The Faith Hour with Harriet Cammock

Grief in this country has always had an equity problem, and 2020 has only amplified the issue, as Black deaths have come in back-to-back blows, from the coronavirus, police brutality, and the natural deaths of those we care about. In June, a Washington Post poll found that 1 in 3 Black Americans knows someone personally who has died of Covid-19. The death rate among Black individuals is up to 10 times higher than among white individuals. We’ve lost mothers, fathers, siblings, uncles, aunts, pop-pops, nanas, play cousins, friends, and neighbors as the pandemic ravages our community.

The President has the coronavirus. He and top aides along with members of the Senate, intent on appointing a justice to the Supreme Court took part in an event where it seemed the coronavirus was rampant. The next 48 hours are critical in determining what happens next. Will the President emerge healed from the coronavirus after an experimental was administered or will the virus win?

U.S. President Donald Trump has tested positive for the coronavirus, the deadly virus has swept the world. With Trump and his followers claiming the the virus is “nothing to be worried about”, where will the country go now that the leader has tested positive for the virus.

Many Americans watching the presidential debate earlier this week remarked at the irony of three, elderly white men debating on the merits of the Black Lives Matter movement- with not one actual Black person in sight.

We were joined this morning by UK journalist, Denis Campbell who shared some perspective on ‘The Cost of Racism’. A new report exposing the high cost of racism in the U.S. show States with the lowest IRS tax audit rates tend to be home to middle income, largely white populations: places like New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. On the other hand, Humphreys County, Mississippi, a rural county populated by mostly impoverished Black American residents, who work as fishers, is the most heavily audited county in the entire country

Amid raging debates over how Britain reckons with its imperial past, a new report published by Britain’s National Trust identifies over 93 places that were built, benefitted from, or connected to the spoils of slavery and colonialism. They include Chartwell, Winston Churchhill’s former home in the southeastern county of Kent, Devon’s spectacular Lundy Island, where convicts were used as unpaid labor and Speke Hall, near Liverpool, whose owner, Richard Watt traded rum made by slaves and purchased a slave ship in 1793 that trafficked slaves from Africa to Jamaica. As modern-day contemporaries grapple with the implications of a long history of slavery and colonialism, this reports highlights another blood-soaked form of racism.

With thirty five days to go to the November general election, America is burning. The impact of the Breonna Taylor verdict, has seen a nation torn apart by a man hell- bent on retaining power, doing everything to stoke the fires of racial unrest. The people are dissatisfied, and are vowing to vote out an unpopular leader, whose program of race-based politics has left America burning; from within, her scars made public for the whole world to see and her reputation tarnished and without the prestige she’s accustomed to. World leaders and people in other countries are probably praying for America right now. Watching as the politics of hate has left this once great nation tarnished and burned, in the dust. Jesus, Take The Wheel

The Windrush scandal, along with the Black Lives Matter movement have altered the perceptions of the English ‘mother country’ . Windrush refers to the name of the ship that took Caribbean migrants from nation states like Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, Trinidad & Tobago to Britain, from 1948-1971, to ease the shortage of labor after WWII. Britain through a public policy of making the UK a ‘hostile immigration’ environment for illegal immigrants, confused the Windrush generation with being ‘illegal’. Undocumented does mot mean illegal. That’s what the British government found out. But the cost of another white supremacy policy leaves Black people in the dust.

Join us as we talk with Shawn D. Rochester, author of “The Black Tax”, has quantified the cost of racism in the United States: $70 Trillion since the start of slavery. Today, he says, the Black Tax is perpetuates by discrimination- Black people are hired less frequently, paid less, and have less access to wealth-building tools like affordable mortgages.

Black Americans face a staggering wealth gap. The most recent statistics show that, in 2016, a typical middle-class white family in the US had $149,703 in accumulated wealth, while a middle-class Black family had only $13,024-meaning Black families have 8.6% of the wealth of white families. According to Shawn Rochester, author of “The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black In America”, the cause of this gap can be traced back to slavery.