Governors willing to risk your life to cover their butt with business. Be as careful as you can because for now, we are on our own. Why? Because people in those six states, travel to your!
New coronavirus infections hit record highs in six U.S. states on Tuesday, marking a rising tide of cases for a second consecutive week as most states moved forward with reopening their economies.
Editor’s note: This article describes racist imagery and slurs.
In early June, an ice cream truck jingle rang out in Brooklyn, yet it drew no children, produced no soft serve, and evoked no nostalgia. It was midnight, and it came from an unmarked NYPD cruiser.
It was the third night of an 8 p.m. citywide curfew, issued by Mayor Bill de Blasio, ostensibly to curb looting and violence. Despite the order, peaceful protests continued well past 8 p.m. It was around 11 p.m. in the historically Black neighborhood of Crown Heights that police officers descended upon a group of protesters headed home. Sounds from the street brought Taylor, who wished to have his last name redacted, and many of his neighbors to their porches and windows.
“At least six cop cars showed up, and a few dozen cops in full riot gear popped out with their batons and started tackling and aggressively detaining the protesters,” says Taylor. “It was just sheer violence.” He says neighbors broke out in Black Lives Matter chants while the arrests took place, such as the call-and-response “No justice! No peace!” In response, says Taylor, the police taunted the neighbors. “They were yelling back, like, ‘Is that all you got?’”
The cruisers dispersed around midnight, though one unmarked car remained in front of Peter Chinman’s apartment. “They couldn’t start their car, and all the people in the surrounding buildings started really jeering at them,” he says. When they finally got the engine running, however, they made a curious exit. “They drove off giving everyone the middle finger, while playing the ice cream truck song.” A video of their departure taken by a separate witness and posted on social media immediately garnered thousands of likes and comments.
The next night, I heard the jingle as well. At 2 a.m., the unmistakable melody emanated from an N.Y.P.D. cruiser rolling slowly down a Bedford-Stuyvesant thoroughfare framed by housing projects. I returned to the Instagram post to find an outpouring of similar testimony. “They’re playing this in Harlem every night,” read one comment. “This is not an isolated incident,” read another.
So, why are police officers blasting this jingle from their cruisers in predominantly Black neighborhoods? As of the time of publication, the NYPD has refused multiple requests to comment. But with the nation in the midst of a racial reckoning, it may be illuminating to look at the melody’s place at the intersection of ice cream and Black history.
The tune many recognize as “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” first reached American shores with an influx of Scots-Irish immigrants in the 1700s; it was originally a fiddle song called “The Rose Tree.” Early Americans took kindly to the meandering melody, and by the early 1800s it became “Turkey in the Straw,” a playful exploration of rural Appalachian life. The jingle was borrowed again later in the century for an altogether new, and uniquely American form of entertainment: traveling blackface minstrel shows.
As Theodore R. Johnson writes for NPR, the earworm lost its innocence in the 1820s when it became “Zip Coon.” The song introduced a blackface character of the same name who, after finding freedom and moving into a metropolitan setting, clumsily attempted to fit into white society with fancy clothing and big words. By the time of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, “Zip Coon” was the most popular song in the United States.
The success of the melody as a vessel for white supremacy hit a fever pitch in 1916 with Harry C. Browne’s “Nigger Love A Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!,” released by Columbia Records. Oddly enough, music of this ilk found a happy home in American ice-cream parlors.
To keep American families entertained while they enjoyed their soft serve with sprinkles, many parlors housed music boxes that played popular songs of the day. Unfortunately, well into the 20th century, that meant minstrel show tunes like “Camptown Races,” “Dixie,” “Jimmy Crack Corn,” and, of course, “Zip Coon.” When ice cream went mobile in the 1920s, newfangled ice cream trucks kept the parlor soundtrack, blaring instrumental versions of the aforementioned hit songs into newly constructed suburban neighborhoods. Thus, the catchiest tune of them all, “Zip Coon,” became simply known as “the ice cream truck jingle.”
When Johnson’s article went viral in 2014, detractors argued that ice cream trucks were, surely, only playing the innocuous “Turkey in the Straw.” Yet as Johnson points out in a follow-up article, early-20th century sheet music for “Turkey in the Straw” featuring racist imagery proves that “Zip Coon” had made such a splash that even the once-innocent song leaned into its more problematic connotations. As Johnson wrote, “There is simply no divorcing the song from the dozens of decades it was almost exclusively used for coming up with new ways to ridicule, and profit from, black people.”
So is the NYPD playing this storied jingle as a joke, by coincidence, or as an obscure dog whistle? A quick survey of officers’ sense of humor suggests it could be the latter.
The NYPD’s challenge coins—small, members-only medallions bearing departmental insignias and slogans—offer a look at both a rich trove of departmental inside jokes and how they view the civilians in their jurisdiction. East Harlem’s 25th Precinct covers several drug-treatment clinics, an area they call “Zombieland.” Queens’ 42nd Precinct depict themselves (“Warriors of the Wasteland”) as muscle-laden vikings beating criminals with spiked bats. A “Justified 4X” coin pays homage to “supercop” Ralph Friedman, who killed four people on duty between 1970 and 1984, one of whom was a burglary victim who called the police for help.
