doctor to come in and take a look at me. I never saw her again after that day. Later that night, another doctor came into the room to check on me, and she immediately went white in the face, calling for the other senior doctor on call to attend to me. By this time, my entire bed was soaked, and before I knew what was happening, nine people were in my room, three doctors and six nurses, all clamoring around my bed and asking me my symptoms. At first, I was unalarmed because of the lax way that the first nurse had approached the bleeding and because I felt no significant pain. 

The doctors informed me that I was losing blood at a dangerous and rapid pace,  and needed to go in for a dilation and curettage surgery, a surgical procedure in which the cervix is dilated so that the uterine lining can be scraped with a spoon-shaped instrument to remove abnormal tissues. The doctors gave me a general anesthetic through an intravenous line (IV) into a vein in my arm that caused me to sleep throughout the surgery. I woke up from the surgery feeling disoriented, groggy, light-headed, and lethargic. My tongue felt like rubber, and I felt excruciating pain as I struggled to gulp. The room had the smell of rubber gloves and hand sanitizer.  I tried to speak but could barely make out a word as one of the nurses flatly informed me that my baby was in the nursery and my husband was in the waiting room. Before the surgery, I had two blood transfusions, and after the surgery,  I had four transfusions, making it a total of six transfusions. I could barely move my body as I was wheeled back to the recovery room. 

As it turns out, I am not the only Black woman who nearly lost her life due to a lack of care from healthcare professionals in the United States. And racism, unfortunately, lies at the core of this malpractice. Millions of women have suffered my fate or, even worse, died.

 In the United States, Black women are two to six times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white women, depending on what part of the country they live in. This rests on many factors, including the racial divide in healthcare. When data obtained from 1979 to 1992 was analyzed by medical experts, the overall pregnancy-related mortality ratio was 25.1 deaths per 100,000 for Black women, 10.3 for Hispanic women, and 6.0 for non-Hispanic white women. According to the American Medical Association, these rates have not improved, and the leading causes of maternal death are hemorrhage, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and embolism. Black women have almost three times the risk of death from hemorrhage than white women.

Although the data exists to measure the maternal mortality rate in Black women, it wasn’t until recently that there has been national attention given to this issue. According to Dr. Neel Shah, an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School, medical professionals did not systematically measure the mortality rates in childbirth until relevantly recently.

“It was only in 2018 that we discovered that the maternal mortality rate of Black women in our country has been going up for 25 years, and the only way to try to understand that is through the lens of racism. A Black person, on average, is more likely to die from childbirth than a white person, and that disparity is even larger when you are in places like New York City where there is a lot of segregation not only geographically but in terms of opportunities to thrive,” said Shah.

He also said that racism in healthcare also affected the outcome of many Black women’s births.

“When it comes to Black birthing experiences, in particular, there are structural causes of racism, and there are also interpersonal stories of racism that we see play out in the media sometimes when people don’t get heard and feel dismissed,” said Shah. “There are systemic traces of racism that are built into this practice, and the way doctors are trained and some of that has roots that go back to slavery.”

Kimberly Sallers, the owner of Irth App, a nonprofit organization where Black women can find prenatal, birthing, postpartum, and pediatric reviews of care from other Black and brown women, said that education and status do not protect Black women from racism in healthcare.

“We can look at what happened to Serena Williams as an example. She had some complications during her childbirth and had her white millionaire husband was by her side, but still, she was dismissed,” said Sallers. Sallers also said that despite the stories of Black women who have died during childbirth or experienced traumatic birthing experiences and experience traumas, there remains hope.

“Although the narrative around Black birth is often painted as doom and gloom, we can’t just let this be a fear-based event,” Sallers said. “Using fear has been used as a tool to control Black people from time, but we should not allow Black births to be a solely negative event because there is hope for the future of Black births.”

The post Racism in Healthcare: A Black woman’s childbirth story appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

“I used to hate my hair, and it is kind of crazy when you have a little girl who grows up hating a part of herself,” she said.“I grew up seeing people in cartoons and movies with euro-centric features and straightened hair.”

