an album stream.
NPR MUSIC: First Listen: Ryan Adams, 'Ryan Adams'
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Friday, August 29, 2014
take u there.
a live take.
from diplo, skrillex, & kiesza.
PITCHFORK: Diplo, Skrillex, and Kiesza Debut "Take U There" Live
from diplo, skrillex, & kiesza.
PITCHFORK: Diplo, Skrillex, and Kiesza Debut "Take U There" Live
Thursday, August 28, 2014
church & state.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clairty.
words.
"The thing about Ferguson is it doesn't need messaging or intermediaries. You can understand everything that's happening even by staring at a muted TV—sometimes especially so, if Don Lemon's busy giving a lecture to black kids about saying "ma'am" with their pants on tighter, or whatever his job is. All you need is a functional long-term cultural memory. An unarmed black teenager is dead, shot multiple times by a white cop from a disproportionately white PD in an overwhelmingly black community. You know everything that that means.
All the usual dismissals fall impotently away. You can't dismiss these people as bored, privileged interlopers when you see an economically depressed local community responding to its own structure. The message is a centuries-long refrain about legal force used as an instrument of terror by an economic and racial overclass, and the moment you might dismiss that as the airy evocation of some college revolutionary, it is instantly reinforced by rubber bullets, by snipers on rooftops, by the brutal color binaries of white faces and long black guns firing clouds of white gas at black men and women who stand palms upraised. Journalists will exit the craft table area for that.
...The citizens of Ferguson are speaking to the instrument they democratically and economically empower, and in the process have been maligned by every element indebted to modern security theater—the conservative crowd that pushes law-and-order both as a governing plank and a handgun sales pitch. (Not to mention networks that just love gee-whiz military stuff on the teevee.) Beyond the bestializing of blacks as part of a centuries-long narrative of dehumanization, the ease—almost necessity—with which the right addresses Ferguson citizens' publicly impeaching the legitimacy of the state as "animals" speaks to the desire to see them caged. Someone can be paid to build that cage, so long as the right people are elected to fund it. The most seductive aspects of modern U.S. prison culture are temporary walls you can move to wherever they're necessary.
...it's easy to read the terrifying police response to Ferguson, as so many have, as not a local government responding to the voices of the community but rather an occupying force addressing an insurgency of the ineluctable other that needs to be subdued. It's an attitude made more immediate and more horrible by the spontaneity of Ferguson citizens' outrage at Mike Brown's shooting and by the legacy of racial repression in America. But it's an attitude we have accepted elsewhere because it's been expressed more telegenically about less sympathetic groups amid better planned repressive theater.
It's very easy for a wing of the American political population to say that the residents of Ferguson belong in a cage and that events in that town over the last few weeks have confirmed that. It's easy, because they're falling back on the same screaming leitmotif running through 400 years of African-American history. But it's only gotten easier in the last 15 years, because they've been egalitarian enough to throw the rest of us in with it, and for the most part, we've gone quietly."
ROLLING STONE: Insecurity State: The Politics Behind the Drama in Ferguson
words.
"The thing about Ferguson is it doesn't need messaging or intermediaries. You can understand everything that's happening even by staring at a muted TV—sometimes especially so, if Don Lemon's busy giving a lecture to black kids about saying "ma'am" with their pants on tighter, or whatever his job is. All you need is a functional long-term cultural memory. An unarmed black teenager is dead, shot multiple times by a white cop from a disproportionately white PD in an overwhelmingly black community. You know everything that that means.
All the usual dismissals fall impotently away. You can't dismiss these people as bored, privileged interlopers when you see an economically depressed local community responding to its own structure. The message is a centuries-long refrain about legal force used as an instrument of terror by an economic and racial overclass, and the moment you might dismiss that as the airy evocation of some college revolutionary, it is instantly reinforced by rubber bullets, by snipers on rooftops, by the brutal color binaries of white faces and long black guns firing clouds of white gas at black men and women who stand palms upraised. Journalists will exit the craft table area for that.
...The citizens of Ferguson are speaking to the instrument they democratically and economically empower, and in the process have been maligned by every element indebted to modern security theater—the conservative crowd that pushes law-and-order both as a governing plank and a handgun sales pitch. (Not to mention networks that just love gee-whiz military stuff on the teevee.) Beyond the bestializing of blacks as part of a centuries-long narrative of dehumanization, the ease—almost necessity—with which the right addresses Ferguson citizens' publicly impeaching the legitimacy of the state as "animals" speaks to the desire to see them caged. Someone can be paid to build that cage, so long as the right people are elected to fund it. The most seductive aspects of modern U.S. prison culture are temporary walls you can move to wherever they're necessary.
...it's easy to read the terrifying police response to Ferguson, as so many have, as not a local government responding to the voices of the community but rather an occupying force addressing an insurgency of the ineluctable other that needs to be subdued. It's an attitude made more immediate and more horrible by the spontaneity of Ferguson citizens' outrage at Mike Brown's shooting and by the legacy of racial repression in America. But it's an attitude we have accepted elsewhere because it's been expressed more telegenically about less sympathetic groups amid better planned repressive theater.
It's very easy for a wing of the American political population to say that the residents of Ferguson belong in a cage and that events in that town over the last few weeks have confirmed that. It's easy, because they're falling back on the same screaming leitmotif running through 400 years of African-American history. But it's only gotten easier in the last 15 years, because they've been egalitarian enough to throw the rest of us in with it, and for the most part, we've gone quietly."
ROLLING STONE: Insecurity State: The Politics Behind the Drama in Ferguson
rap city.
words.
Pitchfork: There certainly can be a disconnect between fans and artists in terms of backgrounds and being able to take something as seriously as it might be in real life.
Vince Staples: Listeners don’t take a lot of rappers seriously because rappers don’t take themselves seriously. And, to be honest, the majority of these dudes are lying. It’s not even that they’re just lying—because you can lie all day in your music and tell a story—they’re assholes who walk around like they don’t have any connection with the people. A lot of music comes from a selfish place, but there’s no sense of self within it. With rap, everyone’s fit in the same mold. And that’s one thing that you have to know about these people: They’re trying to portray this image because they’ve seen the prototype, they’ve seen what everybody thinks that community is, even though they’ve probably never been in it. So they feel like they can’t be themselves, when in reality those environments are made up of every single kind of person. I got homies whose parents have money that live two streets over. They did everything that we did. They don’t have to act like they don’t have anything, and they never will. Are they to be taken lightly? Hell no. They don’t have to pretend. There’s too much pretending within this music, and that’s why we get treated the way that we do.
PITCHFORK: Rising: Vince Staples
Pitchfork: There certainly can be a disconnect between fans and artists in terms of backgrounds and being able to take something as seriously as it might be in real life.
Vince Staples: Listeners don’t take a lot of rappers seriously because rappers don’t take themselves seriously. And, to be honest, the majority of these dudes are lying. It’s not even that they’re just lying—because you can lie all day in your music and tell a story—they’re assholes who walk around like they don’t have any connection with the people. A lot of music comes from a selfish place, but there’s no sense of self within it. With rap, everyone’s fit in the same mold. And that’s one thing that you have to know about these people: They’re trying to portray this image because they’ve seen the prototype, they’ve seen what everybody thinks that community is, even though they’ve probably never been in it. So they feel like they can’t be themselves, when in reality those environments are made up of every single kind of person. I got homies whose parents have money that live two streets over. They did everything that we did. They don’t have to act like they don’t have anything, and they never will. Are they to be taken lightly? Hell no. They don’t have to pretend. There’s too much pretending within this music, and that’s why we get treated the way that we do.
PITCHFORK: Rising: Vince Staples
"#tbt".
with diddy & the smashing pumpkins.
STEREOGUM: Hear Diddy’s 16-Year-Old Remix Of Smashing Pumpkins’ “Ava Adore”
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
mature themes.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"In the days after 9/11, it was common to hear people say that it was the first time Americans had really experienced terrorism on their own soil. Those sentiments were historically wrong, and willfully put aside acts that were organized on a large scale, had a political goal, and were committed with the specific intention of being nightmarishly memorable. The death cult that was lynching furnished this country with such spectacles for a half century. (The tallies vary, but, by some estimates, there were thirty-three hundred lynchings in the decades between the end of Reconstruction and the civil-rights era.) We know intuitively, not abstractly, about terrorism’s theatrical intent. The sight of Michael Brown, sprawled on Canfield Drive for four hours in the August sun, dead at the hands of an officer who was unnamed for a week, recalled that memory. It had the effect of reminding that crowd of spontaneous mourners of their own refuted humanity. A single death can be understood as a collective threat. The media didn’t whip up these concerns among the black population; history did that.
...I was once a linebacker-sized eighteen-year-old, too. What I knew then, what black people have been required to know, is that there are few things more dangerous than the perception that one is a danger. I’m embarrassed to recall that my adolescent love of words doubled as a strategy to assuage those fears; it was both a pitiable desire for acceptance and a practical necessity for survival. I know, to this day, the element of inadvertent intimidation that colors the most innocuous interactions, particularly with white people. There are protocols for this. I sometimes let slip that I’m a professor or that I’m scarcely even familiar with the rules of football, minor biographical facts that stand in for a broader, unspoken statement of reassurance: there is no danger here. And the result is civil small talk and feeble smiles and a sense of having compromised. Other times, in an elevator or crossing a darkened parking lot, when I am six feet away but the world remains between us, I remain silent and simply let whatever miasma of stereotype or fear might be there fill the void.
Fuck you, I think. If I don’t get to feel safe here, why should you?"
THE NEW YORKER: Between the World and Ferguson
words.
