An excerpt from the Associated Press -
National Geographic acknowledges past racist coverage
By JESSE J. HOLLAND
WASHINGTON (AP) — National Geographic acknowledged on Monday that it covered the world through a racist lens for generations, with its magazine portrayals of bare-breasted women and naive brown-skinned tribesmen as savage, unsophisticated and unintelligent.
“We had to own our story to move beyond it,” editor-in-chief Susan Goldberg told The Associated Press in an interview about the yellow-bordered magazine’s April issue, which is devoted to race.
National Geographic first published its magazine in 1888. An investigation conducted last fall by University of Virginia photography historian John Edwin Mason showed that until the 1970s, it virtually ignored people of color in the United States who were not domestics or laborers, and it reinforced repeatedly the idea that people of color from foreign lands were “exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages_every type of cliché.”
For example, in a 1916 article about Australia, the caption on a photo of two Aboriginal people read: “South Australian Blackfellows: These savages rank lowest in intelligence of all human beings.”
https://apnews.com/52098332431c4ef1be3046487451684e
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Back & White Twins
From the National Geographic -
These Twins, One Black and One White, Will Make You Rethink Race
Marcia and Millie Biggs say they’ve never been subjected to racism—just curiosity and surprise that twins could have such different skin colors.
By Patricia Edmonds
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-twins-black-white-biggs/
These Twins, One Black and One White, Will Make You Rethink Race
Marcia and Millie Biggs say they’ve never been subjected to racism—just curiosity and surprise that twins could have such different skin colors.
By Patricia Edmonds
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-twins-black-white-biggs/
 | ||
| Marcia (left) and Millie Biggs, both 11, say people are shocked to learn that they’re fraternal twins. Marcia looks more like their mother, who’s English born, and Millie looks more like their father, who’s of Jamaican descent. PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBIN HAMMOND |
Monday, March 12, 2018
Wakanda Forever
From Slate -
Black Athletes Have Started Celebrating Their Victories With the “Wakanda Forever” Salute from Black Panther
By MATTHEW DESSEM
https://slate.com/culture/2018/03/black-athletes-have-started-celebrating-their-victories-with-the-wakanda-forever-salute.html
Black Athletes Have Started Celebrating Their Victories With the “Wakanda Forever” Salute from Black Panther
By MATTHEW DESSEM
https://slate.com/culture/2018/03/black-athletes-have-started-celebrating-their-victories-with-the-wakanda-forever-salute.html
Playcousin to the Rescue
An excerpt from the Root -
How My Playcousin Stopped a Mass Shooting and Disproved the Myth about Good Guys With Guns
By Michael Harriot
To understand this story, you must first know the hierarchy of the Black family tree. There are black people across this country who have blood relatives they don’t know about, including sisters, brothers and sometimes parents. Ranking higher than any DNA-based relationship is the earned honorific of “playcousin.” A playcousin is a defacto sibling. It is more family member than actual family.
When I was growing up, my mother’s best friend had four children. She was as much my aunt as any of my mother’s sisters. Her husband was one of the scant few in-house fathers in my neighborhood, and he was a hulking figure of a man who still calls me “professor.” Like my family, they had three girls and only one of their children was a boy. His name was Heyward Jackson, Jr. but in most black neighborhoods, birth names are as malleable as DNA and often give way to nicknames.
We call him “Junie Poonie.”
https://www.theroot.com/how-my-playcousin-stopped-a-mass-shooting-and-disproved-1823669955
How My Playcousin Stopped a Mass Shooting and Disproved the Myth about Good Guys With Guns
By Michael Harriot
To understand this story, you must first know the hierarchy of the Black family tree. There are black people across this country who have blood relatives they don’t know about, including sisters, brothers and sometimes parents. Ranking higher than any DNA-based relationship is the earned honorific of “playcousin.” A playcousin is a defacto sibling. It is more family member than actual family.
When I was growing up, my mother’s best friend had four children. She was as much my aunt as any of my mother’s sisters. Her husband was one of the scant few in-house fathers in my neighborhood, and he was a hulking figure of a man who still calls me “professor.” Like my family, they had three girls and only one of their children was a boy. His name was Heyward Jackson, Jr. but in most black neighborhoods, birth names are as malleable as DNA and often give way to nicknames.
