https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/public/ recent bookmarks from jerryking 2026-07-13T21:57:30+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/11/nyregion/routine-jamie-hector.html jerryking actors African-Americans Brooklyn New_York_City the_Wire https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:29e008a94009/ 2026-06-24T10:59:19+00:00 https://archive.is/20260622204312/https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/06/trump-bunch-smithsonian/687660/#selection-615.0-647.1 jerryking African-Americans cultural_institutions Donald_Trump exhibitions history leaders museums Smithsonian white_fragility white_grievances https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:672605a9bd6c/ 2026-06-17T07:07:59+00:00 https://www.propublica.org/article/how-covid-19-hollowed-out-a-generation-of-young-black-men#1018189 jerryking African-Americans black_men COVID-19 health hollowing_out mens'_health racial_disparities https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:eb5c9a8a2189/ 2026-06-05T02:21:58+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/us/politics/robert-woodson-dead.html jerryking African-Americans black_conservatives obituaries Robert_Woodson https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:75b7dee7c869/ 2026-05-27T04:30:31+00:00 https://www.wsj.com/opinion/a-community-activist-who-listened-to-communities-6b8697c5?mod=WTRN_pos2 jerryking African-Americans black_conservatives community_activism Jason_Riley obituaries Robert_Woodson https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:c6e04e9eed62/ 2026-05-23T11:15:28+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/arts/music/rob-base-dead.html jerryking '80s African-Americans anthems hip-hop hits obituaries rappers songs music nostalgia old_school sampling https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:78dce82289aa/ 2026-04-10T02:34:36+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/arts/music/afrika-bambaataa-dead.html jerryking African-Americans hip-hop obituaries trailblazers https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:80914c5de4c1/ 2026-03-04T03:09:56+00:00 https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/film/delroy-lindo-sinners-oscar-career-420180ba?mod=wknd_pos1 jerryking actors advice African-Americans Managing_Your_Career self-betterment https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:5a4bab89528b/ 2026-02-22T01:09:34+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/17/business/black-women-job-market-hiring-careers-dei.html?searchResultPosition=1 jerryking advice African-Americans Black_women career_paths Managing_Your_Career networking college-educated self-help unemployment unemployment_rates DEI https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:a0c905fdf279/ 2026-02-18T22:34:52+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/opinion/jesse-jackson-style-fashion.html jerryking Jesse_Jackson mens'_clothing African-Americans body_language brands confidence detail-oriented Eric_Adams fashion image-consciousness mayoral New_York_City nonverbal personal_grooming power_brokers power_dynamics public_servants self-confidence self-made standing_out_from_the_crowd street-smarts stylish unspoken unwritten visual_culture https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:41bbcc7e7b7c/ 2026-02-18T15:23:49+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/us/politics/jesse-jackson-black-voters-voting-rights-act.html jerryking African-Americans Black_Power Democrats gerrymandering Jesse_Jackson pivotal_moments the_South U.S._Supreme_Court voters Voting-Right_Act https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:7a920936c284/ 2026-02-17T14:59:20+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/us/jesse-jackson-dead.html jerryking African-Americans Jesse_Jackson obituaries flawed_people legacies orators politicians tributes Campaign_1984 Campaign_1988 civil_rights economic_rights icons trailblazers https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:8fbb503e5df0/ 2026-01-28T11:18:00+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/science/gladys-west-dead.html jerryking African-Americans GPS mathematics modelling obituaries trailblazers women unheralded https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:0aa85638c891/ 2026-01-17T15:59:02+00:00 https://archive.is/20260117094246/https://www.ft.com/content/0e8676f0-6f16-40f7-ab17-f7c35fac7b84#selection-1577.0-1893.13 jerryking>noughties<< HBO show The Wire. Ostensibly a >>police procedural<<, The Wire follows a group of weary cops in an unwanted Major Crimes Unit trying to bring down Baltimore’s drug crews. But from the start, the underlying ambitions of its creators, former cop Ed Burns and former journalist David Simon, were clear. “The grand theme here is nothing less than a national existentialism,” Simon wrote in a leaked pitch to HBO from 2000. He promised that “the reward for the viewer — who has been lured all this way by a well constructed police show . . . is something that Euripides or O’Neill might recognise: an America, at every level at war with itself.” And it wasn’t hyperbole. The Wire was lauded as the best TV show of all time; two decades later it still is by many critics. The show ended in March 2008, before the financial crisis, as the campaign of a young presidential hopeful from Chicago, Barack Obama, was taking flight. Obama called The Wire his favourite show and the gay stickup artist Omar Little its best character. I admit that in rewatching it I was ostriching. I remembered The Wire as the product of a dysfunctional but ultimately moral time. I wanted to retreat into that past, to escape the chaos of Donald Trump’s America, if only for an hour at a time. Men are searched by police beside a car on a residential street lined with boarded-up houses Today’s horrors are of a different magnitude, yet, what I found as I watched was a pre-Trump world that didn’t seem so glorious. Instead, I saw a portrait of a major city in the most powerful country on earth, failing miserably. Institutions in decline, self-serving elites who fail to deliver for the voters they are supposed to represent. A world of endless compromise, of criminals debating the differences between “norms” and “rules”. There were the white dockworkers, deindustrialised and forgotten, who would soon become the Maga base. In late August, days after Trump sent the National Guard into Washington, I watched an episode where one officer asks, “You think that if 300 white people were killed in this city every year, they wouldn’t send the 82nd Airborne?” Of course, they would, I thought. They were already talking about it. Already, The Wire’s creators understood what was happening to the country. They were not blind to the problems to which Trump would announce himself as the solution. In that regard, the show serves as a record of all that was already rotten. The Wire asked us, what happens to a society where you can break the rules and get away with it? The real world gave us the answer. The best show to understand the Trump era turns out to be the best show of the pre-Trump era. In perhaps the most famous scene from an early episode, several small-time dealers are learning to play chess. “So how do you get to be the king?” one asks. “It ain’t like that,” comes the reply. “See, the king stay the king, all right? Everything stay who he is, except for the pawns.” The Wire is about how things should be, and how they are, about who can rise and who deserves it. Lately, when I think of the current US president and contemplate his attacks on societal norms, I find myself thinking about “the Sunday truce”. The Baltimore dealers of drugs whose colourful nicknames include “WMD”, “Bin Laden” and “Pandemic” observe one day of mutual non-violence a week: Sunday. Omar has been robbing the stash spots of kingpin Avon Barksdale’s crew without compunction on the other six days, year after year. When he is spotted taking his grandmother to church on a Sunday, permission is given by Avon’s cerebral lieutenant, Stringer Bell, to go after him. Bullets fly. The old lady’s capacious hat, her “crown”, is shot off her head. Omar can’t believe it (“No shame!”) and neither can Avon, once he finds out. “The Sunday truce has been around as long as the game itself, man,” Avon admonishes Stringer. “You can do some shit . . . but just never on no Sunday.” How do you deal with someone who revels in breaking the rules, the show asks. What is a norm, anyway? Simon and Burns did not predict the rise of Trump. But they did create another ruthless upstart who infiltrated the system and then took it over. Marlo Stanfield makes Stringer’s regard for norms and rules look positively schoolboyish. The other dealers try to tame him by inviting him into their cartel to share the spoils. Instead, Marlo announces that he’s murdered the cartel’s leader after learning everything he needed — and there’s no need for any more meetings. “And