The Eyes of the World Are Upon Some Of Them: RaceAhead
President Trump, along with other world leaders and veterans of World War II, visited northern France to mark the 75th anniversary of D-day. The veterans are now mostly in their 90s and have long been a welcome part of a solemn duty: The importance of remembering.
"When veterans started coming back here years ago, local people used to turn out to hug and kiss them," a representative of Normandy Chapters, an organization which arranges visits for veterans who served in the Normandy area during World War II told the Los Angeles Times. "The feeling for the American and Allied troops here remains strong, very strong."
The invasion of Normandy was a brutal business, the largest seaside invasion in history. It was a bloodbath for the U.S., as wave after wave of soldiers sacrificed their lives, sometimes just seconds after hitting the beach, to push the German defenders back on their heels.
Ernie Pyle, one of the greatest war correspondents in U.S. history, was on the scene the next day. In the absence of Instagram and instant reporting, his dispatch was the first time the folks back home knew how bad things had been. "The advantages were all theirs," he began. "Four men on shore for every three men we had approaching the shore.":
Submerged tanks and overturned boats and burned trucks and shell-shattered jeeps and sad little personal belongings were strewn all over these bitter sands. That plus the bodies of soldiers lying in rows covered with blankets, the toes of their shoes sticking up in a line as though on drill. And other bodies, uncollected, still sprawling grotesquely in the sand or half hidden by the high grass beyond the beach.
Remembering is so important, which is why it's important to remember everyone.
Though black men and women served throughout World War II, the only African American combat unit at D-day was the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion. Their mission was to raise a barrier of balloons, mini-blimps, really, into the sky to protect the ships, troops, and supplies from the constant aerial attacks by German aircraft. As the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum notes, the first wave of troops, including the 320th were caught in the horror immediately. "Many of the balloons were shot up and destroyed before they could even be brought off the ships, and the soldiers of the 320th did what they could to survive."
Eventually, they managed to deploy as many as 12 balloons by dawn on June 7. The steel cables they used to steer the balloons were a specific danger for dive-bombing planes, but the balloons backed a punch of their own.
"It was [packed with] something like a canister bomb," says William Garfield Dabney in this short but powerful video. "You'd pull the bomb right down into the wing of the plane and BOOM it would blow up."
Though as many as 2,000 African American troops landed on both Omaha and Utah beaches, they appear in no Hollywood films or commemorative non-fiction pieces though, according to Linda Hervieux, the author of Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day Black Heroes, At Home and At War, you can see their balloons in the distance in Saving Private Ryan.
Hervieux has become the historian of record for the 320th, and has been fighting valiantly every year for their recognition. (I do not say this lightly. If you have time, she breaks down the entire story in this extraordinary presentation at Claremont McKenna College last year.)
This year, she's standing with Joann Woodson, the 90-year-old widow of Corporal Waverly "Woody" Woodson Jr., who was just a 21-year-old medic from West Philadelphia when he splashed his way onto Omaha Beach around 9 a.m. on June 6, 1944, only to be shot seconds later. From Hervieux’s latest essay:
Woodson was wounded, hit by burning shrapnel that raked his landing craft and ripped open his buttocks and thigh. The soldier next to him was killed. A medic slapped dressings on Woodson's wounds, and they, along with three other medics in their crew, crept up the beach while crouched behind a tank. They were the first African-Americans to set their boots on Omaha Beach. For the next 30 hours, Woodson would survive German snipers and his own searing pain to save scores of lives. Decades later, Woodson would learn that he had been nominated for the Medal of Honor.
He's never gotten it, even as previous administrations sought to belatedly remedy the many racist snubs from World War II.
Here’s what black WWII veterans did get: A set of New Deal entitlements that fully accommodated Jim Crow racism, and a society that was so viciously bigoted, it was known to lynch black veterans, sometimes in uniform.
It's a complicated history to remember, I'll grant you that. But it’s worth getting it all right.
The great Ernie Pyle was shot and killed by a Japanese machine-gunner almost a year after D-day, as he reported the fighting on a tiny island near Okinawa. Less than three weeks later, the war in Europe ended.
On this important anniversary, I give Mr. Pyle the last word, along with my deep respect:
“In this column I want to tell you what the opening of the second front [of the D-day invasion] in this one sector entailed, so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you.”
