May 11, 2016

tweet thread of "new studies" that found things Black people been saying all our lives

@ImFromRaleigh aka Jonathan, holds a Masters in Education and graduates from Harvard this May. He's one of those internet famous guys who often leads discussions that range from determining which fast food restaurants serve the best fried chicken (*cough* Popeyes) to disparities in education. This morning, he launched into a thread of tweets of new studies that describe issues that minority communities have complained of, literally forever. These studies show the myriad of issues that minorities face and how race can influence just about everything, even if we don't realize it. Most of the studies were published in the last 2-3 years showing that these issues have long been overlooked and why the Shriver Center's Racial Justice Training Institute is so important. https://storify.com/WhitneyWJD/new-studies

Too many to list here because tweeters(?) are contiuously posting studies. But I like @ImFromRaleigh's new addition at the very end of this small list

Survey finds black fathers more involved in children's lives than white fathers
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/20/local/la-me-black-dads-20131221

A new study from the Public Religion Research
Most white Americans generally believe that protests are good for the country, but they hold significant reservations about protests led by African Americans,” Dr. Robert P. Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, said in a press release. “Among white Americans, strong support for protesting government mistreatment drops dramatically among whites when protesters are identified as black Americans.https://www.colorlines.com/articles/white-americans-think-protesting-improves-nation%E2%80%94unless-black-folks-are-involved

Why White People Downplay Their Individual Racial Privileges
In the past year, the killings of unarmed black men by police officers, as well as a mass shooting in a black church in South Carolina, have garnered enormous media attention. The shootings have become touch points in a larger discussion about race relations and racial bias in the United States.
Stanford Graduate School of Business

Study suggests link between gun ownership, racism
Are gun ownership and racism linked? Researchers have found that the more racist beliefs held by a white person, the more likely the person is to own a gun - conclusions that have rankled gun rights advocates. Washington Times

New Study Finds That Racism Makes Black Men Old
A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has shown that racism may accelerate aging in African-American men. Researchers at the University of Maryland found signs of accelerated aging in African-American men who reported high levels of racial discrimination and who had internalized anti-black attitudes, UMD Right Now reports.

Study: White teachers are less likely to expect academic success from black students, especially black boys. http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2016/03/bias.html?cmp=soc-edit-tw …

Reviewers will find more spelling errors in your writing if they think you're black
You're reading this article. Should it change your opinion of the piece's quality to know that its author was white, black, or of another race? No, if you're evaluating it on its merits. Yet a new study by the consultancy firm Nextions shows that reviewers of a legal brief did just that. http://www.vox.com/

Harvard University study finds that black federal judges are much more likely to be overruled than white judges http://ow.ly/ZETCU
'Black judge effect': study of overturning rates questions if justice is really blind
A Harvard analysis found that black federal district judges are significantly more likely to be overruled than their white counterparts, suggesting not just implicit bias but racism within the...
theguardian.com

Study finds that in Jim Crow era, half of black-white wage gap could be explained by differences in school quality.http://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-REB-35040 …

White Americans Are Biggest Terror Threat in U.S.
White Americans are the biggest terror threat in the United States, according to a study by the New America Foundation. The Washington-based research organization did a review of “terror” attacks on US soil since Sept. 11, 2001 and found that most of them were carried out by radical anti-government groups or white supremacists. http://www.globalpost.com/article/6592741/2015/06/24/white-americans-are-biggest-terror-threat-united-states

BREAKING: New study proves you can save a lot of time and money by listening to Black people. ]@ImFromRaleigh

Also found too many to list on a friend's Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150731114699956&set=pcb.10150731114724956&type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150731114689956&set=pcb.10150731114724956&type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150731113839956&set=pcb.10150731113869956&type=3&theater

May 5, 2016

Have you noticed these two patterns?

One: Because HRC has most PoC votes therefore it will be our fault for ushering in President Trump, because he'll win.
Two: Have fun with President Trump because HRC needs BS supporter votes and we won't vote for her and Trump wins.

