Darlingniki821

Whiteness is the complexion for the protection -- and being white and female comes with great privileges as well.

According to Wednesday's New York Times, Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller will interview a former spokesman for Donald Trump's legal team named Mark Corallo, who resigned last July. Corallo will reportedly tell Mueller that he took part in "a previously undisclosed conference call" with President Trump and White House communications director Hope Hicks:

Mr. Corallo planned to tell investigators that Ms. Hicks said during the call that emails written by Donald Trump Jr. before the [June 2016] Trump Tower meeting — in which the younger Mr. Trump said he was eager to receive political dirt about Mrs. Clinton from the Russians — “will never get out.” That left Mr. Corallo with concerns that Ms. Hicks could be contemplating obstructing justice.

In response to this report, the sentiment has emerged on social media and elsewhere that Hicks -- a presidential confidante and senior figure in the Trump administration -- is somehow naive or too young or supposedly in over her head, and that she should be given the opportunity to make amends and to move on from the Russian scandal later in life.

This is extremely problematic. Hope Hicks is an adult who chose to work for Donald Trump. She was not coerced, and she is very well compensated. Her boss is a petit-fascist authoritarian who may have conspired with agents of a foreign government during the 2016 presidential campaign. There is a mounting body of evidence that he has obstructed justice in an effort to derail Mueller's investigation into Russian interference and other crimes.

If Hicks conspired with Donald Trump on these matters she should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Conservatives incessantly preach the merits of "personal responsibility." It is long past time they applied such standards to themselves.

Because Hope Hicks is a young white woman -- and one who by conventional white American standards is viewed as "attractive" -- she enjoys privileges and other unearned advantages that are denied to nonwhite women. Making excuses for her, and attempting to gin up sympathy and concern for her, all result from that fact.

Social psychologists and others have repeatedly shown that white women are viewed as being more attractive and more worthy of sympathy and empathy -- and also weaker and more vulnerable -- than nonwhite women. This divergence in perception is especially true when white women are compared to black women. Such perceptions and attitudes offer a pungent example of how race intersects with gender to do the work of white supremacy by negatively impacting the life chances of nonwhite women.

Other research has shown that black girls are often viewed as being older, less "innocent" and more mature than they actually are. This process of "adultification" means that black girls are more likely to be expelled and otherwise punished in schools. In the most extreme examples, black girls -- because they are viewed as being more like adults than children -- are subjected to more severe punishment and violence (including lethal violence) by police officers and other law enforcement agents than white girls in a comparable situation.

What has come to be known as "missing white woman syndrome" is another example of the way white women are viewed by the mainstream media as a privileged and protected group. While black women and girls are much more likely to be kidnapped or otherwise disappear than white women, it is the latter group who are disproportionately featured by the corporate news media. George Johnson of the Grio writes:

When we look at the overall picture of the missing, black people account for nearly 40 percent, while only making up 13 percent of the total population. The media coverage on the missing, however, is quite the opposite. The press is 4 times more likely to report when a white person goes missing vs. someone who is black or brown. These numbers are even more dire when the missing is a black woman.

There is also, of course, the inordinate power of white women's tears. Maura Cullen, who is a leading expert on diversity issues at colleges and universities, suggests that this power has three dimensions:

1. Crying shifts the focus to me.
2. Women of color are typically blamed and painted as villains for creating my upset.
3. My intention will always trump the women of color impact.

In her article "When White Women Cry: How White Women's Tears Oppress Women of Color," Mamta Motwani Accapadi explains the broader cultural and political power of white women's tears this way:

Recognizing privilege means acknowledging that our societal norms allow White women to toggle their identities, meaning they can choose to be a woman and choose to be White. Combining these two social identities, White women can be both helpless without the helplessness being a reflection of all White people and powerful by occupying a position of power as any White person. Women of Color do not have the option of toggling their identities in this manner. When a Woman of Color acts, her actions at some level reflect upon her racial community, and she cannot centrifuge her racial identity from her womanhood.

White women's tears hold amazing power in American society. They have gotten innocent black men lynched, created mass panic about dark-skinned strangers who supposedly kidnap white women's children (when in most instances it is a family member, an intimate relation, an acquaintance or the mother herself who is responsible), and projected a state of victimhood and powerlessness that derails substantive social and political change across the color line.

As the pity party for Hope Hicks swings into full gear we are reminded of two fundamental truths:

Racism exists across the ideological spectrum in White America.

There are white liberals and progressives who are invested, albeit in different ways than conservatives, in maintaining and protecting white privilege -- even if that means offering ideological cover to one of Donald Trump's sycophants and political handmaidens.

This is one of the two fundraising months for my podcast, online writing, and other projects for 2018.

I usually put out the old begging bowl in December but decided to wait, as an experiment of sorts, until February. As a practical matter this means that the last fundraiser was back in June of 2017.

As you know, I have been trying to do my best to shine a light of truth on the dangers embodied by Donald Trump on my podcast and through my various other writings and projects. To that end, I have featured conversations/interviews with some of the country's (and world's) leading experts about Donald Trump and his regime.

I am not paid for the podcast. Nor am I compensated for the various TV and radio interviews that I participate in. I also try to offer help and support for other folks' work whenever I can in the form of informal advice or other labor.

I have been given numerous offers to run advertisements and paid for content on my podcast, here, as well as on Facebook (believe it or not). I have declined such offers because I want to maintain my independence.

The podcast and other work requires approximately (at least) 20 hours of work a week...in addition to my "regular" job responsibilities. There is no vast "liberal conspiracy" that funds my work.

As I like to say and offering of "coffee money" from the good folks who listen to, read, and otherwise benefit from my work is so very much appreciated. If you can, and only if you have the resources, please do offer up some gold, silver, paper or other such monies over at the Paypal link on the right hand side of the screen here at chaunceydevega.com aka "Indomitable".

Just days after Bresha Meadows killed her father, her mother, Brandi, appeared on a Fox affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio. “She is my hero,” she said sobbing. “I wasn’t strong enough to get out and she helped us all.”

According to multiple reports, including a petition for a protective order filed by Brandi in 2011, Bresha's father,  Jonathan, physically and verbally abused his family.

Brandi described her suffering in detail. “In the 17 years of our marriage, he has cut me, broke my ribs, fingers, the blood vessels in my hand, my mouth, blackened my eyes. I believe my nose was broken,” she wrote.

She went on to express concern for the safety of her children. “If he finds us, I am 100 percent sure he will kill me and the children … My life is like living in a box he created for me, and if I stepped out of that box, he’s there to put me back in that box.”

The couple reunited and lived together until Bresha, now 15, couldn't take anymore. She has been jailed since July awaiting trial for murder.

Bresha's case has attracted the attention of activists and organizers, and for the past week, they've organized a week of action. For Harriet spoke to organizer Mariame Kaba about the efforts to bring attention to the case.

I am interested in how you first became acquainted with the case of Bresha Meadows.
Sure. I learned about it, actually, through my friend, Kelly, who's a fellow organizer. Kelly is based out of Chicago. She sent the article to a group of us who have been doing work around supporting criminalized survivors of violence. This was back in early August of last year, and she said "this sounds like a really terrible case, and I'm wondering if this young girl has any good legal support. Is this something we might want to support?"

We basically got a small group of people together and started asking about what was happening locally and getting some more information about her case. From there, we formed a Free Bresha defense campaign.

Have you been in contact with her family? In the stuff that I've read about the case, there seems to be a split in the extended family, right?

Yes. The campaign has been in contact with Bresha's mother, Brandi Meadows, and, of course, her mother's supportive. We have, through her mother, connected with her aunt, Martina Latessa. So, yes, we're connected to the side of the family that's been supportive of Bresha. I think even the father's side of the family, who's been less supportive, has been talking about the fact that what they want to see for their niece is that she gets "help" for what they see as a mental health issue, which led to the situation.

Even though they have been saying publicly that their brother was not abusive, they still don't want any draconian action against their niece.
Could you describe the kind of conditions that Bresha is being held in right now?

She's being held at the Trumbull County Juvenile Detention Center in Warren, Ohio. Well, it's not actually in Warren, but it's close to Warren, which is where she's originally from. The juvenile detention center would be like most juvenile detention centers around the country. They are basically jails--holding places before young people are adjudicated for the crimes they're being accused of.

Most of those places are very spare places with very few programs and little to no real mental health support for the young people there. They're jails. I think a lot of times people think about juvenile jails and juvenile detention as mini getaways, or maybe some form of more lenient spaces. They're jails, so you're deprived of your freedom. I think that's most important.

It's very, very strict as to who can come and visit you, [and] how often you can get visits. You can't wear your own clothes, obviously, so you're wearing a uniform. It's deprivation, so she's been under suicide watch several times as she's been held in jail. That's to be expected. She was traumatized before she went in, and she remains traumatized as she's there.

She had a brief 30-day placement for evaluation at an outside mental health facility that her family had to pay for out-of-pocket. So we helped raise money so that they could actually afford it because they can't.

While she was at that particular mental health facility for a 30-day evaluation, she was doing much better in the sense that she got to see her family a lot more. She finally got to see her siblings after she hadn't been able to see them for six months when she was at the jail. They returned her a couple of weeks ago back to the Trumbull County Detention Center from that mental health base, so she's back in the area that was causing her so much anxiety and trauma in the first place again, after having a brief respite from that.

Bresha is 15 years old. There's a lot of talk right now about Kalief Browder and the kinds of traumas that he endured when he was at jailed at Riker's Island. I'm wondering about the concerns that you have, about not only Bresha Meadows, but children, generally, being jailed.

Yes, well you know one of the things that I think people don't pay enough attention to is the notion that jail makes people worse, right? Whatever it is that you had when you were going in is exacerbated when you're in those kinds of spaces. So, if Kalief had any sort of mental health issues before he went into jail, that was just exacerbated. If he didn't have any mental health issues, then he would by the time he left jail, right?

So those places are actually places that are very, very traumatic, incredibly violent spaces, for the most part. It's there for punishment, even though the fact is you're there waiting for trial. So it's punishing you prior to even having your case adjudicated. That should make everybody incensed and enraged.