"In the days after 9/11, it was common to hear people say that it was the first time Americans had really experienced terrorism on their own soil. Those sentiments were historically wrong, and willfully put aside acts that were organized on a large scale, had a political goal, and were committed with the specific intention of being nightmarishly memorable. The death cult that was lynching furnished this country with such spectacles for a half century. (The tallies vary, but, by some estimates, there were thirty-three hundred lynchings in the decades between the end of Reconstruction and the civil-rights era.) We know intuitively, not abstractly, about terrorism’s theatrical intent. The sight of Michael Brown, sprawled on Canfield Drive for four hours in the August sun, dead at the hands of an officer who was unnamed for a week, recalled that memory. It had the effect of reminding that crowd of spontaneous mourners of their own refuted humanity. A single death can be understood as a collective threat. The media didn’t whip up these concerns among the black population; history did that.
...I was once a linebacker-sized eighteen-year-old, too. What I knew then, what black people have been required to know, is that there are few things more dangerous than the perception that one is a danger. I’m embarrassed to recall that my adolescent love of words doubled as a strategy to assuage those fears; it was both a pitiable desire for acceptance and a practical necessity for survival. I know, to this day, the element of inadvertent intimidation that colors the most innocuous interactions, particularly with white people. There are protocols for this. I sometimes let slip that I’m a professor or that I’m scarcely even familiar with the rules of football, minor biographical facts that stand in for a broader, unspoken statement of reassurance: there is no danger here. And the result is civil small talk and feeble smiles and a sense of having compromised. Other times, in an elevator or crossing a darkened parking lot, when I am six feet away but the world remains between us, I remain silent and simply let whatever miasma of stereotype or fear might be there fill the void.
Fuck you, I think. If I don’t get to feel safe here, why should you?"
THE NEW YORKER: Between the World and Ferguson
the daily show.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
“Race is there and it is a constant. You’re tired of hearing about it? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it.” - Jon Stewart
ALTERNET: Jon Stewart Eviscerates Fox Pundits In a Searing Monologue on Ferguson
“Race is there and it is a constant. You’re tired of hearing about it? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it.” - Jon Stewart
ALTERNET: Jon Stewart Eviscerates Fox Pundits In a Searing Monologue on Ferguson
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
i can't give you anything but love.
a video.
starring tony bennett & lady gaga.
ROLLING STONE: See Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett's Chemistry at Work in the Duo's New Video
starring tony bennett & lady gaga.
ROLLING STONE: See Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett's Chemistry at Work in the Duo's New Video
"who will survive in america?"
words.
"More and more I’m convinced that America right now isn’t a country dealing with a mere dip in its mood and might. It’s a country surrendering to a new identity and era, in which optimism is quaint and the frontier anything but endless.
There’s a feeling of helplessness that makes the political horizon, including the coming midterm elections, especially unpredictable. Conventional wisdom has seldom been so useless, because pessimism in this country isn’t usually this durable or profound.
Americans are apprehensive about where they are and even more so about where they’re going. But they don’t see anything or anyone to lead them into the light. They’re sour on the president, on the Democratic Party and on Republicans most of all. They’re hungry for hope but don’t spot it on the menu. Where that tension leaves us is anybody’s guess.
...“People are mad at Democrats,” John Hickenlooper, the Democratic governor of Colorado, told me. “But they’re certainly not happy with Republicans. They’re mad at everything.”
And it suggests that this isn’t just about the economy. It’s about fear. It’s about impotence. We can’t calm the world in the way we’d like to, can’t find common ground and peace at home, can’t pass needed laws, can’t build necessary infrastructure, can’t, can’t, can’t."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Lost in America
"More and more I’m convinced that America right now isn’t a country dealing with a mere dip in its mood and might. It’s a country surrendering to a new identity and era, in which optimism is quaint and the frontier anything but endless.
There’s a feeling of helplessness that makes the political horizon, including the coming midterm elections, especially unpredictable. Conventional wisdom has seldom been so useless, because pessimism in this country isn’t usually this durable or profound.
Americans are apprehensive about where they are and even more so about where they’re going. But they don’t see anything or anyone to lead them into the light. They’re sour on the president, on the Democratic Party and on Republicans most of all. They’re hungry for hope but don’t spot it on the menu. Where that tension leaves us is anybody’s guess.
...“People are mad at Democrats,” John Hickenlooper, the Democratic governor of Colorado, told me. “But they’re certainly not happy with Republicans. They’re mad at everything.”
And it suggests that this isn’t just about the economy. It’s about fear. It’s about impotence. We can’t calm the world in the way we’d like to, can’t find common ground and peace at home, can’t pass needed laws, can’t build necessary infrastructure, can’t, can’t, can’t."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Lost in America
a kiss goodbye.
starring emile hayne, charlotte gainsbourg, dev hynes, & sampha.
STEREOGUM: Emile Hayne – “A Kiss Goodbye” (Feat. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Devonté Hynes, & Sampha)
STEREOGUM: Emile Hayne – “A Kiss Goodbye” (Feat. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Devonté Hynes, & Sampha)
the beautiful ones.
words.
for your consideration...
"...cherry-picked details of his life may not matter for the inquest into his shooting. But that doesn’t make his character irrelevant. His character definitely matters. It matters to the black people who are still alive, those of us who have to continue to muster the resolve to participate in and contribute to a country in which Brown was shot and left to languish, uncovered, for hours on the pavement.
...The black community is fond of the idea of the Good Ones, not because it’s logical or reasonable, but because it gives people agency. It allows black people to believe the notion that effort breeds success — that, through preparation, diligence and sacrifice, we can build lives that can’t be taken away on a whim. It allows black parents to operate under the delusion afforded to all parents that keeping their children safe and ensuring their success is entirely within their sphere of control. It allows resilience in the face of indignity.
Yes, in the passionate debate around Brown’s shooting, casting him in glowing terms — college-bound, funny, gentle — risks eliciting ad hominem attacks against him and promulgating the idea that black people have to do a certain thing or be a certain way to earn their right to live. But talking around Brown’s character further dilutes his basic rights and validates the underlying premise of a terroristic act. It suggests that speaking kindly of a dead child is more trouble than it’s worth. It requires accepting that not much has changed for black parents since they were conceiving kids during slavery, when they couldn’t even expect their children to be treated as if they belong to someone."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Actually, it does matter that Michael Brown was going to college
for your consideration...
"...cherry-picked details of his life may not matter for the inquest into his shooting. But that doesn’t make his character irrelevant. His character definitely matters. It matters to the black people who are still alive, those of us who have to continue to muster the resolve to participate in and contribute to a country in which Brown was shot and left to languish, uncovered, for hours on the pavement.
...The black community is fond of the idea of the Good Ones, not because it’s logical or reasonable, but because it gives people agency. It allows black people to believe the notion that effort breeds success — that, through preparation, diligence and sacrifice, we can build lives that can’t be taken away on a whim. It allows black parents to operate under the delusion afforded to all parents that keeping their children safe and ensuring their success is entirely within their sphere of control. It allows resilience in the face of indignity.
Yes, in the passionate debate around Brown’s shooting, casting him in glowing terms — college-bound, funny, gentle — risks eliciting ad hominem attacks against him and promulgating the idea that black people have to do a certain thing or be a certain way to earn their right to live. But talking around Brown’s character further dilutes his basic rights and validates the underlying premise of a terroristic act. It suggests that speaking kindly of a dead child is more trouble than it’s worth. It requires accepting that not much has changed for black parents since they were conceiving kids during slavery, when they couldn’t even expect their children to be treated as if they belong to someone."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Actually, it does matter that Michael Brown was going to college
black & blue.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"To be young, male and black in America means not being allowed to make mistakes. Forgetting this, as we’ve seen so many times, can be fatal.
...When Officer Darren Wilson stopped him, did Brown respond with puffed-up attitude? For a young black man, that is a transgression punishable by death.
Fatal encounters such as the one between Brown and Wilson understandably draw the nation’s attention. But such tragedies are just the visible manifestation of a much larger reality. Most, if not all, young men go through a period between adolescence and adulthood when they are likely to engage in risky behavior of various kinds without fully grasping the consequences of their actions. If they are white — well, boys will be boys. But if they are black, they are treated as men and assumed to have malicious intent.
...Michael Brown had no police record. By all accounts, he had no history of violence. He had finished high school and was going to continue his education. All of this was hidden, apparently, by the color of his skin."
THE WASHINGTON POST: When youthful mistakes turn deadly
words.
"To be young, male and black in America means not being allowed to make mistakes. Forgetting this, as we’ve seen so many times, can be fatal.
...When Officer Darren Wilson stopped him, did Brown respond with puffed-up attitude? For a young black man, that is a transgression punishable by death.
Fatal encounters such as the one between Brown and Wilson understandably draw the nation’s attention. But such tragedies are just the visible manifestation of a much larger reality. Most, if not all, young men go through a period between adolescence and adulthood when they are likely to engage in risky behavior of various kinds without fully grasping the consequences of their actions. If they are white — well, boys will be boys. But if they are black, they are treated as men and assumed to have malicious intent.
...Michael Brown had no police record. By all accounts, he had no history of violence. He had finished high school and was going to continue his education. All of this was hidden, apparently, by the color of his skin."
THE WASHINGTON POST: When youthful mistakes turn deadly
Monday, August 25, 2014
a moment of clarity.
words.
"Ferguson, as a tragic manifestation of a much wider American problem, also risks becoming denuded and detached from its context daily, reinforcing the deeply American tendency to treat racism like a game of Whack-A-Mole—if we could just handle Ferguson, everything else will sort itself out. Lauryn Hill's "Black Rage (Sketch)”, recorded live in her living room, averts these pitfalls in part because it wasn't written with Missouri in mind (she's been performing it live since at least 2012).
..."Black Rage" is a key record for this moment because it recognizes our problems are deeply entrenched, and that postmodern detachment or cynical capitalism are poorly formed tools for people hoping to make a sustained attack on widespread systemic violence. Lauryn Hill celebrates black rage not as a raw expression of pain, nor as an irrational behavior that must be reigned in. Like Maria Rainer, it's a coping mechanism, but for Lauryn Hill, it's also something more: a practical strategy."
