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How To Get Away With Murder’ excels at revealing slices of black culture
by Danielle Henderson
Last night on How To Get Away With Murder, Annalise Keating — as played by Viola Davis — sat down on the floor between her mother’s knees and had her hair combed. Her mother, Ophelia, played expertly by Cicely Tyson, tugged small sections and talked about their complicated past while Annalise stared straight ahead, her neck jerking ever so slightly back with each pull. You could hear the gentle scritch of the comb against her 4C hair
It’s an innocuous scene, but the familiarity of it hit me like a ton of bricks. I could smell the Dax pomade on Ophelia’s fingers and feel the jab of that pointed end of the comb while she carved delicate parts and sections on Annalise’s scalp. I’ve spent approximately 8,000 hours on living room floors, ears cuffed by my own mother’s knees, having my own hair parted and “oiled up” and braided. It’s so familiar, and something I’ve never seen on TV before—the delicate dance of black women, crafting our hair and talking to each other, bonding.
It’s worth noting that this scene — involving just two women, both over 40, wearing very little or no makeup — was riveting.
How To Get Away With Murder is so good at showing these small slices of black culture. There was a joyous yawp all over Twitter when Annalise took off her wig for the first time—white fans were mostly astonished, but black fans knew they were seeing a warrior disrobing. You can turn on any TV channel and see a white woman brushing her hair, flipping it around on a shampoo commercial, and having it caressed, but it’s so rare that we get to see the process of black beauty in a way that is respectful and real. It’s so rare that we get to see how tenderly black women care for each other, and themselves.
http://fusion.net/story/52053/how-to-get-away-with-murder-excels-at-revealing-slices-of-black-culture/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialshare&utm_content=desktop+left
How to Make It In Conservative America (If You Aren’t White)
Dinesh D’Souza’s racism and the shame of immigrant self-hatred
By Jeet Heer
I have two shameful family secrets. The first is that when I was growing up, almost all gatherings of my extended clan would include buckets and buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a staple of our diet. The second and more serious source of self-mortification is that some of my kin—almost all of whom hail from rural India—sometimes vent anti-black racism.
These two focal points of embarrassment merged when I was 19 and went on a KFC run with a cousin I will call Amandeep. As our car glided into the parking lot, we saw a black family exiting the fast food joint. “Boy, black people sure love fried chicken,” Amandeep muttered. The comment angered as it baffled me: He clearly couldn’t see the irony of stereotyping black culture while heading for one of our regular KFC pick-ups. It was actually one of Amandeep’s more benign remarks. On other occasions he made Charles Murray-like forays into questions of black genetic inheritance and propensity toward crime.
I wish Amandeep’s racial theories were an anomaly, but he’s far from alone among South Asian immigrants. Anti-black racism, I’ve often thought, is one of the more unwholesome manifestations of assimilation. If blacks are near the bottom of the perceived racial hierarchy across North America, some enterprising immigrants find it useful to step on blacks as a way of climbing higher.
Racism among South Asians has some peculiar qualities; it’s not so much hatred of the other but the hatred of the almost-the-same, akin to a sibling rivalry. At the heart of this sort of immigrant racism is the desire to differentiate oneself from the group one could easily be identified with. As it happens, Amandeep is one of the most dark-hued members of my family. When he was small, his nickname in India was “kala” (Punjabi for black). I’ve sometimes thought that some discomfort at being labeled black contributed to his racial fixations.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121105/dinesh-dsouzas-anti-black-racism-rooted-national-review?utm_content=bufferb71d0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Stop Calling It Road Rage
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Yeah, how’d that work out for you guys, now that you’re making funeral arrangements? She could have gone inside and called the police but no, gun culture and the NRA says you gotta take matters into your own hands and hunt down your fucked up, also-armed neighbor. Because Freedumb:
Meyers said his wife and son went looking for Nowsch after the road rage incident because they knew him and where he lived.
This isn’t road rage. Road rage implies a randomness, strangers whose chance encounter on the highway escalates because one person can’t control their emotions. These people knew each other. Both were armed. And that’s what changed everything.
