From Inside Hook -
The 20 Best Aretha Franklin Songs You Probably Don’t Know
These lesser-known songs could use a little more R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Monday, August 16, 2021
How Does He Do That?
A collection of me turning into random objects. pic.twitter.com/ValPdPNJIj
— Kevin Parry (@kevinbparry) July 13, 2021
Congratulations!
An excerpt from Black Enterprise -
28-YEAR-OLD WINS VIRAL WINE CONTEST; RECEIVES $10,000 MONTHLY SALARY AND FREE RENT FOR A YEAR
by Charlene Rhinehart
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| (Image Credit: Instagram) |
Austin-based wine connoisseur Lindsay Perry was recently selected as a new employee of Murphy-Goode Winery. The 28-year-old will move to California this fall to pursue her dream job. As a contest winner, she will receive a salary of $10,000 per month and live went free for a year while indulging in some of the best wines.
Perry participated in the company’s “A Really Goode Job” viral competition. According to Inside Edition, Perry beat out over 7,200 other applicants who submitted videos for the Sonoma-based Murphy Goode Winery wine competition.
Friday, August 13, 2021
Our Ancestors' Wildest Dreams
We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams.✨
— R.J. Ledet, Ph.D. #MentalHealth4DaHood (@drrussellledet) December 14, 2019
In the background, an original slave quarter.
In the foreground, original descendants of slaves and medical students. #whatatimetobealive #yeahwecandoboth pic.twitter.com/INOUMmc1cx
Jason Arena pissed off at #antivaxxers #antimask people he’s got a point...
https://youtu.be/Vei9Qv2kWXw
Who Do You Want to Wake Up With?
From Bored Panda -
21 Women Before And After Their Bridal Makeup By Arber Bytyqi (New Pics)
By Rokas Laurinavičius and Greta Jaruševičiūtė
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Cute & Conscientious: A Winning Combination
Michael B. Jordan launches basketball showcase for HBCU athletes
By Jaelen Ogadhoh
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| Michael B. Jordan attends the 51st NAACP Image Awards, Presented by BET, at Pasadena Civic Auditorium on February 22, 2020 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) |
Basketball as we know it today may not exist without the contributions of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and their alumni, such as Howard University graduate Edwin Henderson, who earned the nickname “The Father of Black Basketball” in the early 20th century when he introduced the game to African Americans in Washington D.C., catalyzing the sport’s rapid growth in popularity among Black communities nationwide.
Today, largely thanks to Henderson’s contributions, basketball is not only one of the most popular sports among HBCUs, but among Black Americans across the country. Despite the current popularity, only one five-star-ranked high school basketball player has opted to play for an HBCU since ESPN began ranking players in 2007.
Actor and producer Michael B. Jordan is among the high-profile public figures making efforts to further amplify HBCUs and their student-athletes in 2021. The Black Panther and Just Mercy star is launching the “Hoop Dreams Classic,” a basketball showcase featuring the nation’s top Division 1 HBCU men’s and women’s basketball teams.
Edwin Henderson (November 24, 1883 – February 3, 1977), widely recognized as the "Grandfather of Black Basketball." pic.twitter.com/TGk5jEbKjx
— BeverlyBlack (@gumboforthesoul) September 8, 2016
https://news.yahoo.com/michael-b-jordan-launches-basketball-215059107.html
Great! You First.
An excerpt from the Metro -
‘You can’t call yourself a hairdresser unless you can do Afro hair,’ says white salon owner
By Natalie Morris
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| Anne says there needs to be significant changes in the beauty industry (Pictures: Anne Veck) |
Last month it was announced that all UK hairdressers would have to learn to cut and style Afro hair as standard – in an update to beauty regulations.
The move was welcomed by many who called it long-overdue, particularly people with Afro hair who don’t live in diverse areas and would have to travel long distances to find a salon that could cater to their needs.
Anne Veck is a white hairdresser, originally from France, and the owner of Anne Veck hair salon in Oxford. She believes that the changes to training standards are of course welcome, but within salons there is still lots more to do.
The 58-year-old is on the hair committee for the British Beauty Council and was also a finalist at the British Hairdressing Awards 2021 with an all Afro hair collection.
I'm Not a Baseball Fan, But This Batgirl is My Hero!