PITCHFORK: BEST NEW TRACK: Lauryn Hill - "Black Rage (Sketch)"
Friday, August 22, 2014
miss info.
words.
"Is it strange that, of all the current-events products currently on television, it’s often Fox News that feels most like a “Weekend Update” bit? Critics are constantly asking why there’s no conservative Daily Show, but there is; it just won’t admit it’s a joke. The structure of Fox News is so deeply and basically comic that it’s impossible not to read it into the tradition of news satire. All those weeping paranoiacs! The fist-shaking curmudgeons! The gun-toting robo-blondes! Like “Weekend Update,” Fox succeeded by taking the elements of a normal news broadcast and exaggerating them to ludicrous proportions. Only instead of Opera Man, it has Angry Immigration Crusader; instead of Mr. Subliminal, it has Jowly Operative Insinuating Things About Hillary Clinton’s Health; instead of Gay Hitler, it has Outmatched Token Liberal; instead of “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead,” it has Benghazi.
...But who gets their news from real news anymore? We get our news from morning-after viral videos attacking the real news, or from videos attacking the videos. Our entertainment becomes a kind of horror. Our horror becomes a kind of entertainment. The lines between irony and truth blur in ways we barely notice."
GRANTLAND: Unreality TV: ‘Weekend Update’ and the landscape of fake news
"Is it strange that, of all the current-events products currently on television, it’s often Fox News that feels most like a “Weekend Update” bit? Critics are constantly asking why there’s no conservative Daily Show, but there is; it just won’t admit it’s a joke. The structure of Fox News is so deeply and basically comic that it’s impossible not to read it into the tradition of news satire. All those weeping paranoiacs! The fist-shaking curmudgeons! The gun-toting robo-blondes! Like “Weekend Update,” Fox succeeded by taking the elements of a normal news broadcast and exaggerating them to ludicrous proportions. Only instead of Opera Man, it has Angry Immigration Crusader; instead of Mr. Subliminal, it has Jowly Operative Insinuating Things About Hillary Clinton’s Health; instead of Gay Hitler, it has Outmatched Token Liberal; instead of “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead,” it has Benghazi.
...But who gets their news from real news anymore? We get our news from morning-after viral videos attacking the real news, or from videos attacking the videos. Our entertainment becomes a kind of horror. Our horror becomes a kind of entertainment. The lines between irony and truth blur in ways we barely notice."
GRANTLAND: Unreality TV: ‘Weekend Update’ and the landscape of fake news
Thursday, August 21, 2014
"QUESTION!"
words.
"...[J] Cole didn’t just drop off the track and call it a day. He went to Ferguson — not with a video guy, but with his buddies, unshaven and in sweats — and he paid his respects to Brown and met the congregated people. In an interview with Complex, he explained that he wasn’t planning on talking with the media, but that he has a buddy who worked at the magazine, so, OK, what the hell. And for a few minutes, he spoke, candidly and affectingly and with humor, about how hard this was hitting him. “Do you think that artists owe their fans … some form of activism?” he’s asked. “No,” he says. “Artists owe whatever they feel. Whatever hits you in your spine, that’s what you owe.” .
..That a rapper can have a positive impact by speaking out on a situation like this is evident here. Cole made a fan out of me; he wasn’t afraid to show up in Ferguson and speak his thoughts, as fragmented and weary as they might be.1 And the question of a rapper’s responsibility in these situations is an important and interesting one. As BuzzFeed pointed out earlier this week, so far, despite a track record of vocal activism, our rap megastars have stayed quiet on Ferguson. Do they owe us otherwise?"
GRANTLAND: Killer Mike, J. Cole, and Hip-Hop’s Response to Ferguson
"...[J] Cole didn’t just drop off the track and call it a day. He went to Ferguson — not with a video guy, but with his buddies, unshaven and in sweats — and he paid his respects to Brown and met the congregated people. In an interview with Complex, he explained that he wasn’t planning on talking with the media, but that he has a buddy who worked at the magazine, so, OK, what the hell. And for a few minutes, he spoke, candidly and affectingly and with humor, about how hard this was hitting him. “Do you think that artists owe their fans … some form of activism?” he’s asked. “No,” he says. “Artists owe whatever they feel. Whatever hits you in your spine, that’s what you owe.” .
..That a rapper can have a positive impact by speaking out on a situation like this is evident here. Cole made a fan out of me; he wasn’t afraid to show up in Ferguson and speak his thoughts, as fragmented and weary as they might be.1 And the question of a rapper’s responsibility in these situations is an important and interesting one. As BuzzFeed pointed out earlier this week, so far, despite a track record of vocal activism, our rap megastars have stayed quiet on Ferguson. Do they owe us otherwise?"
GRANTLAND: Killer Mike, J. Cole, and Hip-Hop’s Response to Ferguson
desire lines.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"Countries tell themselves stories, and then they start believing them. If we keep misleading ourselves into thinking we are wholly divided by incidents of this sort, we won’t even try to talk to each other, let alone look for ways to improve the situations of young African Americans or relations between our police and our minority communities.
We talk too much about “teachable moments” and have too few of them. That’s because the concept itself can have a condescending feel, implying that some people need to be teachers and others need to be pupils. In a democracy, we are all teachers and we are all students — and we’re obligated to search for common goals. We should join together in seeking a thorough investigation of Michael Brown’s death and remember that Martin Luther King Jr. instructed us all that we should “refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.”"
THE WASHINGTON POST: Ferguson divides us less than we imagine
words.
"Countries tell themselves stories, and then they start believing them. If we keep misleading ourselves into thinking we are wholly divided by incidents of this sort, we won’t even try to talk to each other, let alone look for ways to improve the situations of young African Americans or relations between our police and our minority communities.
We talk too much about “teachable moments” and have too few of them. That’s because the concept itself can have a condescending feel, implying that some people need to be teachers and others need to be pupils. In a democracy, we are all teachers and we are all students — and we’re obligated to search for common goals. We should join together in seeking a thorough investigation of Michael Brown’s death and remember that Martin Luther King Jr. instructed us all that we should “refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.”"
THE WASHINGTON POST: Ferguson divides us less than we imagine
black rage (sketch).
starring ms. lauryn hill.
PITCHFORK: Lauryn Hill Releases "Black Rage (Sketch)", Dedicates It to Ferguson
PITCHFORK: Lauryn Hill Releases "Black Rage (Sketch)", Dedicates It to Ferguson
shake it off.
words.
for your consideration...
"More than anything, the “Shake It Off” video is on-brand for Taylor Swift. That brand isn’t about controversy; it’s about Swift reinforcing her status as the queen of oblivious yet self-conscious white girls. She’s the ideal version of the kind of suburban basic bitch who might ask a woman of color, “Girl, can you teach me to twerk even though I have a white-girl ass (and am, like, waaaay intimidated by it)?”
... If Lana Del Rey is the Tumblr of pop stars and Beyoncé is the well-curated Instagram feed, then Taylor Swift is the Facebook friend you know really well due to her TMI statuses, though you’re not quite sure how exactly you met her IRL.
...She’s gunning hard to be your dorky BFF while still performing perfection in many ways. She seems to know that, for her, the irritatingly successful and stunning part only works if she remains relatable above all. And being confused by racial nuance and vaguely inappropriate about where one’s own identity fits into it all is, frustratingly, relatable to some young white women."
FLAVORWIRE: Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” and the Cult of Awkward White Girls
for your consideration...
"More than anything, the “Shake It Off” video is on-brand for Taylor Swift. That brand isn’t about controversy; it’s about Swift reinforcing her status as the queen of oblivious yet self-conscious white girls. She’s the ideal version of the kind of suburban basic bitch who might ask a woman of color, “Girl, can you teach me to twerk even though I have a white-girl ass (and am, like, waaaay intimidated by it)?”
... If Lana Del Rey is the Tumblr of pop stars and Beyoncé is the well-curated Instagram feed, then Taylor Swift is the Facebook friend you know really well due to her TMI statuses, though you’re not quite sure how exactly you met her IRL.
...She’s gunning hard to be your dorky BFF while still performing perfection in many ways. She seems to know that, for her, the irritatingly successful and stunning part only works if she remains relatable above all. And being confused by racial nuance and vaguely inappropriate about where one’s own identity fits into it all is, frustratingly, relatable to some young white women."
FLAVORWIRE: Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” and the Cult of Awkward White Girls
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
the look.
words.
'"Music videos often reduce women to a series of body parts. Nicki shows us her body, but makes damn well sure you’re going to know it’s connected to a face, a heart, and a mind. Her body is not her soul, but the two are indivisible. The last setup involves Nicki giving Drake a lap dance and walking away after presumably giving him a boner, making this Drake’s second most embarrassing public erection after Jimmy’s classroom boner in Degrassi. Drake, of all people — stripper-fetishizing emo prince Drake — is the sexual object in “Anaconda.” And with that final inversion, Nicki more or less flips the whole twerking issue onto its stomach, where it can continue to hump the ground forever."
GRANTLAND: Nicki Minaj Reclaims the Twerk in the ‘Anaconda’ Music Video
roman's revenge.
words.
"Plenty of people — prominent among them, Nicki Minaj — are happy to talk about Nicki Minaj’s ass, but fewer want to confront a certain sense of unease that she creates in her most provocative videos, like the stark, black-and-white clip for the 2014 single “Lookin’ Ass” (in which she quite literally guns down the male viewer) or her great 2012 collaboration with Cassie, “The Boys” (which plays out like a candy-store-hued pop-art Thelma & Louise). And it’s there in “Anaconda” too. These videos enact a certain bait-and-switch violence toward the viewer who has the audacity to think Nicki is shaking her ass for him; they draw you in with their neon-bright, sexually charged imagery, and then they suddenly, unexpectedly turn confrontational. She plays this whole narrative out in miniature in the last part of “Anaconda,” in which she gives her Twitter husband Drake a lap dance — that ends in a quick slap when he crosses the line and tries to touch her. The primary message of the scene is pretty obvious (“OH MY GOD, LOOK AT HER BUTT”), but it also seems intent on making Drizzy look a little ridiculous. “Anaconda” fades out on a shot of him looking like a chastised (and/or blue-balled) schoolboy sitting in the corner.