I’m done feeling sorry for you people. Live by the gun, die by the gun. Constitution, Founding Fathers, blah blah. This is the country you want to live in? These are the neighborhoods you’re creating for our families? Fuck you.
https://southernbeale.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/stop-calling-it-road-rage/
https://twitter.com/BostonGlobe/status/568751990349688833/photo/1
Maggy @Maggyw519
Omg this is awful. New video released of ASU professor arrest http://azc.cc/1A86K1U
DIGITAL INFLUENCERS RECREATE LEGENDARY IMAGES OF BLACK HISTORY ICONS IN #WEAREBLACKHISTORY
Billie Holiday. Angela Davis. Rosa Parks. “We aren’t claiming to be the next iteration of these icons, but we do stand on their shoulders.”
http://www.elle.com/culture/art-design/news/a26695/digital-influencers-recreate-images-of-black-history-icons-weareblackhistory/
Say it over and over again, Zandar.
Say it over and over again who his initial torture victims were.
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From Chicago To Gitmo
Posted by Zandar at 9:02 am
Feb202015
Do check out the article there. Of all the horrible torture regime psychopaths working the circus of pain in Gitmo, Zuley appears to be one of the worst. And he had years to hone his technique beating confessions out of black suspects as a Chicago cop. If your goal was to recruit people who could get confessions out of terror detainees by any means necessary, what better farm system for raising career torture experts did America have than urban homicide divisions in major police departments?
We had tons of bad cops like Zuley ready to go after 9/11. They had been getting confessions for years and after what happened in NYC they were ready to take some serious revenge. After warming up in the minor leagues on black men getting beaten until they confessed to murder raps, of course Gitmo was the obvious next stop for guys like that and the Bushies gladly acquired their services “for America”.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/02/20/from-chicago-to-gitmo/#comment-5260865
ISIS changes Americans’ appetite for war
02/20/15 08:44 AM—UPDATED 02/20/15 08:59 AM
By Steve Benen
There was a crisis of sorts for U.S. policy towards Syria in the summer of 2013, but I’m convinced much of the political world remembers the events poorly. The Beltway version is that President Obama drew a “red line” but blinked when it came time to follow through.
That’s not quite what happened. Obama was convinced that Syria had used chemical weapons, and had decided to use force against the Assad government. But before launching strikes, the president turned to Congress to authorize the mission, just as many Republican lawmakers had recommended.
Congress balked. Lawmakers said the public, wary after disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, simply had no appetite for yet another combat mission in the Middle East, and many of the same Republicans who demanded the White House get permission for airstrikes soon announced their opposition to the airstrikes. Some even used this as the basis for fundraising. (Obama considered strikes anyway, but instead scored a diplomatic coup by ridding Syria of its chemical weapons.)
A year and a half later, Americans’ attitudes appear to have shifted. Consider a CBS News poll released this week.
Amid more executions by the militant group ISIS, Americans increasingly see the group as a threat to the U.S. Now, 65 percent of Americans view ISIS as a major threat – up from 58 percent in October….
With concern about ISIS growing, support for the use of U.S. ground troops in the fight against ISIS has risen. For the first time, a majority of Americans (57 percent) favor the U.S. sending ground troops into Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS. In October, Americans were divided (47 percent favored and 46 percent opposed), and in September these numbers were reversed (39 percent favored and 55 percent opposed).
There is, of course, a political angle to all of this – the White House recently sent lawmakers proposed language for an Authorization to Use Military Force against ISIS, effectively trying to get Congress’ buy-in for a military offensive that began last August.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/isis-changes-americans-appetite-war
Walker punts on Giuliani’s nonsense, Jindal horns in
02/19/15 04:43 PM—UPDATED 02/19/15 05:24 PM
By Steve Benen
Rudy Giuliani is “not questioning” President Obama’s patriotism. He simply said to a Republican audience last night, “I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me.” The clownish former mayor made the comments at an NYC event for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) – who was right there near Giuliani while he spouted this garbage.
And at that moment, Walker was presented with a test of sorts. Would the governor do the decent thing and distance himself from Giuliani’s little tantrum, or would he do the partisan thing and stay silent?
Walker said nothing during the event or after it, but he had another chance this morning. The Wisconsin Republican chose not to take it.