The department’s impressive grasp on even antiquated racist tropes is public record as well. From displays as conspicuous as wearing blackface while tossing fried chicken and watermelon into a crowd from a Labor Day Parade float in 1998, to more subtle ones like flashing white-supremacy symbols at recent George Floyd protests, many NYPD officers have used an array of blatantly racist imagery. In 2015, a federal monitor tasked with overseeing police reform within the NYPD recommended new training that included “Do not tell or tolerate ethnic, racial, or sexist jokes.”
The ice cream truck jingle’s history is as complicated as it is obscure. And while a look at the NYPD’s historic sense of humor is telling, the officers’ exact motives for playing the song in today’s climate remain uncertain. For the time being, however, we can surely all agree that the jingle is best left to those who actually sell ice cream.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday reported 2,104,346 cases of coronavirus, an increase of 18,577 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 496 to 116,140.
Not good but other also “modernizing” their holdings – dumb
STOCKHOLM (BLOOMBERG) – India and China have added to their nuclear warhead stockpile in the past year while all other nuclear-armed nations such as the US, Russia and France, continued to modernise their arsenal, according to a recent report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
India increased its arsenal from an estimated 130-140 nuclear warheads in 2019 to 150 in 2020, whereas China increased its stockpile from an estimated 290 warheads to 320 during the same time, the SIPRI report said on Monday (June 15).
China and Pakistan, which has an estimated stockpile of 160 nuclear warheads, individually have more nuclear warheads than India, the report added.
China is modernising its nuclear arsenal and “developing a so-called nuclear triad for the first time, made up of new land and sea-based missiles and nuclear capable-aircraft”, the report said. On the other hand, India and Pakistan were both increasing the size and diversity of their nuclear weapons, it noted.
The SIPRI report on India and China increasing their nuclear stockpile comes at time when the two neighbours are engaged in a six-week-long border stand-off at multiple places along their 3,488 kilometre long unmarked border. Although, meetings between senior military personnel and at the diplomatic level have eased tensions, the confrontation continues.
Globally nine states together possessed an estimated 13,400 nuclear weapons at the start of 2020 which is slightly lower than the 2019 count of 13,865, SIPRI Yearbook 2020 said. The drop was largely due to the dismantling of retired stockpile by Russia and the US, which account for more than 90 per cent of the world’s stockpile.
Of the 13,400 active nuclear warheads, the SIPRI estimates about 3,720 of the nuclear weapons are deployed with operational forces and another 1,800 are stored in a state of readiness.
Three soldiers have become the first casualties in 53 years to result from a clash between nuclear-armed neighbours China and India as troops clash with iron rods and stones at their disputed border.
Doctors Without Borders make the tough decision to leave the Afghan capital of Kabul one month after an attack on a maternity hospital that killed 24 people including babies, nurses and several young mothers.
Alabama’s new cases rose 97% to 5,115 for the week ended June 14, with 14% of COVID-19 tests coming back positive compared to 6% in the prior week, according to the analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak.
New cases in South Carolina rose 86% to 4,509, while the positive test rate rose to about 14% from 9% over the same period, according to the analysis and state data.
When asked to comment on the increases, South Carolina and Alabama health officials said some residents were not following recommendations to maintain social distance, avoid large gatherings and wear a mask in public.
In Oklahoma, where President Donald Trump plans to hold an indoor campaign rally on Saturday, new cases rose 68% to 1,081 in the second week of June, while the positive test rate increased to 4%, from 2% the previous week.
Memorial Day outings are partially to blame for a bump in the number of COVID-19 cases reported, said Dr. Chris Bird, associate professor of biology at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi during his weekly joint Corpus Christi/Nueces County briefing June 12. He also attributed the increase to people returning to work and visiting restaurants and bars as the state continues to reopen businesses under Gov. Greg Abbott’s Strike Force to Open Texas.
“One month of Open Texas, and it looked good,” Bird said. “One month and one week, and things are different. This week is one of the highest weeks (in Nueces County) since we began counting.”
“It’s important to realize we have control over this,” Bird said. “We changed our behaviors, and COVID-19 started back. Wearing a mask makes a difference. It’s important to wear a face covering whether you have symptoms or not. Stay at home if you can. Postpone social gatherings or have them online. And self-isolate when symptomatic.”
Bem Vindos a este espaço onde compartilhamos um pouco da realidade do Japão à todos aqueles que desejam visitar ou morar no Japão. Aqui neste espaço, mostramos a realidade do Japão e dos imigrantes. O nosso compromisso é com a realidade. Fique por dentro do noticiário dos principais jornais japoneses, tutoriais de Faça você mesmo no Japão e acompanhe a Série Histórias de Imigrantes no Japão. Esperamos que goste de nossos conteúdos, deixe seu like, seu comentário, compartilhe e nos ajudar você e à outras pessoas. Grande abraço, gratidão e volte sempre!
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