Eva Bonsu’s perspectives on hair have evolved after years of trial and error. 2/22/2021. Photo courtesy of Eva Bonsu

Bonsu was a fan of Pocahontas who had brown skin, but hair was silky straight.

“I grew up with those images and felt that I needed to change that, and as soon as my Mom said that I could perm my hair to get it straight, I did it and it made me feel beautiful,” she said. 

Bonsu was 14 when she first felt the sting of chemical relaxers and the smooth hair that resulted. For years it made her feel confident, but she decided to cut off her hair and go natural because could not find anyone in the small town of Macon, Georgia who could do her hair and she became part of  the natural hair movement. 

The movement encourages Black women to embrace Black hair free from wigs, extensions, or chemicals that could cause damage to their natural hair roots in the long run. The natural hair movement began in the 60s as a political statement for Black activists. The movement permeated the 70s and dissipated in the 80s after Black people with afros started to be targeted for their activism against racial oppression. The trend took off again in the mid-2000s. It was accelerated when notable Black celebrities like Erykah Badu, Lupita Nyong’o, Janelle Monáe, Solange Knowles, Tracee Ellis-Ross, and Viola Davis began to wear natural styles.

According to Mintel,  a market intelligence agency, 40 percent of Black women reported that they were most likely to wear their hair in its natural form without any added heat, while 33 percent of Black women said that they would wear their hair in its natural form, but also use added heat to straighten their hair.

Although a Mintel study shows that hair relaxer sales have dropped by about 22.7 percent since 2016, and more Black women are wearing natural styles, it comes at a steep cost for some Black women in professional spaces.

Susan “Susy” Oludele, a Nigerian-American New York-based celebrity hairstylist who has worked on unique hairstyles for Beyonce and a bevy of other celebrities, said that many of her regular clients often complained about being discriminated against at work because of their hairstyles.

“There was a time when almost every other client I had would complain about the discrimination that they faced in the workplace because of their hairstyles, and I thought to myself, ‘this is crazy.’ I couldn’t understand it,” she said . 

Oludele said that there was a time that one of her clients had to spend over $800 on her hair because her employer disapproved of it.

“I did auburn-colored braids for one of my clients who works in the tech industry, and she paid $400 for those braids, but I soon noticed that she set up another appointment, and I later found out that she had to take down the braids I had just recently done and pay an extra $400 to have them re-done because her employer didn’t approve of the color,” said Oludele.

Because of the discrimination that many of her clients were experiencing, Oludele teamed up with OkayAfrica to draw awareness to the plight of Black women experiencing discrimination because of their hair choices.

Historically, Black workers alleging discrimination against their natural hair in the workplace have filled courthouses for over four decades. Still, these allegations often produced mixed results. The judicial rulings, intertwined with changing socio-cultural standards, have yielded a contentious and uncertain legal quandary. For decades, the social pressure to emulate eurocentric hair has permeated American society, especially influencing Black women’s hair and their grooming decisions. Despite this, some Black women have continued to stand their ground and maintain their unique hairstyles regardless of the mounting pressure that they receive from society.

Danielle Twum, a scientist with a Ph.D. in Cancer Immunology, said she has experienced microaggressions because of her natural hair. 

“While I was pursuing my Ph.D., an incident occurred in the bathroom with one of my professors,” she said. “I had on a crochet hairstyle, and I ran into her in the bathroom and after seeing my hair, she asked me how I could afford to do my hair, and change the styles regularly with the little graduate stipend they were paying me.”

Although Twum, like many other Black women, is aware of the prejudices that surround Black women and their hairstyles, she doesn’t allow it to define her.

“To me, hair is a fun way to express myself,” she said. “It’s a portion of me, but it is not entirely me. I am aware that as a Black woman, there are a lot of stereotypes surrounding my Blackness, but there was a reason I got a Ph.D. It was so that there wouldn’t be any doors closed to me.”