...The biggest hits and most-discussed viral surprises of this summer were girl-on-girl collaborations — Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX’s “Fancy”; Jessie J, Ariana Grande, and Nicki Minaj’s “Bang Bang”; Beyoncé and Nicki’s “Flawless” remix; and Ariana and Iggy’s “Problem,” on which Big Sean’s voice is reduced to a superfluous whisper. The staying power of “Anaconda” might not outlast its viral moment, but while it’s trending let’s at least acknowledge its slyly confrontational power."
VULTURE: Nicki Minaj’s ‘Anaconda’ Video Is Not Pandering to the Male Gaze
the dream.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"...The riots in Ferguson follow a period of setback for African-Americans, despite the fact that we have a sitting black president in the White House.
...The urban riots of the second half of the 1960s prompted Washington to pump out money, legislation, judicial decisions and regulatory change to outlaw de jure discrimination, to bring African-Americans to the ballot box, to create jobs and to vastly expand the scope of anti-poverty programs.
Civil unrest also drew attention to the necessity of addressing police brutality.
Today, however, political and policy-making stasis driven by gridlock — despite a momentary concordance between left and right on this particular shooting — insures that we will undertake no comparable initiatives to reverse or even stem the trends that have put black Americans at an increasing disadvantage in relation to whites — a situation that plays no small part in fueling the rage currently on display in Ferguson."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Ferguson, Watts and a Dream Deferred
words.
"...The riots in Ferguson follow a period of setback for African-Americans, despite the fact that we have a sitting black president in the White House.
...The urban riots of the second half of the 1960s prompted Washington to pump out money, legislation, judicial decisions and regulatory change to outlaw de jure discrimination, to bring African-Americans to the ballot box, to create jobs and to vastly expand the scope of anti-poverty programs.
Civil unrest also drew attention to the necessity of addressing police brutality.
Today, however, political and policy-making stasis driven by gridlock — despite a momentary concordance between left and right on this particular shooting — insures that we will undertake no comparable initiatives to reverse or even stem the trends that have put black Americans at an increasing disadvantage in relation to whites — a situation that plays no small part in fueling the rage currently on display in Ferguson."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Ferguson, Watts and a Dream Deferred
blood orange.
words.
"You don't want it to be real, but it is. And I don't know what's happening or what's going to happen. To me, it feels like I've been getting poked all my life. This irritating jab that keeps... and people are just getting tired. It feels like you associate time with learning. I think in our culture it's a real shock that that doesn't add up in everything. Just because the Civil Rights Act was like 50 years ago, doesn't mean that we're 50 times past it." -Dev Hynes
PITCHFORK: Blood Orange's Dev Hynes Speaks About Police Brutality and Ferguson at Central Park Concert: Video
"You don't want it to be real, but it is. And I don't know what's happening or what's going to happen. To me, it feels like I've been getting poked all my life. This irritating jab that keeps... and people are just getting tired. It feels like you associate time with learning. I think in our culture it's a real shock that that doesn't add up in everything. Just because the Civil Rights Act was like 50 years ago, doesn't mean that we're 50 times past it." -Dev Hynes
PITCHFORK: Blood Orange's Dev Hynes Speaks About Police Brutality and Ferguson at Central Park Concert: Video
the life aquatic.
a moment of clarirty.
words.
"... when I returned to my room from the thermal baths, or from strolling in the streets with my camera, I read the news online. There I found an unending sequence of crises: in the Middle East, in Africa, in Russia, and everywhere else, really. Pain was general. But within that larger distress was a set of linked stories, and thinking about “Stranger in the Village,” thinking with its help, was like injecting a contrast dye into my encounter with the news. The American police continued shooting unarmed black men, or killing them in other ways. The protests that followed, in black communities, were countered with violence by a police force that is becoming indistinguishable from an invading army. People began to see a connection between the various events: the shootings, the fatal choke hold, the stories of who was not given life-saving medication. And black communities were flooded with outrage and grief.
In all of this, a smaller, less significant story (but one that nevertheless signified), caught my attention. The Mayor of New York and his police chief have a public-policy obsession with cleaning, with cleansing, and they decided that arresting members of the dance troupes that perform in moving subway cars is one of the ways to clean up the city. I read the excuses for this becoming a priority: some people fear being seriously injured by an errant kick (it has not happened, but they sure fear it), some people consider it a nuisance, some policymakers believe that going after misdemeanors is a way of preëmpting major crimes. And so, to combat this menace of dancers, the police moved in. They began chasing, and harassing, and handcuffing. The “problem” was dancers, and the dancers were, for the most part, black boys. The newspapers took the same tone as the government: a sniffy dismissal of the performers. And yet these same dancers are a bright spark in the day, a moment of unregulated beauty, artists with talents unimaginable to their audience. What kind of thinking would consider their abolition an improvement in city life? No one considers Halloween trick-or-treaters a public menace. There’s no law enforcement against people selling Girl Scout cookies or against Jehovah’s Witnesses. But the black body comes pre-judged, and as a result it is placed in needless jeopardy. To be black is to bear the brunt of selective enforcement of the law, and to inhabit a psychic unsteadiness in which there is no guarantee of personal safety. You are a black body first, before you are a kid walking down the street or a Harvard professor who has misplaced his keys.
...He was a stranger in Leukerbad, Baldwin wrote, but there was no possibility for blacks to be strangers in the United States, nor for whites to achieve the fantasy of an all-white America purged of blacks. This fantasy about the disposability of black life is a constant in American history. It takes a while to understand that this disposability continues. It takes whites a while to understand it; it takes non-black people of color a while to understand it; and it takes some blacks, whether they’ve always lived in the U.S. or are latecomers like myself, weaned elsewhere on other struggles, a while to understand it. American racism has many moving parts, and has had enough centuries in which to evolve an impressive camouflage. It can hoard its malice in great stillness for a long time, all the while pretending to look the other way. Like misogyny, it is atmospheric. You don’t see it at first. But understanding comes.
“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” The news of the day (old news, but raw as a fresh wound) is that black American life is disposable from the point of view of policing, sentencing, economic policy, and countless terrifying forms of disregard. There is a vivid performance of innocence, but there’s no actual innocence left. The moral ledger remains so far in the negative that we can’t even get started on the question of reparations. Baldwin wrote “Stranger in the Village” more than sixty years ago. Now what?"
THE NEW YORKER: Black Body: Rereading James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village”
words.
"... when I returned to my room from the thermal baths, or from strolling in the streets with my camera, I read the news online. There I found an unending sequence of crises: in the Middle East, in Africa, in Russia, and everywhere else, really. Pain was general. But within that larger distress was a set of linked stories, and thinking about “Stranger in the Village,” thinking with its help, was like injecting a contrast dye into my encounter with the news. The American police continued shooting unarmed black men, or killing them in other ways. The protests that followed, in black communities, were countered with violence by a police force that is becoming indistinguishable from an invading army. People began to see a connection between the various events: the shootings, the fatal choke hold, the stories of who was not given life-saving medication. And black communities were flooded with outrage and grief.
In all of this, a smaller, less significant story (but one that nevertheless signified), caught my attention. The Mayor of New York and his police chief have a public-policy obsession with cleaning, with cleansing, and they decided that arresting members of the dance troupes that perform in moving subway cars is one of the ways to clean up the city. I read the excuses for this becoming a priority: some people fear being seriously injured by an errant kick (it has not happened, but they sure fear it), some people consider it a nuisance, some policymakers believe that going after misdemeanors is a way of preëmpting major crimes. And so, to combat this menace of dancers, the police moved in. They began chasing, and harassing, and handcuffing. The “problem” was dancers, and the dancers were, for the most part, black boys. The newspapers took the same tone as the government: a sniffy dismissal of the performers. And yet these same dancers are a bright spark in the day, a moment of unregulated beauty, artists with talents unimaginable to their audience. What kind of thinking would consider their abolition an improvement in city life? No one considers Halloween trick-or-treaters a public menace. There’s no law enforcement against people selling Girl Scout cookies or against Jehovah’s Witnesses. But the black body comes pre-judged, and as a result it is placed in needless jeopardy. To be black is to bear the brunt of selective enforcement of the law, and to inhabit a psychic unsteadiness in which there is no guarantee of personal safety. You are a black body first, before you are a kid walking down the street or a Harvard professor who has misplaced his keys.
...He was a stranger in Leukerbad, Baldwin wrote, but there was no possibility for blacks to be strangers in the United States, nor for whites to achieve the fantasy of an all-white America purged of blacks. This fantasy about the disposability of black life is a constant in American history. It takes a while to understand that this disposability continues. It takes whites a while to understand it; it takes non-black people of color a while to understand it; and it takes some blacks, whether they’ve always lived in the U.S. or are latecomers like myself, weaned elsewhere on other struggles, a while to understand it. American racism has many moving parts, and has had enough centuries in which to evolve an impressive camouflage. It can hoard its malice in great stillness for a long time, all the while pretending to look the other way. Like misogyny, it is atmospheric. You don’t see it at first. But understanding comes.
“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” The news of the day (old news, but raw as a fresh wound) is that black American life is disposable from the point of view of policing, sentencing, economic policy, and countless terrifying forms of disregard. There is a vivid performance of innocence, but there’s no actual innocence left. The moral ledger remains so far in the negative that we can’t even get started on the question of reparations. Baldwin wrote “Stranger in the Village” more than sixty years ago. Now what?"
THE NEW YORKER: Black Body: Rereading James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village”
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
-INTERLUDE-
a moment of clarity.
words.
