HUMOR: Age vs race

HISTORY - Stark color photos of segregation-era U.S. thought lost, rediscovered in photographer’s storage

BY ABRAHAM  /  January 16, 2014

In 1956, photographer Gordon Parks was hired by Life Magazine to follow and document the everyday life of a southern Black family. Twenty of these photos were published in Life’s September issue that year with an article titled “The Restraints: Open and Hidden.”

Of course, Parks snapped many more photos than actually made it to print, but these were thought to be lost. However, in early 2012 the Gordon Parks Foundation was going through several storage boxes and came upon a taped-up paper package labeled, “Segregation Series.” In it they found 70 more color photographs from Parks’ 1956 work.

Here are just a few of the pics, both the published and the rediscovered…

To see more - http://twentytwowords.com/stark-color-photos-of-segregation-era-u-s-thought-lost-rediscovered-in-photographers-storage-10-pics/

CULTURE/SOCIETY - Parents call cops on teen for giving away banned book; it backfires predictably

In News by Alex Moore

Apr 28, 2014

The book in question was Sherman Alexie’s young adult novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” Published in 2007, it won the National Book Award and has become popular with young teens, supposedly for its universal themes of fitting in, making sense of race, and sexual discovery. Parents in Idaho called the cops last week on junior-high student Brady Kissel when she had the nerve to help distribute a book they’d succeeded in banning from the school curriculum.

The sex part (and let’s face it—probably the race part) led parents to lobby Junior Mountain High School to remove it from the syllabus, citing its sexual content (it discusses masturbation) and supposedly anti-Christian content.

For the rest of the story:

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/219767/parents-call-cops-on-teen-for-giving-away-banned-book-it-backfires-predictably/

CULTURE/SOCIETY - Nelson Mandela’s Life and Times in Photographs

Nelson Mandela, the civil rights leader who rose from a small village in rural, apartheid-era South Africa to become the country's first black President, died on Thursday at age 95. Mandela's election in 1994 ended three centuries of European domination of indigenous African people of the region.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/pictures/131105-nelson-mandela-pictures-photos-south-africa-apartheid/

CULTURE/SOCIETY - Meet Your First Black Girlfriend

CULTURE/SOCIETY - Transgender Day of Remembrance: An Angry Trans' View

I haven't seen anything about it on any Gawker sites today, but today is Transgender Day of Remembrance.

The mainstream feminist movement has, in large part, abjectly failed the trans* community, as has the LGBT movement (which has often been more about LG than B or T or Q or I or anything that's not attractive white couples).

When you look at any of the galleries of trans* people killed in the last year, and there are plenty of them, you'll notice that the vast majority of those murdered are trans women, and trans women of color at that. Trans issues ARE feminist issues, and they're not treated as such in many spaces that purport to be safe.

http://groupthink.jezebel.com/transgender-day-of-remembrance-1468606909

CULTURE/SOCIETY - Commentary: Why the Transgender Day of Remembrance Matters to Black People

The African-American transgender community disproportionately faces violence and homicide. 

Since 1998, November 20 has commemorated the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, which memorializes those who have been killed as a result of anti-transgender violence. This day is also aimed at bringing attention to the continued violence endured by the transgender community through out the world.

And while this day may not get the media attention that it deserves, hundreds around the country in places such as New York City, Kansas City, Boise and St. Louis will gather and hold vigils for those whose lives ended way too soon.

And while it’s easy for many of us to ignore this day, we have to face the facts: Violence against the transgender community is most definitely an African-American problem.

http://www.bet.com/news/health/2013/11/19/commentary-why-the-transgender-day-of-remembrance-matters-to-black-people.html

ENTERTAINMENT - You Know What “Pandering” Is in Superhero Comics? 75 Years of Straight White Dudes as the Default

Can we talk about the idea of “pandering” in Superhero comics? I’ve see the world tossed around a lot in the free wheeling world of internet commenting and I gotta say if I see it one more time, I’m going to punch as wall.

Marvel creates a set of comics with female leads? PANDERING!

Green Lantern and Batwoman are gay? PANDERING!

Characters of color getting their own comics? PANDERING!

Transgender characters in Demon Knights or Batgirl? Pandering!

It seems that anytime anything but a straight white male character is introduced there’s a certain part of the internet that balls up their little hands and screams “PANDERING!”

Because you know, why would comics reflect anything but the little bubble that surrounds their little world.

Lately I’ve seen the term pandering turned towards the comics community on Tumblr. Bleeding, channing and cbr’ing and stamping their feet that some comic creators and publishers are choosing to pay attention to NOT THEM!

http://dcwomenkickingass.tumblr.com/post/58001028889/you-know-what-pandering-is-in-superhero-comics-75

CULTURE/SOCIETY - America's forgotten black cowboys

Like many people, Jim Austin - a college-educated, 45-year-old businessman - hadn't heard about the black presence in the Old West.

The discovery inspired him and his wife Gloria to set up the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. It pays tribute to some of the forgotten black cowboys - men like Bill Pickett, a champion rodeo rider who invented bulldogging, a technique where he would jump from a horse on to a steer and take the animal down by biting on its lip.