“The mayor can speak for himself,” Walker said on [CNBC’s] “Squawk Box.” “I’m not going to comment on what the President thinks or not. He can speak for himself as well.”
“I’ll tell you, I love America,” he continued.
Co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin pressed further, asking, “But did you agree with those comments? Were you offended? What was your reaction when you heard them?”
Walker replied, “I’m in New York. I’m used to people saying things that are aggressive out there.” He would go no further.
The truth is, had Walker shown just a little more guts, this could have been an opportunity to demonstrate the kind of leadership he should be capable of. It’s not like Rudy Giuliani is a party boss with a massive constituency; the former mayor hasn’t even won an election in 18 years. Walker could have said something like, “I disagree with the president on nearly everything, but I’m sure he loves his country.” He would have looked like a mature, responsible contender for the most powerful office in the world.
But Walker just couldn’t muster the courage to take this simple step. A week after “punting” on whether he believes in evolutionary biology, the Wisconsin Republican is left to punt once again.
What kind of leader would Scott Walker be? The kind that talks about leadership without actually demonstrating any.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/walker-punts-giulianis-nonsense-jindal-horns
Why a far-right group considers Jeb Bush ‘unelectable’
02/19/15 04:02 PM
By Steve Benen
It’s hardly a secret that some on the far-right have concerns about Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign. The former Florida governor is obviously very conservative, but he also supports Common Core standards, which the right tends to hate, and has expressed some closer-to-the-mainstream views about immigration reform.
But Ed O’Keefe reports today on a conservative group that’s labeled Jeb Bush “unelectable” for an entirely unexpected reason.
ForAmerica, a group founded by longtime conservative commentator L. Brent Bozell, is releasing a short online video on Thursday designed to raise questions about Bush’s conservatism. The premise of the film is built around an appearance Bush made in 2013 alongside former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Bush, as chairman of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, awarded the group’s Liberty Medal to Clinton during an elaborate ceremony on Independence Mall on Sept. 10, 2013, a day shy of the one-year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya that left four Americans dead.
Even for the right, this is an odd one. ForAmerica put together a 69-second video showing Jeb Bush presenting Hillary Clinton with an award a year-and-a-half ago. The clip shows the Republican thanking Bill and Hillary Clinton “for your service to our country. We’re united by love of country and public service.” Simple, generic, non-committal language from a high-profile figure from one high-profile family to another.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-far-right-group-considers-jeb-bush-unelectable
is this a new face on ‘Respectability Politics’
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Can Reforming Culture Save Black Youths?
In a new book, Harvard sociology professor Orlando Patterson explores the way in which culture can be used to understand and improve the lives of young African Americans.
BY: GREG THOMAS
Posted: Feb. 19 2015 3:52 PM
Jamaican-born Orlando Patterson, a Harvard sociology professor since 1969, likes to tackle big issues. Slavery and Social Death and Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, two of his most acclaimed works, traverse centuries and continents. Now he’s confronting the issue of culture and black youths. In the newly released The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, Patterson and more than 20 other scholars drill down to focus on the contemporary state of young black people in the United States.
Considering recent tragedies and protests involving black youths, the police and the legal system—along with the centuries of devastation wrought by racial bias—a work exploring the impact of culture is both timely and welcome. Though we are far from achieving a post-racial society, what Ralph Ellison called conscious culture can point a way.
Culture—“that which separates the behavior of Homo sapiens from other species”—is so fundamental, Patterson proclaims, that “the question, then, is not whether culture matters but how.” He begins the 688-page anthology with an account of the concept, which he explains as two processes that dance. The first is shared “ideas, narratives, metaphors, and beliefs, formal and informal rules or norms, and specific as well as ultimate values.” The second is how these apply in social interactions with others, where individuality and creativity can be exercised “within limits set by practical rules of engagement that take account of status, power, and context.”
A diagram of the processes of culture that Patterson presented in his 2014 paper “Making Sense of Culture” was, unfortunately, not included.