"As an American today I simply say: Enough! My rights are precious, and I value those provided to me through the United States Constitution so much. I will never take a day off policing the people we pay and keep a public trust with. I will use my camera, my pen, my pad and my network to do my part, to make sure that American will no longer fear their government. or it's employees. They work for us -- not the other way around." - Killer Mike.
PITCHFORK: Killer Mike Writes Op-Ed About Ferguson, Dangers of Police Abuse of Power
SEE ALSO:
words.
words.
"As an American today I simply say: Enough! My rights are precious, and I value those provided to me through the United States Constitution so much. I will never take a day off policing the people we pay and keep a public trust with. I will use my camera, my pen, my pad and my network to do my part, to make sure that American will no longer fear their government. or it's employees. They work for us -- not the other way around." - Killer Mike.
PITCHFORK: Killer Mike Writes Op-Ed About Ferguson, Dangers of Police Abuse of Power
SEE ALSO:
words.
i can't give you anytnhing but love.
starring lady gaga & tony bennett.
ROLLING STONE: Hear Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett's Latest 'Cheek to Cheek' Love Song
ROLLING STONE: Hear Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett's Latest 'Cheek to Cheek' Love Song
bother.
starring les sins (aka "toro y moi").
PITCHFORK: Toro Y Moi Announces Michael, Debut Album as Les Sins, Shares "Bother"
PITCHFORK: Toro Y Moi Announces Michael, Debut Album as Les Sins, Shares "Bother"
Monday, August 18, 2014
Health. CARE. First. AID.
words.
"This system does a reasonable job of getting Westerners the drugs they want (albeit often at high prices). But it also leads to enormous underinvestment in certain kinds of diseases and certain categories of drugs. Diseases that mostly affect poor people in poor countries aren’t a research priority, because it’s unlikely that those markets will ever provide a decent return. So diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, which together kill two million people a year, have received less attention from pharmaceutical companies than high cholesterol. Then, there’s what the World Health Organization calls “neglected tropical diseases,” such as Chagas disease and dengue; they affect more than a billion people and kill as many as half a million a year. One study found that of the more than fifteen hundred drugs that came to market between 1975 and 2004 just ten were targeted at these maladies. And when a disease’s victims are both poor and not very numerous that’s a double whammy. On both scores, a drug for Ebola looks like a bad investment: so far, the disease has appeared only in poor countries and has affected a relatively small number of people.
It’s not just developing nations that the system disserves, however. In recent years, the rise of drug-resistant microbes has made the antibiotics we use less effective and has increased the risk that an infectious disease could get out of control. What people in the West need, health officials agree, is new drugs that we can keep in reserve against an outbreak that regular antibiotics can’t contain. Yet, over the past thirty years, the supply of new antibiotics has slowed to a trickle. “Antibiotic resistance really has the potential to make everything about the way we live different,” Kevin Outterson, a co-director of the Health Law program at Boston University and a founding member of the C.D.C.’s working group on antimicrobial resistance, told me. “So we need to stoke the pipeline.”
...The up-front costs of a prize system would be substantial—a recent report commissioned by the F.D.A. estimated that it would cost a billion dollars to get a great new antibiotic, factoring in tax credits. But we’d save lives by developing the drugs we need and taking measures against future disaster. The alternative is pretty grim: a system that, when it comes to some fierce mortal perils, is leaving a lot of blood on the floor."
THE NEW YORKER: Ebolanomics
"This system does a reasonable job of getting Westerners the drugs they want (albeit often at high prices). But it also leads to enormous underinvestment in certain kinds of diseases and certain categories of drugs. Diseases that mostly affect poor people in poor countries aren’t a research priority, because it’s unlikely that those markets will ever provide a decent return. So diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, which together kill two million people a year, have received less attention from pharmaceutical companies than high cholesterol. Then, there’s what the World Health Organization calls “neglected tropical diseases,” such as Chagas disease and dengue; they affect more than a billion people and kill as many as half a million a year. One study found that of the more than fifteen hundred drugs that came to market between 1975 and 2004 just ten were targeted at these maladies. And when a disease’s victims are both poor and not very numerous that’s a double whammy. On both scores, a drug for Ebola looks like a bad investment: so far, the disease has appeared only in poor countries and has affected a relatively small number of people.
It’s not just developing nations that the system disserves, however. In recent years, the rise of drug-resistant microbes has made the antibiotics we use less effective and has increased the risk that an infectious disease could get out of control. What people in the West need, health officials agree, is new drugs that we can keep in reserve against an outbreak that regular antibiotics can’t contain. Yet, over the past thirty years, the supply of new antibiotics has slowed to a trickle. “Antibiotic resistance really has the potential to make everything about the way we live different,” Kevin Outterson, a co-director of the Health Law program at Boston University and a founding member of the C.D.C.’s working group on antimicrobial resistance, told me. “So we need to stoke the pipeline.”
...The up-front costs of a prize system would be substantial—a recent report commissioned by the F.D.A. estimated that it would cost a billion dollars to get a great new antibiotic, factoring in tax credits. But we’d save lives by developing the drugs we need and taking measures against future disaster. The alternative is pretty grim: a system that, when it comes to some fierce mortal perils, is leaving a lot of blood on the floor."
THE NEW YORKER: Ebolanomics
movement.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"More than one person in the streets of Ferguson has compared what is happening here to the chaotic days of the Birmingham desegregation campaign in 1963. And, like that struggle, the local authorities, long immune to public sentiment, were incapable of understanding how their actions reverberated outside the hermetic world where they held sway—how they looked to the world. That incomprehension was the biggest asset the protesters in Birmingham had. Michael Brown was left lying in the street for hours while a traumatized community stood behind police tape in frustration, grief, and shock: an immobile metaphor for everything that was wrong in Ferguson, Missouri."
THE NEW YORKER: A Movement Grows in Ferguson
words.
"More than one person in the streets of Ferguson has compared what is happening here to the chaotic days of the Birmingham desegregation campaign in 1963. And, like that struggle, the local authorities, long immune to public sentiment, were incapable of understanding how their actions reverberated outside the hermetic world where they held sway—how they looked to the world. That incomprehension was the biggest asset the protesters in Birmingham had. Michael Brown was left lying in the street for hours while a traumatized community stood behind police tape in frustration, grief, and shock: an immobile metaphor for everything that was wrong in Ferguson, Missouri."
THE NEW YORKER: A Movement Grows in Ferguson
Sunday, August 17, 2014
a moment of clarity.
words.
"There is a pattern here, but it isn't the one Eugene Robinson (for whom I have a great respect) thinks. The pattern is the transmutation of black protest into moral hectoring of black people. Don Imus profanely insults a group of black women. But the real problem is gangsta rap. Trayvon Martin is killed. This becomes a conversation about how black men are bad fathers. Jonathan Martin is bullied mercilessly. This proves that black people have an unfortunate sense of irony.
The politics of respectability are, at their root, the politics of changing the subject—the last resort for those who can not bear the agony of looking their country in the eye. The policy of America has been, for most of its history, white supremacy. The high rates of violence in black neighborhoods do not exist outside of these facts—they evidence them.
This history presents us with a suite of hard choices. We do not like hard choices."
THE ATLANTIC: Black People Are Not Ignoring 'Black On Black' Crime
"There is a pattern here, but it isn't the one Eugene Robinson (for whom I have a great respect) thinks. The pattern is the transmutation of black protest into moral hectoring of black people. Don Imus profanely insults a group of black women. But the real problem is gangsta rap. Trayvon Martin is killed. This becomes a conversation about how black men are bad fathers. Jonathan Martin is bullied mercilessly. This proves that black people have an unfortunate sense of irony.
The politics of respectability are, at their root, the politics of changing the subject—the last resort for those who can not bear the agony of looking their country in the eye. The policy of America has been, for most of its history, white supremacy. The high rates of violence in black neighborhoods do not exist outside of these facts—they evidence them.
This history presents us with a suite of hard choices. We do not like hard choices."
THE ATLANTIC: Black People Are Not Ignoring 'Black On Black' Crime
Friday, August 15, 2014
"WHO AM I?!..."
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"...The reality, though, is this is America. Ferguson is a mirror, and it represents exactly what America is and has been. What causes the discomfort is how far this falls short of the ideals we have for ourselves and project around the world.
...America is a country where citizens of color live in economically isolated communities, where the police force tasked to “serve and protect” them are white and don’t live there. Ferguson, for example, is 67 percent black, but the police force is 94 percent white. Ninety-two percent of all arrests were of the black residents... America is a country where police are more likely to arrest and use force against black protesters.
America is a place, as Ferguson has shown us, where those rights and freedoms that we commend our military personnel for fighting in faraway lands for can be taken away under questionable circumstances. We live in a country where the Westboro Baptist church can picket funerals and the Ku Klux Klan can organize rallies, but a grieving black community staging a protest to demand answers for the death of one of their sons is met with rubber bullets and tear gas.
So America, once the media and cameras leave Ferguson, which they will do, we must ask ourselves: Who do we want to be as a country? Because as uncomfortable as it is to admit, Ferguson is who we are right now."
THE WASHINGTON POST: In the battle for America’s identity, Ferguson is Ground Zero
SEE ALSO:
pandora.
be free.
the sounds.
healthcare.gov.
words.
"...The reality, though, is this is America. Ferguson is a mirror, and it represents exactly what America is and has been. What causes the discomfort is how far this falls short of the ideals we have for ourselves and project around the world.
...America is a country where citizens of color live in economically isolated communities, where the police force tasked to “serve and protect” them are white and don’t live there. Ferguson, for example, is 67 percent black, but the police force is 94 percent white. Ninety-two percent of all arrests were of the black residents... America is a country where police are more likely to arrest and use force against black protesters.
