Month: March 2017

Two months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, fears that the president’s administration will try to curtail U.S. civil rights has led some of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities to do what they can to fight back. 

A large number of A-list stars have signed up to raise money for the American Civil Liberties Union next Friday as part of a modern-day telethon that will be streamed live on Facebook. 

Participating celebrities include Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan, Tom Hanks, Padma Lakshmi, Jon Hamm and Amy Poehler, among many others.

The event, which is being called Stand for Rights: A Benefit for the ACLU, begins on Friday, March 31, at 7 p.m. ET and will stream live on the Facebook pages of The Huffington Post and Funny Or Die, which will also premiere new videos throughout the event. The stream will additionally be available on the Stand for Rights Facebook page. 

Net proceed will benefit the ACLU. 

“Our work in the courts is essential right now to hold off the worst of the abuses,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said in a statement. “But it is also the collective will and tireless actions of ‘we the people’ that serve as a bulwark against unconstitutional and wrong-headed policies and executive orders. By supporting our work through this telethon, we can fight even harder to defend the rights guaranteed by our Constitution.”

The ACLU has already received millions more in online donations in 2017 than it has in a normal full year, even pulling in $24 million over a single weekend in January. But something tells us they’ll need all the money they can get in the coming years. 

Stand for Rights is being put on by Friend of a Friend Productions in partnership with The Huffington Post, Funny Or Die and Maggie Vision.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

President Donald Trump just took a cheap shot at an NFL player who dared to speak his mind.

During a rally in Louisville, Kentucky, on Monday, the commander in chief brought up free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s inability to land a job with a team, according to reports.

Trump once called Kaepernick disrespectful for taking a knee during the national anthem to protest racial injustice before games last season ― a move that polarized the nation. This time, the president referenced a Bleacher Report story in which an unidentified team general manager estimated that 10 percent of teams were reluctant to sign the former 49er over fears Trump would tweet about them.

“There was an article today … that NFL owners don’t want to pick him up because they don’t want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump,” the president said. “Do you believe that?”

“I said, ‘If I remember that one, I’m gonna report it to the people of Kentucky because they like it when people actually stand for the American flag.’”

As of early Tuesday, Kaepernick’s Twitter remained mum on Trump’s comments.

The 29-year-old footballer opted out the final year of his 49ers contract weeks ago and became an unrestricted free agent, ESPN reported.

He will reportedly stand for the anthem next season ― if he signs with a team.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

“I don’t know if street harassment is going to end anytime soon,” artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh told The Huffington Post. “But people around the country ― and the world ― are fighting for it.”

Since 2012, Fazlalizadeh has been at the forefront of the campaign to stop the cat-callers, bullies and chauvinists who make women feel unsafe for simply existing in public spaces. Her ongoing series “Stop Telling Women to Smile,” which features the faces of real women alongside the words they wish they could say to their harassers, has gained traction around the internet and across the globe, providing a glimpse into the abuse women face from strangers on a daily basis. 

Nearly five years after the project’s inception, Fazlalizadeh’s process is basically the same. She recruits women from social media and friends who have grappled with street harassment to sit for a photograph and an interview ― a candid conversation that defines what street harassment means on an individual level.

“I don’t want to define it for everyone,” Fazlalizadeh explained. “Street harassment ranges from sexist comments to racist micro-aggressions to homophobic slurs to getting pushed out due to gentrification.”

Central to Fazlalizadeh’s project is the belief that, as she puts it, “sexism doesn’t work alone.” Gender-based discrimination is usually accompanied, the artist explicated, by racism, transphobia or homophobia. The artist invites her subjects to discuss their backgrounds and identities at length, drawing connections between who they are and the way the world treats them.

The photograph Fazlalizadeh snaps during each meeting is later adapted into a graphic poster. Beneath the portrait is a quote from the conversation, often a message directed at a nameless and invisible oppressor. “I’m uplifting women’s voices while showing their faces,” Fazlalizadeh said. “A lot of times, when we look at art, we’re looking at images of women created by men. I’m a woman making portraits of women and their words, and putting them in public spaces that are usually very hostile to us. It’s about taking back space with the artwork, physically and metaphorically.” 