So all of us are either to blame or be punished getting the impression now that some liberals want Trump to win. Trump losing, that I'm seeing is most likely, is not even a possibility.

April 20, 2016

Some Diaspora News: Black in the USSR and Race and Place in Brazil

“When people ask me about my background I usually start by explaining how my mum is Russian, my dad is Ghanaian and that I was born in Bulgaria,” says the photographer Liz Johnson Artur. “It often becomes a long explanation.”

Johnson Artur spent her childhood in Bulgaria and then Germany and has been based in Britain since 1990. Her father was unable to return to Bulgaria and is now settled in Ghana. She only met him for the first time in 2010. After doing so, she felt moved to start documenting the stories of other Russians of African and Caribbean origin. “Most black Russians that I met in Moscow and St Petersburg had also grown up without their fathers. Some had been fostered or grown up in children’s homes and had never met their mothers. But we all agreed that we felt Russian as well as African.”

Most of her subjects, who often describe themselves as Afro-Russians, had grown up without much contact with other black people or with little of the shared culture and identity familiar to African-Americans and black Britons. “The amount we know about our African heritage varies from individual to individual,” says Johnson Artur. What they do have in common however, is a history of struggle against a commonly encountered resistance to the presence of black people in Russia. “Those who grew up and live in Russia still have to justify on a daily basis the fact that they are Russians too.” Johnson Artur hopes her project will go some to connecting and making visible the generation of black Russians that have grown up calling the country home. http://calvertjournal.com/features/show/5388/red-africa-afrorussians-black-ussr-portraits-generation-identity

https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/49YE-FSbaT0Blg8V5HZUiM27PYSeAW5EeU9_afErVoycMfcRUvnV4OgAp1GSZuGwCrslPj-ENEmktc4VJUN2qfeCfnzPqtJfWpvlRRRsHsfmCHYpGZX5ccOmLQdEZxJAtyNjA9qzYOeiw2x9kgv5C_3vA3vbCtv5FtvIoySagJLVkMK_ldgKs9XMsdEFdmpUIfkB9U3NsAqNbquenKHqMWOWz0UQ6RR39ChM4YmM7n0Wijhv=s0-d-e1-ft#?w=560
Rita de Cássia Pereira Costa, a 31-year old maid that passed the OAB (Brazilian Lawyer's Guild) exam

Brazil is a society constructed very much upon class and race. There’s simply no way to deny this (although people still try). Perhaps no better evidence of this is elite reactions to seeing traditionally poorer, mostly black classes ascending in life and frequenting places where previously only those elites and their families frequented. We previously touched upon this in a piece entitled “80% of Brazil’s new middle class is black and upper and upper-middle class consumers are none too pleased about it”. We’ve also made reference to the rejection of those deemed “out of place” by privileged classes who have voiced their discomfort with this presence in the racist graffiti that has been found in numerous university campuses throughout Brazil, most recently at the University of Campinas.

This resentment is real as college student Lorena Cristina de Oliveira Barbosa came to see it when she was told that “she’ll only be a maid, or will need to use her black sexuality’ to move up in life” or as Matheus Pichonelli documented well in his article “The maid has a car and travels by plane. Then why did I go to college?”

This is to say that, being part of Brazil’s elite is not only based on one’s economic status and means of frequenting certain exclusive areas, but also enjoying the fact that so many others cannot. https://blackwomenofbrazil.co/2016/04/20/the-resentment-of-studying-in-the-same-classroom-as-the-black-maids-daughter/

April 8, 2016

The Rise and Fall of 'Free, White, and 21'

Free, white, and 21” appeared in dozens of movies in the ’30s and ’40s, a proud assertion that positioned white privilege as the ultimate argument-stopper. The current state of contention over the existence and shape of white privilege weaves back into the story of this catchphrase: its rise, its heyday, and how it disappeared. White America learned the same lesson as the society woman saying “free, white and 21” to the fugitive: you can’t be sure to whom you are speaking. Every time a movie character uttered this phrase so casually, they were giving black America a glimpse into the real character of American democracy. Decades before it came to a head, they inadvertently fed the civil rights struggle. The solution to this problem would be quintessentially Hollywood, and thus quintessentially American—a combination of censorship and propaganda that would erase “free, white, and 21” from films, from public life, and nearly even from national memory.

