Facebook wouldn’t let me share a NJ.com article about Mayor Ras Baraka signing into law Newark’s new civilian police review board. This is what I wrote them:
Racists who rejoice in black and brown men being killed want to block this news from being shared. It’s completely legitimate content posted in a major newspaper about the signing into law of a Newark police review board.
Walter Scott was a South Carolina man who owed child support, and the car he drove had a broken taillight, which 33 year old Police Officer Michael T. Slager stopped him for on April 4 2015. It’s possible that slightly overweight Mr. Scott ran slowly away from the officer to avoid being arrested for his unpaid child support – we’ll never know, because Slager decided to pull out his gun and shoot Mr. Scott 8 times. One of those shots entered Mr. Scott’s heart and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
U of Oklahama footballer Striker posted a furious Snapchat rebuttal to SAE fraternity’s racist chant.
Politics USA posted this transcript:
“You’re the same mother f*ckers telling us racism don’t exist… f*ck you phony-ass, fraud-ass b*tches. I’m so mother f*cking fierce right now, SAE you’ve f*cked it up for all white fraternities. The same mother f*ckers sitting out here giving us hugs … telling us you really love us. F*ck you!”
HuffPost reviewer Kim Lute hated Beyonce’s grammy performance of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” so much I had to see for myself what the hullabaloo was all about. She writes:
…Beyoncé (as well as her much talked about cast of put-upon black men) fumble(d) and falter(ed) her way through Mahalia Jackson’s classic, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”
@KimLute‘s criticism of Beyoncé’s performance is a bit extreme, but it’s completely clear that Beyoncé is no gospel singer. She lacks both range and the vocal ability to extend a note. In light of recent observations about racism permeating the Grammys, Lute’s next comment seems spot-on:
Unhappy facts about the school to prison pipeline, which Brave New Films describes as “..another way the United States incarcerates more people than any other country on earth.*”
* From NAACP Criminal Justice Fact Sheet: Combining the number of people in prison and jail with those under parole or probation supervision, 1 in every 31 adults, or 3.2% of the (USA) population is under some form of correctional control.
Michael Twitty (@koshersoul) is a fascinating man I would love to share a Pesach (Passover) seder with. We could trade stories – Michael, of what being a Black Jew celebrity chef is all about … while I would tell about running my mother’s Chinese takeaway restaurant and Asian grocery store in downtown Tel Aviv. From her hospital bed, Mom said if I kept alive the business she loved so much, she felt she could win the battle to regain her health. Whatever I did or didn’t do, those who loved that vivacious wonder enjoyed Mom’s company for almost another decade after that. Mom was Israeli and my Dad is Chinese.
Ernestine Johnson is glorious in her spoken word performance of ‘The Average Black Girl’ on the Arsenio Hall Show.
Ernestine recounts when boyfriend’s mother told her she was acceptable because she’s not ‘The Average Black Girl’ … and she’s told she’s not ‘The Average Black Girl’ because “When I speak, I pronounce every syllable.” But Ms. Johnson interprets this label in a very different way.
Nyack Village Theatre celebrates Black History Month in Film. The theatre is located upstairs at 94 Main Street in the historic Woolworth Way, built in 1905 and today presenting film, music, theatre, dance and poetry in an intimate 49 seat space in the heart of Nyack.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6th – 8:00pm
“Hidden Colors” – The Untold History of People of Aboriginal, Moor and African Descent
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7th 7:30pm
“Cabin in The Sky” – starring Ethel Waters, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Lena Horne, Louie Armstrong, Rex Ingram, Duke Ellington & The Hall Johnson Choir
The Amistad Act became law in New Jersey half a generation ago, which I learned today is long enough ago for young equal education activists to have never heard of it. “What’s that?” a young friend asked on Facebook when I suggested that we pressure state government to fund the Amistad Commission’s mandate to bring historically accurate curricula and books that teach the true roles African Americans and other ethnic minorities have played in the evolution of society both at home and abroad, to all K-12 classrooms. This knowledge is not currently being taught to our children but in New Jersey it ought to be, because state law calls for it.
A Movement or a Moment panel discussion on police brutality, racial profiling and the matter of black lives will be presented on Monday as part of the Fireside Chat Series at Essex County College.
Monday, February 2 2015 6-8pm
ECC Fireside Chat Series Panel:
A Movement or a Moment,
on the Matter of Black Lives
Siegler Hall, Essex County College
303 University Avenue, Newark, NJ
Cost: free
This free program is being offered in response to the high-profile deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, and the subsequent court rulings and responses. It will center on whether the matter of black lives is an event of the moment, or an ongoing and growing movement.
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston is exhibiting a striking collection of Gordon Parks photographs that Life commissioned, but never ran. In its article What It Was Like to Be Black in 1950s America Slate writer Jordan G. Teicher tells us:
Gordon Parks hadn’t been to his hometown, Fort Scott, Kansas, in more than 20 years when he returned there in 1950 as a photojournalist on assignment for Life magazine. Growing up as the youngest of 15 children, Parks attended the Plaza School, an all-black grade school in the heavily segregated town. Now, as the first black man hired full-time by the magazine, Parks wanted to find and photograph all 11 of his classmates from grade school as a way of measuring the impact of school segregation. The photo essay he created, which was never published, is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the exhibition, “Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott,” beginning Jan. 17.
When people express a problem with Israel, they are not talking about the many Israeli Arab citizens of the country or the pretty large number of Chinese that now live there. They are talking about Jews. That is why criticism of Israel is criticism of Jews – because when people criticize Israel they are really criticizing Jews, then pretending that is not what they intended to do.
I almost didn’t read this, as I don’t have such a big interest in how women transition into being men and vice-versa but I’m glad I did, because that’s not what this article talks about. It’s about the experience of being a black man in the US on the queer spectrum … the experience of being a black trans-gender man … the family and sociological ramifications of becoming a transgender person and the experience of being a black man in America today amidst all the social unrest, told from the perspective of a person who chose to be a man.
D.B. Anderson tells us about the suppression and history of “They Don’t Care About Us”, the anti-racism song Michael Jackson wrote and recorded two years after being strip-searched by police in 1993.
“They Don’t Care About Us” was denounced by The New York Times even before its release, and did not reach much of its intended audience because the controversy caused by the New York Times article would go on to overshadow the song itself. Radio stations were reluctant to play it and one of the short films Jackson created for the song was banned in the US
On December 14, the New York Times published Op-ed Columnist Charles M. Blow‘s opinion America, Who Are We? Mr. Blow writes on “Politics, public opinion and social justice” and his thoughts are deep and persuasive.
Last week I spoke at a seminary and graduate school in New York about the protests following the grand jury decisions in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases.
It was invigorating and inspiring to be among so many young people with so much passion about social justice, young people beginning to feel their power as change agents and brimming to exercise it by disrupting the status quo.