The post More Black women are choosing natural hair appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

As December ushers in the continuation of the holiday shopping season, uncertainty continues to grow in the brick-and-mortar world of retail amid an economically crippling pandemic, leaving many to wonder what the e-commerce success rate of this year’s Black Friday could mean for its future.

For years, the holiday shopping season has revolved around the Black Friday event, and Black Friday has been regarded as America’s busiest shopping day of the year. With retailers across the country offering highly discounted prices, it is little wonder that millions of Americans queued up in long lines at their favorite stores so that they could purchase items at low prices.

This year, many retailers began to advertise those deals as early as October and offered many of them online, reflecting both the challenges that physical stores are facing and the sudden shift in how consumers prefer to shop.

Amid a harrowing pandemic that left many financially and physically disenfranchised, Black Friday looked different for both American retailers and consumers. For one thing, the long queues and crowded stores that once characterized the shopping event were replaced by online shopping. Furthermore, this year’s online Black Friday shopping was the second-largest online spending day in U.S. history, coming in behind 2019’s Cyber Monday. This surge can be credited to the pandemic’s impact as American shoppers chose to skip crowded stores and malls to shop instead from the comfort of their homes.

Data obtained from Sensormatic Solutions revealed that in-store traffic on Black Friday fell by about 52.1% compared to last year’s in-store shopping traffic. In other data obtained from Adobe, consumers spent roughly $9 billion shopping online this year, which shows that millions of American shoppers were still willing to shop despite the pandemic’s blow to the country’s economy.

Sheryl Thomas, a photographer from Grand Rapids, Michigan, said her Black Friday was different this year compared to others before it.

“I chose to do my Christmas shopping online this Black Friday because with everything that has been going on, you just never know,” said Thomas. “It was less stressful to be able to shop online this year, and I don’t believe that I missed out on much of the fun because I read and saw in the news that people who shopped in stores this year were very scarce.”

The coronavirus instilled in many American shoppers a heightened sense of discomfort and anxiety about going into stores. Most retail chains across the country who predicted the outcome promptly moved their doorbuster deals online to allow people to shop more safely. Even the Center for Disease Control and Prevention urged consumers to shop online, use curbside pickup, and favor open-air shopping centers over enclosed shopping areas.

Almeffa Vengerko, a store manager at Nordstrom in Chicago, Illinois, said that although the company had strategically placed many of its deals online, store-traffic was low and the shoppers who did stop by were there to pick up the items that they had purchased online.

“There were a lot of people shopping on our online platform and then stopping by to pick their items either in-store or through our curbside pick up service,” said Vengerko. “Another part of our strategy for Black Friday was to price-match a lot of the items because with the pandemic going on, no one knew what to expect.”

According to a preliminary survey conducted by Sensormatic Solutions in October, the forecast revealed that retail stores’ traffic would be down by 22% to 25% during the critical weeks of the holiday shopping season, and its estimation was accurate due to the amount of traffic that stores received on Black Friday.

Robin Sanchez, a Macy’s store manager in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said that to meet up with sales numbers and expectations, Macy’s and many other stores like it had to start their Black Friday promos earlier than usual.

“Nationwide with retail, this year was very different because many retailers started offering their deals way earlier than usual,” said Sanchez. “I’d say we started marketing and promoting our Black Friday sales weeks before the actual day, and I think it went a long way in terms of being an effective strategy.”

Sanchez also said that although executing this strategy meant that there were no lines at the door on the day of  Black Friday itself, the store still managed to churn a profit.

“There were no long lines through the store and around the building this year because people didn’t feel the same sense of urgency that they have felt in previous years, and that is partly due to the pandemic, but as a store, we did not do too badly,” said Sanchez.

Although Black Friday this year was an online success for many large stores and for e-commerce in general, some people still have their reservations about the durability of retail businesses moving forward. .

Andy Wu, an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, has a lot to say about where the busiest shopping day of the year is headed in the near future.

As we look to the future, consumer demand for goods will look a lot different, making inventory planning more complex than what it was before. Recently, many companies have had to gauge in real-time what people are spending their money on and the frequency at which they are spending it.