I spend a lot of my time, most of the work that I do with my organization, Project Nia, is focused on addressing and ending youth incarceration of all sorts. We really understand that all empirical evidence suggests that locking children up is a bad thing. There's not a study that says "this is good." You can't find one, so we should stop doing it.

In the case of Bresha in particular, when you are a victim of domestic violence, and you end up in these kinds of circumstances, it's incredibly retriggering and re-traumatizing. In the case of girls, particularly, who find themselves in the system, overwhelmingly they come from families where family violence existed. 84% of the time. They come from situations where they were, themselves, sexually violated and abused. When you go into jail, whatever sexual abuse experience you had is heightened in jail, where you have to strip search and you have to change in front of a lot of other people. In some cases, you're actually attacked by staff members.

A lot of the research that has been done over the years suggests that guards are the people who actually sexually traumatize girls and young women when they're locked up. So, that's not a good place to be, and we really need to abolish pre-trial detention and abolish youth incarceration altogether.

The pushback you get from people who don't understand the idea of prison abolition, is "well what do you do with people who commit crimes? What do you do with people who might be a danger to society? Even children." If we eliminate pre-trial incarceration, what do we replace it with?

For me, the question is not "what do we replace a bad thing with?" My point is always that you get rid of the bad thing, no matter what it is. Then you work on creating alternatives to actually achieve what it is, that you're trying to do.

For me as an abolitionist, I don't believe in punishment as being something that actually addresses the issues or the root cause of the issues that we're trying to address. As Angela Davis has said many times, prisons and jails are meant to disappear people and also disappear problems.

What I always say to folks is, most people in the world who are locked up are not,"rapists and murderers." So, if you want to start there, start with freeing all the people who aren't those things. You would decarcerate a whole bunch of people, and that would be a good thing.

Then, I think as an abolitionist, I always talk about the fact that abolition isn't advocating the opening of the doors of every prison and jail and just letting people out. Abolition is about making sure that we are addressing the conditions that make it necessary for us to have those hell-holes in the first place. If you work on those kinds of things, we'll be living in a different kind of world. We'll have different questions, and we'll address what to do with people who cause harm under a different context that will maybe be a non-punitive one and that will allow us to think about how we deal with that stuff.

So my answer is always, I'm not going to really engage in that, "what do we do with the bad people?" question. Because that's actually a question that needs a collective response that we build together. But, for me, it's not even about that.

I would certainly say that if in the case of people like Bresha, they don't deserve to be in jail, period. So, that's not even a question.
I'm wondering if feel like Bresha being a teenage black girl has any influence or impact on the kind of mobilization that has occurred around her case? 

That's a great question.  I saw many years ago an article or a post that said "somebody got ... A woman was killed and no one showed up" or something like that, to commemorate that loss.
Somebody else wrote a piece that said "actually, that's super offensive." The idea that no one showed up is actually a complete misreading of what happened. There were people there, and the fact that you don't acknowledge that is actually a form of erasure that should be avoided, right?

So, I actually think that in the case of Bresha, Black lives matter when we make them matter. So, I just believe in the importance of stressing that for black women and girls. It's always been other black women and girls mostly who have stepped up to support, push, make sure that they're seen and understood and not made invisible, and that continues to be the case.

We have a very multiracial group of people who have come together to press, but it's women of color dominated. That's just always been the case.

Now, I think we've done a pretty good job of making sure that her story stays in the press and in the media, and people have been surprisingly open to holding teachings in their communities and donating money. The family has raised over $100,000 for Bresha's expenses and other things. We have raised several thousand dollars for the mother when she lost her job, in order to tide them over over the holidays. So people have been pretty receptive, and I think the truth of the matter is, the Say Her Name mobilizations and Black Lives Matter, and other mobilizations and organizing that has happened over the last few years has paved the road to get people paying more attention to the lives of Black girls and young women, at least on the public side.

So that's a long way of saying, that, yes, I think Black girls and women don't get as much focus on our fight and the issues that we face. That's just true. At the same time, I'm seeing some change around that, and I'm seeing that in the case of Bresha, and I saw that happening with Marissa Alexander, a case that I was also involved in.

So yeah, that's what I would say.

You and your organization are organizing a week of mobilization around Bresha Meadow's case. Could you talk a little bit more about that.

Yeah, we've had two previous weeks of action. One in April around a hearing, and then one in January around a hearing, and this is the third week of action that's happening this month in April, starting Monday the 10th, going through the 17th. Initially, we were coinciding it with her next hearing date, which was supposed to be on April 17th. That has now moved to May 8th, but we decided to keep the week of action, both because it's Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and we wanted to make sure to raise up the fact that criminalization itself is sexual violence. We want that message to be understood--that it's state enactment of gendered violence.

So, we really want to raise those point and make that known. We want people to keep Bresha in the forefront of their minds. We want them to make sure they understand and get ready for May, which is a very big month, with her pre-trial hearing on May 8th, and then her trial's supposed to start on May 22nd. We really want to push for people to go to Ohio on May 8th for that hearing, and also for the trial.

We're basically going to use this week to do what we've been doing, which is make sure to educate people. We have a curriculum I wrote that people can download and use in their communities. It teaches people a little bit about Bresha and her case, and puts it into historical context. It talks about domestic violence and its impact. Then, we also have a postering thing that people can do. There's a poster online that they can download and they can post those all up in their communities, take pictures of it, show it, and share it with us so that we have those photos and can share them on social media with people.

We're inviting people to do poetry circles. We've put up a couple of examples of guides of poetry that focus on gender-based violence that people can use to have conversations in their communities.

Really what Bresha's family has wanted has been to make sure that it's not just about Bresha, but about all the Breshas that are out there. Lots of young girls and women and gender nonconforming people are victimized by violence and sometimes have to use violence in order to protect and defend their lives.

Visit FreeBresha.com to learn more about how you can help Bresha Meadows.

President Trump appeared to suggest Tuesday that the wave of bomb threats against Jewish community centers across the U.S. could be coming from within the Jewish community itself, according to a Pennsylvania state lawmaker present for the comments.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who was part of a group of state attorneys general meeting with Trump at the White House Tuesday, relayed Trump’s comments about the bomb threats to Buzzfeed News, explaining that the commander-in-chief seemed to indicate he felt some of the threats were being made from the inside, as part of a potential effort “to make others look bad.”

The coronation of the American Il Duce Donald Trump is scheduled for Friday. At approximately 12pm EST he will become the next President of the United States. What are you plans? Are you protesting? Staying home and in bed, drunk, high, or otherwise with altered mood? Are you planning on a day of not working or shopping? 

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”

Are my worries misplaced? Am I unfair in my condemnation of Trump and his ilk as America's version of "Little Eichmanns", those authoritarians and their human tools?

In many ways, Donald Trump’s victory on Election Day is collateral damage from the “War on Terror.” The profound changes in America’s political culture and values in response to 9/11 created a crack that Trump, the entrepreneur and political opportunist, was able to open wide enough so as to slip into the White House.

Philosopher Slavoj Zizek described the “War on Terror” as a sea change in a 2006 before-and-after essay for The Guardian:

September 11 is the symbol of the end of this utopia, a return to real history. A new era is here with new walls everywhere, between Israel and Palestine, around the EU, on the US-Mexico and Spain-Morocco borders. It is an era with new forms of apartheid and legalised torture. As President Bush said after September 11, America is in a state of war.

Writing in the London Review of Books in March 2002, Zizek also observed:

The paradox is that the state of emergency was the normal state, while “normal” democratic freedom was the briefly enacted exception. . . . The problem is that America is, precisely, not in a state of war, at least not in the conventional sense of the term (for the large majority, daily life goes on, and war remains the exclusive business of state agencies). With the distinction between a state of war and a state of peace thus effectively blurred, we are entering a time in which a state of peace can at the same time be a state of emergency.

The “War on Terror” created a condition where policies and decisions once thought impossible in the United States would now be made routine and quotidian. This includes drone strikes from afar on “terrorists” (attacks in which 90 percent of those killed are innocent civilians), policies such as extraordinary rendition and state sponsored torture and, of course, massive surveillance programs that intrude on the privacy of all Americans.

Beyond public policy, the “War on Terror” negatively affected America’s political culture.
George W. Bush presided over a failed presidency that exacerbated the country’s extreme political polarization. Bush was also able to stoke and subsequently leverage fears of future terrorist attacks on “the homeland” in order to win a presidential election — and invade Iraq under the pretense of preemptive self defense.

The alternate reality created by Fox News and the broader right-wing echo chamber worked its way into the broader public discourse during the Bush administration and amid flagrant disregard for “the reality-based community.” In total, the “War on Terror” has nurtured and reinforced what philosopher and media critic Henry Giroux describes as a “culture of cruelty” in America.

The “War on Terror” also coincided with an increase in authoritarianism and ethnocentrism among many (white) Americans. Social scientists and others have shown how the ascendance of Donald Trump and his ability to win over white conservative and right-leaning independent voters is directly tied to this phenomenon.

President-elect Trump emphasized themes related to “economic anxiety” and malaise in red-state America in order to defeat Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. While the facts of the economic circumstances described by Trump (aided by a gullible and lazy corporate news media) are very much in dispute, the sense that America’s economy has never really recovered from the Great Recession is undeniably true. While the housing bubble may have been the flash point, the American economy was already on the verge of imploding: Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated that the war in Iraq cost the American people at least $3 trillion.

It also cannot be overlooked that one of the stated goals of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida was to drain the United States economy — and in this they were quite successful.

In combination with the negative impact of neoliberalism and globalization on many American workers, the slow bleeding of the country’s economy helped to seed the political terrain for the rise of a right-wing demagogue such as Donald Trump.

As The Washington Post recently explained, economically struggling parts of the American Rust Belt were especially vulnerable to Trump’s right-wing faux-populist economic message.

The deindustrialized Midwest and rural America have borne the brunt of America’s military casualties in the “War on Terror.” Thousands of dead and many more thousands of wounded American soldiers — not to mention those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other long-term maladies — are a real and human reminder of how policy decisions affect communities around the country. These communities in turn often feel neglected, ignored and disconnected from politicians, the mainstream news media and their fellow citizens who live in blue-state America.

