16 Thursday Mar 2017
Posted in Entertainment
15 Friday Jul 2016
Posted in Entertainment, Political/Economics, war
Tags
Presley publicly cited his debt to African American music, pointing to artists such as B. B. King, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, Ivory Joe Hunter, and Fats Domino. In 1956 interview, he named blues singers who “obviously meant a lot to him; how he tried to carry on their music”; also said, “The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin’ now, man, for more years than I know. They played it like that in their shanties and in their juke joints and nobody paid it no mind ’til I goosed it up. I got it from them. Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now and I said if I ever got to a place I could feel all old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody ever saw.”
Little Richard said of Presley: “He was an integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn’t let black music through. He opened the door for black music.”
White male patriarchal culture uses ‘entertainment racism’ in various ways to destroy Black/African culture. As occurred with Rock N Roll, one way is to ignore what’s indigenously Black/African/Nubian; devalue it; subordinate it as ‘heathen’, ‘savage’, ‘gross’. An exception to the rule, rare is it that a white person, like Elvis, gave full credit to Blacks as the originators of the music he played. He even went further to admit that the music didn’t become acceptable until he, a white man, began to play it.
16 Monday May 2016
Posted in Education, Entertainment, Relationships & Sex, Solution, war
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA
…nothing about…
…his birth date, May 26, 1926 (…the same day as my grandmother’s birth day); his home in Alton, Ill.; his affluent childhood, his family even had a ranch (…my grandmother’s paying for me to go to a horse riding camp this summer at Grace United Methodist Church’s horse camp in Ft. Washington this summer ); his father was a dentist and mother a ‘closet’ blues pianist; at age 13 (…a year older than me)… he got his 1st trumpet; and 5 years later he was playing with Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker (…man, he must have really been good); and the same year, he even went to Julliard but dropped out because ‘the’ music was too white (…I understand that…).
Mr. Cheadle didn’t do a good job, at all, telling Miles Davis’ story, he was really much more than a ” dead beat drug head’.
My grandmother tell me, all the time that African philosophy is Ubuntu…’the golden rule’. She says, African Americans who’re in the position to influence Black youth, like me, “…are obligated to seek opportunities to show the full [Ubuntu] humanity of Blacks (Leonard Pitts Jr. Ebony, October 2015).”
So, though Mr. Cheadle had the opportunity to show that Miles Davis was great and a genius, he didn’t…he showed Mr. Davis as a drug user, self-centered, and stupid because he let people, white people in his home who stole his music.
According to the ‘golden rule’, I don’t think Mr. cheaply would like his life story told like this, minus the good thing he did and his talent.
My grandmother was really mad because she wanted us to learn about Miles Davis but the movie (Miles Ahead), didn’t teach us much of anything about him. So, she had to tell us, herself.
Devin Morgan
10 Tuesday May 2016
Posted in Education, Entertainment, health, History, Political/Economics, Solution, war
Tags
#fromthebrowderfile, #joyangeladegruy, #michellealexander, #posttramaticslavesyndromestudyguide, #tanahisicoates, #TonyBrowder, #whiteally
Whites, Allys, Notwithstanding, Do What Whites Do, Package Information, Even Anti-Racism Information…Goal: To Sell…Not To Help Black & Brown People Heal
SirusXM Urban View…Give Us Black/African Experts Who’re About Helping Us Learn & Heal
Compare
Peripheral information about racism/white supremacy, maybe…helpful to whites and maybe Black & Brown people but nothing to help ‘us’ heal.
Vs
Information, for sale, that helps Black & Brown people learn their history (color-consciousness, included) and heal.
Just listening to Coates is educational in a way that’s healing in that it let’s us know, on a personal , intimate, and legitimate level that (1) ‘we are not imagining things’ and (2) there is a systematic reason for our plight.
Others of us, not only write but encourage us to learn but to also, work-thru our pain.
If Sirius XM Radio is interested in helping Black & Brown people, they will introduce us to our experts, we really don’t have a lot of time to waste…beating arounf the bush getting to the point via white allys.