Wu also said that in the months following Black Friday, a dwindling in sales  could have a negative effect at brick and mortar stores, especially for smaller retailers. 

“Keep in mind that the smaller retailers are the ones that we generally think of as being more brick and mortar locations,” said Wu. “There’s obviously another category of smaller retailers that are purely e-commerce retailers. That is a different story. I think there’s evidence that perhaps those businesses are doing reasonably well, but it’s hard to say right now.”

Nationwide, retailers have experienced an abrupt split in fortunes during the pandemic. The extensive shutdowns that happened earlier this spring triggered big-brand bankruptcies and many other store closures. Strong e-commerce sites like Amazon and Walmart have only gotten stronger, exceedingly competent and more profitable because of their ability to rapidly provide the necessities that people need while stuck at home.

According to data gathered by the National Retail Federation, about 59% of shoppers commenced their holiday shopping by early November, and most of that shopping occurred online. This year, early signs of the surplus in digital sales were caught by Adobe Analytics, which scans through about 80 %t of online transactions across the top 100 U.S. online retailers. The data reflected that consumers spent upwards of around $5.1 billion online this past Thanksgiving  Day, compared to the $4.2 billion dollars that were spent around the shopping holiday season last year. 

Looking back on Black Friday’s profit trend this year, it is economically notable that many Americans, on the whole, spent more than they did this year than they did last year, despite the loss of over 22 million jobs nationwide  and the effect that it had on many American households as a whole. Because of the pandemic, the retail industry has rapidly adjusted to meet the heavy consumer demands that American shoppers have, especially this holiday season, thereby abruptly converting traditional department stores into fulfillment centers, building new warehouses, hiring thousands of workers to fill e-commerce roles, and extending or adding curbside pickup service which was a successful trend this Black Friday.

Forces driving online shopping forward were set in full motion a long time before the pandemic progressed and continued to expand. Either way, gauging the decline of many brick-and-mortar retail stores in comparison to the simultaneous growth of e-commerce shopping in the past eight months is like watching the retail sector’s evolution move in fast forward. In the near future, the end of 2020 and then the beginning and progression of 2021 will be seen as a significant turning point for the retail sector.

The post  Black Friday’s Aftermath appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

On Wednesday afternoon, Biden, who received over 71 million votes, the most in U.S history, was joined by his running mate Kamala Harris at a news conference. He said that he expected to win the presidency, but he did not blatantly declare himself the winner.

“After a long night of counting, it is clear that we are winning enough states to reach 270 votes to reach the presidency,” said Biden. “I will govern as an American president. There will be no red states and blue states when we win. Just the United States of America.”

His statement was by and large in stark contrast to Trump, who falsely proclaimed that he had won the election on Wednesday morning despite millions of uncounted votes and a declared definite win. 

Trump who falsely claimed to win the election took to Twitter to tweet out: 

“We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!” he followed up minutes later in a tweet that was subsequently taken down by Twitter for promoting falsified information. 

In 2016, President Trump won Michigan by about 10,704 votes. The president’s success with white working-class voters was crucial to his 2016 victory. While he succeeded in counties like Macomb and Monroe, he also flipped working-class areas in mid-Michigan like Saginaw County.

During the 2020 campaign period, Democrats also worked fervently to increase the turnout in cities with predominantly Black voters, including Detroit and Flint. Three days before the election, Biden and former President Obama held drive-in events in both cities, hoping to create enthusiasm among their supporters. 

Before a mostly African-American audience at Flint’s Northwestern High School on Saturday afternoon, Obama referred to his former vice president as “my buddy” and said Biden would unfailingly restore decency and competence to the White House. 

In a 25-minute speech, Obama stressed the importance of voting.

“This Tuesday, everything is on the line,” Obama said. “Our jobs are on the line. Our health care is on the line, and whether or not we get this pandemic under control is on the line.”