On Point
[bs-title]YouTube finally announces ban on supremacist videos[/bs-title][bs-content]In an update to its (inconsistently enforced) hate speech rules, the platform announced it will prohibit "videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status." YouTube has long been under criticism for its handling of harmful content, most recently, by Vox journalist Carlos Maza. Maza accused Steven Crowder, a YouTube personality, of targeting his sexual orientation. While YouTube originally stated Crowder wasn't violating any policies, the platform backtracked on the decision, ultimately deciding to ban ads from Crowder's channel. As Fortune's Danielle Abril reports, YouTube's recent ban is "a move that comes 14 years after the site's inception and hundreds of millions of videos have been posted." Last year, around 160,000 videos were flagged for hate speech or political extremism, Abril writes, but less than 30 percent were removed from the platform.[/bs-content][bs-link link="http://fortune.com/2019/06/05/youtube-bans-supremacist-videos/" source="Fortune"]
[bs-title]The Trump Organization gets $1 million from payday lenders[/bs-title][bs-content]A recent ProPublica report details how payday lenders moved their last two annual conventions to a Trump hotel--soon after the Trump Administration scrapped an Obama-era regulation that was viewed as "a potential death sentence." Payday lenders largely rely on repeat debt-burdened (and generally low-income) borrowers, who end up paying more in interest than what they actually borrowed. In what would have been a blow to the industry, the rule mandated payday lenders ensure borrowers could "pay back their loans while also covering basic living expenses," ProPublica details. The two conventions, hosted by the Community Financial Services Association of America at the Trump National Doral Miami hotel, cost a combined $1 million.[/bs-content][bs-link link="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-payday-lenders-spent-1-million-at-a-trump-resort-and-cashed-in/amp" source="ProPublica"]
[bs-title]A community rallies to save Cab Calloway's boyhood home[/bs-title][bs-content]Speaking of remembering, a planned demolition of jazz great Cab Calloway's Baltimore home has generated enough public pushback that a stay of execution may be coming. The house, which is in complete disrepair, is scheduled for removal. A small group of community activists are arguing for the home's historic value. "My position is: Once these homes are gone, they're gone forever, and the city should really keep its options open and consider developing it into a tourist or commercial type of thing," says Peter Brooks, who is Calloway's grandson.[/bs-content][bs-link link="https://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/bs-fe-cabcalloway-druidheights-20190531-story.html" source="Baltimore Sun"]
On Background
[bs-title]Some pro tips for brands during Pride Month[/bs-title][bs-content]Ad Age has put together some helpful guidelines for marketers looking to jump into the pro-Pride conversation--particularly important as we prepare to acknowledge the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Today and every day, authenticity matters. For one thing, don't slap a rainbow on some swag and call it a day, cautions Mike Proulx, the Chief Innovation Officer at ad agency Hill Holliday. "At a bare minimum, donate 100% of the proceeds from your pride products to an LGBTQ+ cause that helps to advance the community," he says. Build on that by embracing inclusive practices towards LGBTQ customers and employees. "A year ago, Starbucks began offering comprehensive healthcare for all transgender employees by covering historically elective procedures that are life-saving to trans and gender-nonconforming people."[/bs-content][bs-link link="https://adage.com/article/opinion/opinion-brands-heres-how-do-lgbtq-pride-right/2175271" source="Ad Age"]
[bs-title]A new podcast series explores the many ways to be Muslim[/bs-title][bs-content]As Eid al Fitr celebrations come to an end around the world, NPR's Code Switch team reminds us that the media landscape is still pretty hostile to Muslim people. That's why this new podcast series, Tell Them, I Am, offers a welcome remedy. It "aims to give Muslims a space to define their own identities outside of stereotypes and broad generalizations," says Jess Kung and Michael Paulino. And it succeeds. Episodes dropped regularly during Ramadan, but didn't focus on the holy holiday. Instead, host and producer Misha Euceph interviewed 22 Muslim people about the defining moments of their lives. Euceph tells Code Switch that identity is top of mind for her. "She says that when she moved to the U.S. from Pakistan in 2003, being Muslim went from the default to a label that eclipsed her entire identity." The guests are amazing: Tan France of "Queer Eye," Ramy Youssef, of the Hulu show "Ramy," Reza Aslan, the author of No God But God and Zealot, and Alia Shawkat from "Arrested Development" are among them.[/bs-content][bs-link link="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/06/03/728750146/the-ramadan-podcast-where-muslims-talk-religion-but-mostly-everything-elsehttps://tell-them-i-am.scpr.org" source="Code Switch"]
[bs-title]The giving pledge doesn't appear to have done much for philanthropy[/bs-title][bs-content]After an initial flurry of enthusiasm and media coverage- and after the world's most impressive power lunch - the Giving Pledge was born some ten years ago. It was a public, non-binding promise made by the world's richest people, Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, Ted Turner, Michael Bloomberg, etc., to give away more than half their wealth during their lifetimes. It was supposed to be a boon to good works and a clarion call for everyone to give more, give smart, and give now. "Any way you look at it, the Giving Pledge can turbocharge philanthropy for decades to come, and that is great news." In a compelling long read, writer Marc Gunther says its lofty promise has not come to pass. "There's no evidence that the superrich are giving more," he says, citing data. And the rich are just getting richer. "[V]ery wealthy families, as a group, are piling up wealth faster than they are giving it away, even in the face of pressing problems that philanthropy could tackle," he says.[/bs-content][bs-link link="https://www.philanthropy.com/interactives/20190604-givingpledge" source="Chronicle of Philanthropy"]
[bs-content]Tamara El-Waylly helped produce today's raceAhead and contributed to today's summaries.[/bs-content]
Quote
[bs-quote link="https://www.inc.com/peter-economy/17-serena-williams-quotes-that-will-inspire-you-to-remarkable-success.html" author ="Serena Williams"]Every woman's success should be an inspiration to another. We're strongest when we cheer each other on.[/bs-quote]