Tim Wise Admits, Whites Don’t Know Black/African History, Maybe That’s Why His Lectures Are Restricted To, Not Patriarchy, But Only Racism/White Supremacy In The Modern Era, Doesn’t Discuss The European Origin of Patriarchy & How It Birthed Sexism, Classism, Racism, etc. Black & Brown people need to know the ‘totality’ of their history…as do whites…which includes the European origin of patriarchy (the core of white male supremacy) & how it birth the systematic tool of racism/supremacy. Lisentening to Wise, he doesn’t seem to know that racism/white supreamcy are variable of patriarchy or that Black/African social sturcture is ‘matriarchy’
Black & Brown People Need To Know The Totality Of Their History And When & Where Patriarchy (the core of white male supreamcy) & It’s Tool, The System of Racism/White Supremacy Has Impacted Us Historically, Even Before Colonialism
Tim Wise Doens’t Know This But Tony Browder & Ta-he Coates Can Cover The Totality Of The Topic..Let’s Use Our Experts, PLEASE
White allys, like Wise, Dara Silverman, and Zoe Williams codify anti-racism and make money off it…sell Black & Brown people how to kits, lesson plans, expensive workshops & trainings.
09 Monday May 2016
Posted in CulturalEducation, Entertainment, Solution, war
…nothing about…
…his birth date, May 26, 1926, the same day as my grandmother’s birth day; his home in Alton, Ill.; his affulent childhood, his family even had a ranch…my grandmother’s paying for me to go to a horse riding camp this summer; his father was a dentist and mother a ‘closet’ blues pianist; age 13, a year older than me… he got his 1st trumpet; and 5 years later he was playing with Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker…man, he must have been good; and the same year, he even went to Julliard but dropped out because ‘the’ music was too white…I understand than…
And…
Miles Davis on piano with Howard McGhee (trumpet), Joe Albany (pianist, standing) and Brick Fleagle (guitarist, smoking), September 1947
1986
or
Statue in Kielce, Poland
He died, September, 21 1991
Mr. Cheadle didn’t do a good job, at all, telling Miles Davis’ story, he was really much more than a ” dead beat drug head’.
03 Tuesday May 2016
Posted in Entertainment, Solution, war
In the age of tweets and soundbites, candid conversations about white supremacy’s clutch on the lives of people of color rarely occur outside of black circles, perhaps out of fear that white people might be offended. Local activist Kymone Freeman, however, says that forcing Caucasians to confront this elephant in the room will heal the nation and save humanity.
Freeman, a self-described “angry black man in therapy,” plans to make audiences across the D.C. metropolitan area uncomfortable this spring in “Whites Only,” a one-man play in which he reflects on the bitter lessons he learned about white supremacy’s seemingly innocuous yet pervasive reach during his coming of age. Freeman said that while this performance may upset both black and white people alike, he has no qualms about telling the truth.
“I’m doing this for me and my sanity,” said Freeman, program manager at We Act Radio in Southeast. Throughout the month of March, Freeman has performed “Whites Only” for audiences at local Bus Boys & Poets restaurants with the hopes of bringing the play to the Mosaic Theater Company of DC in Northeast later this year.
The March 12 show at the 5th and K Streets location in Northwest attracted nearly two dozen people, three of whom were white. Freeman said that while black audiences have enjoyed his material, he looks forward to the day that he can express his unfiltered thoughts before an all-white crowd.
“I’ve committed my life to telling the lion’s story. I attempt to do that through We Act Radio, testimonies at D.C. council hearings, and in the streets,” said Freeman. “We live in a system that has determined one rule of law for one group of people and one rule of law for another group. Do you think that if black cops were shooting white children that the end result would be the same? No one has answered in affirmation. Our silence is approval of the situation.”
In “Whites Only,” Freeman stands onstage sporting a black shirt with “Don’t Shoot” emblazoned across the front. The two-hour show starts with his plea to guests to understand from where their long-held beliefs and traditions originated. He later regales guests with stories from his adolescence and adulthood while sipping wine.