America is a place, as Ferguson has shown us, where those rights and freedoms that we commend our military personnel for fighting in faraway lands for can be taken away under questionable circumstances. We live in a country where the Westboro Baptist church can picket funerals and the Ku Klux Klan can organize rallies, but a grieving black community staging a protest to demand answers for the death of one of their sons is met with rubber bullets and tear gas.
So America, once the media and cameras leave Ferguson, which they will do, we must ask ourselves: Who do we want to be as a country? Because as uncomfortable as it is to admit, Ferguson is who we are right now."
THE WASHINGTON POST: In the battle for America’s identity, Ferguson is Ground Zero
SEE ALSO:
pandora.
be free.
the sounds.
healthcare.gov.
pandora.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"... the Brown killing, as part of a grim series of similar tragedies, has quickly become symbolic. As usual, the incident confirms people’s existing ideological narratives. It shows a racism deeply rooted in U.S. legal structures. Or it demonstrates the opportunism of the media and the grievance industry. It is evidence of structural rot or of anti-police bias. It indicts the militarization of police forces or reveals the well-armed challenges they face.
But many people I know who differ on these matters shared the same immediate, emotional reaction: The images of tear gas, rubber bullets and sniper rifles from Ferguson don’t look like America. In a sense, it is a different country. As the United States has grown more diverse and prosperous over the past several decades, the economic and social isolation of some communities has only increased. This is not entirely a function of race. Many in the white working class have also felt segregated from the promise of America. But problems are concentrated among African American males, who have disproportionately low levels of workforce participation, disproportionately high levels of incarceration and little sympathetic attention from the broader society.
...During civil strife, it is necessary to establish public order — against both criminal elements and abusive police power (which undermines order as well). But our most admirable, influential leaders have attempted to do something more: to build a single nation of justice and opportunity. And surrendering this objective for any group of Americans would leave a nation both diverse and divided."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Michael Gerson: Ferguson and the paradox of American diversity
words.
"... the Brown killing, as part of a grim series of similar tragedies, has quickly become symbolic. As usual, the incident confirms people’s existing ideological narratives. It shows a racism deeply rooted in U.S. legal structures. Or it demonstrates the opportunism of the media and the grievance industry. It is evidence of structural rot or of anti-police bias. It indicts the militarization of police forces or reveals the well-armed challenges they face.
But many people I know who differ on these matters shared the same immediate, emotional reaction: The images of tear gas, rubber bullets and sniper rifles from Ferguson don’t look like America. In a sense, it is a different country. As the United States has grown more diverse and prosperous over the past several decades, the economic and social isolation of some communities has only increased. This is not entirely a function of race. Many in the white working class have also felt segregated from the promise of America. But problems are concentrated among African American males, who have disproportionately low levels of workforce participation, disproportionately high levels of incarceration and little sympathetic attention from the broader society.
...During civil strife, it is necessary to establish public order — against both criminal elements and abusive police power (which undermines order as well). But our most admirable, influential leaders have attempted to do something more: to build a single nation of justice and opportunity. And surrendering this objective for any group of Americans would leave a nation both diverse and divided."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Michael Gerson: Ferguson and the paradox of American diversity
be free.
words.
"There was a time in my life when I gave a fuck. Every chance I got I was screaming about it. I was younger. It’s so easy to try to save the world when you’re in college. You got nothing but time and no responsibility. But soon life hits you. No more dorms, no more meal plan, no more refund check. Nigga need a job. Nigga got rent. Got car note. Cable bill. Girlfriend moves in and becomes wife. Baby on the way. Career advances. Instagram is poppin. Lebron leaves Miami. LIFE HITS. We become distracted. We become numb. I became numb. But not anymore. That coulda been me, easily. It could have been my best friend. I’m tired of being desensitized to the murder of black men. I don’t give a fuck if it’s by police or peers. This shit is not normal." - J. Cole
PITCHFORK: Frank Ocean Weighs in on Ferguson and Michael Brown, J. Cole Releases New Song "Be Free"
"There was a time in my life when I gave a fuck. Every chance I got I was screaming about it. I was younger. It’s so easy to try to save the world when you’re in college. You got nothing but time and no responsibility. But soon life hits you. No more dorms, no more meal plan, no more refund check. Nigga need a job. Nigga got rent. Got car note. Cable bill. Girlfriend moves in and becomes wife. Baby on the way. Career advances. Instagram is poppin. Lebron leaves Miami. LIFE HITS. We become distracted. We become numb. I became numb. But not anymore. That coulda been me, easily. It could have been my best friend. I’m tired of being desensitized to the murder of black men. I don’t give a fuck if it’s by police or peers. This shit is not normal." - J. Cole
PITCHFORK: Frank Ocean Weighs in on Ferguson and Michael Brown, J. Cole Releases New Song "Be Free"
the sounds.
words.
"At fifteen, I went as a scholarship boy to a boarding school in Pennsylvania. The first black student in the school’s history was admitted in my junior year—just months after a blatantly racist story had appeared in our literary journal. For most if not all of us, this would be the first time we’d found ourselves on equal terms with a black person. I didn’t know him. He roomed in another dorm, and we had no classes in common, no clubs or teams. I took little notice of him unless we happened to pass in a hallway or sit near each other in the chapel. At such moments I felt a tingle of unease, not because of any personal animus, or any objection on principle to his presence in the school. On the contrary: in the realm of principle, conscious principle, I had come to profess the equality of all, and the need to change whatever had to be changed to make our equality more than theoretical.
... I really did not regard my black classmate as being in any way inferior to me, as having any weaker claim than mine to his place in the school; indeed, I was anxiously aware of the fragility of my own position, gained by deception and under constant threat from lousy grades and an ever-rising mountain of demerits. This boy observed the same dress code as the rest of us: coat and tie on class days, dark suit on Sunday. He was quiet, correct, reserved—neither a star nor a wild man. He stood out, at least to me, for one reason: the blackness of his skin. So it wasn’t a matter of racism as I had come to understand it, as contempt or hatred or fear of another because of his race. I felt none of those things. What I did feel was a frisson of essential, incomprehensible difference.
...most of us still live in enclaves. As much as the country has changed since I was young, this has not. Though more and more we work together, learn together, bear arms together, we mostly go home to separate worlds and bring up our children in separate worlds, either by intention or cultural habit or simply as a consequence of economic and class divisions. And if we ourselves never say a slighting word about those others or smile in a certain way at the dramatic fulfillment of a stereotype, our children, living in our world, will still see and hear such things and be touched by them.
...When my daughter was in kindergarten, she often spoke of her favorite classmate, a girl named Alice. Alice was really nice. Alice liked to sing. Alice helped her clean up after a messy art project. Alice was funny. We finally got to meet Alice and her mother at a school parents’ night. She was black. Our daughter had never mentioned that; of all the many things she’d told us about Alice, this detail had seemed too trivial to mention, if she’d noticed it at all. In my daughter’s regard of Alice, of the qualities that made Alice Alice, the color of her skin had counted for nothing. I cannot say how strongly this affected me. These little girls, unconscious of each other in this one way, revived the vision of a possibility that I hadn’t been aware I’d stopped believing in—a land not of races but of brothers and sisters. That was Martin Luther King’s dream, and it is still a dream. It will never be anything more than a dream until we stop pretending that we have already attained it."
THE NEW YORKER: Heart of Whiteness
"At fifteen, I went as a scholarship boy to a boarding school in Pennsylvania. The first black student in the school’s history was admitted in my junior year—just months after a blatantly racist story had appeared in our literary journal. For most if not all of us, this would be the first time we’d found ourselves on equal terms with a black person. I didn’t know him. He roomed in another dorm, and we had no classes in common, no clubs or teams. I took little notice of him unless we happened to pass in a hallway or sit near each other in the chapel. At such moments I felt a tingle of unease, not because of any personal animus, or any objection on principle to his presence in the school. On the contrary: in the realm of principle, conscious principle, I had come to profess the equality of all, and the need to change whatever had to be changed to make our equality more than theoretical.
... I really did not regard my black classmate as being in any way inferior to me, as having any weaker claim than mine to his place in the school; indeed, I was anxiously aware of the fragility of my own position, gained by deception and under constant threat from lousy grades and an ever-rising mountain of demerits. This boy observed the same dress code as the rest of us: coat and tie on class days, dark suit on Sunday. He was quiet, correct, reserved—neither a star nor a wild man. He stood out, at least to me, for one reason: the blackness of his skin. So it wasn’t a matter of racism as I had come to understand it, as contempt or hatred or fear of another because of his race. I felt none of those things. What I did feel was a frisson of essential, incomprehensible difference.
...most of us still live in enclaves. As much as the country has changed since I was young, this has not. Though more and more we work together, learn together, bear arms together, we mostly go home to separate worlds and bring up our children in separate worlds, either by intention or cultural habit or simply as a consequence of economic and class divisions. And if we ourselves never say a slighting word about those others or smile in a certain way at the dramatic fulfillment of a stereotype, our children, living in our world, will still see and hear such things and be touched by them.
...When my daughter was in kindergarten, she often spoke of her favorite classmate, a girl named Alice. Alice was really nice. Alice liked to sing. Alice helped her clean up after a messy art project. Alice was funny. We finally got to meet Alice and her mother at a school parents’ night. She was black. Our daughter had never mentioned that; of all the many things she’d told us about Alice, this detail had seemed too trivial to mention, if she’d noticed it at all. In my daughter’s regard of Alice, of the qualities that made Alice Alice, the color of her skin had counted for nothing. I cannot say how strongly this affected me. These little girls, unconscious of each other in this one way, revived the vision of a possibility that I hadn’t been aware I’d stopped believing in—a land not of races but of brothers and sisters. That was Martin Luther King’s dream, and it is still a dream. It will never be anything more than a dream until we stop pretending that we have already attained it."
