“No society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

Black culture tells its story through various forms of expression like dance, song, inventions, and food. The resilience to preserve their truth defines “the culture.” Despite a difficult past, New Orleans chefs are now using culinary innovation to inspire their city by highlighting the stories of black chefs who worked at famous restaurants like Galatoire’s and Commanders Palace.

Here’s the breakdown.

1. Dakar NOLA, a restaurant in New Orleans, is serving a dish called Last Meal that contains palm oil, a food used to “fatten up” enslaved West Africans before they were shipped to the United States.
2. Black chefs and scholars in New Orleans are seeking to dismantle the “whitewashed” stories that underlie the city’s tourist economy by emphasizing the crucial role that enslaved laborers played in creating its famous cuisine.
3. Many Black residents in New Orleans experience startling racial inequality today, and these disparities are reflected in the amount of acclaim and fortune that goes to the city’s white chefs and restaurateurs.
4. Dakar NOLA is part of a wave of Black-owned African and Caribbean restaurants that are opening in New Orleans and seeking to highlight the city’s West African and Caribbean antecedents.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you”

 — Mayo Angelou

The Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, established by Congress in 1865 to help formerly enslaved people establish financial stability, collapsed after nine years, with many depositors never seeing their money again. Today, Mehrsa Baradaran, a law professor at the University of California Irvine, draws parallels between this and the story of many Black Americans who invested in cryptocurrency. Crypto was marketed as a way for people to build wealth outside of the mainstream financial system, but many Black investors got in late and appear to have bought high and sold low. According to a recent LendingTree survey, Black crypto investors were more likely than white investors to say they had borrowed money to make their investment and sold their crypto for less than it was worth. “It is a looting of people’s money,” Baradaran said.

1. Cryptocurrencies were marketed to Black communities as a way to build wealth outside of the mainstream financial system.
2. Black investors invested in cryptocurrency at higher rates than their white counterparts, however, many got in late, and some appear to have bought high and sold low.
3. Similar to past financial products targeting Black communities, cryptocurrencies were a pitch to build wealth through a new, largely unregulated technology that would later see the bottom substantially fall out, leaving many Black investors holding the bag.

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

USA TODAY analyzed named executive officers at S&P 100 companies and found that white men still represent 7 in 10 of these positions, while women make up only 17% of named executive officers and women of color only 3%. The greatest progress made was among Black men, with 19 named executive officers in 2022, an increase of over one-third since 2020. Chris Womack of Southern Company and Calvin Butler Jr. of Exelon are two of those top executives. However, despite companies’ pledges to increase diversity, high turnover rates and low promotion rates for people of color persist.

• Chris Womack, a Black man, was appointed as CEO of Southern Company, the largest subsidiary of Southern Company, becoming the first Black CEO in 2021. He will take over the entire organization later this year during the utility holding company’s annual meeting.
• Black men have made the greatest progress in becoming named executive officers in S&P 100 companies, with an increase of more than one-third from 2020 to 2022.
• White men represent 7 in 10 named executive officers across S&P 100 companies, while women make up only 17% of them, with only 17 women of color being named executive officers in 2022.
• Most big businesses that pledged to add diverse talent and put more money into racial equity have not put in the work necessary to reverse high turnover rates and low promotion rates for people of color.
• When named executive officers are all white or all men, companies are not taking diversity seriously, and Black executives like Ron Williams and Calvin Butler Jr. have emphasized that diversity is essential to the success of the business.

“I can tell you, without diversity, creativity remains stagnant.”

— Edward Enninful

With everything going on in the world the want to buy land and properties has increased. I am all here for land ownership! Okay! Not only wanting to own land but wanting to be healthier and find healthier options. For some that looks like “living off grid”. There are several black influencers that have gone completely off grid meaning; buying acres of land and having their own farms with cattle and growing their own food! They even teach other people how to do it too. However there’s always someone that doesn’t want you to be great! A black Texas farmer was dealing with this last week. Farmer Courtney Mallory even got arrested!

• Mallory and his wife purchased 640 acres near Yonder Texas
• Their animals have been mutilated & poisoned
• The N word has been spray painted on their property.
• Mallory was arrested for “stalking, tampering with a utility and theft”
• Dispatchers have received more than 170 calls for their property since April 2021 with no resolution
• Mallory and his family are getting the NAACP and a defense attorney to assist them with this crazy clearly racist issue.

Now if you want to go off grid I suggest you research your area and neighbors FIRST! Even if you have 640 acres clearly you can still have a crazy neighbor or be in an area that’s very racist and unwilling to assist you.

“We don’t have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.”
-Warren Buffett

In a viral TikTok video, popular food reviewer Keith Lee shared the story of Gary Shanks, owner of Southern Taste Seafood, whose food truck was struggling to attract customers. After Lee visited the truck and was accommodated with an allergy-friendly meal, he sent $450 to Shanks through Cash App to help him out. The video went viral, leading to an outpouring of support for Shanks, with strangers sending him money via Cash App. Shanks’ business saw a 900% increase in revenue since Lee’s video went viral, and he’s now serving customers from all over the country.

Read the full article here (7.8 mins)

“Make kindness the norm”