Each of Freeman’s anecdotes touch on his interaction with family members, friends, employers, and old beaus, with a critique of America serving as the common thread. At times, he holds up a large white sign with a smiley face — representative of what he describes as the façade black men often have to put up in a white-dominated society — drawn in the middle.
Freeman leaves no stone unturned in his assault against American capitalism, the military industrial complex, gentrification, police brutality, and corporate media. Some stories, like one about an argument with a woman who wore weave, drew chuckles. Other stories, like one in which he had to comfort a young woman traumatized by a sexual assault at the hands of a drunk white man brought the room to complete silence. Guests later shook their heads in disbelief as Freeman reminisced about his violent encounters with police officers in Georgetown and Northern Virginia.
“I’ve never said any of this stuff out loud,” Freeman said. “You can’t walk around with all this rage pent up. Writing this play has given me a lot of clarity about what has happened in my life. There’s an empathy that white people don’t feel for black production because they don’t think it’s for them. That’s part of the problem. I think we need to challenge white and black people to be honest with themselves.”
Natalie Molinaro, a white woman from Chevy Chase, Maryland and guest at the March 12 viewing, shared Freeman’s sentiments. Molinaro said that “Whites Only” compelled her to think more deeply about the United States’ race problem and her experiences with white and black people.
“I learned so many facts that made me even angrier about the situation unfolding in this country,” said Molinaro, 19. “I feel a little embarrassed for my race but I don’t represent all white people. I went to a Catholic school in Maryland and had classmates who teased me about being Italian. I have friends who are black, including one who’s from Kenya. People who are racist are behind the times and I didn’t even realize those kind of people existed until I went to college.”
“Whites Only” has already found a fan in Roger Moulden II, a local minister and guest at the recent viewing. Moulden said that hearing Freeman articulate his frustrations as a black man emboldened him to do the same in his life.
“It was phenomenal and liberating to hear the things that I knew in my journey,” Moulden, 27, said. “Kymone broke down how white supremacy’s fascination with monsters comes from white people wanting others to not see them as villains. Everything he said from start to finish caught my attention. It’s important to tell the truth and let the world know that we have a point of view. We’re telling our story,” said Moulden, a Temple Hills, Maryland resident.
Freeman’s newest project comes on the heels of two previous productions and a trip to Cuba in the months after the United States changed its foreign relations status with the island nation. As a founding member of protest group DC Ferguson and frequent guest commentator on TV One’s News One with Roland Martin, Freeman has made a name for himself as an agitator of the status quo.
“I had an opportunity to go on the big stage, do some damage and contribute to the Black Lives Matter movement,” Freeman said. “If this play becomes a financial success, I will become more of a threat to the system but it will take some outside support. People in our community who are interested in seeing something different should come out. People often place a different value on white stuff than black stuff and that’s the white supremacy I’m attacking, not white people.”
We missed the play…when will it return?
29 Friday Apr 2016
Posted in Education, Entertainment, History, Political/Economics, Solution
Tags
#cornellwest, #drwilmerleon, #glenford, #johnhenrikclarkafricanoriginsofchristianity, #jOHNhENRIKcLARKE, #karenhunter, #princejohnhenridkclark, #revwilliambarber
and, Cornell West
Tell us the truth: http://www.siriusxm.com/siriusxmurbanview
Topics included:
http://www.essence.com/2016/04/21/prince-interview-cover-story-essence-archives-june-2014
28 Thursday Apr 2016
Posted in Entertainment, Political/Economics, war
Melissa Harris-Perry was at 30 Rockefeller Center prepping for her MSNBC show last month when she witnessed the taping of an all-white panel of journalists and analysts discussing black voters in South Carolina.
“It was jaw-dropping,” Harris-Perry said in a New York Times interview back in March. “Given that someone who wrote two books about the black vote was in the building.”
Her experience, and her recent departure from MSNBC, is emblematic of a deeper problem in cable news: people of color not being included in conversations about people of color. Outside of MSNBC lies a whole cable news landscape that severely lacks inclusion, and the timing is terrible.