THE NEW YORKER: Heart of Whiteness
Thursday, August 14, 2014
the black eyed peas.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"...Americans are reacting, in part, to the breakdown of the political system, which leaves people quite rationally worried about American decline and the nation’s diminishing ability to weather crises. “One of the hallmarks of being an American is the optimism that your children will be better off,” Yang told me. The lost optimism, he said, “says a lot about how shaken we are by the inability of our political system to address seemingly easy issues, and it leaves us worried about the future.”
In a narrow sense, this is good news for President Obama because it means the problem is not of his making but the result of two decades of scorched-earth politics. That’s bad news for the rest of us, though, because the problem is larger than any leader’s ability to bring hope and change.
... virtually all polling shows a steep decline in optimism since the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Yang doesn’t see that improving much, even as the economy does. “The unsettledness of the public is what is normal now,” he said. “To me, this is less about economic reality than about our political system — our lack of confidence that our political leaders, regardless of party, are equipped to deal with the future.”"
THE WASHINGTON POST: Americans’ optimism is dying
words.
"...Americans are reacting, in part, to the breakdown of the political system, which leaves people quite rationally worried about American decline and the nation’s diminishing ability to weather crises. “One of the hallmarks of being an American is the optimism that your children will be better off,” Yang told me. The lost optimism, he said, “says a lot about how shaken we are by the inability of our political system to address seemingly easy issues, and it leaves us worried about the future.”
In a narrow sense, this is good news for President Obama because it means the problem is not of his making but the result of two decades of scorched-earth politics. That’s bad news for the rest of us, though, because the problem is larger than any leader’s ability to bring hope and change.
... virtually all polling shows a steep decline in optimism since the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Yang doesn’t see that improving much, even as the economy does. “The unsettledness of the public is what is normal now,” he said. “To me, this is less about economic reality than about our political system — our lack of confidence that our political leaders, regardless of party, are equipped to deal with the future.”"
THE WASHINGTON POST: Americans’ optimism is dying
healthcare.gov.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.
Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.
This is part of the anguish we are seeing in the tragic events outside of St. Louis, Missouri. It is what the citizens of Ferguson feel when there is an unfortunate and heartbreaking shooting like the incident with Michael Brown.
Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention."
TIME: Rand Paul: We Must Demilitarize the Police
EARLIER:
a moment of clarity.
black like me.
THE WASHINGTON POST: What caused the Ferguson riot exists in so many other cities, too
words.
"When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.
Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.
This is part of the anguish we are seeing in the tragic events outside of St. Louis, Missouri. It is what the citizens of Ferguson feel when there is an unfortunate and heartbreaking shooting like the incident with Michael Brown.
Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention."
TIME: Rand Paul: We Must Demilitarize the Police
EARLIER:
a moment of clarity.
black like me.
THE WASHINGTON POST: What caused the Ferguson riot exists in so many other cities, too
a moment of clarity.
words.
"Imagery helps frame the narrative arc of a story, particularly one laden with racial recriminations, and critics have long denounced the negative media portrayal of African-Americans. In the aftermath of Brown’s death, they decried the use of a photo in which he flashes what has been alternately characterized as a peace sign and a gang sign, instead of his high school graduation picture, reinforcing damaging stereotypes. In protest, activists launched a Twitter campaign, using the hashtag #iftheygunnedmedown. Thousands of African-Americans posted contrasting pictures of themselves, one respectable and one less flattering, musing about which photo the press would use to portray them if they were killed and how that choice would affect the public perception of and reaction to their deaths. Other critics lamented the emphasis that Brown was college bound, as implicitly suggesting that the killing of black teenagers whose trajectory is less admirable is somehow less tragic.
...The looting in Ferguson will not heal the community or bring comfort to Brown’s grieving family. But the media do incalculable damage in framing the town’s response as the monolithic action of vandals or decontextualizing the rage at another young African-American life lost at the hands of the police."
ALJAZEERA AMERICA: The second tragedy of the Michael Brown shooting
SEE ALSO:
black like me.
"Imagery helps frame the narrative arc of a story, particularly one laden with racial recriminations, and critics have long denounced the negative media portrayal of African-Americans. In the aftermath of Brown’s death, they decried the use of a photo in which he flashes what has been alternately characterized as a peace sign and a gang sign, instead of his high school graduation picture, reinforcing damaging stereotypes. In protest, activists launched a Twitter campaign, using the hashtag #iftheygunnedmedown. Thousands of African-Americans posted contrasting pictures of themselves, one respectable and one less flattering, musing about which photo the press would use to portray them if they were killed and how that choice would affect the public perception of and reaction to their deaths. Other critics lamented the emphasis that Brown was college bound, as implicitly suggesting that the killing of black teenagers whose trajectory is less admirable is somehow less tragic.
...The looting in Ferguson will not heal the community or bring comfort to Brown’s grieving family. But the media do incalculable damage in framing the town’s response as the monolithic action of vandals or decontextualizing the rage at another young African-American life lost at the hands of the police."
ALJAZEERA AMERICA: The second tragedy of the Michael Brown shooting
SEE ALSO:
black like me.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
black like me.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"...on Sunday, the hashtag #iftheygunnedmedown began circulating on Twitter, with thousands of tweets pointing to the ways in which incidents such as these play out. Many tweets were accompanied by the sort of pictures that could be used to tar even staid black professionals as intimidating. Brown was a large eighteen-year-old—six feet four inches, according to his mother—and, in the image that circulated in the media immediately following the shooting, his size is highlighted. He flashes a peace symbol that, in conjunction with his imposing stature, could predictably be assailed as a gang sign. The hashtag was an overt riff on the way a jury, for example, might decide that a slight teen-ager like Trayvon Martin could be justifiably seen as a threat to George Zimmerman, a man with a gun. Imagery counts as a kind of unspoken forensics, with the power to render someone an innocent victim or a terrifying menace. Implicit is a question: Would you be afraid of this person, too?
The truth is that you’ve read this story so often that the race-tinged death story has become a genre itself, the details plugged into a grim template of social conflict. The genre is defined by its tendency toward an unsatisfactory resolution of the central problems. Two years ago, I visited St. Louis to give a talk at a museum. My visit fell in the wake of a rally in which hundreds of local residents turned out to demand an arrest in Martin’s death. (Brown’s family has now retained Benjamin Crump, the attorney who represented Martin’s family.) Martin was killed nearly a thousand miles away, but when I spoke to people about the rally they conveyed the sense that what had happened to him could happen anywhere in the country, even in their own back yards. For those people in Ferguson pressed against the yellow police tape separating them from Brown’s remains, the overwhelming sentiment is that it already has."
THE NEW YORKER: The Anger in Ferguson
EARLIER:
words.
SEE ALSO:
THE NEW YORKER: A Militarized Night in Ferguson
words.
"...on Sunday, the hashtag #iftheygunnedmedown began circulating on Twitter, with thousands of tweets pointing to the ways in which incidents such as these play out. Many tweets were accompanied by the sort of pictures that could be used to tar even staid black professionals as intimidating. Brown was a large eighteen-year-old—six feet four inches, according to his mother—and, in the image that circulated in the media immediately following the shooting, his size is highlighted. He flashes a peace symbol that, in conjunction with his imposing stature, could predictably be assailed as a gang sign. The hashtag was an overt riff on the way a jury, for example, might decide that a slight teen-ager like Trayvon Martin could be justifiably seen as a threat to George Zimmerman, a man with a gun. Imagery counts as a kind of unspoken forensics, with the power to render someone an innocent victim or a terrifying menace. Implicit is a question: Would you be afraid of this person, too?
The truth is that you’ve read this story so often that the race-tinged death story has become a genre itself, the details plugged into a grim template of social conflict. The genre is defined by its tendency toward an unsatisfactory resolution of the central problems. Two years ago, I visited St. Louis to give a talk at a museum. My visit fell in the wake of a rally in which hundreds of local residents turned out to demand an arrest in Martin’s death. (Brown’s family has now retained Benjamin Crump, the attorney who represented Martin’s family.) Martin was killed nearly a thousand miles away, but when I spoke to people about the rally they conveyed the sense that what had happened to him could happen anywhere in the country, even in their own back yards. For those people in Ferguson pressed against the yellow police tape separating them from Brown’s remains, the overwhelming sentiment is that it already has."
THE NEW YORKER: The Anger in Ferguson
EARLIER:
words.
SEE ALSO:
THE NEW YORKER: A Militarized Night in Ferguson
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
break free.
a video.
starring ariana grande.
PITCHFORK: Ariana Grande Destroys Aliens and Robots in Her Campy Sci-Fi "Break Free" Video
starring ariana grande.
PITCHFORK: Ariana Grande Destroys Aliens and Robots in Her Campy Sci-Fi "Break Free" Video
words.
for your consideration.
"I don't care if others rioted or why. I don't care that ballplayers and rappers are what they shud be. I care that we as humans care as much about one another more. I care we see past Class, race and culture and honor the humanity that unites our species. Stop talking and LOOK at these PEOPLE. LOOK at these HUMANS and stand with them against a system allows a Human PIG to slaughter their child. Forgive any typos love and respect u all." - Killer Mike
DEADSPIN: America Is Not For Black People
SEE ALSO:
PITCHFORK: Killer Mike Writes Essay About Michael Brown, Black Teenager Killed by Police in Missouri
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Shooting Spurs Hashtag Effort on Stereotypes
"I don't care if others rioted or why. I don't care that ballplayers and rappers are what they shud be. I care that we as humans care as much about one another more. I care we see past Class, race and culture and honor the humanity that unites our species. Stop talking and LOOK at these PEOPLE. LOOK at these HUMANS and stand with them against a system allows a Human PIG to slaughter their child. Forgive any typos love and respect u all." - Killer Mike
DEADSPIN: America Is Not For Black People
SEE ALSO:
PITCHFORK: Killer Mike Writes Essay About Michael Brown, Black Teenager Killed by Police in Missouri
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Shooting Spurs Hashtag Effort on Stereotypes
Monday, August 11, 2014
war on war.
a moment of clarity.
words.