To win over these voters, Trump repeatedly emphasized themes of national disgrace and humiliation (“we don’t win anymore”), false claims that the United States military is “weak” and needs to be made “strong again,” and overblown anxieties about Islamic terrorism. The “War on Terror” helped Trump’s message of (white) American nationalism resonate with his public.

The American people must now grapple with a terrifying, albeit wholly predictable outcome of the expansion of the national security state and domestic spying apparatus that began under Bush and that continued and in some ways was expanded by President Barack Obama. Indeed Obama (and Hillary Clinton) possesses the temperament, wisdom and experience to reasonably preside over such a lethal and dangerous bureaucracy and the fearsome power it commands — power that will in time be under the command of a leader with no such qualifications.

Trump will soon be the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military and intelligence services. He has promised to violate international law in his fight against ISIS and other Islamic terrorist groups. Trump has also shown little to no respect for standing norms of democratic governance, civil liberties or the U.S. Constitution by threatening his political rivals with jail and violence, saying that he would not respect the outcome of the presidential election if he lost, and suggesting that freedom of the press should be curtailed. He is also profoundly ignorant of basic policy knowledge.

And as resistance against Trump’s unpopular presidential election grows, he may well turn the national security state established by the “War on Terror” against his political enemies and the American people en masse.

Sept. 11 and the resulting “War on Terror” did not cause the election of Donald Trump, but they helped enable it. They brought out the worst traits in many Americans and helped to create a state of national derangement fueled by revenge and fear. Trump, the demagogue and authoritarian, harnessed those political demons and rode them to victory over Clinton to the White House.

Historians and pundits often refer to Hofstadter’s ideas about the “paranoid style.” Much-overlooked, however, is a sub-theme in Hofstadter’s writing. That discussion focused on the emergence of “fundamentalism” in American politics. Individuals who seek a broader understanding of the present political standoff in Washington may find Hofstadter’s judgments thought-provoking.

Richard Hofstadter recognized that evangelical leaders were playing a significant role in right-wing movements of his time, but he noticed that a “fundamentalist” style of mind was not confined to matters of religious doctrine. It affected opinions about secular affairs, especially political battles. Hofstadter associated that mentality with a “Manichean and apocalyptic” mode of thought. He noticed that right-wing spokesmen applied the methods and messages of evangelical revivalists to U.S. politics. Agitated partisans on the right talked about epic clashes between good and evil, and they recommended extraordinary measures to resist liberalism. The American way of life was at stake, they argued. Compromise was unsatisfactory; the situation required militancy. Nothing but complete victory would do…

Here, then, is the significant marriage between practical politics and a fundamentalist-style political religion. Republican intransigence in clashes over Obamacare, budgets, and debt ceilings may reflect smart politics from the radical Right’s point of view. Militant conservatives in Washington can succeed in channeling the base’s anger while also boosting their political careers. They treat political fights in Washington like holy crusades and are generously rewarded for their militancy in conservative voting districts.

When I first heard that they wanted to remake ROOTS, I legit was like “Bhet why?” The mini-series from 1977, based on Alex Haley‘s book of the same name is one of those classics that everyone knows about even if they haven’t seen. Why touch it? Why do we need to see a new version of the harrowing tale of Kunta Kinte, a Mandinka warrior, stolen and sold into slavery? It was the role that catapulted LeVar Burton into stardom, and it is so strongly HIS that why would they even try to re-do it?

Fun fact: that was LeVar’s first ever audition. If you wanna talk about being where you are destined to be in, that’s an example.

Those were my questions when the ROOTS team reached out to me. I was hella skeptical. And then they told me why they were re-imagining (not remaking) ROOTS. It turns out that most millennials (people under 35) have never seen the original ROOTS. We’ve seen clips of the “What’s your name? KUNTA.” scene, but many of us have never sat down to watch it. Me included.

So they sent me a screener of the first episode of ROOTS Reimagined. Y’all. Y’ALL. I watched it and when it ended, I felt trapped in a glass case of emotions. I felt anger that was visceral. I felt proud, from the resilience of my people. And I felt more than ever that this was necessary. This is a time when this conversation can be really productive.

I agreed to partner with the History Channel and A+E on this to spread the word because what they’ve done here is fantastic. They put my skepticism to bed after seeing that episode, and the care they took to tell a story that was layered, as complete as it could be, but also relevant to the pace we absorb things in now.

Episode one spends a lot of time in Africa, where we learn who Kunta Kinte was, who he came from and how he came to be who he was before he was stolen from his home to become a slave in the United States.

We see the power that has been infused in him, allowing him to bend but not break. That is what gave me the pride in the midst of the anger of seeing people being treated like cattle, branded and beaten. There were times I had to take my eyes away from the screen, because it was TOO real. There were times when tears fell from my eyes before I even realized they were there. It did not spare us from the ugliness of what happened to Kunta and other Black people but it also gave us the beauty they had before they were torn away to come to this land.

ROOTS stars Malachi Kirby, who is about to bust out the gates and be considered a strong part of Hollywood’s next generation. He is phenomenal as Kunta Kinte. He might be unknown, but that is changing right now. Last week, I was at the White House with the ROOTS crew, speaking on a panel where we talked about “Your Name is Your Shield: How People Today Are Finding Their Roots.” I’ve written About Yoruba Names and their Meanings and how our monikers are the dreams our parents have for us and the circumstances of our births. The conversation we had explored that and how these names define who we are (Kunta/Toby).

Afterwards, they screened the first episode for everyone who was there. I was backstage with the cast, and when the closing credits rolled and lights came on, LeVar Burton, who serves as Executive Producer, was in tears. He was so proud to see this story, and the scene we are left in is THE defining moment for Kunta. He hugged Malachi and that had me in my feels. He passed the torch.

Anika Noni Rose (hey boo!) plays Kizzy, Forest Whitaker is Fiddler, Emayatzy Corinealdi is Belle and Laurence Fishburne is Alex Haley. Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Tom Lea.

So yeah. ROOTS kicks off next week on Memorial Day (May 30), with a 2-hour premiere episode at 8pm CT. It will then continue every evening at the same time (for 1 hour), wrapping on Thursday night. Get this: it will be playing on the History Channel, A+E and Lifetime at the same time, so this ain’t no game. Instead of the 12-hour ROOTS we had before, this is 6 hours.

Anywho, join me on the Twitters on Memorial Day at 8pm CT/9pm ET, as I watch and live-tweets ROOTS! Follow me @Luvvie. And afterwards, I’ll jump on Periscope to recap it and debrief so we can all woo-sah together. My Periscope is at: http://periscope.tv/Luvvie, so even if you don’t have an account, you can watch from your browser. The Twitter account for the mini-series is @ROOTSseries so you can follow them too.

I am asking my white friends to also watch this mini-series, possibly with your kids too. The trans-atlantic slave trade is not just Black history. We didn’t do it to ourselves. This is also part of YOUR history, as well, as your ancestors were the ones who were on the other side. This conversation with your children will be uncomfortable, but it is one that they can handle. Black folks had to have these talks with our kids since they were young, so TRUST, yours can deal too. They need to know the truth in the legacy of slavery and the lingering effects. They need to know that this happened.

Our trauma isn’t an inconvenience but a tangible remnant of what happened across those oceans and on this soil. Protecting them from this is to sit in the privilege of being able to afford not knowing. Make this a family event. History Channel even created a family viewing guide to help give you some ideas on how to decompress afterwards, and answer some tough questions. Teachers, there’s classroom resources for you too.

Part of Kunta’s identity was how much his name mattered to him. You can show that Your Name is Your Shield through the app that History has.

Let’s get uncomfortable. Let’s have the conversations that need to be had.

What I’ve seen so far? It’s good, y’all. I was so nervous at first but this was well done and they took it very seriously. In fact, the son of the original producer is the one who is producing this one. I spoke with members of their team and from the top down, they were like “we knew we couldn’t mess this up.” I know people are often like “why do we always have to tell slavery stories?” But think about it. How many in 35 years have there really been? The problem is the lack of OTHER stories, not in the telling of the ones of the legacy of slavery. I really hope folks tune in.

Oh and I got a picture with LeVar Burton at the White House. After my panel, he told me “you’re incredible.” So basically, I can steal away to Jesus now. Anywho, here’s our picture. BECAUSE LEVAR BURTON, SON!!!

And he happens to be one of the sweetest celebs I’ve ever met. His spirit is pure light. I even gave him my book and he took a picture with it, where he nailed the look of my side-eye lollipop. It was PEAK awesome!

---

Disclosure: Compensation was provided for this post by A+E Studios but as always, all opinions, thoughts, side-eye and whatnot are all mine. I keep it 100 always.

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An Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for an upcoming project that you should consider getting behind... Below you'll find details courtesy of the award-winning filmmakers - Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster - who produced and directed "American Promise," and are currently working on the New York Times Op-Doc "Conversations on Race" series, both (the film and the series) featured on this blog. The campaign goal is $50,000, with 20 days to go until it ends.  For much more on the project and the campaign, watch a video pitch below, and then visit the project's Indiegogo page here: *** "Say Their Names" is a bold and groundbreaking multimedia...

From March 2-4, Lyon (France) will become the European capital of animation cinema as more than 700 animated feature film producers, investors, distributors, sales agents, video game companies and new media players from all over Europe and beyond will attend the 18th Cartoon Movie Forum to create partnerships and co-productions that will allow for the funding of around 20 animated feature films this year.  55 projects from 19 European countries have been selected to be pitched at Cartoon Movie: 23 of them are in concept, 21 in development, 8 in production and 2 are completed films. France will be represented by 18 projects, followed by Denmark and Germany with 5 each, Italy,...

It's an inevitable debate during awards season - who won, who really should have won, and for which role. When it comes to black actors in particular, there's a longstanding belief that the Academy routinely gets it wrong, snubbing certain Oscar-worthy performances and choosing instead to hand out the trophy for roles that don't quite cut it. In anticipation of the Academy Award nominees announcement tomorrow morning, here's a look back at the black actors who've taken home the Oscar, and which other roles they should have won for, if any. BEST ACTOR - Sidney Poitier            Won for: Homer Smith, "Lilies of the...