In an election year where people of color account for 43 percent of eligible voters, where the Latino electorate alone will reach 27 million people, where white men make up a mere 31 percent of the American population, why is it that when the “black vote” and “Latino” are up for debate on TV, black and Latino voices are either tokenized, or worse — simply not there?
MSNBC was thrown into controversy after it had a very messy and very public falling out with Harris-Perry last month. In a leaked email to her staff, she claimed that the network had tried to stifle her voice and authority. They pushed her away from conducting cultural discussions about race and identity and encouraged her to give a more straightforward analysis of the election, she said — something she had no interest in doing.
“I am not a token, mammy or little brown bobble head,” Harris-Perry wrote. “I am not owned by… MSNBC.”
“I am not a token, mammy or little brown bobble head.”Melissa Harris-Perry
The fallout from the whole episode prompted many to criticize not just MSNBC’s alleged unfair treatment of Harris-Perry, but the network’s lack of diversity overall. Since last year, the network has had a complete editorial overhaul, which meant thecancellation of most of its op-ed styles shows, including Ronan Farrow’s millennial-focused “Ronan Farrow Daily,” and Joy Reid’s “The Reid Report.”
But also among the shows axed were daily editorial news hours hosted by Alex Wagner, Touré, and Rev. Al Sharpton (whose show now only airs on Sundays), all moves that have prompted outcry and criticism. With Harris-Perry, Reid and Wagner gone, the only woman of color hosting a show on the network is Tamron Hall.
Meanwhile, Cuban-American journalist Jose Diaz-Balart (who also anchors news hours on Telemundo and NBC), has seen his early-morning hour on MSNBC frequently-bumped to make room for election coverage and “Morning Joe.”
Other than news anchors who report daily news, there are currently zero editorial or op-ed style shows (in the vein of Rachel Maddow or Bill O’Reilly) hosted by a person of color on the major cable news networks: MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News. And with Harris-Perry’s show gone, there are certainly far fewer diverse perspectives represented.
“[Harris-Perry] gave so many people their first shot,” trans activist and Melissa Harris-Perry Show guest Cherno Biko told The Huffington Post. “She gave marginalized people a seat at the table.”
A 2014 Media Matters study found that Harris-Perry’s show, compared to other Sunday shows including “Meet the Press” and “Fox News Sunday,” had the most diverse guests based on race and gender, with 27 percent white male guests and 73 percent of men and women of color.
2014 Media Matters Breakdown Of Sunday Shows Guests Based And Gender And Ethnicity:
Here are some unsurprising, but alarming truths about the state of of cable news: A 2014 FAIR report found that 84 percent of cable news guests were white, the majority of them male. Last year, Vocativ researched not just the Sunday news shows, but all primetime and morning shows across the major networks, finding that people of color made up just 30 percent of all hosts and anchors (women of color were the least represented).
Beyond field reporters and contributors, there are only a handful of anchors or hosts of color on the major cable news networks: Tamron Hall, Craig Melvin, Jose Diaz-Albert, and Frances Rivera on MSNBC; Victor Blackwell, Michaela Pereira, Fredricka Whitfield and Don Lemon on CNN.
CNN has also received criticism in the past for apparently phasing out black executives and prominent personalities including Suzanne Malveaux, Soledad O’Brien and TJ Holmes. The network, in a statement to The Huffington Post, CNN’s Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion Geraldine Moriba maintains that it is very committed to diversity and inclusion, saying, “We aim to provide different points of view and perspective in our news gathering and reporting.”
Meanwhile, Fox News has three black anchors (Charles Payne, Arthel Neville and Harris Faulkner), two co-anchors (Kelly Wright and Charles Payne) but very few black contributors. A Media Matters annual “Sunday Shows” study revealed this year that 86 percent of guests on Fox News Sunday were white, and 63 percent were white men.
We are in an election year, and we’re witnessing one of the most bizarre, frightening, fascinating, and important presidential races in recent memory. Discussions in particular about race have reached a boiling point — between the incidents of police brutality across the nation, the water crises in city’s like Flint, and the often incendiary racial and xenophobic comments of a certain Republican candidate, race is at the forefront of the country’s collective mind.