For the past few years, Fazlalizadeh has enlisted fans and followers to expand her project during Anti–Street Harassment Week, set to take place this year between April 2 and April 8. Specifically, she started an event called International Wheatpasting Night, named after a common poster adhesive, inviting people from all over the world to download and print Fazlalizadeh’s posters for free to display throughout their communities and neighborhoods. 

“I’d heard from people asking about how they can participate,” Fazlalizadeh said. “This is one night for people to go out on the streets knowing you are acting with other women in solidarity. When we wake up the next day, we’ll find a bunch of these pieces scattered across the country.”

Fazlalizadeh also has an installation on view in Brooklyn called “America Is Black.” The piece features portraits of American people of color alongside a powerful block of text written by the artist just after November’s presidential election. It reads, in part: 

America is Black. It has always been. It is a man twirling at 3AM under colorful lights, sweaty and in love with his boyfriend. It thrives with disabilities. It is migrant. It is a tongue that unapologetically only speaks Spanish. It is a self-regulated womb. It is Native. It has been here before any White foot touched its soil. It is traumatized. It is hungry. It is a woman. It has always been …

The piece is similar in style and message to a mural Fazlalizadeh created in her hometown of Oklahoma City in November. The more concise text of that piece read: “America is black. It is Native. It wears a hijab. It is a Spanish speaking tongue. It is migrant. It is a woman. It is here. Has been here. And it’s not going anywhere.”

Fazlalizadeh said both murals were inspired by Donald Trump’s administration.

“There is this group of people who wanted to keep America as this white, male, Christian country,” Fazlalizadeh said. “And that’s just not what it is. It’s not my reality and it never was. Even growing up in a place like Oklahoma City, I grew up in a black neighborhood. I went to black schools and black churches. I am trying to say, ‘America is all these things.’ It’s not just male and straight and cisgender.”

The current political climate has, Fazlalizadeh said, created a sense of urgency within her ― an urgency to do work. Her personal challenge, however, has been to make sure she slows down from time to time, ensuring her efforts as an artist and activist are thoughtful and effective. “I am trying to take a second and plan what I need to be doing,” she said. “I am trying to take my time in order to create something that has quality and integrity.”

Learn more about International Wheatpasting Night and register to circulate posters of your own here. An exhibition of Fazlalizadeh’s work, including her “America Is Black” mural, will go on view at BRIC Media Arts in Brooklyn, New York, on March 22. 

Take a look at more of Fazlalizadeh’s work below.

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Prime time is about to get real.

Instead of using a euphemism such as the “N-word,” NBC’s family sitcom “The Carmichael Show” will air the unedited, full racial slur several times on an episode this summer, Variety reported Monday.

“‘N-word’ is childish… say it!” creator and star Jerrod Carmichael said to reporters at an NBC press event Monday. “We know what we’re talking about. We’re not speaking to children.”

Actress Loretta Devine, who plays Carmichael’s mother on the show, offered some historical perspective. She said that 1970s sitcoms such as “All In The Family” and “Sanford and Son” uttered the uncensored word but that was “before political correctness,” Variety reported.

A parental advisory will precede the episode when it appears in its regular 9 p.m.(Eastern) Wednesday time slot, Deadline noted.

The show, inspired by standup comic Carmichael’s life, centers around an opinionated African-American family in North Carolina. It has previously covered such difficult topics as Bill Cosby and Black Lives Matter, Uproxx noted.

“The Carmichael Show” returns for its third season on May 31.

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Nicki Minaj is feeling her new Billboard record. On Monday, the rapper racked up the most Hot 100 hits of any female artist with 76, besting the previous record set by Aretha Franklin with 73.

Franklin held the record for most Hot 100 tracks for nearly four decades, according to Billboard. But after tying for the title earlier this month, Minaj released three new songs that tipped the scales: “No Frauds” with Drake and Lil Wayne, “Regret in Your Tears” and “Changed It.” 

She reacted to the news over Instagram. 