The 2016 Sundance Film Festival kicks off later this month. And as it usually does leading up to the festival each year, Sundance has begun releasing its "Meet the Artist" series of videos which feature the filmmakers whose films will be premiering in competition at the festival. Below, watch Nate Parker talk about the inspiration for his film "The Birth of a Nation" as well as his struggles in trying to get the film financed, which premieres in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section. The actor wrote, directed and also stars in the film, playing Nat Turner.  The official synopsis reads: Set against the antebellum South, this story follows Nat Turner,...

There has been some very good and smart writing about the Bundy Brigands (see David Neiwert's piece in The Washington Post. Neiwert has also been a guest on The Chauncey DeVega Show.)

But, this picture sums it up perfectly.

White privilege consists of the unearned advantages, privileges, and opportunities that come with being "white" in America.

Being a white conservative is white privilege on crack and steroids combined.

The irony, of course is, that white conservatives complain about being "oppressed" or "disadvantaged" when they are really among the most privileged, spoiled, and coddled group of people in the United States.

What other examples of white conservative privilege can we add to the list?

At least a half-dozen attendees shoved and tackled the protester, a black man, to the ground as he refused to leave the event. At least one man punched the protester and a woman kicked him while he was on the ground.

All of the attendees who were involved in the physical altercation with the protester were white.

The protester appeared to be shouting “black lives matter” and later removed his sweatshirt to reveal a shirt with those words.

At least one attendee shouted “all lives matter” as the protester was eventually led out by police officers on the scene…

The Black Lives Matter protester attacked during Donald’s Trump’s Birmingham rally said he was punched, kicked and called “n****r” while a group of eight or nine people were on top of him…”

He said people encircled him, and he was being pushed and punched from every direction. Someone hit him from behind, and the next thing he knew, he was at the bottom of pile. He was kicked in the stomach, and the chest, both men and women. “I got enough people off of me that I was able to get up a little bit,” he said. “Somebody got behind me and started trying to choke me out.”… Southall said he was repeatedly called a “n****r” and “monkey” and told his life doesn’t matter.

“Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing,” Trump said on the Fox News Channel on Sunday morning. “I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a trouble-maker who was looking to make trouble.”

Scandal has done one thing well in all its seasons, and that is to keep throwing curveballs where you don’t expect. We might have gotten better at solving the cases Olivia and them get but they have kept me on my toes. The ending of this episode was a good example of that.

Poping the President – Sally Langston has posted the leaked pics of Fitz and Olivia frolicking in the White House for all to see and it is the talk of the town. President Ghost leaves an astounded Liv to go speak with Abby and Liz and they tell him he has to make a statement. He tells them that he will talk with Olivia besides him, and Abby almost cackles in his face. She knows her friend and she says “The President is about to be Poped.”

SURE IS. Because he returns to his room and she is gone! He calls her and she’s booked it out the underground tunnel, faster than he can say “Vermont.” OOPS.

Liv heads to Quinn’s, where she takes a wine bottle to the head and changes into a tshirt. She is not ready to face this. She just wants to work. Whenever it’s her turn to be her own client, she cannot deal. She runs.

Mellie’s Apology – The next day, President Ghost walks into the Oval Office and finds Mellie sitting there in a red suit. What does she want? She wants him to apologize to her. She thinks it’s better for her to be there for the optics so it looks like they are still together and she wants an apology because the divorce papers he gave her were “mean.” She still thinks they’re a team but what he needs to realize is that they never were. Fitz does nothing to have her back. Girl, bye. She does, however, read his ass. “You wanna play? Let’s play. You placed Olivia in a dangerous position. You outed her. You thought you’d be making a grand gesture… She’s not just a mistress now. She’s America’s mistress. History will preserve her as such.”

Actual factual, Mellie Mel.

He tells her that he knows she leaked the pictures, but she counter-points saying she didn’t. Sure, as FLOTUS it will get her sympathy but as a Senator, it makes her come across as a sexless prude. Good point. It makes no sense for her to do it. Ghostie replies by telling her to get the hell out. Mellie walks away with a smirk because she got her bite back. That red suit ain’t for nothing.

Fixing Things – Afterwards, Abby rolls back into the Oval Office asking Fitz how they can fix this. What comment should she give the hungry press? Once again, he insists that he will do nothing without Liv. With his weak ass. He never makes a decision that isn’t agreed on by someone else first, even when he thinks he’s the one making a decision. VP Susan comes in huffing and puffing talmbout how of course the President would never cheat. “This whole situation is malarkey and doo doo.” Bless her heart. She’s way too honest for politics. I just wanna pat her on the head. Also, who says “doo doo” and they’re over the age of 5?

Back at the Olivia Pope and Associates office, press is parked outside, waiting to see her. Quinn is holding down the fort as always when Jake and Huck walk in. Huck says “He fixed me. Jake fixed me.” I was all BISH WHERE?!? So was Quinn, who calls bullshit, saying there is no amount of medicine in the world to fix Huck. Anywho, they wonder where Liv is and she tells them she’s on a case. Some rich, white kid (Gavin) is accused of killing his father because his stepmom found him at the bottom of the stairs and his elderly father laying in blood. Apparently, he pushed him. The boy was arrested but out on bail 24 hours later, in spite of the fact that he is accused of committing a 1st degree felony. Because: rich and white.

Now, he’s missing. Stepmom wants Olivia to find him and bring him back.

2-Bit David – David shows up in Mellie’s office with some federal investigators. They are there to scan her computer for evidence of her possibly leaking those pictures. Mellie looks at him and says that in case he ain’t know, he really isn’t working as the Attorney General of the United States in that moment. He is nothing but a “2-bit divorce attorney.” This is true. Folks stay having Lemony do their dirty, sleazy jobs. He gets no respect. She hands over her computer without a fight, saying she has nothing to hide.

Catching Gavin – Liv goes to North Carolina on his trail because of his use of his cards while on the lam. She’s wearing baseball cap because now her picture is plastered all over TV. Luckily enough, she runs into the boy as he walks into a casino. She sits down at his Blackjack table and sleekly handcuffs his leg to the stool he’s sitting on. Well played. Of note: the boy’s haircut is absolutely atrocious.

Jake walks in right then, because wherever Liv is, he will come find her. They get in the car and the boy says he didn’t kill his father. Says they argued and his dear old dad wouldn’t give him the money to finish some house he was building. HOWEVER, why would he want him dead? He wants them to look at his stepmom, who was cheating on the old man. In their prenup, if she cheats, she gets nothing. BUT if he dies, she gets $1 billion. He says his dad had his will changed right before he died so they might be looking at him when she actually killed him.

Stranger Danger – Huck and Quinn are trying to get to the bottom of the case with Gavin. As they discuss, someone shows up. He’s a press guy holding a camera, and wants to know more about the accusation of their boss being the Presidential Mistress. Huck gets up and grabs a pencil and Quinn springs to action. She bends the guy’s hands backwards and takes his camera and dares him to even say he was on their premises. She punked him so bad. “If you don’t get out of here, I will kick your ass and tell everyone a girl beat you up.” UGH I LOVE QUINN SO MUCH NOW. And to a shaking Huck clutching a pencil, sir you ain’t fixed worth a lick.

Be the Adult – Cyrus is watching Abby struggling with the press and giggling. Fitz still refuses to give a comment so all she can do is tell the press that she will not anwer questions about the cheating allegations. Beene calls Red and says he wants to offer her advice.

“Be the adult. Bring Mellie back to the White House. How does leadership come? Is it given to you? No. You want to lead, be the leader. You want POTUS to fall in line. To behave. Be the adult. He will become the child. You don’t ask children when bedtime is and you don’t listen to children when they say they don’t want their vegetables. You threaten them and you make them eat those vegetables. Be the adult.”

I LOVE me a good Cyrus Beene monologue! He makes a great point, though. They have always treated President Ghost as the child because he is. He can do nothing by himself. He is the least powerful character on this show.

Huck Gone – At OPA, Huck thinks he’s gotten some info by digging up the old man who was murdered’s property info and Quinn flips out. He is supposed to be finding the man’s will. Our boy is off his game, man. BUT Quinn throwing this no fix thing in his face is gon get her messed up by him. She better watch out before he uses a couple of her teeth as dice. He tells her PEACE and leaves.

Pope Caught – In some janky motel, Liv tells Jake that Gavin’s story seems plausible. The boys walks into the room and turns on the TV. Before he can be stopped, he sees the story of the scandal, and Liv’s picture. He’s like “I’m not the only one on the run, huh?” Mmhmmm.

Liv is on her incognegro steeze with the hat low on her forehead when she goes to a diner with Jake and Gavin. The boy excuses himself to go to the bathroom and as he goes, he stops quickly at a table of women. Jake follows him. Liv gets a call and it’s Quinn, who is updating her about the will she found. Gavin was forging checks in his dad’s name and pops found out about it and was going to tell the cops. He died the next day.

A woman walks up to Liv and asks “are you Olivia Pope? The little guy was right.” That summagoat snitched, and as women swarmed Liv for selfies, Gavin slips out.

Being the adult – Abby is in the press room and when the press asks her for the umpteenth time about the scandal happening, she decides to be the adult. She tells them that the First Lady is still living in the White House and that she and her husband, the President are dealing with the matter privately. It was a comment when she was previously told to make one. Fitz blows his gasket as he watches and tells Liz North to fix it. Abby was the adult.

She goes to see Cyrus to ask what to do now, because she is getting a lot of heat from President Ghost, who is pissed. Cy tells her to do what Liv would want, reminding her that she knows her friend better than anyone else. She asks why he’s offering advice so freely. It surely ain’t from the goodness of his heart. What’s his angle? Well, he hates no one more than he hates Liz. An she hates Mellie even more than she hates him. This is to help get Mellie back into the White House. Unspoken but obvious: getting that to happen could lead to him getting his job back. Ah yes.

Flawed Man – VP Susan is summoned to the Oval Office because the President wants her to take his place in some meeting he has the next day. She wants to protest because she’s schedule to speak to some high school kids but he ain’t hearing it. She starts to leave then turns back to ask how he could be cheating in America’s house. That ain’t what they elected him for. “Susan, I am a flawed person, just like everyone else.” “Mr. President, you don’t get to be just like everyone else.” ALL THE WELPS. Drop that word on him right quick! Again, Susan is too honorable for politics.