Vincent Jacobs, now 80, battled racism as a rodeo rider in the 1950s

"The kids who are learning history in our schools are not being told the truth about they way the West was," says Austin.

"I bet you nine out of 10 people in this country think that cowboys were all white - as I did.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768669

CULTURE/SOCIETY - I'm Biracial, and That Cheerios Ad Is a Big FuckingDeal. Trust Me.

(Oh my god! My daughter could have written this! - OMGeek)

By now you know some racist dicks have whipped themselves up in a frenzy of racist dickery over the portrayal of an interracial family in a Cheerios ad. You see, Cheerios has committed the heinous crime of “acknowledging that interracial families exist,” and also that “sometimes interracial families need to eat breakfast.” This was too much for the racist dicks—Cheerios was forced to disable comments onYouTube where the video was posted. (What’s up with you racist dicks, anyway? Don’t you have jobs?)

I am biracial. My mom is black and my dad is white. My family often had the audacity to eat breakfast even though cereal was not being specifically marketed to us.

http://jezebel.com/im-biracial-and-that-cheerios-ad-is-a-big-fucking-dea-510740851

CULTURE/SOCIETY - What happened after MLK died?

On Thursday, April 4, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stepped out onto the balcony of a Memphis hotel and was killed by an assassin's bullet. The story typically ends there, with the slain civil rights leader on the ground, surrounded by blood-stained colleagues left to carry on his vision. Rebecca Burns' new book, Burial for a King, begins that day in Atlanta, as the news passes through restaurants and telephones, from radios and televisions, over symphonies and street corners, and ends as his body is laid in the ground the following Tuesday, April 9. Through enormous research and a careful narrative hand, Burns has crafted this week of history into a vivid, microcosmic moment. Spanning from Auburn Avenue in Atlanta to the mountains of South Vietnam, Burial for a King makes the reverberations of King's life and death feel raw and clear again.

http://clatl.com/atlanta/what-happened-after-mlk-died/Content?oid=2668606

CULTURE/SOCIETY - How Blacks And Whites Remember Martin Luther King Jr.

Dyson explores how blacks and whites have shaped their own different images of the late civil rights leader.

Whites, Dyson writes, “want to see Dr. King as peaceful and clawless, while blacks remember him as flawless, even though he had affairs and depression.”

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/01/21/mlk-book-dyson

HISTORY: Iowa's place in school desegregation

http://www.iptv.org/iowastories/detail.cfm/alexander_clark

HUMOR: The most ridiculously misguided observances of Martin Luther King Day.

Guess we all have our own way of revering a fallen civil rights pioneer. As the party invites and sale ads below would indicate, one man's solemn observance is another man's extra night to hit the strip club. But a 3-day weekend is a 3-day weekend after all, so if you aren't spending the holiday shopping the sales or sleeping off a hangover, spend some time perusing these wonderfully failed attempts at observing Martin Luther King Day.

http://www.happyplace.com/13372/10-ridiculously-misguided-observances-of-martin-luther-king-day

HISTORY: 17 Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes You Never Hear

While best known for his “I Have a Dream” speech, King's legacy included much more than that.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/17-martin-luther-king-jr-quotes-you-never-hear

HISTORY: 8 Surprising Things You Didn't Know About Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Although King is one of U.S. history's most widely chronicled individuals, there are aspects of his life that are less well-known than the pivotal speeches, the campaigns against Jim Crow city halls from Montgomery in 1955 to Memphis in 1968, and the dalliances that for some, tainted his personal life. King was as complex a figure as exists in our social narrative. He was a man conflicted by his commitment to a movement into which he was drafted against his better judgement and by the overwhelming demands to fulfill the role of human rights spokesperson. He was a husband and father who belonged to a people and a revolution, and the nation's most prominent advocate of nonviolence at a time when violence burned on urban streets, college campuses and in Southeast Asia.

http://www.alternet.org/activism/8-surprising-things-you-didnt-know-about-dr-martin-luther-king-jr

POLITICS: What The 2012 Election Would Have Looked Like Without Universal Suffrage

A look at the electoral college if only white men voted and another pic if only white men AND women voted. Noticed something different in the middle? Iowan women, I love you!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/what-the-2012-election-would-have-looked-like-with

SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION and POLITICS: Missouri Pastor's Fiery Speech Against Equal Rights for Homosexuals Has Stunning Twist Ending

http://m.gawker.com/5953357/missouri-pastors-fiery-speech-against-equal-rights-for-homosexuals-has-stunning-twist-ending

SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION: Is American atheism heading for a schism?

In the passionate world of American atheism, the venom usually directed at believers has now been turned against the wrong kind of atheists.

The cause of this freethinking furore? A new movement called Atheism+. According to its website, "Atheism+ is a safe space for people to discuss how religion affects everyone and to apply skepticism and critical thinking to everything, including social issues like sexism, racism, GLBT issues, politics, poverty, and crime."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/02/american-atheism-schism-spit-venom

ENTERTAINMENT: Super-Dreams of an Alternate World Order ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ and the Modern Comic Book Movies

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/movies/the-amazing-spider-man-and-the-modern-comic-book-movie.html#http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/movies/index.jsonp