“Man, I tell ya… God said he ain’t done showing off yet. Lol. Walked off stage to find out history was made yet again today,” she wrote, before expressing gratitude to her fans.

“I fkn love u guys more than I’ll ever be able to put in words. Thank u so much for your unwavering love & support. God bless each & every one of you.” 

After Minaj and Franklin, Taylor Swift still sits in third place with 70 hits in the Billboard ranking. 

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Debates about the viability of school voucher programs have focused in recent months on programs with lackluster or spotty academic records. But there’s another issue raised by the potential expansion of public financing for private schools: an exacerbation of segregation.

A brief released Tuesday by the left-leaning Century Foundation takes a look at the limited research on race and school voucher programs to glean what expansion of these programs at the federal level would mean for student diversity. The brief’s results are mixed, but it posits that these programs slightly increase segregation in private and public schools.

The report comes after President Donald Trump’s proposed budget set aside $250 million for a still-opaque “private school choice program” and after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos claimed at her confirmation hearing that school choice programs lead to more integrated schools. 

The history of school voucher programs is tied up with ideas of white supremacy. To avoid school desegregation as a result of 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling, some Southern states created tuition grants to allow white students to attend all-white private schools in the 1960s. Some of these private schools still exist, though they are no longer specifically for white students. 

White students continue to dominate private school demographics, in part because of this racist history, says Halley Potter, the Century Foundation fellow who wrote the brief. It’s a history that must be considered when looking at the future of these programs.

“It’s important to realize that a lot of people think about private school vouchers as providing more opportunities for students of color, but there’s also a trend borne out in the data that white families tend to use private school vouchers to leave diverse public schools to attend more white schools and religious families move to parochial schools. There’s a real sense of sorting there that promotes segregation,” Potter said.  

There is a dearth of research that directly tracks school segregation as it relates to voucher programs. Potter’s study looks at available data from programs around the country and overseas and finds that these programs tend to slightly exacerbate issues of segregation, although the record is certainly uneven. This can happen when white students use these programs to leave schools where they are in the minority and go to schools where they are in the majority. In some instances, black students leave schools where they are in the majority to go to schools where they are similarly in the majority.

Many private schools that utilize vouchers in programs around the country are religious. They are not required to accept every student. They are allowed to maintain policies that restrict the enrollment of certain groups of students ― like LGBT kids. While some voucher programs are targeted to low-income students, others have a wider income threshold for participants. 

DeVos has long championed voucher programs. Although Trump has emphasized his desire to expand private school choice options, it is unclear how exactly his administration will do so and whether or not it will be in the form of a voucher. 

A previous study conducted by university researchers in 2006 also detailed how race can influence one’s views about school voucher programs. Among white families, the study found, “support for vouchers increases with the proportion of minority students in the local public schools.” This was not the case with non-white families. David Kirkland, an associate professor English and urban education at New York University, pointed to this study as evidence that school vouchers exacerbate white flight. 

“It’s an essential part of American history,” said Kirkland. “People who can separate themselves, residentially or within the enterprise of education, usually do. We recognize this as a dark side of pure choice. People with elite status, power, usually choose to separate themselves from those of us with less power.”

It’s an essential part of American history. People who can separate themselves … usually do. We recognize this as a dark side of pure choice.
David Kirkland, New York University

On the flip side, the country’s first voucher program in Milwaukee was started by black leaders who felt that the public school system wasn’t adequately serving black students. Gerard Robinson, a resident fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, also noted that the phenomenon of public money going toward private schools existed in America long before Brown v. Board of Education. 

“There are people who simply do not like private education and do not like public money going to private schools,” said Robinson, who writes in support of voucher programs. “It’s simply an opportunity for people to use their tax dollars to pay for education in a setting they believe works best for their children.”

Robinson, who had not seen the Century Foundation report, said that it is unfair to criticize private schools on issues of race when the nation’s public school system remains incredibly segregated. He noted other evidence that these programs actually lead to increased interaction among students of different races. 