Beer and Spoon – Liv is back in the motel room, reassessing her bad decisions and feeling sorry for herself. Jake walks in with beer, because there was no wine in the little bodega he went to. Her pics are everywhere because all the diner folks have posted them. On a good note, there is a lead on Gavin. He stole a red car and they just need to track it. Liv wonders how she got there (because nobody’s s’posed to be here). She turns around and Jake spoons her as he gives her comforting words.

He takes being friend zoned to such epic levels. He is ALWAYS there for Olivia no matter how bad she plays him. Everyone should have a Jake. Someone who has your back in spite of the fact that you won’t give them none. HA! Liv says “Let’s face it. I’m basically Gavin.” Running from something you know you did? Sure. but your haircut isn’t terrible. She is running from the shame of loving Fitz.

What Would Liv Do? – Abby finds President Ghost on the White House balcony and points out to him that the photos of Liv in the diner also show she’s with Jake. Right. Most importantly, she wants him to understand that Liv will never be able to deal with the pressure that comes with being America’s mistress. “Olivia is doing what Olivia always does. She’s trying to stay out of the storm.” She is never going to face that music so he needs to deal with it on his own.

David later tells the President that they’ve swept Mellie’s computer and there is no evidence those pictures were ever on it. But the breach started in a network in her office. President Ghost shuts the door on him before he can continue. Mellie gets a call and it is Fitzgerald Grant calling to apologize. He wants her to come home. WELL DAMB. David goes to Abby’s office with the report and drops it on her desk. Mellie’s key code was used but it probably wasn’t by her. BUT he read some tea in her inbox. And there’s tea in that report he is leaving for her to sip.

Equality Now – Liz North walks into the Oval Office and is surprised to see Mellie stroll in too. She’s back in the White House. The First Couple is doing an interview together, to squash the rumors. Ain’t nobody tell Liz til now. Whoops. She finds Abby and says she knows she’s behind it. Red pulls her into her office and says she knows she leaked the pics of Fitz and Liv to Sally, and she could use it to destroy her, of course. Instead, what she wants is that she is no longer Liz’s underling. They must be equals.

Smart move, though, because Red knows she can pull that card anytime she wants.

Gavin Found – Quinn calls Olivia and says the car Gavin last stole was at some lake. It reminds Jake that he must be by the little house he was stealing money from his dad to build. They show up at the house and the boy is standing in the middle holding a nail gun. As if that’s a really good defense. Boy, bye.

Gavin admits to killing his dad because he’s called him “a little weasel” his entire life. Shut your weak-skinned ass up, Gavin! Shit. Nigerian parents call us idiots for breakfast. You don’t see us tryna end their lives. Poor, little rich white boy without coping skills. He hears sirens coming. His running is done.

Huckleberry Quinn Unite – Quinn finds Huck at a bar. She admits that she ain’t normal herself so she’s been mad at him because she kinda sees herself in him. Huck tells her that he missed her. AAWWW.

Yes – Olivia checks her voicemail and she has one from Fitz. He tells her that he gets it. “You don’t want this. I am going to deny Sally’s story and bring Mellie back to the White House because I don’t want you to throw away your whole life just for me. I love you too much for that.” In times like this, I do feel bad for Fitz. Because he loves Olivia SO MUCH that he constantly puts her first. She hangs up and back at the White House, he is looking pained as he sits down for the interview with Mellie. Jake asks her if Liv’s ready. She walks out the car in front of OPA offices and reporters swarm her. They ask her if she’s the mistress of the President of the United States. She pauses before saying “YES.”

---

I literally said “HOLY SHIT” when I heard Olivia’s answer. This is HUGE. Liv stood in truth as Fitz does the opposite BECAUSE of her. Oh shit. She’s decided to stop running and just own it. What does this mean for everyone? Fallout.

Here’s the thing. Liv does what she wants, when she wants, and I’m not sure if she takes into account how things affect the people around her. The reason she hasn’t owned this relationship isn’t that she’s wanted to protect Fitz. She’s been protecting herself, which I understand. But to say “YES” when you know he’s currently, saying “NO.” It 1. makes him out to be the liar when he’s been the one ready to tell the truth all along. B. does not give him the chance to have a say in any of it and iii. Creates chaos that could have been created but controlled better had she just agreed to speak up with him.

BUT she is just tired of lying and running. It is about time.

I can’t wait to see what comes next. But let’s talk about Jake again. That dude is so down for Olivia. Jake is Aiden. Fitz is Mr. Big. You SHOULD go with Aiden but your loins don’t throb when you see Aiden. Big, doe? YES. Your brain knows you should go with Aiden (Jake). But your heart is attached to Mr. Big (Fitz). It’s a real dilemma.

Now, Cyrus. Well, I need him back in the White House and this might just be what brings him back. His smarts will be needed to deal with the fallout to come. Also, Cyrus will need to choose whose team he is on. Mellie is now hellbent on destroying Liv, but that’s his good friend. What is he gon do? Also, Abby has tea from Mellie’s emails. Will she use them to get Olivia some help in this? Information is the biggest asset here and she has more than anyone realizes she does now.

After my recap of last episode, some folks were in my comments, saying I am so biased and I am anti-Olivia and team Mellie. People seemed slightly butthurt about it. Let’s clarify some things. Absolutely, I am biased. This is my blog and this is a show I ALWAYS have opinions about. Also, I am not anti-Olivia. Just because I call her on some bullshit doesn’t mean she isn’t still bae. And I am fond of Mellie, because nothing she’s done has been more evil than anyone else on this show. Yes. I think Fitz is an asshole. He comes at her sideways OFTEN so I’m ready for her to clapback.

Whew! Let’s go! ROAR in the comments, Gladiators!

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By Arturo R. García

While it may not be that surprising to see that Amadeus Cho will be the title character in Marvel’s Totally Awesome Hulk series, it’s still an intriguing premise, especially considering this updated presentation of the character.

It’s notable enough to consider that one of the company’s signature brands will be helmed by a Korean-American character (with a nearly entirely Korean-American creative team, to boot). But what’s interesting about Amadeus being promoted from Hulk’s cohort to his own Hulk within 10 years — and really, he was the last person within Bruce Banner’s immediate circle who hadn’t been turned into a Hulk — is that he’s been allowed to do so in a more mature incarnation.

Don’t forget, the series’ December debut comes on the heels of the Secret Wars boondoggle; it could have been easy for editor Mark Pannica to ask writer Greg Pak to write Amadeus as the tween figure we’ve been used to seeing.

But Totally Awesome starts with Cho as a 19-year-old, giving him the potential for a growth arc similar to another Hulk cohort of yore, Rick Jones. As rendered by penciller Frank Cho and colorist Sonia Oback, the character’s gawkiness is gone, while his trademark cockiness appears to be intact:

“He’s on top of the world, he thinks he’s right about everything…and he might be,” Pak told Entertainment Weekly. “Or he might not be. But this is a kid who’s got a ridiculous amount of confidence. A lot of it has been justly earned, but he may be in over his head, and he’s going to come in here and he’s determined to be the best Hulk there’s ever been. He loves being the Hulk.”

That he enjoys being the Jade Giant suggests that Cho will also retain his super-intellect while in Hulk form, at least for now. Whether he knows or tries to solve the series’ big mystery — what happened to Bruce Banner? — remains to be seen, but a smart Hulk who enjoys the role will help buoy it after years of the mantle being passed around Banner and his traditional supporting cast.

As the series goes on, here’s to hoping that Amadeus follows in Banner’s footsteps in at least one regard and gets promoted to being part of the Avengers series, joining the burgeoning youth movement that’s seeing Miles Morales as Spider-Man and Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel on the squad.

The post Amadeus, Amadeus!: Marvel’s Asian-American Whiz Kid Is The New Totally Awesome Hulk appeared first on Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture.

Like other black conservatives he lives in a fantasy world

The Black Freedom Struggle began in America when the first Africans were brought to Florida in 1581. It continued onward through emancipation and reconstruction as black Americans “built a nation under their feet”, resisting chattel slavery, self-manumitting, taking up arms, and then building political and social institutions across the South and the rest of the United States. The Black Freedom Struggle would reach its peak with the Civil Rights Movement and be seared into American public memory with the Great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and iconic speeches by Dr. King and others.

The Civil Rights Movement continues today with Black Lives Matter and the centuries-long fight by black and brown folks against police thuggery, for a more equitable society, dignity, and full human rights for all peoples on both sides of the color line. The Black Freedom Struggle inspired other groups—women, gays and lesbians, the differently-abled—in the United States to resist and fight Power. It has also been a source of inspiration for people’s movements around the world.

Of course, the individuals who led (and lead) the Black Freedom Struggle are not perfect. They, like all of us, are flawed. Black resistance to white supremacy occasionally (both necessarily and understandably) involved moments of fleeting flirtation with racial chauvinism.

And one cannot overlook how political stagecraft and cruel realpolitik tried to erase the leadership role played by gays and lesbians in the Civil Rights Movement–this is a shameful blemish on the radically humanistic and transformative vision of American life offered by that glorious struggle.

But in all, the Black Freedom Struggle has been a source of inspiration; black Americans are the moral conscience of a nation. Black America has earned that title even as much as it has been unfairly forced upon it. In that idealized role, black Americans are called to defend the weak against the strong, speak truth to power, and force America to live up to the promise of its democratic creed and vision.

This obligation can give strength, clarity of purpose and energy to Black Americans and others who honor that legacy. Being part of a community that is “the miner’s canary” and “moral conscience of a nation” can exact a heavy burden. As such, some black folks have decided that the burden and obligation are too great to carry. Their shoulders are too narrow and weak.

Ben Carson, black conservative and 2016 Republican presidential primary candidate, is one such person. Last week, Ben Carson surrendered to xenophobia, nativism, and intolerance when he suggested that Muslims are inherently incapable of being President of the United States because their faith is incompatible with the Constitution.

As reported by CNN, in a conversation on Wednesday of this week Carson then suggested:

“I find black Republicans are treated extremely well in the Republican Party. In fact, I don’t hear much about being a black Republican,” he said Wednesday at an event in Michigan. “I think the Republicans have done a far superior job of getting over racism.” 

