Journalism

Journalism

9 Essential Reads For Your Racial Justice Conversations

By now we know that racism is a discussion that everyone needs to have, yet it’s easy to become overwhelmed by it all. These discussions can challenge what we know. There is still much we don’t know about each other and the impact of race and racism in our homes, our schools, our workplaces, our local governments. Many of our families and communities are simply microcosms of the greater society that often miseducates us. When we enter school, we learn about the fact of slavery but too often without context or judgment. We don’t learn about the resistance movements. Or the full stories of Nat Turner or John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth. This is changing slowly. Small groups of people of all racial backgrounds are discovering the centuries of literature that do tell these stor...
Journalism

A Radical Vision for Food: Everyone Growing It for Each Other

I grow a half-dozen fruit trees along my 40-foot stretch of sidewalk. The generous fig tree just finished, two young apple trees and a pomegranate are full of bounty, and the kumquat and persimmon are ripening. As much as I love the simple act of orcharding, I’m also sharing a radical vision for food and economy in my suburban Los Angeles community of Altadena. What if all my neighbors grew food in their yards, too? What if we shared the bounty with each other? What if you could eat a delicious, varied, and healthy meal from the abundance provided by your neighborhood trees? Forty percent of the food produced in the part of the planet we call the U.S. is wasted. Much of this waste ends up in landfills, where it produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The food–climate nexus is a wind...
Journalism

Online game to players: Don’t touch black people’s hair

Art director Momo Pixel moved to Portland, Oregon in 2016, and confronted a challenge she had never experienced before: Strangers reaching out to grab or stroke her long braided hair, often without her permission. “I would be walking down the street visibly mad,” Pixel recalled. One day, she told her boss about it. In trying to mimic that scene, he playfully ducked imaginary hands coming toward him. Pixel remarked that it would make a funny game. With the support of her employer, advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, an online game, “Hair Nah! ” was born. Since Pixel shared it on Twitter on Nov. 15, the game received more than 51,000 likes and 27,000 retweets and caught the attention of celebrities including television producer Shonda Rhimes and Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson. ...
Journalism

What Went Wrong With Men That 12 Million Women Said #MeToo?

The massive outpouring of women saying #MeToo is both heartbreaking in its scope and encouraging in the bravery and solidarity it shows—12 million uses of #MeToo on social media in the first 24 hours, according to various reports. Commentators are rightly saying we need to change the culture of male power, have more women as bosses and elected officials, and enforce sexual harassment laws. These and more are important. I want to look at this from a different angle. What happens to boys to make this behavior so pervasive? What happened to men that they support a $96 billion dollar pornography industry that produces, by some estimates, 13,000 films a year (compared to Hollywood’s 600 films), has 420 million websites, and sees 68 million search engine requests for porn every day? My brothe...
Journalism

“Politicizing Beyoncé”: The Unique College Course on Feminist Politics

Nina Simone said, “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.” By using vivid imagery and strong lyricism, music artist and pop icon Beyoncé is doing just that. So much so that a college professor created a course that examines her work. It’s not exactly about learning the dance moves to “Single Ladies,” though in my mind that should get you some extra credit. Beyoncé has been getting increasingly more political. In 2010, Rutgers University professor Kevin Allred created “Politicizing Beyoncé,” a course that focuses on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality and centers Black feminist authors and creatives. Recently Rutgers fired him following a dispute over his political commentary following the 2016 presidential election. Since then, Allred has taught t...
Journalism

12 Reasons Biking Is About to Get Way More Popular

For too long, biking has been viewed skeptically as a white-people thing, a big city thing, an ultra-fit athlete thing, a 20-something thing, a guy thing, a warm weather thing, or an upper-middle class thing. But times are changing. More than 100 million Americans rode a bike in 2014, and bicycles have outsold cars most years in the U.S. since 2003. Latinos bike more than any other racial group, followed by Asians and Native Americans. African Americans and whites bike at about the same rate. Most bicyclists are low-income, according to census figures—as many as 49 percent of bike commuters make less than $25,000 a year. From 1990 to 2012, bike commuting tripled in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Portland. We still have a long way to go to make a bike-frien...
Journalism

Cop Finally Gets His Due, Walter Scott’s Killer Sentenced To Prison

In America, we have been having a conversation about police brutality against black Americans. Despite the countless black people murdered unjustly by police, there is usually no justice. Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Keith Lamont Scott, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray…too many to mention here, really. All of those people were senselessly murdered by cops who chose to be their judges, juries, and executioners, and they did so with impunity and without consequence. However, there is hope, and it is coming out of South Carolina, of all places. North Charleston police officer Michael Slager murdered Walter Scott, a black man who was fleeing after a routine traffic stop in cold blood in 2015. He would have gotten away with it, too, had it not been for a citizen who was brave enough to tape the ...
Journalism

“Zimbabwe’s Ugliest Man” Proud to Win Title for the 4th Time

We’ve all got our physical flaws and learn to live with them. Well, some don’t, but that’s what plastic surgery is for. There is one person in Zimbabwe who not only relishes his ugliness but also get awards for it. William Masvinu from Epworth has been crowned Zimbabwe’s Mr Ugly 2017 and couldn’t be prouder! It’s his fourth title, and he’s fully convinced his claim is undisputed. William was happy with the “recognition” in general but especially pleased to wrest back the title he lost to another contestant last year. Winning ugly contests apparently requires preparation, just as beauty pageants, and the 43-year-old unemployed man will now be prepping to wow the world in the Mr Ugly World competition set to take place next year in South Africa. William was quite rattled to lose to Maison ...
Journalism

Power, Dear White People and More Nominated for NAACP Image Awards

The nominees are out for the 49th NAACP Image Awards! The annual event, which takes place on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2018, celebrates the achievements of people of color in entertainment in film, television, music and literature. January’s ceremony will see Ava DuVernary, Bruno Mars, Issa Rae, Chadwick Boseman, JAY-Z and Chance the Rapper go at it for Entertainer of the Year. Meanwhile, hit shows like ABC’s black-ish, Starz’s Power, Fox’s Empire and OWN’s Queen Sugar have picked up several nominations, including ones for Outstanding Drama and Outstanding Comedy. Newcomers looking to make their mark include the Netflix series Dear White People, an adaption of Justin Simien’s thought-provoking film. Plus, Niecy Nash made waves with her portrayal as a nail salon owner with big dreams...
Journalism

Houston Neighbors Said No To Walmart And Invested In Black-Owned Businesses After The Hurricane

Three months ago, Hurricane Harvey ripped through Houston and coastal Texas, killing 82 people, displacing more than 60,000, and leaving parts of Houston with severe wind and flood damage. As the city recovers from the strongest hurricane to hit in more than 50 years, many of its residents in historically Black neighborhoods continue to struggle for resources and support. “Houston is the tale of two cities,” explains Andrew Cobb, cofounder of West Street Recovery, a nonprofit disaster response organization that formed out of Hurricane Harvey to aid residents in underserved neighborhoods. “A lot of people in Black and brown and low-income neighborhoods still need help.” “If you flew in from the airport and drove around, you’ll probably be like, ‘Well, I don’t see the problem,’” he says. “B...