Cable news is where many Americans go to unpack these issues. So what does it mean when, across the breadth of the cable news world, white anchors (be they on liberal or conservative networks) are bringing us that news, and shaping that conversation?
While some networks make an effort to have at least one black or brown voice at the table, just as often the analysts, pundits, and hosts leading these discussions are white. The ramifications of this could be harmless, or they could be damaging. Take, for example, CNN’s 2015 coverage of the protests in Baltimore in the wake of the killing of Freddie Gray, where much of the emphasis of the coverage was on subtlety condemning the protestors as looters and thugs, rather than questioning why they were moved to protest in the first place.
“Good journalism… tries to understand why a city is bleeding instead of just frowning at the wound,” Slate writer Justin Peters aptly observed.
And in an election year where immigration is also a hot button topic, there is a dearth of Latino representation across the networks which has been the case for years.
2015 Media Matters Breakdown Of Sunday Shows Guests Based And Gender And Ethnicity:
“Diversity isn’t just about inviting minorities to discuss issues of race,” says Cherno Biko. “Our opinions should be included for topics that run the gamut.”
There are some realities to acknowledge when it comes to this topic. First: the fact that MSNBC, a historically liberal network, saw its low ratings begin to perk up when it began focusing on the election and straightforward news and started phasing out its op-ed style shows (then again, it isn’t surprising that ratings would rise during an election year).
Also, statistics show that cable news watchers are overwhelmingly white, male, and middle-aged to senior citizens. Do these viewers really care about diversity among their anchors? Are young, black and Latino voters really getting their news about the campaign from Fox, CNN, and MSNBC, or are they finding it on social media platforms? After all, a 2015 American Press Institute survey found that a whopping 88 percent of millennials say they get their news from Facebook.
“Diversity is an ongoing, everyday process. It is not a one and done. It is also dependent on the content. That’s also diversity. “Yvette Miley, MSNBC
But for Yvette Miley, the Senior Vice President of Talent And Diversity at MSNBC, the aim of all networks should be to reach as diverse an array of viewers as possible. The network is keen to emphasize the fact that while they have no editorial shows hosted by people of color, they have ongoing relationships with people like Joy-Ann Reid, and a racially diverse roster of contributors. In addition to focusing on their pipeline programs and hiring people of color in positions of power behind-the-scenes (like Rashida Jones, the managing editor for MSNBC), Miley says that the network is addressing inclusion through other channels.
“Diversity is an ongoing, everyday process,” she told The Huffington Post. “It is not a one and done. It is also dependent on the content. That’s also diversity. “
Miley brings up a valid point — the concept of diversity, especially as it pertains to cable news, is not finite. The Melissa Harris-Perry’s of the world are equally as important as the Yvette Miley’s, as the Rashida Jones’. There are just 10 black-owned media stations in the United States, a fact that makes the dearth of black primetime anchors in news even less surprising.
While MSNBC seems to be making a concerted effort to prove the #MSNBCsoWhite criticism wrong, it remains unclear whether other major networks share the same apparent passion for diversity.
The problem of diversity in cable news, then, is a many-headed monster. Will more black guests across cable news fix the issue? Or more black anchors? Or more POC producers, vice presidents, and executive editors? At what point does representation become a non-issue in journalism? Should the race of who is leading conversations really affect the conversation itself?
There are people behind-the-scenes who believe that the race of those having conversations about issues affecting black people is totally irrelevant — it’s journalism after all, and journalism isn’t about bias.
On the other hand, studies have shown that racial bias in news media is an ongoing issue. That’s why perspective and context is an important aspect of even the most straightforward reporting. A white Fox News host who refuses to acknowledge race as a factor in the police killing of a black man, with no one there to vigorously challenge or even question him, is a perfect example of this.
When talking about the need for more black hosts on cable news, one must return to the image of Melissa Harris-Perry listening to Steve Kornacki lead a vigorous debate with Kate Snow and Ari Melber about the “black vote.” Suddenly, the only question that seems worth asking is: how can race not be relevant?