Carson was a Democrat for years, but said he’s found the Republican Party to be more welcoming.

It is a new/old day in America. On Thursday, there was another mass shooting. On Friday, today, and tomorrow, and in the week's thereafter America's politicians will do nothing to stop the plague of gun violence. This is a choice. It is cowardice. The weakness is caused by the grip exerted on America's political elites by the ammosexuals and gun money barons in the National Rifle Association.

Chris Harper Mercer killed 9 people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Much will be written about what his murder spree reveals--none of it really new--about toxic aggrieved masculinity, gun culture, ammosexuals, the online Right-wing sewers that gave him aid and comfort, and other matters.

I would like to call attention to one detail about Mercer's personhood, a detail that may be overlooked or not discussed by the mainstream news media out of fear of being called "racist", or alternatively because they lack the conceptual tools (and will not feature experts who possess them) to talk about race and the color line in a nuanced way.

Mercer identifies as "mixed race": his father is white and his mother is black. In America's one drop system of racial hierarchy and identification Chris Harper Mercer is considered "black". During America's centuries-long slave regime, he could have been auctioned off as human property; Mercer would have been subjected to the rules of Jim and Jane Crow.

But in America, there is an odd dynamic when a "mixed race" person does something noteworthy or infamous.

When Barack Obama was elected president, there were many white Americans who could not, and many still cannot, accept that he is a black man. Obama's mother is white. He identifies as black. Obama does something legendary in winning the White House; there are white folks who want to credit claim as white privilege deems that they must always get all the toys. But, if Obama was a young man who was arrested for selling drugs or committing a violent crime, his "whiteness" would be fully ignored and he would just be another "black" criminal.

Elliot Rodger, a mass murderer, driven by aggrieved white masculinity, killed six people. Again, the fact that he is "mixed race" was used by those who do not want to talk about toxic white masculinity to deflect and derail any critical intervention on the topic.

George Zimmerman, a likely sociopath killed Trayvon Martin, and was embraced as a hero by the White Right. As such, white racism and white racial paranoiac thinking allowed George Zimmerman to kill Trayvon Martin with impunity. But again, racial identity as a "mixed race" white Hispanic was used to muddy the waters of justice and public opinion about the role that Zimmerman's (now obvious) racial animus played in this decision to shoot Trayvon Martin.

How will the "stain of blackness" complicate and color the narrative about Chris Harper Mercer's life and his decision to commit mass murder? I am not yet sure. But it most certainly will be present as questions of race, masculinity, and violence are deeply, and perhaps even inseparably, intertwined with one another.

By Arturo R. García

The post The Netroots Nation Files: Daring To Internet While Female 2.0 appeared first on Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture.

I hope that your Memorial Day was restful. I am preparing to tape an interview for Ring of Fire TV where I will be discussing my recent essay on white racial logic. The segment should air tomorrow evening on the Free Speech network.

As I collect my thoughts, two observations about race and the colorline have been hovering over me.

Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro recently gave an interview to the Guardian in which he noted:

The treatment of African Americans is emerging as one of America’s “buried giants”, a subject that the general population might prefer to forget, Booker prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro has said. 

Speaking to the BBC’s Martha Kearney at the Hay Festival on Sunday, the author said he had become fascinated with the idea of “societal memory and collective forgetting” when writing his new novel The Buried Giant, his first book in a decade.

Ishiguro said he had become aware that much of his earlier work was about the memories of individuals, and he wanted to examine the memory of a society, and what societies are willing to forget – the “buried giants” of the book’s title.

Unwilling to be drawn into specifics about Britain’s “buried giants”, Ishiguro said he saw the treatment of racial minorities in America as an example of collective forgetfulness.

Writing at Truthout, Nicholas Powers made this devastating claim:

Stealing Black lives at gunpoint is the most visible and violent evidence of history repeating in the present. To be Black in America is to be evidence of a theft. It is to be a descendent of human beings stolen from villages, stolen from their bodies, stolen from each other, sold and sold again. It is to see in one's family history, ancestors stolen from their language, stolen from their land and left as walking targets. And inevitably, we, their descendants are shot at with everything from microaggressions to all-out physical violence, from suspicious stares to racial slurs, from stop-and-frisk to bullets. 

To be Black in America is to know White supremacy is a culture of theft. We feel it like a tornado that one can try to sidestep but other times, descends on us, ripping us out of our bodies. It's like an ancient vortex that split from another vortex, a slavery split from older forms of slavery that mixed with European capitalism, colonization and scientific racism. A whiteness took shape that churned through centuries and over continents, pulling people from their homes and "blackening" them. Whiteness is a social structure of extraction that rose in the triangle trade of slave ships, auction blocks and plantations, broken by the Civil War then remade as Jim Crow, in segregated public spaces and redlined ghettos, now reinvented again as a war on drugs.

And consider this context: on Memorial Day, the United States, in the Age of Obama, still celebrates and honors those who fought to protect the white supremacist institution of chattel slavery under the guise of the Confederate States of America, whose stars and bars are the American swastika.

How can the United States move forward when it cannot even have an honest accounting of its past?

Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi was the real name of the Iraqi, whose bony features were softened by a white beard. But no one knew him by that name. Even his best-known pseudonym, Haji Bakr, wasn't widely known. But that was precisely part of the plan. The former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein's air defense force had been secretly pulling the strings at IS for years. Former members of the group had repeatedly mentioned him as one of its leading figures. Still, it was never clear what exactly his role was. 

But when the architect of the Islamic State died, he left something behind that he had intended to keep strictly confidential: the blueprint for this state. It is a folder full of handwritten organizational charts, lists and schedules, which describe how a country can be gradually subjugated. SPIEGEL has gained exclusive access to the 31 pages, some consisting of several pages pasted together. They reveal a multilayered composition and directives for action, some already tested and others newly devised for the anarchical situation in Syria's rebel-held territories. In a sense, the documents are the source code of the most successful terrorist army in recent history. 

Until now, much of the information about IS has come from fighters who had defected and data sets from the IS internal administration seized in Baghdad. But none of this offered an explanation for the group's meteoric rise to prominence, before air strikes in the late summer of 2014 put a stop to its triumphal march. 

For the first time, the Haji Bakr documents now make it possible to reach conclusions on how the IS leadership is organized and what role former officials in the government of ex-dictator Saddam Hussein play in it.

by Kesiena Boom
Kesiena Boom is a Black lesbian feminist and writer who adores Audre Lorde, sisterhood, and the sociology of sexuality. She is twenty years old. She is a regular contributor at For Harriet and has also written for Autostraddle.com. You can tweet at her via @KesienaBoom.

by Leah C.K. Lewis


The Myth of White Supremacy is the scourge of the earth. Period. I do not believe that world has ever seen an affliction of this magnitude. People of European descent who are so inclined and people of color who are broken by the ever-present execution of this pernicious ideology perpetuate this diabolical myth.

Many of the purveyors of this sinister mindset are men who act out in ways detrimental to the human race because significant numbers of people are harmed socially, economically, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

If we were to look solely at the implications of the Myth of White Supremacy in the United States, it is white men in the various seats of power that have murdered and pilfered countless millions often in the name of some form of self-declared and self-determined “manifest destiny.” From the presidency, to Congress, to Wall Street, to corporate board rooms, to military situation rooms, white men inclined toward mayhem for their own gain have laid waste to valuable human resources in one form or another.

Without question in the United States, the historical facts establish this: the dastardly enslavement of African peoples, patriarchy, the genocide of Native American Indians, never-ending warmongering, the manipulation of discriminatory laws, and the numerous anti-immigrant campaigns have been—and in some instances, continue to be—perpetuated largely by white men. Consequently, opportunities for people of color and women have consistently and persistently been decimated. These are not racist, but factual, claims.

This is but one of a myriad of ways of understanding and placing into context the tweets from Saida Grundy, Ph.D. As a result of her exercise of well-honed thought and free speech, some folks are all upset. Professor Grundy has been label as “racist” and “anti-white” for asserting factual summations of U.S. history in 140 characters or less. Such claims simply do not hold weight. Contending that white males are a “problem population” alone is not enough to forge a claim that Dr. Grundy meets what is perhaps the lowest threshold of ethnic bigotry—in this case, asserting the inferiority of white males or the superiority of any other group.



The young scholar (presumably a white male) who took umbrage with Professor Grundy’s tweets felt compelled, first, to compile a series of her tweets and then opted to justify the immorality and pathology of white males by pointing out that other populations are immoral and pathological too. For example, it was noted that Arabs, Muslims, and Barbary pirates also participated in the slave trade. (Let me add, so did Africans who deemed their captives “enemies.”) To justify brutality by calling a roll of those who also perpetuated slavery is perverse in itself, is it not?

A critical piece of data is lost in this outrage over Dr. Grundy’s remarks—especially her tweet about white males as a troubled population. Here it is: The world would be a much better place if white males would engage in a measure of self-introspection that could possibly lead them to the recognition of who they really are—flawed, not superior, human beings just like the rest of humanity.

To make or imply this recommendation does not make me or Dr. Grundy a racist or anti-white. It makes us clear-eyed, intelligent, and realistic.

As a population that has wielded so much power, the legacy of privileged white men is predicated on the destruction and delimiting of other peoples and women. History bears this out in grand fashion. This is a sad reality.

Fulfillment of this nation’s true greatness is not known due to the long-standing suppression of talents possessed by people of color and women. Until every human being is given place and space to operate in the full measure of our intelligence and abilities our communities and societies suffer. The United States included.

When I first read of the burgeoning controversy surrounding Saida Grundy on Facebook, my reply was: "Yeah, and what she said is true. So, what's the problem? Her detractors can't handle the truth! This we know.”

My people are often told, "Get over it." The “it” being our entire history and present day struggle to fend off the systems and other ramifications of the Myth of White Supremacy. It is very difficult to get over what one is currently living through.

So, for those offended by Professor Grundy’s justifiable take on history, how about taking up the oft bandied about recommendation. Lay down your fragility, face the truth, and “get over it.” Face the truth of your long-standing white male privilege and the legacy of degradation of peoples of color and women from which you have benefited. For good measure, I suggest you "get over it" by undertaking acts of contrition.