“If the public school system itself has not been able to do so, why are we going to stop students from going to private schools because somehow that leads to more segregation?” Robinson said. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

No delegates from Africa attended a summit on African trade after the visas of planned speakers and attendees were not issued ahead of the conference, VOA reported last week.

The organizer of the African Global Economic & Development Summit, an annual three-day conference held at the University of Southern California, told VOA that every person single person was denied entry to the U.S.

“Usually we get 40 percent that get rejected but the others come,” said Mary Flowers, the conference’s chair. “This year it was 100 percent. Every delegation. And it was sad to see, because these people were so disheartened.”

The summit, held each year since 2013, aims to connect African businesses with U.S. investors. This year’s event focused on renewable energy, including wind and solar power projects. The conference went on last weekend as planned, but suffered from diminished attendance. Flowers told The Guardian that between 60 and 100 people from at least 12 countries were denied entry and could not attend the conference. 

A State Department official declined to discuss the particulars of the would-be conference attendees’ cases. 

“We do not discuss the details of individual visa cases,” the official said in an email. “Visa records are confidential under Section 222(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Additional information on the visa process can be found at travel.state.gov.” 

The visa denials comes as President Donald Trump’s administration attempts to crack down on travel from select majority-Muslim countries. Earlier this month, Trump signed an executive order blocking travel to the U.S. from six countries, including three in Africa: Libya, Somalia and Sudan. Flowers told the Guardian that no citizens from those countries sought visas for the event. 

A federal judge has blocked Trump’s order from going into effect. However, travelers from countries across the globe have faced immigration troubles and visa denials since Trump first issued a travel ban in January.

Earlier in March, several performers set to perform at SXSW were reportedly turned away at the border on their way to the festival in Austin, Texas. The same weekend, a group of musicians from Morocco canceled a performance at a New Orleans music festival after their visas were denied. Days earlier, a group of children from Ghana was denied visas to perform West African dancing and drumming in Charleston, South Carolina. In late February, several members of the Tibet women’s soccer team were denied visas to attend a tournament in Dallas. 

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Ed Sheeran and reggaeton may not seem like an obvious fit, but Zion & Lennox are here for it.

The Puerto Rican reggeaton duo is behind the Latin remix to Sheeran’s “Shape of You,” posted Friday on YouTube. The British superstar and Zion & Lennox are both under the Warner Music label. 

“We were thrilled to work on this amazing track because everything about it is beautiful,” the boricuas told Billboard. “The rhythm, which is very Caribbean, everything. It’s very representative of what he can do with music. We saw him last year and he had a country song, you’d never imagine it’s Ed Sheeran. For us it was great news to be able to make this happen. The result is epic.”

The song sounds very similar to Sheeran’s version, keeping most of its original rhythm. Zion & Lennox’s remix features several Spanish-language lines.

Listen to the Latin remix of “Shape of You” above.

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A while back I wrote a piece titled “Hollywood Needs More Brown Superheroes”, which was about diversity in the entertainment industry, but also about how I really wanted to be a brown superhero or Jedi. As an Indian actor, I was growing frustrated over the limited variety of roles I could audition for. The representation of brown people in movies and television is just sad. A bunch of nerds to be sidekicks for the charming white lead, or ‘unnamed terrorist’ numbered one through thirty for the human shooting galleries in our America’s-The-Shit action flicks.

It took less than three auditions in my pursuits before I heard my first, “Can you do the accent?” It didn’t make it better that a bunch of my instructors would tell me things like, “I’ll be real with you, you’ll probably be typecast.”

It didn’t take long for me, as a minority actor, to realize that roles of any real substance are rare. I found myself falling into cynical asshole mode, skeptical of every gig that came my way. But that’s not the type of creative I wanted to be. I decided to fight for my worth, something I initially did out of great anger. I wanted to pride myself on being the Indian dude that wasn’t going to take any shit.

It took me a while to understand that anger was not the move. Adopting a more assholish disposition wasn’t helping my situation. It was only making me more difficult to relate to and it certainly didn’t get me any more gigs. My voice was becoming a noise that blended in with everyone else’s, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid in the first place. This opened me up to a lot of hypocrisy.