In Tuesday’s election, Michigan set a voter turnout record that surpassed the 2008 record set when former president Barack Obama was elected. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, while election workers counted ballots, officials had already tallied over 5.1 million votes in the political race between Biden and Trump. This number surpassed the 5,039,080 benchmark set in 2008.

It is a difficult task to overemphasize Michigan’s importance in the 2020 election. The state — along with Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — is critical to Biden becoming the United States president.

In 2016, president Trump flipped Michigan and became the first Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1988 to win the state. For nearly 25 years, Michigan has been a reliably blue state regarding choosing a president. During his 2020 presidential campaign, President Trump made a total number of eight trips to the state of Michigan, including a final stop a day before election day.

In his 2020 campaign, Trump tried to repeat history partly by organizing his final campaign to rally in Grand Rapids, just like he did in 2016

“This is a poll,” Trump said to the crowd. “This is not the crowd of somebody who’s going to lose this state.”

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris also spent most of her Tuesday in Detroit, where Biden campaigned with former President Barack Obama on Saturday. During his campaign with Obama on Saturday, Biden reminded voters that the Obama administration had rescued Michigan’s automobile industry with government investment after the 2008 recession hit the nation.

By contrast, this year, unemployment rates were starkly high in Michigan; therefore, the pandemic coupled with the economic crisis were pertinent issues in Michigan, where thousands in the state vehemently protested Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s ordered restrictions to curb the coronavirus.

Trump also openly disagreed with Whitmer’s approach to curbing the pandemic and seemingly shrugged off the threat she faced from a domestic terrorist group’s plot to kidnap her, downplaying its effect.

Following Tuesday’s election, as votes in Michigan continued to be counted on Wednesday, however, President Trump’s reelection campaign filed a lawsuit in Michigan’s Court of Claims, seeking to delay the counting of ballots indicating inadequate access to vote-tallying locations. In addition to seeking to halt counting the votes “until meaningful access has been granted,” the Trump campaign also demanded to review the ballots that were previously opened and counted. The lawsuit came after Trump tweeted several times, spreading misinformation about the overall election process.

How come every time they count Mail-In ballot dumps they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020

While he scored a win in Michigan, Biden also secured a win in Wisconsin, flipping a battleground state that helped President Trump win the election in 2016. 

Even before Biden was officially declared a winner in the state, Trump’s campaign said it would request a recount. Like Michigan, Wisconsin is a crucial swing state, and a recount of votes and a lawsuit in Michigan could further delay election results.

Joe Biden’s narrow win in Michigan was also the outcome of an extremely high voter turnout in Detroit. In 2016, Detroit’s Black voters’ underwhelming performance caused Hillary Clinton’s electoral loss. Biden, however, managed to improve on Clinton’s performance in the significant counties around Detroit. 

The post Amid national tension and uncertainty, Joe Biden scores big in Michigan. appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

“I know a lot of cats who were wronged by our justice system and got locked up till today for it,” said Thomas, 41 of Grand Rapids, Michigan and a barber at Jay’s Den. “We hear about the George Floyds and the Jake Blakes on the news who were victims of a flawed justice system, but there are also many other brothers out there whose lives and freedom got taken away for crimes that they did not commit, or whose crime did not warrant the punishment they got. It’s crazy. We gotta vote like our lives depend on it to change that. I know I will.”

For many Black male voters, the upcoming election feels like a life or death issue. With police brutality, unemployment raging under the pandemic, racism and domestic terrorism on the rise, Black men are disproportionally affected. 

“The Black vote is super important,” said Thomas.  “It changes the whole narrative. Our forefathers died and risked their lives so that we could have these rights, and we have to show them that we don’t take it for granted.” 

Byron Brooks, 25, an activist, social entrepreneur and student at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan,

Byron Brooks believes that Black America needs to put politicians in office who will stand for social equity. Photo courtesy of Byron Brooks.

said  that this upcoming election differs starkly from the rest because of the spotlight on racial  injustice.

“One thing that stands out about this election is that we are now in an era where people are bolder in their ideologies of racism,” he said. “With the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others, we need to put people in office who will stand for social equity.” 