Yet it took women to popularize the phrase—or fictional women at least. The expression figures in romance narratives starting as early as 1856. Later, Dorothy Dix, the nation’s first advice columnist, would recycle it, directed to young women. If the primary sphere of influence for the white male was in the voting booth, for the disenfranchised white woman it was the home. Her privilege was narrow but vital: to choose which white male to share it with.

White newspapers said nothing about this. But when the phrase began appearing in movie after movie, the black press took notice. “There seems to be a tendency on the part of the moving picture industry to use the above phrase at every slight opportunity,” wrote Walter L. Lowe beneath the headline “Free, White, and 21” in the Chicago Defender in 1935. He wasn’t sure whether Hollywood used it because it was considered “timely and clever” or because it “further inflates the ego of their white patrons,” but, he continued:


Why, he wondered, would studios keep using a phrase that was “unfair,” “unsportsmanlike,” and, with “3,000,000 colored American moving picture lovers,” likely unprofitable? The saying, he concluded, “cannot substantially add anything to the pleasure of white moving picture-goers,” yet it “can detract considerably from the serenity and the pleasure of the colored people.” http://pictorial.jezebel.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-an-all-american-catchphrase-free-1729621311

April 5, 2016

SOLUS (Short Movie), on Shadow and Act, Museum of UncutFunk and

at the Black Science Fiction Society today, SOLUS (Short Movie)

Carl is a man in his fifties, who’s trying to lead a normal life in an unusual situation with his friend Eddy. One day, while he’s looking for food, he finds Sam, unconscious. Carl brings him back home. When Sam wakes up, he will question Carl’s way of life. The latter is going to understand his meeting is maybe not due to chance.


https://vimeo.com/52223526

March 27, 2016

Coltrane's ‘A Love Supreme’ Added to the Library of Congress

Each year the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress selects recordings to be preserved as part of the national collection.

This year the Library of Congress added John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” to their library—a huge honor as only 25 songs deemed “significant to American history and culture” make the cut.



These recordings, by a wide range of artists in many genres of music and in spoken word, will be preserved for future listeners,” said acting Librarian of Congress David S. Mao in a statement. “This collection of blues, jazz, rock, country and classical recordings, interspersed with important recordings of sporting events, speeches, radio shows and comedy, helps safeguard the record of what we’ve done and who we are.”

“A Love Supreme” makes a total of 450 recordings for The National Recording Registry in the library as report by NY Time’s Artbeat.
http://www.essence.com/2016/03/25/john-coltrane-love-supreme-added-library-congress

Two very well done NPR stories covering "A Love Supreme."

http://www.npr.org/2000/10/23/148148986/a-love-supreme

Listen http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=369191157&m=369191158

http://www.npr.org/2014/12/07/369191157/50-years-of-coltranes-a-love-supreme

Listen http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=369191157&m=369191158

March 4, 2016

Nina Simone: Poetic Hot Lava In Open Letter

A new film directed by a White woman who claims to be Nina Simone’s number one fan aims to achieve what America couldn’t achieve while Nina was alive - the total erasure of the Empress of Activist-Cool from her own Black image - an image so subversive and counter culture in its dark Negroidness that the challenge of living it imbued Nina with a justifiably rebellious and outspoken symphony of under-dog passions; all of it expressed through grandly operatic musical masterpieces, scornfully bold and unrepentant public truth-telling, beautifully Afro-sculptural body posturing, and most of all, Nina’s defiant love for herself and for her people’s political well-being. Nina Simone was no ordinary jazz stylist, woman or public figure. Everything about her was intelligence married to fire. She was charismatic, eccentric and Queenly. And above all else-she was the moving embodiment of raw cultured Blackness.