Here’s some video sent that was sent to me. pic.twitter.com/9hICgcVdR5
— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) August 8, 2021
The Impact of Racism
An excerpt from Market Watch -
‘Males, particularly white males, are persistently overrepresented’: Many kids of color don’t see themselves in the books they read
Researchers used artificial intelligence technology to analyze imagery in children’s books
By Andrew Keshner
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| A new study looks at the images looking back at kids in children's books (PHOTO BY GEORGE FREY/GETTY IMAGES) |
The researchers were not attempting to offer any suggestions on the right amount of demographic and race representation in kids’ books, they said.
Instead, they noted the study showed that with the help of technology, it’s possible to quantify the amount of race and gender representation in children’s books.
“By providing research that expands our understanding about the diversity in content, we can help to contribute to work that aims to overcome the structural inequality that pervades society and our daily lives,” they wrote.
The study comes amid a debate on the presence of critical race theory in the classroom. The theory says race is a social construct. The theory is pointing out that social institutions like the criminal justice system, housing market, healthcare system and more can treat races differently, according to observers like Rashawn Ray, a fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The “scholars and activists who discuss [critical race theory] are not arguing that white people living now are to blame for what people did in the past,” Ray wrote. “They are saying that white people living now have a moral responsibility to do something about how racism still impacts all of our lives today.” (Highlighted by Faye)
'A Journal for Jordan' trailer starring Michael B. Jordan, directed by D...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zvmxYSE4UY
Sunday, August 8, 2021
She Was a Pioneer in WWII
An excerpt from Time -
This Pioneering Officer Led an All-Black Women’s Army Corps Battalion in a Daunting World War II Mission: Saving Soldiers' Mail
BY MARI K. EDER
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| Maj. Charity Adams, commanding officer of the WAC Postal Battalion serving in England Bettmann Archive/Getty Images |
Charity Adams was already on her way to the European theater in January 1945, and there was a sealed envelope on her lap. It was time to find out where she was going. She tore open the sealed orders and gasped. It was the job every officer coveted: command, troop time, and being in charge. Adams, who had been the highest-ranking Black officer at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, had commanded a training company, which was a good experience, but to be selected to command a battalion—a brand-new unit—overseas during wartime was a tremendous vote of confidence in her abilities. It was every opportunity she could have hoped for.
Adams had been born in 1919, at a time when the U.S. was celebrating victory in World War I. The next year, the 19th Amendment was passed, and women were given the right to vote. It was a time of change in the country. A feeling of optimism was in the air, and it felt like new possibilities were open for women—unless you were Black. Then it was still a fight, all the way. Growing up in Columbia, S.C., the oldest of four children of a minister and a teacher, she’d been first in many things in her life, including being first in her high school class, valedictorian, and she continued that streak in 1942, becoming part of the first officer class of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC, later simply WAC).
By the time she reached Fort Des Moines for basic officer training, she’d already gotten her first taste of racism in the Army. A white lieutenant had insisted and made certain that Black recruits didn’t sit with the white women on the bus headed for the camp. In that first officer class, there were 400 white women. There were also 40 Black women—the “ten percenters.” While their training was integrated, their living conditions were not.
The Army had scrambled to assemble Adams’ new unit, the 6888th Central Postal Battalion. By 1944, there was a two-year backlog of mail for troops, members of the Red Cross and civilians serving in Europe. There simply weren’t enough postal units. The all-Black WAC unit, known as the “Six Triple Eight,” was the only Black WAC unit to be deployed—another first, with an impossible mission.
The Six Triple Eight’s 855 women were sent to Birmingham, England. When the first contingent arrived, Adams was there to meet their ship. Many had been seasick on the trip over. After being chased by submarines, others were glad to be on land. Their arrival came with a message about the danger of their work—a German V1 rocket, the “Buzz Bomb,” came screaming in just as the women were heading down the ramp. They ran for cover as it hit the dock close to where they were disembarking. No one was injured, but it was a definite reminder that they had arrived in a war zone.
https://time.com/6085055/charity-adams-world-war-ii/
They Got the Last Laugh
An excerpt from the Mirror -
People who have had the last laugh with funny messages on their tombstones
Here are our favourite picks of some of the most entertaining, comical, light-hearted and even slightly questionable gravestones out there
By Olivia Rose Fox
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| Merv certainly must have had a sense of humour as demonstrated by his light-hearted gravestone at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park, Westwood, California (Image: ©Joseph P. McKenna) |
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| You can't exactly say that this one didn't get straight to the point ( Image: Diane Diederich) |
Lockdown Love
An excerpt from Entrepreneur -
She Made Personalized Cards for Her Husband in Prison. Then She Realized Thousands of Prison Wives Would Buy Them.
Danielle Macias started True Blue Stationery as a side hustle. She soon discovered there was more demand than she could possibly meet.
By Elizabeth Greenwood, Author of LOVE LOCKDOWN: Dating, Sex, and Marriage in America's Prison System
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| Image credit: Danielle Macias |
Danielle Macias never set out to be a stationery designer. Back in 2014, when she started her business, she was working full-time as a medical diagnostic scheduler and supporting her husband José through his 25-year prison sentence. They met as teenagers and married while José was incarcerated in Kern Valley State Prison, in California. Between visits, she wrote him love letters, decorating the envelopes and sheets of paper with simple designs. “I’m a horrible artist,” Danielle, 34, says. Still, a friend with whom she carpooled to the prison caught a glimpse of an envelope Danielle had prepared for José, 35. It was adorned with a cartoon image of a mailbox and the phrase “love letter” in a striking script. She asked Danielle where she had gotten this prison-specific piece of stationery, and Danielle told her she’d made it. She asked Danielle to make something similar for her, and True Blue Stationery was born.
“I didn’t go into this thinking I’d make a whole business out of my cards,” Danielle says, “but it took off pretty quickly.” She had tapped into a large and underserved customer base: There are more than 2 million people incarcerated in the United States, 93% of them men. And on the outside, there are millions more caring for them from afar, like Danielle.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/379077
The 2nd Amendment Is Not Intended For Us
An excerpt from Slate -
“The Second Amendment Is Not Intended for Black People”
Tracing the racist history of gun governance.
BY DAHLIA LITHWICK
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| Black gun owners take part in a rally in support of the Second Amendment in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on June 20, 2020. Reuters/Lawrence Bryant |
On a recent episode of Slate’s legal podcast Amicus, host Dahlia Lithwick spoke with historian Carol Anderson, professor and chair of African American studies at Emory University, about her new book, The Second. Anderson’s work explores how the Constitution’s Second Amendment was not only crafted to suppress Black Americans, but was continually enforced throughout the centuries in a racist manner, leading to everything from the terrorizing of Reconstruction-era Black Americans to the police killings of even legally armed Black people today. A portion of the conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, has been transcribed below.
Dahlia Lithwick: I wonder if you could start by talking about what led you to this exploration of the connection between slavery, the founding, and guns.
Carol Anderson: It began in 2016 with the killing of Philando Castile. In Minnesota, you have a Black man who was pulled over by the police. The officer asked to see his ID. Castile, following NRA guidelines, alerts the officer that he has a license to carry a weapon with him but he says he’s reaching for his ID. The police officer begins shooting and kills Philando Castile. We see the film of it. It is horrific.
We have a Black man killed simply for having a gun—not for brandishing it, not for threatening anyone, simply for having a license to carry a gun. The National Rifle Association, that protector of the Second Amendment, goes virtually silent. And I thought, how is the NRA silent on this, particularly when it was calling federal law enforcement jackbooted government thugs at Ruby Ridge and at Waco? On this, they’re like virtually silent. Journalists began asking, “Well, don’t African Americans have Second Amendment rights?” And I thought to myself, that’s a great question, and that’s what led me on to this hunt.
In the epilogue to your book, you put in Trevor Noah’s quote from when he looks at a whole host of incidents in which police officers talk down a white man with a gun: They persuade him to disarm and they arrest him. Noah makes the argument that “the Second Amendment is not intended for Black people.” I think the argument is saying that the Second Amendment is in fact working exactly the way it was intended to work with respect to Black folks, and that is as a tool of persistence, subordination, and destruction. I just want to be super clear that you’re not saying the Second Amendment is broken, that it was conceived to do a thing that it doesn’t do. You’re saying the Second Amendment does precisely the thing it was crafted to do.
Exactly. You nailed it.
Brothers help underprivileged students afford historically Black college...
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/brothers-raise-money-help-students-080018355.html
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