Darren Davis, a Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame University and an expert in political behavior and racial politics, believes that the security and safety of the Black man are at stake because of how President Donald Trump has handled the Black Lives Matter movement.

Darren Davis, a Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame University and an expert in Political behavior and racial politics, believes that the security and safety of the Black man are at stake in the upcoming election. October 24, 2020. Photo Courtesy of Darren Davis.

“People are encouraged to be punitive and to fear AfricanAmerican men because of the rhetoric that President Trump puts out there,” said Davis. “That has been very clear from the beginning.”

African-American men have been one of the main targets of police brutality. According to research carried out by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by the police in their lifetime compared to their white counterparts. 

“To personalize it a bit, I am fearful, and I have friends who are fearful because of the way the current president has endorsed the police,” Davis said. “The big dog whistle in his discourse is his endorsement of the police.” 

According to recent polling by the Democracy Fund, 83 percent of potential Black voters favored former Vice President Joe Biden. In comparison, 10 percent favored President Trump, and 8 percent said they were unsure of who they would pick as their presidential candidate. 

Although a significant portion of Black voters gravitate towards the Democratic party, there are still influential Black men who are rooting for the Republican party. Rappers like 50 Cent and Ice Cube recently attracted a lot of media attention with their support  of President Trump, seemingly highlighting a small faction of Black conservative male voters.  

Every side is the Darkside for us here in America. They’re all the same until something changes for us. They all lie and they all cheat but we can’t afford not to negotiate with whoever is in power or our condition in this country will never change. Our justice is bipartisan. https://t.co/xFIXXpOs8B

— Ice Cube (@icecube) October 14, 2020

👀you see that, I post something on IG while watching the News and I end up on the front page of the paper.🤦‍♂️hey get the app STARZ. pic.twitter.com/oFQAkEjxXy

— 50cent (@50cent) October 21, 2020

Roland Martin, a journalist and News One commentator, believes  the Democratic Party is  overlooking the Black male vote.

Hey @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris. Y’all better pay more attention to Black men! I’ve gotten a dozen calls in the last 48 hours about the lack of attention on Black males. These brothers from all walks of life have hit me. The disconnect is REAL. 1/2

— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) October 7, 2020

Armani Madison, 26, a Harvard Law School student and Editor in Chief at the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Review,  believes the Black male vote is complex and driven by a variety of issues.

 “Issues like policing, mass incarceration, funding for education, social programs, and issues impacting low-income urban environments come to mind,” said Madison.”I also think about undocumented Black immigrants and how my vote will affect them. The stakes are higher than they have ever been before. Now that we have seen the policy effects of Trump in office, it puts urgency in people’s minds about the election.”

Arturo Puckerin, an executive director of the Muskegon-Oceana Community Action Partnership (MOCAP), and a politician, said that he agrees with a vast range of Trump initiatives, and will be voting for him in the upcoming election. Photo courtesy of Arturo Puckerin.

Although the numbers may show that a large majority of the Black vote goes to the Democratic Party, there are exceptions.

Arturo Puckerin, 37, a politician, president, and executive director of Muskegon-Oceana Community Action Partnership (MOCAP) in Muskegon, Michigan, is a member of the Republican Party and believes that the Trump administration is doing an excellent job.

“I voted for Trump in 2016, and I will vote for him again this year,” said Puckerin. “Yes, he can be a little racist, but at least you know that he is looking out for the interest of the people. He goes in and does his job.” I like what he [Trump] has done so far.”

In what seems to be one of the most high stakes elections in recent history, Black voting is on the rise. 

 “It is a proportional increase because there has been a general uptick in voting across the city,” said Joel Hondorp, Grand Rapids Michigan City Clerk, “However,  I have observed that people in the Black community are  spreading more information in their communities about voting and are very keen on getting members of their demographic to vote. That’s a good thing. Voting is power. If you’re not voting as a bloc, you are giving up a lot of your political power.”

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