one more thing,” Marlo announces as he consolidates control of Baltimore’s drug trade. “Price of the brick going up.” As the show’s five seasons progress, we get to look inside a different city institution. There are the career politicians — councilmen, attorneys-general and elected judges, all vying for a slice of the pie. We follow an ex-cop into high school, where he is forced to teach kids the answers to test questions so that their grades will show they learnt something. We see what’s left of the local newspaper, whose editors care less about local readers than winning awards. (Simon was once a Baltimore Sun crime reporter.) In the second season, The Wire shifts to the port of Baltimore. Now we see how the drugs come in. Frank Sobotka is the union leader at the port, where fewer and fewer ships dock every year. He looks the other way, not to line his own pockets but to buy his way into political circles to keep the port alive. Here is the much mythologised American white working class, who worked good, honest jobs but found they had little value to society through no fault of their own. Frank and his union are of Polish stock, a distinct kind of white culture, quite separate from that of the police. Sometimes they feel more like the poor Black population. “Black, white, what’s the difference, Nat?” Frank tells a colleague. Trump would put it less crudely when he asked Black voters, “What have you got to lose?” Frank’s wayward son, Ziggy, unable to get any shifts on the docks like his old man, unable to sell drugs with any skill, finally snaps. The last time we see him, he’s about to go to prison for double murder. Throughout it all, stalks the shotgun-toting, openly homosexual, hyper-moralist Omar. Obama apparently preferred Omar to Tommy Carcetti, whose arc, becoming the white mayor of a majority-Black city, was then only slightly less unlikely than the ascent of America’s first Black president. Once in power, on a platform of change and renewal, Tommy finds himself in thrall to the city’s identity groups. In this city, like so many in America, Democrats outnumber Republicans by orders of magnitude. One thing that becomes clear is that voters don’t have much to show for their loyalty. Nothing seems to get better. Tommy rides a wave of hope to power. Then he disappoints almost everyone. One of Ziggy’s cousins reappears to hurl abuse at a surprised Tommy, who has rezoned around the docks to build luxury condos. Another dockworker is shown homeless. Tommy has no idea who these people are, but we do. Watching Obama kite surfing by Richard Branson’s private Caribbean island days after Trump’s first inauguration I’d felt a similar pang of outrage. The show, dripping in the cynicism born of a disappointed idealism, perhaps had the misfortune to end in 2008. Its critiques never had the chance to marinate as Obama’s election allowed liberal followers to feel they’d begun addressing the problems — that everything was now moving in the right direction. But beneath the surface, the resentments were only getting worse. We’re now living with the aftershocks of Tommy Carcetti’s America, of a disappointment that was building long before Obama. For all its critical acclaim, The Wire isn’t mentioned as much any more in popular culture. You don’t see it in the reaction gifs on social media. Part of that, I think, is because the people who loved the show when it came out belong to those institutions that have been under sustained attack for the past decade. The journalists, the politicians, the educators. All those professions have lost some of their stature. The Wire was the favourite show of a particularly 20th-century incarnation of the cultural elite, that could help keep a show on the air in a way which is no longer possible in the era of the all-seeing algorithm. We might have preserved a better connection from that time to our own if Simon and Burns had managed to make what I think of as the lost season of The Wire, one they spoke about openly. It would have focused on the growing Hispanic population of Baltimore. Immigration, and who belongs where, is the issue of our time. “I would have loved to have done that, but none of us knew Spanish and none of us had done any research on it,” Simon said. “It would have taken us a little time, as it always did.” The show is poorer without it. As this issue was going to press, the American public was watching the fallout from the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. It is an obvious escalation of Trump’s strong-arm tactics. But rewatching The Wire reminded me that the world before him was not all that pretty, either. Simon and Burns had dared to question that America. And they got their answer. The Wire is to American liberalism what Marcel Ophuls’s two-part 1969 documentary The Sorrow and The Pity was to the Nazi occupation of France. Sixty episodes later, I felt I understood one of the street-corner soldiers when he says: “This game is rigged, man. We like them little bitches on the chessboard.” ]]> actors African-Americans Baltimore blue-collar civic_collapse criminal_gangs David_Simon dramas Ed_Burns ensemble_acting hits institutional_failure Michael_K._Williams noughties post-industrial power_structures punishment television the_Wire working-class police_procedurals dysfunctional_institutions https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:dceacb711d73/ 2025-11-24T03:05:00+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/us/h-rap-brown-dead.html jerryking '60s African-Americans Black_Power orators Black_Muslims militants https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:e7b490e64950/ 2025-11-22T21:45:40+00:00 https://www.facebook.com/stacey.patton.9/posts/pfbid0NRPXjT8o4UxtZz9UW5o3TqKUY3SjqXYahUY2KkGkmymA2nPr4fry8d2j18dRXi8Dl/ jerryking African-Americans black-owned future-proofing HBCUs journalism journalists mission_statements newsrooms Black-owned_media https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:15944c0956c3/ 2025-11-20T15:20:20+00:00 https://www.facebook.com/reel/4139556186303563 jerrykingAfrican-Americans black_churches boycotts economic_clout group_self-determination Target buying_power collective_purpose collective_will economic_empowerment https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:9ddb79bd490a/ 2025-11-05T21:27:51+00:00 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Cruse jerrykingAfrican-Americans trailblazers https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:fcf359596cd7/ 2025-11-05T15:01:41+00:00 https://www.facebook.com/reel/796830299844970 jerryking>critical thinking<< and questions. They’re not easily deceived by propaganda. They are harder to scare and control. This explains why some forces in this country want to demonize or outright destroy TRUE education and its advocates! +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ “The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. ” ― James Baldwin +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ W.E.B. Du Bois believed education was a tool for social change, empowerment, and full human development, not just vocational training. He argued for a broad, classical education that fostered >>critical thinking<< to combat prejudice and create informed citizens. For Du Bois, education was also about creating leaders, instilling >>cultural pride<< in African Americans, and helping individuals find their own path and potential. ]]> African-Americans purpose_of_education Colleges_&_Universities history mis-education professors James_Baldwin W.E.B._Du_Bois ahistorical black_studies Carter_Woodson engaged_citizenry Morehouse students critical_thinking cultural_pride https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:c35e5013cedb/ 2025-10-20T04:12:26+00:00 https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/film/spike-lee-highest-2-lowest-do-the-right-thing-5477e7d3?mod=hp_featst_pos5 jerryking African-Americans Brooklyn filmmakers Hollywood legacies Spike_Lee https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:8df862019813/ 2025-10-08T17:31:33+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/us/politics/black-leaders-trump.html jerryking African-Americans appointees Donald_Trump firings high-profile denuding https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:cbb95d7761f9/ 2025-10-02T01:21:10+00:00 https://www.facebook.com/reel/807104841767342 jerryking African-Americans black_churches internal_unity https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:a224afc15944/ 2025-09-29T22:55:05+00:00 https://archive.is/KDgqh#selection-89.0-165.12 jerryking '70s African-Americans anthems disco empowerment funk singers songs women disco-soul Whitney_Houston https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:ebfdde1126a0/ 2025-09-17T22:02:48+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-differences-doctors.html jerryking 1619 African-Americans discrimination false_beliefs health history legacies medicine race