We call him “Junie Poonie.”
https://www.theroot.com/how-my-playcousin-stopped-a-mass-shooting-and-disproved-1823669955
An Open Letter
From the Root -
An Open Letter to Kenya Barris Begging Him to Leak the Banned Episode of Black-ish
By Michael Harriot
https://www.theroot.com/an-open-letter-to-kenya-barris-to-begging-him-to-leak-t-1823681303
An Open Letter to Kenya Barris Begging Him to Leak the Banned Episode of Black-ish
By Michael Harriot
https://www.theroot.com/an-open-letter-to-kenya-barris-to-begging-him-to-leak-t-1823681303
The Perfect Crime
From Now I Know -
http://nowiknow.com/how-a-nearly-perfect-crime-became-perfect-again/
http://nowiknow.com/how-a-nearly-perfect-crime-became-perfect-again/
True Diversity
An excerpt from the NY Times -
Black Kids Don’t Want to Read About Harriet Tubman All the Time
By DENENE MILLNER
I’m pretty sure I hadn’t even wiped the sonogram goop off my belly before I rushed off to pick out dresses and books for my unborn child. I was on a mission: My daughter was going to need all the pink dresses and all the books with brown babies.
Finding adorable dresses was easy. Finding children’s literature with pictures of children of color was not.
Books with white children and, like, ducks, were de rigueur, which I guess was fine for parents who were having white babies or ducks. But this was not going to work for my brown baby, who would spend a lifetime looking for her image in a pop cultural landscape that all but ignored children who looked like her. I wanted — needed — her to see her beautiful brown self reflected in the music and stories I hoped to feed to her as consistently as food. In my house, she would be visible.
Eventually, a friend helped me track down Ezra Jack Keats’s “The Snowy Day,” and the lovely “ ‘More More More,’ Said the Baby.” And my stepson gave his copy of Nikki Giovanni’s “The Sun Is So Quiet” to his baby sister. I eventually discovered the treasure trove that is Just Us Books, and works by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Eloise Greenfield. Still, the pickings were slim.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/children-literature-books-blacks.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share
http://justusbooksonlinestore.com/index.php
Black Kids Don’t Want to Read About Harriet Tubman All the Time
By DENENE MILLNER
I’m pretty sure I hadn’t even wiped the sonogram goop off my belly before I rushed off to pick out dresses and books for my unborn child. I was on a mission: My daughter was going to need all the pink dresses and all the books with brown babies.
Finding adorable dresses was easy. Finding children’s literature with pictures of children of color was not.
Books with white children and, like, ducks, were de rigueur, which I guess was fine for parents who were having white babies or ducks. But this was not going to work for my brown baby, who would spend a lifetime looking for her image in a pop cultural landscape that all but ignored children who looked like her. I wanted — needed — her to see her beautiful brown self reflected in the music and stories I hoped to feed to her as consistently as food. In my house, she would be visible.
Eventually, a friend helped me track down Ezra Jack Keats’s “The Snowy Day,” and the lovely “ ‘More More More,’ Said the Baby.” And my stepson gave his copy of Nikki Giovanni’s “The Sun Is So Quiet” to his baby sister. I eventually discovered the treasure trove that is Just Us Books, and works by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Eloise Greenfield. Still, the pickings were slim.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/children-literature-books-blacks.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share
http://justusbooksonlinestore.com/index.php
She Knew
An excerpt from the NY Times -
Melania Knew
By Charles M. Blow
Dear America: Come on, you can’t be serious.
The ongoing saga over a president, a porn star and a payoff is so lewd and tawdry that it can’t simply be added to the ever-expanding list of horrible misbehaviors of a womanizing misogynist.
It’s not even the infidelity that most bothers me. I view that as an issue between spouses and with the other person involved. I contend that we on the outside never really know what understandings may exist in a marriage, unless the two parties within reveal it.
In this case, Melania knew exactly the kind of man she was getting.
When Donald first meets Melania, they are at a New York Fashion Week party to which Donald has been invited by the wealthy Italian businessman who brought Melania to America on a modeling contract and work visa. According to GQ, sometimes, to promote his models, the businessman “would send a few girls to an event and invite photographers, producers, and rich playboys.”
Trump is on a date with another woman that night. He is also in the process of divorcing Marla Maples, his second wife, with whom he had had an affair while still married to his first wife, Ivana Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/11/opinion/melania-trump-stormy.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share
Melania Knew
By Charles M. Blow
Dear America: Come on, you can’t be serious.
The ongoing saga over a president, a porn star and a payoff is so lewd and tawdry that it can’t simply be added to the ever-expanding list of horrible misbehaviors of a womanizing misogynist.
It’s not even the infidelity that most bothers me. I view that as an issue between spouses and with the other person involved. I contend that we on the outside never really know what understandings may exist in a marriage, unless the two parties within reveal it.
In this case, Melania knew exactly the kind of man she was getting.