I can dream can I not?

Photo: University of Michigan

Leah C.K. Lewis, J.D., M.Div., D.Min., (ABD), is a minister, councilwoman, author, animation producer, and literary activist. She recently completed her dissertation on sex and sexuality in the African American Baptist Church and a manuscript on legal, religious, and political rhetoric pertinent to “race.” Follow her @HumanStriving and on SoundCloud.com/Reverend-Leah-CK-Lewis.

The Women On 20s campaign recently held an online election allowing the public to choose an America woman to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 Bill. After 10 weeks of polling and over 600,000 votes, Harriet Tubman emerged as the winner by gaining 33% of the vote.

On May 12th, a petition was delivered to the White House informing President Obama of the vote and asking him to instruct the Secretary of the Treasury to make this change before the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in 2020. 
You can join the virtual march here and read more about Harriet Tubman a true hero and the inspiration for this site here. 

By Tope Fadiran

Our colleagues at Race Forward, the racial justice organization that publishes Colorlines, was one of the organizations that pushed back against Starbucks’ hastily conceived “Race Together” initiative in March 2015.

At the time, Executive Director Rinku Sen penned an open letter calling for a national conversation on race that centers systemic rather than individual forms of racism. Race Forward is now building on this statement with “What is Systemic Racism?,” a new 8-part video series.

The videos star, and were written by, Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine fame, who does double duty as Race Forward’s Video and Multimedia Producer. In a minute or less, each video introduces a different facet of systemic racism in the United States: mass incarceration, housing discrimination, the race and gender wealth gap, infant mortality, and more.

Racialicious had the opportunity to ask Jay Smooth some questions about how the series came together and what he hopes viewers take from it. Our interview, edited for clarity, follows below.

Tope Fadiran: I’m curious how the series came into being, how you conceptualized it, and how you saw it working once it was out in the world.

Jay Smooth: Well, Race Forward’s been working for decades on various approaches to the issue of social justice, bringing attention to it and finding solutions. One of our primary solutions has—I don’t know about always, cause I haven’t been here for 30-plus years [laughs]—but since I’ve been here one of the focus has been shifting attention/constant focus from individual forms of racism towards the institutional and systemic.

We tend to be drawn towards thinking about whether individual people did or said something racist, whether Paula Deen said the n-word or not, or what have you. It takes attention from these systemic racism that in a lot of ways have a much bigger impact on our lives and are more important to address.

At Race Forward we’re always looking for new ways to bring people towards that concept. We’d been watching things like the DOJ report on Ferguson revealing how much systemic inequity was underneath what bubbled up there. The same thing with Baltimore—there’s been so much great reportage about the decades of injustice underneath the uprising there.

And watching things like the Starbucks initiative a couple months ago, it seemed to be a well-meaning effort, but really disproportionately focused on our individual thoughts and feelings towards each other instead of on seeing the bigger, more insidious forms of racism that really keep injustice and inequity in place. So we wanted something simple that we could get out there and just sort of spark conversations about that idea and give people something to think about.

T: What did the lead up to launching the series look like?

Jay: Kat Lazo—my partner with video projects here—and I had to work pretty quickly to bring something together. Race Forward collectively came up with the topics we would cover, then I wrote the scripts for the videos. I knew I wouldn’t have time to come up with eight different concepts, so I wanted some sort of simple, unifying premise that I could repeat and drive home.

I thought doing this sort of a play on the old “The More You Know” videos would be sort of a fun, engaging way to draw people in and drive the point home. So we worked pretty quickly, did most of them on the same day. From the experience that both Kat and I have sharing things on YouTube and seeing [the] response…You never know for sure, [but] we felt pretty confident that it would connect with people.

T: That’s pretty amazing that you did them all in one day. I noticed the backgrounds are all different—did you stay in the same general area?

Jay: Yea, that was a big part of the work was finding different locations. I brought in three or four different button-down shirts, which is the entirety of my wardrobe, basically, into the office [laughs]. We were all around the Race Forward office, which is basically the Financial District, Battery Park area. We tried find different places to be, and different things I could be doing to sort of provide some variety.

T: Was there any particular thinking beind having the city be the setting for that?

Jay: It was more of a utilitarian thing than having any sort of symbolic purpose behind it—although you always hope that there’s some synchronicity where things will also be communicated on that level. But it was basically, I wanted it to be differentiated visually and stylistically from my usual Ill Doctrine videos where I’m just talking into the camera at home. So being outdoors was an easy way to distinguish it.

Also giving it some sort of different energy, like that sort of Mr. Rogers style, “Hey, I’m your friend who’s out and about and wants to talk to you about this stuff!” For a topic that’s usually really intimidating and we’d be really serious and angry about it, I felt like being outside in the sun doing sort of various activities would lend to the semi-sarcastic happiness of the videos.

T: You mentioned that you all brainstormed the topics together. I’m curious how that process went. Were there any topics that ended up being left out just because of time? Are you thinking about doing more in the future?

Jay: I definitely hope that we get to do more in the future. There’s always so many topics that you want to get to. I think we originally had a longer list of maybe 10 or 12 topics. Just so that we’d have time to film them all, it got cut down to the final number of 8.

We wanted to make sure not to fall into the rut of making everything a Black/white issue and diversify it on that level. I was hoping to do even more reflection on intersectionality, show how this stuff intersects with LGBTQ issues, things like that. So I’m hoping we’ll do more so we can cover more of those layers.

Some topics just lend themselves to a punchy 30 second video more than others. Like housing discrimination—I was glad we still got it in, but that’s an issue where discrimination is usually taking place in sort of covert ways that don’t produce really clear cut statistics the way that something like mass incarceration does. So it was tricky to find an easy, punchy way to demonstrate that.

A couple of things like that, and also the immigration one we tried a different approach just to make sure we still got the issue in. But there’s definitely lots more we could do, and I’m hoping we will just because such a big part of the story of systemic racism lies not just in any single topic but in how they all sort of intertwine and come out of each other. So I’m hoping we can sort of reflect that a little more too.

T: What’s the response been? Have you gotten feedback?

Jay: I haven’t really kept track, but we got picked up on Buzzfeed, which was great, and got a lot of positive response from that. On a more interpersonal level, I’ve heard from a number of educators that they’re already finding ways to use this in their curriculum, which is my favorite sort of feedback to get for things like this. I’ve been really honored and I think Race Forward as an org has been really honored and psyched about the response that we’ve gotten.

And it’s tricky because, you know, humor and sarcasm can be tricky. People might not read the intent you’re going for. But it seems to have communicated pretty clearly and sparked good conversation. So we’re hoping it’ll push the tide a little bit more towards people being systemically aware in thinking about some of these things.

T: Where do you want people to go next with these videos? Someone watches these videos, they maybe want to learn more or start a conversation—how do you envision them continuing on that path?

Jay: Well, I made sure to provide footnotes that give our sources for each topic, where you can dig in a little deeper and see where the cited information comes from. You can dig deeper in the history and see how you might be able to join in making a difference on these issues.

And Race Forward, if you come to our site raceforward.org, we’ve always got other initiatives going on that you can keep track of and support. And of course people should be reading Racialicious! [Awww, thanks Jay!]

I think the more we can encourage people to look a little deeper and look at the big picture beyond those surface celebrity gaffes—and even issues we’ve seen so much in the news, and in the streets, about police brutality—the more we can shift our attentions towards the fact that they are all, whether they hate us or not, part of a system that’s not set up to treat us fairly and humanely [the better]. There may well be officers that don’t consciously hate us, but they’re still a cog in the wheel and perpetuating the system that we need to change, or else we’re never going to get the treatment that we’re supposed to get from that institution. I hope it plays a little bit of a part in making us all try to be more systemically aware when we grapple with these issues that are out here every day.

---

 

Check out the full series from Race Forward: “What is Systemic Racism?” You can also follow the conversation on social media with the hashtag #SystemicRacismIs.

The post Watch: Jay Smooth and Race Forward Break Down Systemic Racism appeared first on Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture.

In 8th grade, I was part of a teen panel that traveled across the state promoting abstinence. If this group had any value, it began my understanding of the differences between gender and sexuality. During this time, I was taught that gender is how a person identifies as male or female; and sexuality is how a person identifies as a sexual being, either heterosexual or homosexual. While this helped me understand the difference between gender and sexuality at a young age, I came to see that this is a woefully inadequate and incomplete look at gender and sexuality.

I have since come to understand the there is a lot more to sexuality than binary gender identity and sexual orientation. Many cisgender, heterosexual (definitions below) people do not realize that both gender and sexuality fall on a spectrum and are often fluid. Accepting this is crucial to being a better ally to LGBTQ (or QUILTBAG) sisters who face unique experiences, oppressions, and issues due to how they identify in regards to their gender and sexual identities.

Below, I have included a few terms to describe orientation, attraction, identity, and relationship status. This is not an exhaustive list, as there are subcultures within many identities—and still, many people reject formal labels altogether—but it may work as a primer for those unfamiliar with the various types of sexual and gender identities throughout the spectrum. Also, please know that I welcome any corrections, clarifications and additions.

First, it is important to give more comprehensive definitions of gender and sexuality, than what many of us were taught in sex-ed classes:

Gender is how a person identifies and expresses themselves as male or female, or—for many—somewhere in-between. This relates to social and cultural norms, expectations, values, attitudes, and behaviors. Gender is not the same as biological sex, but many conflate the two.

Biological sex describes the kind of sex organs, chromosomes, and hormones a person has, and thus how they are often described: male, female, or intersex. Gender and biological sex are separate from each other.

Intersex refers to someone born with genitalia or sex characteristics not classified as male or female. It may also refer to someone born with genitalia or characteristics classified as both male and female. An intersex person may identify with any gender on the spectrum as well as intersex.

According to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), sexuality is defined as:

encompass[ing] the sexual knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors of individuals. Its various dimensions involve the anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry of the sexual response system; identity, orientation, roles, and personality; and thoughts, feelings, and relationships. Sexuality is influenced by ethical, spiritual, cultural, and moral concerns. All persons are sexual, in the broadest sense of the word.

Queer refers to when a person identifies as non-heteronormative. This can be gender or sexual identity, so I include it as a standalone term as an identity here.