racial_disparities slavery https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:256654b8115c/ 2025-09-13T01:38:30+00:00 https://archive.is/rMd0h#selection-99.0-103.17 jerryking 19th_century African-Americans content_creators hard_work hitmakers impresarios last_straw multimedia Netflix period_dramas pivotal_moments producers reimagining romance_adaptations Shonda_Rhimes showrunners streaming talent television women https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:276d22e1a356/ 2025-09-02T17:01:20+00:00 https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/black-american-unemployment-rates-866f2c45?mod=hp_lead_pos9 jerryking African-Americans job_search unemployment job_loss canaries_in_the_coal_mines https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:9959110e2383/ 2025-08-20T10:20:11+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/us/politics/trump-smithsonian-slavery.html jerryking African-Americans Donald_Trump history museums Smithsonian white_fragility cultural_institutions white_grievances exhibitions https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:e8b96af3e8ca/ 2025-07-24T19:05:36+00:00 https://www.wsj.com/opinion/courage-clausewitz-and-the-nfl-mike-singletary-f0f55c03?mod=opinion_lead_pos6 jerryking African-Americans athletes_&_athletics BHAGs Carl_von_Clausewitz greatness mistakes NFL thinking_big visualization pick_causes_bigger_than_yourself https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:59dc71b003b7/ 2025-07-24T12:53:33+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/style/topiary-art-tree-sculpture-michael-gibson.html jerryking>Topiary<<, the practice of training plants into defined shapes, might evoke fantastical scenes from “Alice in Wonderland” or the formal gardens of Versailles. Michael P. Gibson believes its lessons extend well beyond the aesthetic. “Topiary forces you to learn how to be >>patient<<, because once you’re **trimming** [i.e. = pruning"], you have to wait for that new growth to happen,” he explained from the top of a ladder propped against a 20-foot holly tree. “I teach people that doing topiary can **reduce anxiety** [i.e. = "de-stressing"]. It helps you to stay >>focused<<.” In other words, it’s healthy for the plant and the human. Gibson's distinctive style is built on what he calls “the Gibson method,” which has five approaches: >>storytelling<<; sacred geometry, which brings balance and harmony to his sculptures; the Japanese style of >>pruning<< called niwaki, opening up a tree to reduce energy and create structure; illusion; and directional trimming. (Like brushing hair, trimming in one direction allows for a smoother look.) All five need to be present for the >>design<< to be a Gibson creation. Gibson thinks that people need plants in their lives, even if they don’t become topiary artists. “It’s a stress reliever,” he said. “It gives you a sense of accomplishment.” After a plant is trimmed, new growth needs time to fill in: The more you shear, the more dense it becomes. A design can take years before coming into true focus. Depending on the plant variety and the growing zone, a single tree can take five to 10 hours to complete; a larger project for a client might take 20 to 30 hours initially and then need to be maintained two or three times a year in colder climates. At home in South Carolina, he retrims his topiaries every six to eight weeks. “I don’t try to force it to be anything it doesn’t want to be,” he added. “I want to do something that’s so natural, but complex, so you look at it and think: Wait, does it grow like that? Is it supposed to look like that?” Gibson wants to make a place both children and adults keep returning to, and he hopes to leave them with information about >>horticulture<< they can apply to their lives. “When we’re throwing away dead wood and branches we don’t need anymore, think of those as bad habits, right?” he said. “You need to cut off the bad habits so they don’t affect your design later down the road. That’s a >>life lesson<<.” ]]> aesthetics African-Americans art artforms de-stressing design focus gardening horticultural intentionality life_lessons patience philosophy pruning sculptures storytelling thought-provoking vision topiary landscapes whims https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:0e1b08d3134d/ 2025-07-22T16:15:50+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/arts/television/malcolm-jamal-warner-dead.html jerryking '80s actors African-Americans appointment_television black_men character_actors Cosby_Show obituaries representation role_models https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:3c96cf629b53/ 2025-07-18T21:10:36+00:00 https://www.wsj.com/opinion/a-civil-war-sergeant-and-his-old-flag-1525f26d?mod=opinion_lead_pos12 jerryking African-Americans all-Black Andre_Braugher black_manhood black_men Civil_War Denzel_Washington fatherhood films Glory heroes history inspiration masculinity Morgan_Freeman movies responsibility https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:51afca2f4067/ 2025-07-08T21:48:48+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/live/bPDiDX3KE5A jerrykingADOS African-Americans Essence https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:df0a0c06d4b7/ 2025-06-20T02:51:41+00:00 https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/seven-masterpieces-to-commemorate-juneteenth-55c59c9d?mod=hp_listc_pos1 jerryking African-Americans commemoration Juneteenth masterpieces https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:bfc1afd36ba6/ 2025-06-09T21:11:13+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/arts/music/sly-stone-dead.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20250609&instance_id=156200&nl=breaking-news&regi_id=210157216&segment_id=199600&user_id=8da2044dc3202ef4e315c3a39a481e24 jerryking African-Americans hits music_producers obituaries singers songwriters '60s '70s funk popular_music multifaceted music_bands Sly_and_the_Family_Stone https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:634a42610825/ 2025-05-29T14:41:00+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/opinion/black-history-trump.html jerryking African-Americans Donald_Trump history https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:237de41bdb74/ 2025-05-08T08:28:00+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/business/media/clarence-o-smith-dead.html jerryking '70s African-Americans all-black black-owned black_women Edward_Lewis magazines obituaries Susan_Taylor talent_pipelines talent_pools women Essence owners print_journalism founders https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:34896f63aaf2/ 2025-02-24T22:16:45+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/arts/music/roberta-flack-songs.html jerryking>Lauryn Hill<< and the Fugees shifted its shape again with their own remake. With those tracks, Flack became the first artist to take record of the year at the Grammy Awards two consecutive times, with “The First Time” winning in 1973 and “Killing Me Softly” in 1974. ]]> '70s African-Americans essential_tracks obituaries pop-soul songs women Lauryn_Hill Roberta_Flack https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:465d2658428a/ 2025-02-06T04:25:46+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/writing-journalism-coming-out.html jerryking African-Americans Charles_Blow columnists farewells race writers https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:35853ddbddf8/ 2025-02-03T03:03:05+00:00 https://www.teachersgram.com/collections/black-history?ads=16068101056583916635380520%25252C16068130107387868697100520%25252C16066215274237363537940520&show_page=first_page%25253Futm_source%25253DFacebook&utm_id=120218040611420188&fbclid=IwY2xjawIMXIJleHRuA2FlbQEwAGFkaWQBqxpg1_vcvAEddnDNZDYrf45iUtgo0ezzYbhlnn0f9cujQDl5Eqc0MedLTQipqv7m7y02_aem_HuOUxdgGeQVH9AF2oQgmFQ jerrykingAfrican-Americans black_men history T-shirts https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:a3d854b9c960/ 2025-01-13T05:40:52+00:00 https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/justice-department-report-aims-to-correct-record-on-tulsa-race-massacre-3e8fcfb1?mod=us-news_feat1_law_pos1 jerryking African-Americans DoJ massacres racial_violence Tulsa https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:1d9864f02884/ 2024-12-27T02:05:40+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/business/media/richard-parsons-dead.html jerryking African-Americans CEOs executive_management finance influence leadership media movingonup obituries old_boys_network power Richard_Parsons troubleshooting Wall_Street fixers https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:f2d0ea4116a3/ 2024-12-13T22:50:28+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/obituaries/nikki-giovanni-dead.html jerryking African-Americans joy obituaries poems poetry public_intellectuals women writers https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:3c0aa86e6003/ 2024-12-13T20:42:11+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/us/politics/clifton-r-wharton-jr-dead.html jerryking African-Americans CEOs Fortune_500 obituaries PhDs SUNY trailblazers https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:7282a9c8131f/ 2024-12-01T17:00:08+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/world/africa/angola-biden-slavery.html jerryking Africa African-Americans ancestry Angola descendants DNA genealogy genetic_ancestry gene_pool historians historical_data historical_records history Middle_Passage mistreatment researchers slavery trans-Atlantic U.S. https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:7362d5f41067/ 2024-11-04T17:54:41+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/arts/music/quincy-jones-dead.html jerryking>producer<<, he made the best-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” He was also a prolific arranger and >>composer<< of film music.