And because of that inability to see us, the image chosen to represent Nina becomes a mocking dehumanization, an erasure of Nina’s swarthy and robust Black victory. Everything Nina stood for while surviving in that Black body becomes whitened and desensitized by the cloying signature of dishonesty. But of course, White people are making this film for White people anyway.

Black American women are tired of the colorist Hollywood caste system. They love Nina Simone religiously. They know that Nina’s daughter Simone was not asked to be a consultant or even contacted to give her blessing. Imagine if they hadn’t rendered Nina invisible in her own story. With Viola Davis, Lauryn Hill or Yolanda Ross as Nina, it would have become a classic. http://www.ninasimone.com/2012/11/kola-boof-spits-poetic-hot-lava-in-open-letter-to-cynthia-mort/

&ebc=ANyPxKoDc-jky3lE2O5vKrHRzInLr6prmOJhxofds77Q1qhARoz-OyXyVLgm0mhadpN74MkXX2Kv

February 8, 2016

She got the Job Done!

"Today we have Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles, but not too long ago, gymnastics was almost exclusively white. Black gymnasts continue to make strides, break down barriers, and have fun while they're at it.

UCLA Gymnast, Sophina DeJesus, brought down the house with her floor routine at a recent meet. As soon as T-Wayne's "Nasty Freestyle" came on, we knew what to expect. Sophina promptly whipped, hit dem folks and completed another tumbling pass.

It was Black as hell, and we loved every second. Sophina scored a 9.925 for the routine." http://shine.forharriet.com/2016/02/watch-this-gymnast-whip-dab-and-hit.html#axzz3zZMqnkrG

December 28, 2015

Harvard Medical Scientists Say Police Killings Should Be Recorded As Public Epidemic

The article reminds me of the clueless wonder's response in JAG's post about Rosa Park http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=post&forum=1187&pid=33757 AND the poster promoting Sanders who couldn't figure out why we're not excited about his economic worldview, when we should be feeling/doing this or that. It turned out the poster is a physician and I just about passed out. Unfortunately I can't find the doctor's thread or cross post.

"Harvard researchers have called on US Public Health Agencies to consider police killings and police deaths public health issues. With that request, researches are also echoing numerous activists who are urging them to begin tracking the number of people killed by police.

The proposal was inspired by a year of continuous protests and public pressure from the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which stemmed from the murder of unarmed Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, and the consistent police murders and protests that have happened since.

They even mention how absurd it is that in the US, we have to rely on a UK newspaper to count the number of people being killed by police. The US public health system already reports numerous notifiable diseases nationally and in real time."

http://usuncut.com/black-lives-matter/harvard-medical-police-killings-public-epidemic/

December 16, 2015

Some Diaspora News

This is a fun one: 40 Incredible Photos from Brazil’s First Natural Hair Empowerment March http://blackgirllonghair.com/2015/11/40-incredible-photos-from-brazils-first-natural-hair-empowerment-march/

"Brazil is a country with the largest black population outside of the African continent. However it has often been the subject of dialogue regarding the strenuous challenges many of it’s black citizens face on a daily basis. When it comes to natural hair, the attitudes toward it are strained. Just this past week, we covered the backlash, talented Afro-Brazilian actress Taís Araújo received after revealing her natural hair.

Organizers Lorena Lacerda, Andrea and Naiara Souza Gouveia say the idea from the march was launched from their Curled and Curled Facebook group and the need for such an event is clear:

“Women suffer from both sides. Racism and sexism. Therefore, we use the concept of empowerment. From the aesthetics, the woman empowers and empowers the community” [translated]