*As of publishing this article, Fox News has yet to comment. This post has been updated with a comment from CNN.
06 Wednesday Apr 2016
Posted in CulturalEducation, Education, Entertainment, Political/Economics, Solutions
Tags
#frankwalnhealingfromhistoricaltramua, #historicaltrauma, #nasonemike, #nativeamericangenocide, #unescogeneralhistoryofafrica
We Need To Do More Hip Hop To Teach Our Story…from Traditional Africa to The Present…Studies Indicate, Story Telling Heals ‘Historical Trauma’
Hip Hop Content That Comes From UNESCO’s General History of Africa Vol. II Covers 9,000 Year of Africa’s History “freeing it from racial prejudices ensuing from slave trade and colonization…”
http://bit.ly/1pwftZi
Frank Waln, “A lot of it is telling the story of how I’m trying to deal and heal from the historical trauma that has been dealt to me through my ancestors and through being a survivor of genocide.”
Frank Waln is a rapper and member of the Sicangu Lakota. He grew up on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Waln has rapped about the Keystone XL Pipeline, his battle with depression, and the modern Native American experience.
Waln joins Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson to talk about his new album, Tokiya, which comes out this year, and his efforts to be a role model for young Native Americans.
“This album Tokiya is a very personal album,” Waln said. “A lot of it is telling the story of how I’m trying to deal and heal from the historical trauma that has been dealt to me through my ancestors and through being a survivor of genocide.”
On the parallels between black experience and Native American experience
“Hip hop just resonated with a lot of Native youth from my generation, especially growing up on reservations because we could relate to the stories being told in the music.”
“Black folks are coming up out of a history of slavery that their ancestors had to endure. And
my ancestors and myself we’re coming up out of a history of genocide — so we are both being oppressed by this system that was imposed on us.”
“When I moved to Chicago, I started doing workshops and going to schools that were in inner-city Chicago. And I saw the parallels there and I didn’t even know they really existed. And then it started to make sense why I gravitated to that music and those stories.”
On the erasure of Native Americans from U.S. history
“When I came to Chicago to go to school, I actually met a person my first week here, that was living in my dorm, who thought Native Americans are extinct. She thought we were gone and dead. And it really shook me. And I started looking at the way history is taught in this country, and a lot of history books don’t mention us past the 1800’s.”
“So I was talking about that white-washing of history, how history was told by the victors, and how our side of the story is never told, and it’s just as much American history.”
“Genocide did happen in this country, and our people did survive genocide. They tried to wipe us out many times, and that influences our reality, whether we want it to or not.”
On being a role model for Native youth
“My target audience is Native youth because I know what they went through, we grew up in similar circumstances. So I think it’s really important that young Native youth see positive Native role models doing what they love and succeeding.”
“The reaction that I get from Native youth is worth more to me than money. Almost every time I do a show in an indigenous community, a young Native person comes up to me and tells me my music or my performance has changed their life. I remember when I was growing up, I [had] never seen a young Native person from a reservation on a mainstream platform talking about real issues and being honest about who we are and where we come from.”
This volume covers the period from the end of the Neolithic era to the beginning of the seventh century of our era. This period of some 9,000 years of history has been sub-divided into four major geographical zones, following the pattern of African historical research. The chapters cover the corridor of the Nile, Egypt and Nubia, Ethiopian highlands, Magrhib and its Saharan hinterland, the rest of Africa as well as some of the islands of the Indian Ocean
25 Thursday Feb 2016
Posted in Education, Entertainment, History, Solution
Tags
Joe Madison, Sirus talk show host, agrees with me, Race, dispute artistic liberties, the writers and directors, did a good job.
But…PUUR agrees with UNESCO, ‘Until the lions (African Americans) have their own historians (movie writers & directors, etc.), the history (movies) of the hunt will always glorify the hunter (white man).
Jesse Owens
Owens’ Daughter
Anna Waterhouse
Joe Shrapnel
Writers: Anna Waterhouse & Joe Shrapnel
(on right) Director, Stephen Hopkins; Coach in the movie, Jason Sudeikis, and Stephan James who played Jesse Owens