++ Quincy Jones, one of the most powerful forces in American popular music for more than half a century, died on Sunday in California. He was 91.......Mr. Jones began his career as a jazz trumpeter and was later in great demand as an >>arranger<<, writing for the big bands of Count Basie and others; as a composer of film music; and as a record producer. But he may have made his most lasting mark by doing what some believe to be equally important in the ground-level history of an art form: the work of >>connecting<<. Beyond his hands-on work with score paper, he organized, charmed, persuaded, hired and validated. Starting in the late 1950s, he took social and professional mobility to a new level in Black popular art, eventually >>creating the conditions<< for a great deal of music to flow between styles, outlets and markets. And all of that could be said of him even if he had not produced Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the best-selling album of all time. Mr. Jones’s music has been sampled and reused hundreds of times, through all stages of hip-hop and for the theme to the “Austin Powers” films (his “Soul Bossa Nova,” from 1962). He has the third-highest total of Grammy Awards won by a single person — he was nominated 80 times and won 28. (Beyoncé’s 32 wins is the highest total; Georg Solti is second with 31.) He was given **honorary degrees** by Harvard, Princeton, Juilliard, the New England Conservatory, the Berklee School of Music and many other institutions, as well as a National Medal of Arts and a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master fellowship. His success — as his colleague in arranging, Benny Carter, is said to have remarked — may have overshadowed his talent. In the late 1950s and early ’60s, Mr. Jones led his own bands and was the arranger of plush, confident recordings like Dinah Washington’s “The Swingin’ Miss ‘D’” (1957), Betty Carter’s “Meet Betty Carter and Ray Bryant” (1955) and Ray Charles’s “Genius + Soul = Jazz” (1961). He arranged and conducted several collaborations between Frank Sinatra and Count Basie, including what is widely regarded as one of Sinatra’s greatest records, “Sinatra at the Sands” (1966). He composed the soundtracks to “The Pawnbroker” (1964), “In Cold Blood” (1967) and “The Color Purple” (1985), among many other movies; his film and television work expertly mixed 20th-century classical, jazz, funk and Afro-Cuban, street, studio and conservatory. And the three albums he produced for Michael Jackson between 1979 and 1987 — “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad” — arguably remade the pop business with their success, by appealing profoundly to both Black and white audiences at a time when mainstream radio playlists were becoming increasingly segregated.......He wrote music quickly — including his first complete and credited composition, “Kingfish”— and got it sounding good quickly, through preternatural skills of charm and organization.........His most frenetic years, professionally and personally, began in the late 1960s and stretched until 1974........His most frenetic years, professionally and personally, began in the late 1960s and stretched until 1974.......His dozens of film-score credits in those years included “The Deadly Affair,” “In the Heat of the Night,” “In Cold Blood,” “Mirage,” “For Love of Ivy” and “The Getaway,” and he composed theme songs and scored episodes for “Sanford and Son,” “Ironside” and two different shows starring Bill Cosby. He also produced the 1973 television tribute “Duke Ellington … We Love You Madly.”......At the same time Mr. Jones was making large-ensemble jazz-funk records as a leader, including “Walking in Space” (1969), whose title track won a Grammy for best instrumental jazz performance by a large group, before moving toward a more purely commercial kind of funk and R&B with “Body Heat” (1974). He was working on “Mellow Madness,” a follow-up to “Body Heat,” when he suffered a brain aneurysm in 1974, resulting in two operations. ...He produced hit records by the Brothers Johnson, who had sung on “Mellow Madness”; contributed music to the celebrated mini-series “Roots” in 1977; and in 1978 served as musical supervisor for Sidney Lumet’s film version of the Broadway musical “The Wiz,” working with Michael Jackson for the first time. The two would go on to make “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad,” whose combined certified American unit-sales amount to 46 million, and whose worldwide figures are said to be more than double that. As a joint venture with Warner Bros. Records, Mr. Jones started his own label, Qwest, in 1980. The label’s first release was the singer and guitarist George Benson’s “Give Me the Night,” which won three Grammys;....In 1985, he produced, arranged and conducted a supergroup of more than 40 singers — including Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder — under the banner name USA for Africa, in “We Are the World,” a fund-raising single for famine relief......In 1990, his record label became part of a larger multimedia entity, Quincy Jones Entertainment, which produced the sitcoms “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and “In the House” as well as the sketch show “Mad TV.” The business eventually >>branched out<< into >>publishing<<: He helped start the hip-hop magazine Vibe, and published Spin and Blaze with Robert Miller. ]]> '50s '60s '70s '80s '90s African-Americans Communicating_&_Connecting composers genius hitmakers honorary_doctorates jazz music music_arrangers music_labels music_producers musicians obituaries popular_music Quincy_Jones R&B singers smooth_jazz super_connectors creating_the_conditions branching_out multiplatforms publishing https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:7fe1e9b5ff20/ 2024-05-12T20:46:30+00:00 https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/late-admissions-review-glenn-lourys-rise-fall-and-rise-501cd57f?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1#comments_sector jerryking African-Americans black_conservatives books economists Glenn_Loury PhDs https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:9272fc38e348/ 2024-03-30T18:44:11+00:00 https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/03/29/louis-gossett-actor-roots-officer-and-gentleman-dead-obituary/ jerryking '80s actors African-Americans obituaries trailblazers Academy_Awards https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:5378b5f33580/ 2024-03-03T19:46:19+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/arts/television/felicia-snoop-pearson-ed-burns-wire.html jerryking actors African-Americans Baltimore blue-collar civic_collapse criminal_gangs David_Simon dramas Ed_Burns ensemble_acting hits institutional_failure Michael_K._Williams noughties post-industrial power_structures punishment television the_Wire working-class https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:669a5af59edd/ 2024-02-20T18:59:47+00:00 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q1CpAQTmWpFvWiefo7yBVWh0etFgzdXmnMRzqXxfE34/edit jerryking obituaries African-Americans authors behind-the-scenes Black_Power books coming_together-closing_ranks Daniel_Moynihan Democrats institutional_racism PhDs political_organizing political_science scholars self-interest Stokely_Carmichael Tuskegee uChicago writers https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:a5ddecc93123/ 2024-01-27T22:32:57+00:00 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect jerryking African-Americans discrepancies elections politics preference_falsification opinion_polls_&_surveys https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:609af94b404c/ 2024-01-24T18:47:07+00:00 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fwl9gM6KA7Ybqu9vesxgjID1XUv8ZkBfiXUWv6Ske1k/edit jerryking>trans-Atlantic<< slave trade. By 1808, as the number of enslaved persons in the U.S. approached 1.2 million, Congress outlawed the importation of slaves. Even after this prohibition, an estimated 8,000 Africans, like those on the Clotilda, were brought to the