Patterson and his fellow contributors wrestle with hip-hop culture; the values of disconnected youths; continuity and change in neighborhood cultures; street violence and relations with city police; gender relations and class distinctions; barriers to entry in the workforce; religious and social organizations; and family programs.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/02/review_of_the_cultural_matrix_understanding_black_youth.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr%3Acontent%26
Twitter trolled his azz
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Dinesh D’Souza Refers to President Obama as ‘Boy,’ ‘Vulgar’ and ‘Ghetto’
The conservative author is making an embarrasment of himself, again.
BY: YESHA CALLAHAN
Posted: Feb. 18 2015 11:48 AM
Conservative commentator and author Dinesh D’Souza is at it again on social media. Just last month D’Souza had the audacity to compare himself to Martin Luther King Jr. by tweeting “AN INTERESTING PARALLEL: MLK was targeted by J. Edgar Hoover, an unsavory character; I was targeted by the equally unsavory B. Hussein Obama.”
And the Internet collectively laughed in his face.
Now, on the heels of BuzzFeed’s popular video showing the president joking around with a selfie stick and making fun of himself, D’Souza is once again showing not only his lack of a sense of humor but also his inherent hatred of the president.
http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2015/02/dinesh_d_souza_refers_to_president_obama_as_boy_vulgar_and_ghetto.html
We Know Where You Live’: Letter Found in Conn. Officers’ Mailboxes Threatens Black Cop
An unsigned letter threatens the life of Clive Higgins, a black Bridgeport, Conn., police officer, and ends with “white power.”
BY: STEPHEN A. CROCKETT JR.
Posted: Feb. 19 2015 8:18 AM
On Wednesday an ominous letter threatening the life of a black police officer and ending with the words “white power” was placed in Bridgeport, Conn., police officers’ mailboxes.
Police are investigating the unsigned missive, which was written on Bridgeport Police Department letterhead and reportedly singled out a black officer, Clive Higgins, “who was acquitted last month of civil rights violation charges in the beating of a Hispanic suspect in the racially diverse city,” according to the Associated Press. “A white officer and a Hispanic officer pleaded guilty and were sentenced to three months in jail.”
The note states, “You better watch your back. We know where you live,” according to AP. “Your face was all over the newspaper. Remember you have no duty weapon to defend yourself.” According to the news site, the letter also reads, “These black officers belong in the toilet,” and alleges that the police chief doesn’t want black officers, specifically Higgins, on the force.
The Bridgeport Guardians, a minority-officers group that has clashed with the Police Department in the past over race-related issues, held a news conference Wednesday to note that it believes the letter came from inside the department. According to AP, some of the mailboxes that contained the letter are located in areas not accessible to the public.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/02/_we_know_where_you_live_letter_found_in_conn_officers_mailboxes_threatening.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr%3Acontent%26
Former Chicago Inmate Sues Northwestern University for $40 Million
Alstory Simon’s lawsuit claims that the school and a former journalism professor and private investigator pressured him into making a false confession.
BY: BREANNA EDWARDS
Posted: Feb. 17 2015 3:33 PM
Alstory Simon walked out of an Illinois prison as a free man on Oct. 30, 2014, after his murder-and-manslaughter convictions were tossed out. But the former inmate, who was incarcerated for almost 15 years, is suing Northwestern University, a former journalism professor, a private investigator and his own defense attorney for forcing his false confession, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Simon is seeking $40 million for intentional infliction of emotional distress, malicious prosecution and “conspiracy,” the Tribune notes. The lawsuit, which Simon filed with the U.S. District Court in Chicago, claims that the defendants “conspired to frame Simon for the murders in order to secure the release of the real killer, Anthony Porter.”
Now-retired Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess and his students had investigated Porter’s death-penalty conviction for a 1982 double murder and decided to work to get the conviction overturned. As part of their efforts, private investigator Paul Ciolino got a videotaped confession from Simon for the crimes by using an actor to “falsely implicate” him, according to the Tribune. Simon’s confession, in turn, led to Porter’s release from prison in 1999.
Simon’s own release came after Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez looked into Protess’ actions and had concerns about his integrity, the Tribune notes. She also had concerns about Ciolino and the independence of Jack Rimland, Simon’s defense attorney, who was an associate of Ciolino.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/02/former_chicago_inmate_sues_northwestern_university_for_40_million.html
Good Morning, Everyone :)