"When I wrote first wrote about Martin’s killing, I said that one of the burdens of being a black male was bearing the heavy weight of other people’s suspicions. The McBride murder shows that such suspicion knows no gender. I also wrote about the lessons my mother taught me growing up. How I shouldn’t run in public, lest I arouse undue suspicion. How I most definitely should not run with anything in my hands, lest anyone think I stole something. The lesson included not talking back to the police, lest you give them a reason to take you to jail — or worse. And I was taught to never, ever leave home without identification. The reason was not only a precaution in case something happened, such as an accident, but also in case I’m stopped by police for whatever reason.
...When you’re black and especially male — in the United States — you have to go to these seemingly overboard, extra lengths in the off-chance they might save your life.
...The so-called victims of the nonexistent “war on whites” have absolutely NO idea what living under that kind of siege, that kind of very real threat, is like."
THE WASHINGTON POST: The Michael Brown shooting, the ‘war on whites’ and me
words.
"When I wrote first wrote about Martin’s killing, I said that one of the burdens of being a black male was bearing the heavy weight of other people’s suspicions. The McBride murder shows that such suspicion knows no gender. I also wrote about the lessons my mother taught me growing up. How I shouldn’t run in public, lest I arouse undue suspicion. How I most definitely should not run with anything in my hands, lest anyone think I stole something. The lesson included not talking back to the police, lest you give them a reason to take you to jail — or worse. And I was taught to never, ever leave home without identification. The reason was not only a precaution in case something happened, such as an accident, but also in case I’m stopped by police for whatever reason.
...When you’re black and especially male — in the United States — you have to go to these seemingly overboard, extra lengths in the off-chance they might save your life.
...The so-called victims of the nonexistent “war on whites” have absolutely NO idea what living under that kind of siege, that kind of very real threat, is like."
THE WASHINGTON POST: The Michael Brown shooting, the ‘war on whites’ and me
world restart.
starring kindness, kelela, and ade.
PITCHFORK: Kindness Announces New Album Otherness, Shares "World Restart" Featuring Kelela and Ade
PITCHFORK: Kindness Announces New Album Otherness, Shares "World Restart" Featuring Kelela and Ade
Sunday, August 10, 2014
mirrors.
a moment of clarity.
words.
"Not all fat gay men are resentful of fit ones, and not all fit gay men are condescending toward fat ones. But Whitesel touches on a real problem: Many gay men put a shockingly high premium on looks. Most pride parades are populated by unbelievably sexy gym bunnies in skimpy attire; a typical gay bar will feature a mind-boggling number of bulging biceps and rippling abs. It’s a tough market out there for an average-looking guy, let alone a tubby one. And if you can’t slip through the bear escape hatch, you’re bound to wind up a bit aggrieved.
There’s a strange irony in all this. By coming out, gay people have already thrown off the shackles of societal expectations in so many ways, defying gender roles, sex stereotypes, and sexual conformity. So why, after freeing themselves from these conventional traps, do gay men create a whole new set of stringent standards to hold each other to—standards largely cadged from heterosexual society?
...Yes, for reasons that remain totally unclear, many gay men do put a disproportionate amount of effort into personal appearance. But the stereotype has also become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Younger gay men think they must have perfect bodies because everyone expects them to have perfect bodies. This leads to predictable consequences: Gay men have a distressingly high rate of anorexia and are more likely than straight women to have an eating disorder. That’s a dark side of the quest for the six-pack, the one you never hear about during the fleshy revelries of a pride parade.
...In one sense, then, the fat gay men of Fat Gay Men are lucky: Their willingness to embrace their fatness means they’ve wriggled out of the body image bear traps that ensnare so many. But there’s no point in outwardly celebrating your body if you still harbor jealousy of your fitter brethren, as so many fat gay men in Whitesel’s book seem to. What we see here is the inevitable discontent of a stratified community, with the lower strata basically displeased with their lot but unwilling to smash the hierarchy altogether. By boldly trumpeting their own corpulence, the fat gay men of Whitesel’s book want to challenge the norms of their community. Too bad their community doesn’t want to hear what they have to say."
SLATE: Big Gay Pals: The troubles and triumphs of fat gay men.
words.
"Not all fat gay men are resentful of fit ones, and not all fit gay men are condescending toward fat ones. But Whitesel touches on a real problem: Many gay men put a shockingly high premium on looks. Most pride parades are populated by unbelievably sexy gym bunnies in skimpy attire; a typical gay bar will feature a mind-boggling number of bulging biceps and rippling abs. It’s a tough market out there for an average-looking guy, let alone a tubby one. And if you can’t slip through the bear escape hatch, you’re bound to wind up a bit aggrieved.
There’s a strange irony in all this. By coming out, gay people have already thrown off the shackles of societal expectations in so many ways, defying gender roles, sex stereotypes, and sexual conformity. So why, after freeing themselves from these conventional traps, do gay men create a whole new set of stringent standards to hold each other to—standards largely cadged from heterosexual society?
...Yes, for reasons that remain totally unclear, many gay men do put a disproportionate amount of effort into personal appearance. But the stereotype has also become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Younger gay men think they must have perfect bodies because everyone expects them to have perfect bodies. This leads to predictable consequences: Gay men have a distressingly high rate of anorexia and are more likely than straight women to have an eating disorder. That’s a dark side of the quest for the six-pack, the one you never hear about during the fleshy revelries of a pride parade.
...In one sense, then, the fat gay men of Fat Gay Men are lucky: Their willingness to embrace their fatness means they’ve wriggled out of the body image bear traps that ensnare so many. But there’s no point in outwardly celebrating your body if you still harbor jealousy of your fitter brethren, as so many fat gay men in Whitesel’s book seem to. What we see here is the inevitable discontent of a stratified community, with the lower strata basically displeased with their lot but unwilling to smash the hierarchy altogether. By boldly trumpeting their own corpulence, the fat gay men of Whitesel’s book want to challenge the norms of their community. Too bad their community doesn’t want to hear what they have to say."
SLATE: Big Gay Pals: The troubles and triumphs of fat gay men.
words.
"Like a bunch of other festival revelers, the tie-dye-wearing Hula-Hooper and her crew share their knowledge and drugs. Along with joints they pass on compliments about how beautiful our skin is and how mesmerized they are by our hairstyles and the fact that we know the words to "white songs." They can't really be black, can they? I imagine them thinking. You can tell by their tone that they consider themselves sincere, generous even. The backwards generosity maybe an upshot of the electronic dance music credo, PLUR—Peace Love Unity Respect. I can't help but question if it's kindness or if they don't even see us.
My friend dubs it "black privilege." It's her glass half-full way of looking at racism, at least for the weekend. Instead of playing the race card or getting all angryblackwoman, we should just relish the moment, that for once in our lives we're benefiting from bigotry. Like a slave praising massah for leftover scraps and holey shoes. Am I supposed to say thank you? Should I just believe white people when they claim they aren't racist as a preface for saying something racist, like introducing us as "my black friend" or complimenting how articulate we are? I don't think there are enough psychedelics in this too-big world for me to ever consider microaggressions good-natured banter.
...We come down off our acid so we light another blunt while Kendrick performs songs from his 2012 album, good kid, m.A.A.d. city. I nod my head and rap along for a while. Until the THC wears off. Then I'm standing still. Thinking. Again. Is Kendrick Lamar our Jimi Hendrix? Is this our version of crying for freedom? Are we today's counterculture? I watch the crowd—all the white people in designer thrift-store clothes and American Apparel bohemian chic rapping along to "Backseat Freestyle." In unison they shout, with their arms pumping up and down, "Martin had a dream. Martin had a dream. Kendrick have a dream."
I try not to laugh. Or to think about the thousands of pale Millennial hippies rapping about Dr. King's dream. Yet I can't help but wonder if they know that he also says "One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free." I question if they care that this still holds true. My friend passes me the joint. I try to inhale until I can no longer hear white people screaming "nigga" along with Kendrick. I wonder why I can't be more like them. Their drugs must be stronger."
GAWKER: Half-Dancing in Those Post-Racial Moments
My friend dubs it "black privilege." It's her glass half-full way of looking at racism, at least for the weekend. Instead of playing the race card or getting all angryblackwoman, we should just relish the moment, that for once in our lives we're benefiting from bigotry. Like a slave praising massah for leftover scraps and holey shoes. Am I supposed to say thank you? Should I just believe white people when they claim they aren't racist as a preface for saying something racist, like introducing us as "my black friend" or complimenting how articulate we are? I don't think there are enough psychedelics in this too-big world for me to ever consider microaggressions good-natured banter.
...We come down off our acid so we light another blunt while Kendrick performs songs from his 2012 album, good kid, m.A.A.d. city. I nod my head and rap along for a while. Until the THC wears off. Then I'm standing still. Thinking. Again. Is Kendrick Lamar our Jimi Hendrix? Is this our version of crying for freedom? Are we today's counterculture? I watch the crowd—all the white people in designer thrift-store clothes and American Apparel bohemian chic rapping along to "Backseat Freestyle." In unison they shout, with their arms pumping up and down, "Martin had a dream. Martin had a dream. Kendrick have a dream."
I try not to laugh. Or to think about the thousands of pale Millennial hippies rapping about Dr. King's dream. Yet I can't help but wonder if they know that he also says "One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free." I question if they care that this still holds true. My friend passes me the joint. I try to inhale until I can no longer hear white people screaming "nigga" along with Kendrick. I wonder why I can't be more like them. Their drugs must be stronger."
GAWKER: Half-Dancing in Those Post-Racial Moments
Friday, August 08, 2014
eggslut.
FILE UNDER: Coming Attractions
"fried chicken festival? might have to do that...", he said.
THRILLIST: The ultimate Los Angeles food fest calendar
"fried chicken festival? might have to do that...", he said.
THRILLIST: The ultimate Los Angeles food fest calendar
Thursday, August 07, 2014
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