U.S. illegally. As Ms. Durkin relates, the enslavement of the Clotilda’s captives began in mid-April 1860, when warriors of the neighboring Fon people surrounded the town of Tarkar, in present day Nigeria. The attackers, armed with machetes, axes and flintlocks, needed only half an hour to burn the town, kill most of the adults and take prisoner the more than 100 survivors. Many years later, a man named Kossula, 19 at the time of the attack, wept as he recounted the terror of seeing his neighbors slaughtered and then being carried off him self. After enduring a two-week march to the slave port of Ouidah, in present-day Benin, the captives were imprisoned together in a barracoon, a large, circular pen with a thatched roof and bamboo walls. Tied to a stake, 12-year-old Redoshi heard the wails of the other prisoners and realized that she would never see her town or family again. “Africa is my home,” she later said. “White man took it from us. They made animals out of us.” While the prisoners languished in the barracoon, the Clotilda dropped anchor off the African coast. The 86-foot schooner was captained by William Foster, and its voyage was financed by a group of Alabama enslavers headed by the businessman Timothy Meaher. In Ouidah, Foster negotiated a price of $9,000 in gold, 20 barrels of rum and eight cases of calico cloth for the Tarkar captives, who were stripped naked for the duration of the voyage and crammed into the ship’s airless hull. Uriba, a girl of 14 or 15, wept inconsolably for days, while Redoshi prayed for death to take her. Subsisting on a daily ration of a cup of foul water and a little salt pork with crackers, the captives grew so frail that after two weeks, when they were allowed on deck in shifts, they were unable to walk. Seven young victims died at sea. After more than six agonizing weeks, Ms. Durkin writes, the Clotilda reached the Alabama coast and was clandestinely towed through Mobile Bay and then to Twelve Mile Island, north of the city. The ship was burned, and the 103 surviving prisoners, emaciated and disoriented but relieved at finally receiving rags to cover themselves, were taken by steamboat to a wild, swampy area about 40 miles upriver. Although the Clotilda’s arrival was an open secret around Mobile and reported in publications such as the New York Times and Harper’s Weekly, the enslavers were able to avoid discovery by shuff­ling their captives by wagon through a maze of sloughs and canebrakes. As the survivors were sold in small groups, they grieved again at the new separation from family and lifelong friends. Scattered through several Alabama counties, they were put to work in kitchens, cotton fields, forests, lumber mills, shipyards and steamboats. The last slave ship to land in America arrived in Alabama in 1860. Most of its captives were adolescents and children. At the conclusion of the Civil War, five years later, most of the survivors were still in their teens and early 20s. Longing to return to Africa but unable to raise the money for passage, they continued laboring as sharecroppers on the same plantations where they had been enslaved, or found jobs rebuilding the railroads or working in local industries. A few managed to buy their own land. One group approached Meaher, their former captor, and purchased a secluded tract three miles north of Mobile, where they built a largely self-suf­ficient community they called African Town. The settlement thrived, and by 1912 its population had grown to more than 2,000. One by one, Kossula, Redoshi and the others passed away. The last survivor, Matilda McCrear, died in Selma on Jan. 13, 1940, at the age of 81 or 82. In 2019 the wreck of the Clotilda was identified, submerged off Twelve Mile Island. Ms. Durkin is not the first to chronicle the last slave ship and its survivors. The >>Harlem Renaissance<< author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston interviewed Kossula extensively beginning in 1927 but abandoned the project. Her resulting book,“Barracoon,” wasn’t published until 2018. Other writers have mined the archives as well, and the story was featured in a “60 Minutes” segment and a 2022 Netflix documentary. Acknowledging her debt to her predecessors, and sometimes correcting earlier misconceptions, Ms. Durkin adds her own meticulous research and relates the story in ample and affecting detail. “Ultimately,” she writes,“the story of the Clotilda’s survivors is a tale of enduring tragedy and loss” but also “an extraordinary account of survival and >>endurance<<.” The traces of the survivors’ presence “can still be found throughout Alabama, and their legacy, and their descendants, remain across the United States.” By turns horrifying and inspiring, it is a story that bears retelling. ]]> Alabama books book_reviews Middle_Passage plantations slavery trans-Atlantic African-Americans antebellum descendants endurance Harlem_Renaissance the_South shipwrecks https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:ee730fcfb85f/ 2023-12-14T18:44:05+00:00 https://dnyuz.com/2023/12/13/black-students-are-being-trained-to-think-they-cant-handle-discomfort/ jerryking African-Americans anti-Semitism Colleges_&_Universities discomforts double_standards infantilization Jewish-Americans students John_McWhorter lowered_expectations speech_codes https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:7f10c8e1ee04/ 2023-10-25T18:51:19+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/movies/richard-roundtree-dead.html jerryking '70s actors African-Americans blaxploitation films masculinity movies obituaries https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:8d9b43cc47e6/ 2023-10-16T15:58:01+00:00 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/black-career-success-race-backlash/675437/ jerryking>Emmett Till<<’s dead body in Jet magazine in 1955 brought home vividly for my generation of Black kids that the consequences of failing to navigate carefully among white people could even be lethal............One might think that, as a decorated professor at an Ivy League university, I would have escaped the various indignities that being Black in traditionally white spaces exposes you to. And to be sure, I enjoy many of the privileges my white professional-class peers do. But the Black ghetto—a destitute and fearsome place in the popular imagination, though in reality it is home to legions of decent, hardworking families—remains so powerful that it attaches to all Black Americans, no matter where and how they live. Regardless of their wealth or professional status or years of law-abiding bourgeois decency, Black people simply cannot escape what I call the “iconic ghetto.”]]> backlash affirmative_action grievances social_order resentments white_grievances African-Americans Emmett_Till Ivy_League PhDs race_relations racial_resentment https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:c015199229af/ 2023-09-13T18:18:34+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/12/opinion/bayard-rustin-progressive-orthodoxies.html jerryking>intersectionality,<<” a theoretical framework popular among progressives that emphasizes the role that identities play in **compounding oppression against individuals from marginalized groups**. While it’s admirable that Mr. Rustin is being recognized for something he never denied (according to one associate, he “never knew there was a closet to go into”), these tributes studiously ignore another aspect of his life: how, throughout his later career, Mr. Rustin repeatedly challenged progressive >>orthodoxies<<.................Mr. Rustin, who was characterized by The Times in 1969 as “A Strategist Without a Movement” and, upon his death, an “Analyst Without Power Base,” would most likely find himself no less politically homeless were he alive today. A universalist who believed that “there is no possibility for black people making progress if we emphasize only race,” he would bristle at the current penchant for >>identity politics<<. An integrationist who scoffed at how “>>Stokely Carmichael<< can come back to the United States and demand (and receive) $2,500 a lecture for telling white people how they stink,” he would shake his head at an estimated $3.4 billion diversity, equity and inclusion industry that often prioritizes making individual white people feel guilty for the crimes of their ancestors while ignoring the growing class divide. A pragmatist who noted, “There is a strong moralistic strain in the civil rights movement which would remind us that power corrupts, forgetting that the absence of power also corrupts,” he would have no patience for >>social justice<< activists unwilling to compromise. And a committed >>Zionist<< — supportive of the state but likely critical of its government — he would abhor the >>Black Lives Matter<< stance on Israel and the recent spate of antisemitic outbursts by Black celebrities. Mr. Rustin’s resistance to party dogma is a neglected part of his legacy worth celebrating, an intellectual fearlessness [i.e. = "intellectual courage"] liberals need to rediscover........The origin of Mr. Rustin’s >>estrangement<< from the progressive consensus began with his belief that once federal civil rights legislation was achieved, the American left would need to turn its attention from racial discrimination to the much more pervasive problem of economic inequality.