Types of Attraction

An aesthetic attraction means a person has an impersonal attraction based on an appreciation of someone’s physical attributes or demeanor.

A romantic attraction means a person has an attraction based on a desire to experience a romantic relationship with someone.

A sensual attraction means a person has an attraction based on the desire to touch someone, but not necessarily in a sexual way.

A sexual attraction means a person has an attraction based on a desire to participate in sexual acts with someone.

Sexual Orientation and Romantic Attraction

(Note: Some people use the "-sexual" term to indicate both romantic and sexual attractions.)

Aromantic means a person does not experience romantic attraction.

Asexual means a person does not experience sexual attraction.

Autosexual means a person experiences self-gratification rather than other types of sexual activities.

Biromantic means a person experiences romantic attraction to their own gender and a different gender(s).

Bisexual means a person experiences sexual attraction to their own gender and a different gender(s).

Gray-romantic means a person rarely experiences romantic attraction. It is sometimes used as an umbrella term for demi- and lithromantic.

Gray-sexual means a person rarely experiences sexual attraction. This means a person identifies in the gray area between asexuality and sexuality. It is also called semisexual, asexual-ish and sexual-ish. It is also sometimes used as an umbrella term for demi- and lithsexual.

Demiromantic means a person experiences a romantic attraction after developing a strong bond. This type of attraction usually occurs more often in romantic than sexual relationships but it occurs in both.

Demisexual means a person experiences a sexual attraction after developing a strong bond.

Heteroromantic means a person experiences romantic attraction to gender(s) different than their own.

Heterosexual means a person experiences sexual attraction to gender(s) different than their own.

Homoromantic means a person experiences romantic attraction to the same gender as their own.

Homosexual (most commonly referred to as gay or lesbian) means a person experiences sexual attraction to the same gender as their own.

Lithromantic means a person experiences romantic attraction to others but does not desire reciprocation.

Lithsexual means a person experiences sexual attraction to others but does not desire reciprocation.

Panromantic means a person experiences romantic attraction to all genders or regardless of gender.

Pansexual means a person experiences sexual attraction to all genders or regardless of gender.

Polyromantic means a person experiences romantic attraction to multiple genders but not necessarily all genders.

Polysexual means a person experiences sexual attraction to multiple genders but not necessarily all genders.

Skolioromantic means a person experiences romantic attraction to non-binary gender individuals.

Skoliosexual means a person experiences sexual attraction to non-binary gender individuals.

Relationship

Monogamous means a person desires or seeks having an intimate and/or sexual partnership with one person.

Polyamorous means a person accepts, desires, or seeks having more than one intimate and/or sexual partnership with the consent of all individuals involved in the relationship.

Gender Identity

Agender refers to a person who does not identify with any gender.

Androgyny means a person has characteristics and/or a gender identity regarded as both masculine and feminine.

Bigender refers to a person who identifies as a combination of both binary genders.

Cisgender refers to a person who identifies with the gender assigned to them at birth.

Genderqueer refers to a person who identifies outside the gender binary and may include different genders like agender, bigender, pangender, and third gender.

Gender non-binary refers to a person who does not identify within a gender binary.

Neutrois refers to a person who does not identify with gender and falls neutrally between male and female.

Pangender refers to a person who identifies as all genders including non-binary genders.

Third Gender refers to someone who identifies as a gender part of a ternary gender system.

Transgender refers to a person who identifies as a different gender than the one assigned at birth.

Trigender refers to a person whose gender changes among female, male, and third gender.

Two Spirit refers to someone in an Aboriginal or indigenous culture who takes on multiple gender roles within that specific culture. Non-Aboriginal people may not identify as Two Spirit.

We should never assume a gender identity or sexual orientation for anyone and definitely should not use being cisgender or heterosexual as a default identity. It is important to respect the identities of non-heteronormative people and refer to them by the names and pronouns with which they identify. We must also accept and respect that gender identities and sexual orientations may change over time as they are fluid, but remain valid.

Photo: Shutterstock

Inda Lauryn has previously been published in Blackberry, A Magazine, Interfictions, The Toast, and Callaloo, as well as had her work featured on blogs such as Black Girl Nerds, Bitch Flicks, and AfroPunk. She is currently working on a novel and countless other unfinished writing projects, occasionally blogs at Corner Store Press and shares music playlists at MixCloud.

Gentrification continues to seem inevitable in city like New York were real estate . At only four years of residency, I’m still a recent transplant to Harlem and, with the numerous Oberlin grads I’ve talked into following me to the area, technically part of the gentrification problem.  I struggle with what that means, knowing that change can be good, but that in Harlem it’s often coming at a cost.

This time change wants to destroy one of my favourite buildings. The dilapidated Harlem Renaissance Ballroom, also known as ‘The Renny’, should have been preserved years ago. Completed in 1922, the building hosted everyone from Duke Ellington to Zora Neal Hurston to Cab Calloway. The Times gives further details:

Owned by William H. Roach, the Renaissance was a leading hot spot in Harlem and the city. Known as the Renny, it hosted Joe Louis fights. Big bands led by Cab Calloway, Count Basie and Duke Ellington performed on its stage. The Renaissance was also the home court, at a time when blacks were barred from the National Basketball Association, for the Black Fivesbasketball team known as the Harlem Rens, regarded as one of the best of its time. The adjacent 900-seat theater featured movies by Oscar Micheaux, the first African-American to produce a feature-length film. The casino was used for a 1923 anti-lynching meeting held by the N.A.A.C.P.  In 1953, David N. Dinkins, who went on to become the city’s first black mayor, and his bride held their wedding reception there. 

A rendering of the replacement complex via Curbed

Like the former Savoy Ballroom (just over and up a few blocks),  the ballroom is scheduled to be razed and replaced by an apartment complex that, as far as the renderings show, retain nothing of the original structure, historical or cultural value.

A campaign to save the ballroom has been started with a petition here that I’m encouraging anyone who gives a damn about cultural preservation to go ahead and sign. Pictures below will show that the building needs a lot of work, but it’s also so easy to imagine what it once was and what it could be again with even half the care I’m sure they’d put into the apartment complex that’s currently meant to replace it. Such an important building should never have been allowed to get to this condition in the first place.

 

The post Cultural Petiton: Help Save The Renny appeared first on Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture.

The notion that in the West, a given year ends in December and begins in January, is arbitrary.

Yet, it has a powerful amount of cultural significance; consequently, it impacts our day-to-day lives, mood, and prompts--for many people at least--a moment of critical self-reflection and evaluation of the year that has past.

2014 was the year of ISIS, mysterious and unsolved plane crashes, massacres of children and other innocents, as well as continuing economic tumult.

The United States saw a year of new age lynchings where police thugs ran amok in places like Ferguson and choked people to death on videotape in New York, gun fetishists and right-wing domestic terrorists attacked and killed their fellow citizens, the lie of "post racial" America was further shattered, and slogans such as "hands up don't shoot" and "black lives matter" signaled just anger towards a State which routinely violates the civil rights of non-whites.

These events have created a sense of disorientation and confusion among the (global and) American public. I will confess, that at times, I too have felt this same confused sense of urgency combined with fatalism: it is often easier to surrender to the onslaught of events than it is to grapple with them.

Instantaneous global communications, the false intimacy and immediacy of social media, and a duplicitous and profit seeking corporate news apparatus have combined to create the confusion and helplessness that many in the West and around the world are experiencing.

It is also important to note how those same technologies have been used by truth-tellers, resistance fighters, and those others who have the courage--and often nothing at all left to lose in this life--to resist Power.

While there are brave outliers in the United States, and the West, more generally, cultivated paralysis and disorientation among the public are the norm.

Thus the existential question, "how are you feeling?"

In a new short documentary, Adam Curtis, noted cultural critic and documentarian, suggests that if you, as a member of the mass public are feeling dismayed, confused, "blue", or overwhelmed, then perhaps it is by design.

His conclusion about the nature of post-modern politics is especially powerful:

It sums up the strange mood of our time, where nothing really makes any coherent sense. We live with a constant vaudeville of contradictory stories that makes it impossible for any real opposition to emerge, because they can't counter it with any coherent narrative of their own.

And it means that we as individuals become ever more powerless, unable to challenge anything, because we live a state of confusion and uncertainty. To which the response is: Oh dear. But that is what they want you to say.

I often default to a claim that American politics is best understood through the lens of professional wrestling: this model is very hopeful because it suggests that there is some narrative arc, one with a beginning, middle, and end, towards which the powers that be are working.

By comparison, Adam Curtis's framework of paralysis, exhaustion, and discombobulation that he describes as "contradictory vaudeville" is even more damning because 1) it is likely an accurate description of the politics of post-modernity and 2) exposes (again) the common lie and misconception that elites are interested in furthering progress and rationality as virtues for the mass public.

Curtis's diagnosis of a disoriented public--one that is prone to outbursts and momentary fits as a safety valve function, neither coordinated or an effective concerted resistance against Power--is synthetic in the best sense of the concept.

In Curtis's new short documentary, there are echoes of the genius thinker and cultural critic Guy Debord and his concept of the spectacle as a means through which mass culture and consumerism (with the mediated images and relationships they produce) are tools for control that can rob our lives of meaning:

But there are also very modern phenomena that fit its view of the world: when Debord writes about how "behind the masks of total choice, different forms of the same alienation confront each other", I now think of social media, and the white noise of most online life. All told, the book is full of sentences that describe something simple, but profound: the way that just about everything that we consume – and, if we're not careful, most of what we do – embodies a mixture of distraction and reinforcement that serves to reproduce the mode of society and economy that has taken the idea of the spectacle to an almost surreal extreme... 

the spectacle is much more than something at which we passively gaze, and it increasingly defines our perception of life itself, and the way we relate to others. As the book puts it: "The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images." 

How we confront the spectacle is a subject for another piece: in essence, the Situationists' contention was that its colonisation of life was not quite complete, and resistance has to begin with finding islands of the authentic, and building on them (though as what some people call late capitalism has developed, such opportunities have inevitably shrunk, a fact captured in the bleak tone of Debord's 1989 text Comments on the Society of Spectacle, published five years before he killed himself).