When Donald first meets Melania, they are at a New York Fashion Week party to which Donald has been invited by the wealthy Italian businessman who brought Melania to America on a modeling contract and work visa. According to GQ, sometimes, to promote his models, the businessman “would send a few girls to an event and invite photographers, producers, and rich playboys.”
Trump is on a date with another woman that night. He is also in the process of divorcing Marla Maples, his second wife, with whom he had had an affair while still married to his first wife, Ivana Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/11/opinion/melania-trump-stormy.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share
Spot On?
From Business Insider -
8 things science says predict divorce
By Shana Lebowitz
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-know-if-your-marriage-will-end-in-divorce-according-to-science-2017-10
8 things science says predict divorce
By Shana Lebowitz
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-know-if-your-marriage-will-end-in-divorce-according-to-science-2017-10
Sunday, March 11, 2018
What's Old is New Again
An excerpt from the Washington Post -
Meet the latest tourist attractions: Abandoned factories
By Rebecca Powers
Trip-planning multiple choice:
a) Mountains b) Sand c) Surf
d) Factories.
If you picked the last vacation option, you’ve got company.
“We’re finding a hunger,” says Michael Boettcher, an urban planner and industrial-history buff. “Everyone has been to Disney World, and it’s like, what else you got?”
In Japan, it’s popular to take nighttime boat cruises past glittering industrial superstructures. In Germany’s Ruhr industrial powerhouse region, bicyclists meander a landscape that has turned recreational. And in Canada, 1920s wooden grain elevators, dubbed the Five Prairie Giants, draw sightseers to the Manitoba plains.
The appeal? “It gives you a sense of where we’ve been and how that has made us who we are,” Boettcher says.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/industrial-deevolution/2018/03/08/50d57022-1cdc-11e8-9de1-147dd2df3829_story.html?utm_term=.1b3c45c41132&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
Meet the latest tourist attractions: Abandoned factories
By Rebecca Powers
Trip-planning multiple choice:
a) Mountains b) Sand c) Surf
d) Factories.
If you picked the last vacation option, you’ve got company.
“We’re finding a hunger,” says Michael Boettcher, an urban planner and industrial-history buff. “Everyone has been to Disney World, and it’s like, what else you got?”
In Japan, it’s popular to take nighttime boat cruises past glittering industrial superstructures. In Germany’s Ruhr industrial powerhouse region, bicyclists meander a landscape that has turned recreational. And in Canada, 1920s wooden grain elevators, dubbed the Five Prairie Giants, draw sightseers to the Manitoba plains.
The appeal? “It gives you a sense of where we’ve been and how that has made us who we are,” Boettcher says.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/industrial-deevolution/2018/03/08/50d57022-1cdc-11e8-9de1-147dd2df3829_story.html?utm_term=.1b3c45c41132&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
Brain Damage
An excerpt form the Boston Globe -
Nearly half of Patriots on first 3 Super Bowl-winning teams report brain injuries
By Bob Hohler
Some 42 of about 100 Patriots who were members of New England’s first three Super Bowl title teams have alleged in a landmark class-action concussion suit against the NFL and the helmet maker Riddell that they have experienced symptoms of brain injuries caused by the repetitive head impacts they absorbed in games and practices.
In all, more than 340 former Patriots or their estates have sued the NFL and its former helmet manufacturer. The Globe, using the team’s official all-time roster, has for the first time compiled and analyzed a list of the Patriots who allege they suffered brain injuries on the job since the franchise was founded in 1960.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2018/03/10/nearly-half-patriots-first-super-bowl-winners-report-symptoms-brain-injuries/aXvjJscYPy5Gsjwqc8jdYL/story.html?et_rid=606374700&s_campaign=todaysheadlines:newsletter
Nearly half of Patriots on first 3 Super Bowl-winning teams report brain injuries
By Bob Hohler
Some 42 of about 100 Patriots who were members of New England’s first three Super Bowl title teams have alleged in a landmark class-action concussion suit against the NFL and the helmet maker Riddell that they have experienced symptoms of brain injuries caused by the repetitive head impacts they absorbed in games and practices.
In all, more than 340 former Patriots or their estates have sued the NFL and its former helmet manufacturer. The Globe, using the team’s official all-time roster, has for the first time compiled and analyzed a list of the Patriots who allege they suffered brain injuries on the job since the franchise was founded in 1960.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2018/03/10/nearly-half-patriots-first-super-bowl-winners-report-symptoms-brain-injuries/aXvjJscYPy5Gsjwqc8jdYL/story.html?et_rid=606374700&s_campaign=todaysheadlines:newsletter
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