[.e. = "economic_inequity"] Four months after the march, Mr. Rustin was invited to deliver a speech at Howard University to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee... Mr. Rustin “said that the civil rights movement had gone as far as it could with its original approach and that the time had come to broaden the movement, which, he said, faces the danger of degenerating into a sterile sectarianism.” To avoid this fate, he argued, it must “include all depressed and underprivileged minority groups if their own movement is to make another leap forward.” Deriding >>direct-action<< protest tactics as mere “gimmicks,” Mr. Rustin counselled the young activists that “Heroism and ability to go to jail should not be substituted for an overall social reform program … that will not only help the Negroes but one that will help all Americans.”......Mr. Rustin expanded on this analysis in a seminal 1965 Commentary magazine essay, “From Protest to Politics.” Published after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and several months before the signing into law of the Voting Rights Act, Mr. Rustin argued that the main barrier to Black advancement in the United States would soon no longer be racism but >>poverty<<. “At issue, after all, is not civil rights, strictly speaking,” he wrote, “but social and economic conditions” that transcended race. The problems facing Black America, therefore, needed to be seen as the “result of the total society’s failure to meet not only the Negro’s needs, but human needs generally.” A stalwart social democrat, Mr. Rustin argued that meeting these needs required a >>coalition<< of “Negroes, trade unionists, liberals, and religious groups” to push the Democratic Party to the left on economic issues......I am heartened to see a new generation of Americans belatedly acquaint themselves with Bayard Rustin’s life and work. If we truly wish to honor his remarkable legacy, we should begin by recognizing him as he would have wanted: for his >>ideas<<, not his identity. ]]> '60s 1963_March_on_Washington African-Americans anti-Semitism Bayard_Rustin Black_Lives_Matter broad-based_strategies civil_rights coalitions direct_action economic_inequity homosexuality ideas-based intellectual_courage intersectionality legacies MLK orthodoxies overlooked pacifism political_organizing progressivism protest_movements sectarian social_justice targeted_strategies Zionism iconoclasts traitor_to_one's_class Stokely_Carmichael estrangement https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:adb66525c33c/ 2023-08-27T03:00:12+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/26/nyregion/march-on-washington-harlem.html jerryking>legislation<< [i.e. = legislative power"] and the support of the federal government [i.e. = "executive power"], there was not going to be anything done, really.]]> '60s 1963_March_on_Washington A._Philip_Randolph African-Americans anniversaries Bayard_Rustin black_interests civil_rights coalitions commemoration Harlem infighting JFK MLK NAACP nonviolence political_organizing protest_movements seminal_moments Washington_D.C. legislation executive_power legislative_power https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:7cffc9ade314/ 2023-08-19T05:05:11+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/obituaries/charles-j-ogletree-jr-dead.html jerryking African-Americans HLS obituaries https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:df8c76edbdbd/ 2023-08-17T15:55:04+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/14/arts/music/clarence-avant-dead.html jerryking> Behind the scenes, he furthered the careers of numerous entertainers, as well as some athletes and politicians.<< Clarence Avant, a record executive who shaped the careers not only of Bill Withers, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson and other Black singers, but also of politicians, actors and sports figures — exerting so much influence that a 2019 documentary about him was called simply “The Black Godfather” — died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 92....... The flood of tributes offered to Mr. Avant on Monday included many from younger performers who appreciated his legacy. “He is the ultimate example of what change looks like, what architecting change looks like, and what the success of change looks like,” the rapper and producer Pharrell said in a statement. “He stared adversity in the face in climates and conditions that weren’t welcoming to people that looked like him. But through his talent and relentless spirit in the pursuit to be the best of the best, he garnered the support and friendship of people who otherwise wouldn’t look in our direction.” ]]> African-Americans behind-the-scenes civil_rights dealmakers entertainment_industry gatekeepers influence legacies music_producers obituaries political_campaign_financing powerhouse power_brokers radio_stations street-smarts talent_management talent_representation unheralded https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:73574c38f925/ 2023-08-14T21:10:22+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/opinion/masculinity-right-young-men.html jerryking>social media<<, they’ll engage in blatantly racist, sexist and homophobic speech, flirt with fascist imagery and then often disavow their words and actions the instant they’re caught........last month, the Ron DeSantis campaign parted ways with a young speechwriter named Nate Hochman who reportedly inserted a Nazi sonnenrad symbol into a pro-DeSantis video online. Hochman was previously under fire for telling Nick Fuentes, a notorious white supremacist, that Fuentes was “probably a better influence” than the conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro “on young men who might otherwise be conservative.”.........In June the right-wing publication Breitbart published group chats and private messages from Pedro Gonzalez, a popular online influencer and DeSantis supporter, which included comments like “Whites are the only hope nonwhites have of living civilized lives” and “The only tactical consideration of Jews is screening them for movements,” along with a host of other comments not suitable for a family publication...........Richard Hanania, an influential anti-woke writer, published a series of pseudonymous posts at racist publications in the late 2000s and early 2010s. In a Substack post he rejected his old comments, but close observers of his contemporary work were hardly surprised by the revelations. Just this past May, for example, he posted in a thread on crime that America needs “more policing, incarceration, and surveillance of Black people.”..........The September issue of The Atlantic contains Graeme Wood’s fascinating and disturbing profile of a man named Costin Alamariu, better known online as Bronze Age Pervert, who has a cult following among the young right. Alamariu argues, writes Wood, “that the natural and desirable condition of life is the domination of the weak and ugly by the strong and noble. He considers American cities a ‘wasteland’ run by Jews and Black people, though the words he uses to denote these groups are considerably less genteel than these.” (Alamariu has claimed to be Jewish, and Hochman was raised Jewish as well.).......Terrible stuff. And even more terrible is the realization that I could fill this entire column with other examples of right-wing bigotry, from Christian nationalists, a former Trump speechwriter, a former Daily Caller editor and one of Tucker Carlson’s former top writers. And this is hardly a complete list.......What is going on? Why are parts of the right — especially the young right — so infested with outright racists and bigots? Some readers might respond to my question with a question: Why am I surprised? The right has always been infested with racists and bigots, you might argue. Yet while I freely acknowledge that there was more racism on the right than I was willing or able to see before the rise of Trump, there has been a distinct change in young right-wing culture. .......As I survey the right — especially the young, so-called new right — I see a movement in the grip of some rather simple but powerful >>cultural forces<<. Hatred, combined with masculine insecurity and cowardice, is herding young right-wing men into outright bigotry and prejudice. Contrary to their self-conception, they’re not strong or tough or courageous. They’re timid sheep in wolves’ clothing, moving exactly where the loudest and most aggressive voices tell them to. To **understand the cultural dynamic**, I want to introduce you to an obscure online concept, "no enemies to the right". A tiny fringe adopts this mind-set as a conscious ethos, but for a much larger group, it is simply their cultural reality. In their minds, the left is so evil — and represents such an existential threat — that any accommodation of it (or any criticism of the right) undermines the forces of light in their great battle against the forces of darkness. Attack the left in the most searing terms, and you’ll enjoy the thunderous applause of your peers. Criticize the new right, and you can experience a vicious backlash. The result is a relentless pull to the extremes.......the Reagan right of their parents’ generation.........was simply too accommodating. As they see it, classical liberal politics, which preserve free speech and robust debate as a priority, emboldened and empowered the left. Compromise, in their view, ran only one way, and conservatism conserved nothing. The left, in their mind, is winning the >>culture war<< in a rout..........And here’s where masculine insecurity enters the equation. To the new right, their opposition to the left is so obviously correct that only >>moral cowardice<< or financial opportunism (“grifting”) can explain any compromise. To fight on the right — mainly by trolling on social media or embracing authoritarianism as the based alternative to weak-kneed classical liberalism — is seen as strong, courageous and cool. It’s a sign of a fierce and independent mind. Thus, the troll isn’t just a troll he’s a man. He’s a warrior. But what happens if you disagree? What happens if you ask: Wait, are we going too far? Well, then, you’re weak and small. You become the grifter. You don’t know what time it is. All of the social sanctions you inflicted on others come crashing down on you. And if the new right is good at anything, it’s good at bullying its critics. It’s a core aspect of the entire movement.......It’s difficult to break the hold of bigotry and fury on the online right, but as is so often the case, the solution to online evil can be found in offline relationships, the family and friends who keep us grounded to the real..........In the meantime, these angry online sheep can still bite. They’re using their platforms to whip countless Americans into their own frenzy of fear. We should expect more bigotry and more revelations. Dark words spoken in secret will spill out into the public square. The lost boys of the American right corrupt our culture. Full of fury against their opponents and afraid of running afoul of their “friends,” they poison our politics and damage their own souls. ]]> African-Americans alt-right anti-Black anti-semitism bigotry conservatism cowardice David_French Donald_Trump echo_chambers ethno­nationalism extremism fascism far-right gaslighting GOP Internet masculinity racism right-of-center right-wing social_media toxic_behaviors trolls unhinged white_men young_people financial_opportunism grifting cultural_forces culture_wars disaffected_masculinity cultural_understanding moral_cowardice https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:ca4984fda200/ 2023-06-20T13:30:58+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/opinion/black-economists.html jerryking African-Americans biases Colleges_&_Universities crisis cultural_capital diversity economics economists elitism gatekeepers HBCUs hiring mentoring pedigree outreach Peter_Coy PhDs relatability research_assistants shortfalls STEM trailblazers under-representation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:7300a1fde842/ 2023-06-07T19:28:59+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/07/opinion/resistance-black-advancement-affirmative-action.html jerryking affirmative_action African-Americans history Randall_Kennedy https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:692792923766/ 2023-05-20T04:16:29+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/sports/football/jim-brown-dead.html jerryking African-Americans athletes_&_athletics civil_rights football NFL obituaries actors https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:27633fc19a29/ 2023-04-14T06:07:06+00:00 https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/manchild-in-a-promised-land-still-depicts-our-america?utm_social-type=owned&utm_brand=tny&mbid=social_twitter jerryking>novel<<, but was always understood to be a memoir of Brown’s youth, a >>street-level<< portrait of post->>Great Migration<< Harlem. Brown’s family came to New York from rural South Carolina, where his parents had been sharecroppers. They were, like many others they met in Harlem, ambitious people who’d left the Jim Crow South for the promise of upward mobility, only to encounter ruinous poverty and segregated isolation up North..........When Brown died, in 2002, the Times reported that the book was still selling more than thirty thousand copies a year, and was on high-school and college syllabi across the country. In the twenty years since then, the book has become no less relevant, but it seems, anecdotally, to have become >>less visible<<. .......In Brown’s later years, people would ask him about changes he’d seen, across his life, in communities like Harlem. By the turn of the century, gentrification had made parts of Harlem almost unrecognizably different from the neighborhood that he grew up in. But other sections remained destitute, and it was those places Brown kept in mind when he answered the question. He said that, across American cities, poor young men had much easier access to guns than he and his friends had, and were far more ready to use them. ]]> '40s '50s African-Americans books coming-of-age Harlem lawyers New_York_City nostalgia writers bestsellers Great_Migration memoirs novels revisitation street-level street-smarts least/less_visible https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:54e68b006cab/ 2023-03-29T17:58:48+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/us/randall-robinson-dead.html jerryking>He also supported reparations for descendants of enslaved Americans and sanctuary for Haitian refugees. But he lived for two decades in >>self-imposed<< >>exile.<< Randall Robinson, the founder of the lobbying and research organization TransAfrica, at his home in Washington in 2001. Later that year, frustrated with the American government and white society, he left the United States. ]]> '80s activism ADOS African-Americans anti-apartheid exile founders HLS lawyers Randall_Robinson trailblazers TransAfrica Pan-African self-imposed https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:2916f5374e75/ 2023-03-12T02:07:36+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/us/navy-ship-confederate-robert-smalls.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=US%20News jerryking African-Americans Civil_War Confederacy emancipation entrepreneur heroes leaders naming oceanography overlooked politicians Reconstruction Robert_Smalls slavery soldiers sonar statesmen symbolism the_South trailblazers U.S._Navy women https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:36940dd76285/ 2023-02-17T20:58:34+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/17/opinion/desantis-florida-african-american-studies-black-history.html jerryking>Carter G. Woodson<<, who in 1926 invented what has become Black History Month, was keenly aware of the role of politics in the classroom, especially Lost Cause interventions. “Starting after the Civil War,” he wrote, “the opponents of freedom and social Justice decided to work out a program which would enslave the Negroes’ mind in as much as the freedom of the body has to be conceded.” “It was well understood,” Woodson continued, “that if by the teaching of history the white man could be further assured of his superiority and the Negro could be made to feel that he had always been a failure and that the subjection of his will to some other race is necessary the freedman, then, would still be a slave.” “If you can control a man’s thinking,” Woodson concluded, “you do not have to worry about his action.” Is it fair to see Governor DeSantis’s attempts to police the contents of the College Board’s AP curriculum in African American Studies in classrooms in Florida solely as little more than a contemporary version of Mildred Rutherford’s Lost Cause textbook campaign? No. But the governor would do well to consider the company that he is keeping. And let’s just say that he, no expert in African American history, seems to be gleefully embarked on an effort to censor scholarship about the complexities of the Black past with a determination reminiscent of Rutherford’s. While most certainly not embracing her cause, Mr. DeSantis is complicitous in perpetuating her agenda. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so aptly put it, “No society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present.” Addressing these “ravages,” and finding solutions to them — a process that can and should begin in the classroom — can only proceed with open discussions and debate across the ideological spectrum, a process in which Black thinkers themselves have been engaged since the earliest years of our Republic. Throughout Black history, there has been a long, sad and often nasty tradition of attempts to censor popular >>art forms<<, from the characterization of the blues, ragtime and jazz as “the devil’s music” by guardians of “the politics of respectability,” to efforts to censor hip-hop by C. Delores Tucker, who led a campaign to ban gangsta rap music in the 1990s. Hip-hop has been an equal opportunity offender for potential censors: Mark Wichner, the deputy sheriff of Florida’s Broward Country, brought 2 Live Crew up on obscenity charges in 1990. But there is a crucial difference between Ms. Tucker, best known as a civil rights activist, and Mr. Wichner, an administrator of justice on behalf of the state, a difference similar to that between Rutherford and Mr. DeSantis. While the urge to censor art — a symbolic form of vigilante policing — is colorblind, there is no equivalence between governmental censorship and the would-be censorship of moral crusaders. Many states are following Florida’s lead in seeking to bar discussions of race and history in classrooms. The distinction between Mildred Lewis Rutherford and Governor DeSantis? **The power differential**. Rutherford wished for nothing less than the power to summon the apparatus of the state to impose her strictures on our country’s narrative about the history of race and racism. Mr. DeSantis has that power and has shown his willingness to use it. And it is against this misguided display of power that those of us who cherish the freedom of inquiry at the heart of our country’s educational ideal must take a stand. ]]> African-Americans civics Civil_War Confederacy engaged_citizenry Florida foundational Henry_Louis_Gates high_schools history indoctrination Jim_Crow Lost_Cause political_agendas propaganda public_schools race_relations Reconstruction Rollback Ron_DeSantis segregation slaveholders slavery the_South white_supremacy Black_History_Month book-banning Carter_Woodson historians MLK power_structures art_forms https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:8d55697f9339/ 2023-02-06T02:54:26+00:00 https://www.wsj.com/articles/black-african-american-history-ap-florida-desantis-condi-11675614390?mod=opinion_major_pos18 jerryking African-Americans culture_wars education history political_agendas Ron_DeSantis Condeleeza_Rice https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:a6c399131513/ 2023-01-22T19:42:57+00:00 https://adamsmithesq.com/2022/11/the-ballad-of-kanye-and-kyrie/ jerryking>high-profile<< celebrities selling their name could abruptly blow themselves up that they disclose it in their corporate filings as a material risk. Kanye West (Courtesy The Guardian) As Adidas put in its most recent annual report: “the company is exposed to a multitude of business partner risks” through its relationships with athletes and creative partners Nike uses broader language but with the same import. Under “Risk Factors” you find prominently listed adverse publicity and an inability to maintain NIKE’s reputation and brand image, So what happened? Essentially both celebrities turned themselves into public relations kryptonite and corporate persona non grata in full caps italics and bold overnight. Kanye West kicked off the festivities by posting a mock newspaper front page in September faking a report of the death of Adidas chief executive, Kasper Rorsted, who is alive and well. So far so much bad taste, but the unforgivable occurred in early October when Kanye wrote on Twitter that he would “go to Defcon 3 [sic] ON JEWISH PEOPLE” [emphasis original] in the course of bragging in a recorded interview about his anti-semitism. While Adidas announced promptly that it was “reviewing” its relationship, it took several more long weeks before they actually dropped him. And perhaps they had their reasons: The financial impact on Adidas is, as that annual report will surely acknowledge next year, highly material. The Kanye-endorsed product line (“Yeezys”) was responsible for about $250 million this quarter alone in net income, all of which will now disappear, and Yeezys accounted for 8% of Adidas $21 billion in annual revenue. And the very-much-alive Mr. Rorsted has accelerated his planned departure so that the newly hired CEO (Bjorn Gulden, from Puma) can step in and start dealing with the Yeezy fallout. And over at Nike? The Guardianprovided the background nicely: Irving signed with Nike in 2011 and had a signature line of shoes since 2014, with his annual endorsement deal believed to be worth at least $11m. They had methodically built a “Kyrie” [Irving] line of basketball sneakers, becoming one of Nike’s best sellers in that sport, with a broad array of styles drawing kids and others to its continually refreshed models and colors, and a manageable middle class price point of $120/pair. The combination of availability and affordability make Kyries the footwear equivalent of a generic drug. “They’re not as much attached to Kyrie himself as the price point and performance of the product,” said Matt Halfhill, the founder of the sneaker news site Nice Kicks. To put it another way, Kyries are no Yeezys. At that point–last month–Mr. Irving >>immolated<< his own credibility and reputation by promoting a movie that dwelt in false >>conspiracy theories<< about Jews and attempting to minimize the Holocaust.[i.e. = "disinformation"] Whether or not it figured into Nike’s thinking, Kyrie had been a Covid vaccination refuser since, well, as soon as you could be, and was duly banned from playing at home in Brooklyn (or being paid for those games) because of New York City’s vaccination mandate. A loyal correspondent informed me since this column was initially published that he also is a member in the good standing (well, figuratively speaking) of the renowned Flat Earth Society.) Within days of his descent into anti-semitism, and despite a somewhat credible apology out of Mr. Irving, Nike pre-emptively canceled its endorsement contract and pulled the launch of the next “Kyrie” sneaker scheduled just weeks away. Which brings us to the punch line: The shoe having more allure than the name of the shoe is why it wasn’t as difficult for Nike to sideline Mr. Irving. The company had the diversified resources to bench one of its most valuable players and barely notice. Adidas struggled to dump a star. Nike could just do it. Phil Knight, the well-known founder of Nike, took no time laying out why the decision to jettison Kyrie was so easy: “Kyrie stepped over the line,” Knight said. “It’s kind of that simple. He made some statements that we just can’t abide by and that’s why we ended the relationship. And I was fine with that.” --- And what has this to do with lawyers and law firms? A part of me is tempted to end our little essay here, as a parable for the reader to interpret through their own lens, but we deem it imprudent editorial policy to leave our followers in the lurch, so: You have two very high-profile individuals here, both with powerful and occasionally impulsive egos, probably not predisposed to behave in the most conservative, predictable, low-key manner, and without regard to “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” And there’s a lot of money involved. Nike employed Kyrie Irving strategically in a way Adidas could never have achieved with Kanye West. Kyrie was an asset to Nike, we must presume, yet managed in a way that he could be jettisoned at any time, immediately, with no second thoughts or regrets, and immaterial financial fallout. By contrast, Adidas permitted Kanye West to become Too Big, a >>tentpole<< of the corporate brand. If his departure caused, or surely accelerated, the departure of Adidas’ own CEO, you know the relationship had become asymmetrical to a fault. You know what to do with these egos, folks. So, as you have probably heard somewhere, “Just Do It.” ]]> Adidas African-Americans anti-Semitism athletes_&_athletics basketball branding brands Bruce_MacEwen celebrities disinformation ego ego-control high-profile hip-hop Kanye_West lawyers law_firms leadership Nike partnerships persona_non_grata public_relations recruiting reputational_risk sneakers strategy tent-pole conspiracy_theories immolation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:bbb16bd1f247/ 2023-01-08T16:54:37+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/books/review/under-the-skin-linda-villarosa.html jerryking African-Americans books book_reviews healthcare legacies mental_health racial_disparities racism reproductive_health Tuskegee anti-Black https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:bf8bced51a55/ 2023-01-01T16:39:15+00:00 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-singer-anita-pointer-of-the-pointer-sisters-dies-at-age-74/ jerryking '70s African-Americans singers obituaries women https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:3f61d15e247a/