By Post News Group

Post News Group Global Features Journalist Carla Thomas recently hosted a second Virtual Town Hall on Racism, with guests including community builders Trevor Parham of Oakstop and Chien Nguyen of Oakland Trybe.

Thomas opened the town hall by paying homage to the ancestral losses of the African diaspora and to the Indigenous tribes, the enslaved, the freed, and the trailblazers of the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter Movement, and those more recently victimized by police brutality.

After thanking Bay Area non-profits for their work, Thomas led a thoughtful discussion on the importance of acknowledging racism as the first form of hate that built America.

“While our society tends to rebrand over the decades, we find hate as the new word, broadening its arch of issues in society,” she said. “However, the very first form of hate, which is racism, built this country,” she said.

“That act of othering, creating a narrative that made African people, indigenous people, and ultimately melanated people, labeled as less than human justified the colonizers act of subjugating our ancestors to inhumane, incomprehensible treatment for over 400 years,” said Thomas.

Parham of Oakstop, located at 1721 Broadway, explained that Nazi Germany patterned its mistreatment and extinction of Jews in the Holocaust after chattel slavery in America and the Jim Crow apartheid system that followed it.

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“Nazi Germany found America’s treatment of Blacks so inhumane and denigrating that they (decided) it would actually be the perfect ingredient to undermine another group of people,” said Parham. “So, they essentially borrowed from what Americans did to Black people.”

Thomas pivoted the discussion to the limitations placed on Black America’s generational wealth through policies of red-lining, redevelopment, and title deeds to this day, based on the idea that no Black or indigenous person is allowed to purchase property or land.

“For this reason, there continue to be impoverished Black communities throughout the nation,” she said.

“The structures of racism from red-lining to lack of access to capital continue to restrict Black (people) in America; this structural racism kind of finishes you before you even start,” added Parham. “The lack of generational wealth has left our communities at a disadvantage because with generational wealth we’d have the resources to police our own communities and build further.”

Nguyen, Clinton Park site director for Oakland Trybe, spoke about his parents’ journey as immigrants from Vietnam, the challenges of being teased in school, and how his troubled brother was murdered.

Nguyen has turned his personal tragedies into triumph, pivoting from a career as  an eight-year business owner in the Little Saigon community of East Oakland, to now a non-profit leader transforming and reclaiming the community’s Clinton Park at International Boulevard and Sixth Street..

“A park represents community, and between the pandemic, illegal activities, and homelessness, the park needed to be re-established, and we now offer programming for the youth and extended community,” he said.

“Between Oakstop’s business model of purchasing commercial properties and transforming them into beautiful spaces for community ownership, business space, and special event hubs, and Oakland Trybe’s ability to transform public spaces central to a community and empower our communities, we have solutions,” Thomas said.

Throughout the conversation, Parham referred to a press conference hosted at Oakstop in August where NBA icons Jason Kidd and Jaylen Brown pledged to raise $5 billion for Black businesses in the nation.

“Inspired by Black Wall Street, Jaylen began with Boston and created the Boston Xchange because he became aware of a statistic noting that white households in Boston average $250,000 and Black households averaged a mere $8 in wealth,” Parham said.

In Oakland, he established the Oakland Xchange to expand the movement right at Oakstop, he said.

Thomas encouraged viewers to connect with her guests and tap into the dozens of organizations making a change. “I encourage you to join your chambers of commerce, your community-based organizations, non-profits, and churches to uplift and rebuild the community,” she said.

Thomas also suggested that the NAACP as a great start. “The Oakland chapter’s resolution developed around racism was adopted by the national NAACP, and at the Afrotech Conference, national NAACP leader Derrick Johnson announced a $200 million fund to support Black funders.”

Thomas informed viewers of the California vs. Hate,  initiative, a non-emergency hate incident and hate-crime reporting system to support individuals and communities targeted for hate.

“Your reports inform the state of where to designate resources and extra support,” said Thomas.

For more information, visit PostNewsGroup.com, CAvsHATE.ORG or call 1-833-8-NO-HATE.

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