#HistoricPOC Is the Powerful Illustration of Black History Month Everyone Needs to See A new viral hashtag is shattering stereotypes about the way many Americans view Black History Month. #HistoricPOC, founded by #solidarityisforwhitewomen hashtag creator Mikki Kendall, has taken social media by storm this week. She created a platform to showcase the diversity of multiculturalism and race throughout America's history and prove that there is so much more for us to learn. Understanding the power of the photograph, Kendall's goal in creating the hashtag was to try to dismantle the singular narrative of American history pervasive throughout both the media and the education system. "I have a history degree. I know that a lot of the problem of the way it is taught in schools," she told Quartz's Reniqua Allen. The democratic power of social media underlying this hashtag attests to the fact that there is no universal "history" but rather histories — most of which get lost or overlook in the telling of "American history." The hashtag has of course also gone viral on Tumblr:
Cornel West's Rise and Fall by Michael Eric Dyson | The New Republic Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned” is the best-known line from William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride. But I’m concerned with the phrase preceding it, which captures wrath in more universal terms: “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned.” Even an angry Almighty can’t compete with mortals whose love turns to hate. Cornel West’s rage against President Barack Obama evokes that kind of venom. West’s animus is longstanding, and only intermittently broken by bouts of calculated love. Despite West’s disapproval of Obama, he eventually embraced the political phenom, crossing the country as a surrogate and touting his Oval Office bona fides. Obama welcomed West’s support because he is a juggernaut of the academy and an intellectual icon among the black masses. Yet West is, in my estimation, the most exciting black American scholar ever. It was that sense of scholarly excitement that drew me to West after I read his first book, Prophesy Deliverance! Hiroko Masuike / Getty Images
Stop it with the feminist whitesplaining. -- Fusion Lord, protect me from the attentions of well-meaning white women. Yesterday afternoon, I watched with some satisfaction as talented Daily Show Correspondent/Comedian/It Girl Jessica Williams dressed down “The Billfold” writer Esther Bloom for her recklessly-delivered reactions to Williams’ admission that she doesn’t feel qualified to host the soon-to-be vacated The Daily Show. @shorterstory @TheBillfold Because you have personally decided, that I DON’T know myself- as a WOMAN you are saying that I need to lean in. — Jessica R. Williams (@msjwilly) February 17, 2015 There’s no doubt that Bloom meant to be encouraging, but her comments were less constructive criticism, more boiling cauldron of feminist theory, casual racism, and misplaced causation. Last week, Forbes contributor Ruchika Tulshyan outlined the issues women of color face at work when we try to speak up: I know of what she speaks: The feminist sisterhood has attempted to whitesplain me as well.
The Poorest Corner Of Town FERGUSON, Mo. — “I am!” “Mike Brown!” “I am!” “Mike Brown!” By midnight on Wednesday, this call-and-response, and others like it — “Hands up, don’t shoot,” “What’s his name? The protests, nearly everyone agrees, were about more than Brown, about more even than police violence. The protests were also about more than Ferguson. Bishop Timothy Woods, one of the clergy members working to keep the peace, said the protests reflected a feeling of hopelessness among young people in low-income communities across the country. “They kind of assume that how they are now is how they’re always going to be,” Woods said before being called away by a police officer to defuse another tense encounter. ‘If you’d asked me, I would’ve expected something like this would happen in North County,” said Todd Swanstrom, a University of Missouri-St. The St. Ferguson itself, however, is about two-thirds black and is largely integrated internally. That Ferguson is real. “It all has to do with economics,” she said.
Triggered: Objects Mistaken For Guns | Youth Radio Two seconds. That’s how much time it took Cleveland police officers to shoot 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a black boy who was carrying a toy gun in a park near his home earlier this year. The officers later said they mistook the toy for a real gun. When Youth Radio students learned of Rice’s death, they had many questions. Triggered is a project of Youth Radio Interactive, a team of young people and professional developers who co-create apps and interactive news content linked to Youth Radio’s reporting.
Melissa Harris-Perry's Searing Tribute To Black Men Killed By Police In a short but powerful segment on Saturday, Melissa Harris-Perry connected the recent police killing of Michael Brown to the deaths of other black men at the hands of police — and to America's history of injustice towards black people. Harris-Perry read the names of some of the hundreds of men who were killed by police across the country "in the past decade alone," from Sean Bell to Oscar Grant to Eric Garner to Brown. All of the men she mentioned were unarmed at the time of their death. In the past decade alone, these men and hundreds of others have lost their lives to police. "From 2006 to 2012 a white police officer killed a black person at least twice a week in this country," she said. She then noted that Ferguson, where Brown was shot dead, is close to the place from which the slave Dred Scott waged a legal battle for his freedom. Harris-Perry repeated that last phrase over and over again, as images of police in Ferguson flashed behind her.
What the "Lumbersexual" Trend Really Says About Men in Society Today Officially coined only a few months ago by blogs like Gear Junkie, America's latest incarnation of masculinity, the lumbersexual, is fundamentally a bearded hipster with a penchant for plaid, tattoos and cold brew — both coffee and beer. Quickly sensationalized by countless media sites, from Gawker and BuzzFeed to Cosmo and Time, the lumbersexual actually says a lot about the state of masculinity in the 21st century. In fact, one might just wonder if this new cultural identity signifies a crisis in masculinity. This emergent male archetype, with its echoes of a rugged albeit bygone era, parodies aspects of heterosexual masculinity in extreme and even ridiculous ways, suggesting that the most celebrated manly characteristics are struggling to find a place in the 21st century. A parody of masculinity, or the real thing? This has led to some fascinating observations. Of course, lumbersexual is not the first male archetype to appropriate aspects of gay culture. And that thing is technology.
m.colorlines.com/archives/2014/08/artists_on_ferguson.html How a book club is helping to keep ex-offenders from going back to jail Robert Barksdale steps in front of the students in an English class at Eastern High School, searching for some semblance of redemption. “For me, school is a treat because I never got to be in school, for real,” he begins. He always envisioned visiting a school to speak to students but was beginning to realize the pressures of standing in front of the classroom. He scans the room and says: “Y’all are a little intimidating.” Barksdale was around their age when he chose the streets over school. Now, at 25, he is one. Phil Mosby, 26, hands out copies of a poem for the students to read. They were all teenagers then, charged as adults for their violent crimes. Over the past year, they finally came home. So they stick together. They fall into a high-risk category: Juveniles tried as adults are 34 percent more likely than youth tried as juveniles to return to prison, according to a 2007 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He stops to collect himself. Makes me wanna cry