Rather than killing myself with auditions for shitty roles I didn’t want, I elected to create one for myself and for the other misrepresented people in my life.

When your perspective is so tightly framed on your own frustrations, you fail to see others who are also struggling to find an adequate representation just like you. I was taking a pain felt by many performers of color and turning it into my own very self-centered thing, as if I were the only one experiencing discrimination in the industry.

I remember going on an angsty rant about how I couldn’t stand being stereotyped within the industry. When one of my close actor friends showed empathy, I completely rejected the notion that she could understand my frustration. She didn’t share my dark skin and background, how could she possibly know?

She checked me real quick by letting me know that most of the roles she goes for are of the vapid love interest or manic pixie dream girl – and much of that media perception translates over to her real life. She revealed that many people would completely dismiss her intelligence only because she was a woman.

In my self-centered ramblings about feeling under-represented, I almost completely shut down someone else’s similar experience. Sometimes you have to be made aware of your assholish-ness – the media’s portrayals I hated so much had actually negatively informed my thoughts on others. Well, fuck. What was a boy to do?

Representation and inclusivity became prominent topics on my mind. The more I explored these topics, the more I became aware of diversity as an issue across the board. I continued to speak to diverse creatives and performers, and collected a series of conversations which I decided to turn into a project of my own.

Rather than killing myself with auditions for shitty roles I didn’t want, I elected to create one for myself and for the other misrepresented people in my life. I decided to create ‘Self-Love’, a 20-minute short film based on my experiences and the experiences of my friends within the entertainment industry, specifically with regards to diversity and representation. The film served as a means of channeling my own frustrations in a healthier way. I’m not getting the roles I want? I’ll create my own. My friends aren’t having their stories shared? We’ll share our own. I wanted to feature Indian people in lead roles.

Rather than giving into the anger, I chose to take responsibility for my voice and acknowledge its power. My voice is still in its infancy but that’s fine. The point is, as diverse creators we have to continue to nurture and push our voices louder and further. That’s how we break the mold.

The characters in this film mirror the process of the film being made. They acknowledge the misrepresentation within the industry, define their self-love, and eventually feel powerful enough to create something on their own.

We had no budget and relied heavily on whoever could slot us in their busy schedules to participate. Some professionals and some people chipped in to tell a story they felt strongly about. We shot the project over a four-day period in New York.

It’s a tricky thing telling a story about diversity in such a crunch because you can’t cover as wide a range of people as you’d like. It’s not a perfect film, but so much heart went into its creation. It’s an important stepping stone for me, and has inspired me to make more intricately crafted projects featuring a diverse group of people in the future. The lesson? If you’re pissed at misrepresentation, don’t wait for the industry to fix things, go out and fix it yourself.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Dave Chappelle is a bit disappointed over some of the new developments at Comedy Central.

During a candid interview with “CBS This Morning,” Chappelle talked to co-host Gayle King about an array of topics, including his 2005 exit from Comedy Central. Following two successful seasons of “Chappelle’s Show,” the 43-year-old comedian says he walked away from a $50 million deal to relocate to South Africa and focus on fostering a closer relationship with his family.  

Several years later, in January 2012, comedians Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele launched their very own 30-minute sketch comedy series on the network titled “Key & Peele.”

Despite being a fan of their show, Chappelle says that he noticed certain “conventions” ― regarding the race-related skits ― that the network previously resisted during his years of creating “Chappelle’s Show.”

“I fought the network very hard so that those conventions could come to fruition,” he said. “So, like the first episode I do, that black white supremacist sketch. And it’s like, ‘Well, that’s 10 minutes long. It should be five minutes long.’ Why should it be five minutes long? Like, these types of conventions.”

“Key & Peele” has earned multiple Emmy nominations and a 2016 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series. Chappelle says that he “fought very hard” to help create the pair’s show format.

He added: “When I watch ‘Key & Peele’ and I see they’re doing a format that I created, and at the end of the show, it says, ‘Created by Key & Peele,’ that hurts my feelings.”

Watch more of Dave Chappelle’s “CBS This Morning” interview in the clip above.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices