Month: April 2017

A 19-year-old aspiring model and college student has gotten a lot of attention for shutting down a troll who criticized her dark skin.

A Twitter account that celebrates African beauty, @_AFRICANS_, shared three of Mimi Mbah’s photos with their more than 17,000 followers on March 31. 

The response Mbah received was overwhelmingly positive, but one Twitter user threw in his unwarranted two cents to say, “[If] she was lighter, she’d be fire.”

The Cameroonian teen clapped back by informing the troll that she’s perfect in the skin she’s in. “No thanks,” she tweeted Sunday. “I wouldn’t trade my skin color for the world! Still [fire] tho.”

Mbah’s tweet has received more than 21,000 retweets and 58,000 favorites. Folks gave her lots of praise for standing up to the hate.

The Gaithersburg, Maryland, native told BuzzFeed News that she’s encountered this kind of ignorance toward her dark skin before, but she was still disappointed. 

She shared some of the other anti-black comments she received on her Instagram.

”I’m glad my tweet went viral because now I feel like I have a platform, which I want to use to talk about things like that and give advice to other dark-skin women who are going through similar situations and probably blaming themselves for it,” she told BuzzFeed. “I actually wanted people to see that colorism is still real.”

Regardless of the hate, she said she wants women with dark skin to always remember one thing: “I want all my dark skin girls to know that we are chocolate goddesses no matter what anyone says!”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

NEW YORK ― Sam Bee is one funny lady. And sometimes her comedic timing is so good that its underlying earnestness punches you right in the gut. During her introductory remarks for Hillary Clinton on Thursday night at Tina Brown’s Women in the World Summit, she elicited laughs, cheers and some tears.

“I’m surprised that Secretary Clinton was available to speak tonight,” Bee said after walking out on stage to huge applause. “I assumed by now Hermione would have returned to her rightful home at Hogwarts, where she’s rumored to be the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor ― at least we’re all hoping.”

Bee expressed how hard it was to think of what to say to Secretary Clinton, given all that has happened since November 8th. 

“I should be lauding Hillary for making time to be here despite her busy schedule as president,” she said. “I should be talking about how she didn’t just shake Angela Merkel’s hand, but hugged her. Instead, Mr. Trump is nearing his 100th day in office. I assume he’ll mark it the same way all schoolchildren do ― by gluing 100 pieces of macaroni to a health care bill.”

In the latter part of her remarks, Bee addressed her thoughts directly to Clinton:

“I’m only gonna say this once, though you deserve to hear it 100 times. It should have been you.”

Bee continued, mapping out what might have been:

And yes, you would’ve made mistakes. And you would’ve been attacked for doing things that now seem so inconsequential. I mean for god’s sake, I was supposed to talk about you on my show for the next four years. And now I’m saddled with that pint of flat orange Fanta, who gives me more material than I would ever want.

I thought ― and I feared ― that you being elected would unleash a wave of misogyny in the U.S., but we’ve seen that that happened anyway.

Bee ended her introduction on an optimistic note, looking toward a future she hopes we will one day reach.

“We may not know what the future holds, but I’m hopeful that there is one,” she said. “And I do believe it exists in the young women and men who live in this new unexpected reality, who see your legacy, Hillary, and work to build upon it.”

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Cuba Gooding Jr. said Thursday that lifting up Sarah Paulson’s skirt during a panel last month was misinterpreted as “sexual misconduct.” The two “American Horror Story” co-stars hashed out the matter in a phone call after social media users criticized the move. 

“I love the lady that is Sarah Paulson,” Gooding told People at the FX All-Star Upfront in New York City. “We have a banter like brother and sister, which is how the spirit of that whole panel was.”

“Yet that image was taken out to represent some kind of sexual misconduct, and that wasn’t my intent,” the Oscar winner continued. “The first person, when I heard about the fervor, I called Sarah, I said, ‘I love you, I see you as my sister,’ and she said, ‘I feel the same way about you.’ And so I let it go.”

Gooding added that he used the ensuing controversy as a “teachable moment” for his sons, who are in college, about how images can be misinterpreted on the internet.

The incident happened March 26 during an “AHS” screening and panel at Los Angeles’ PaleyFest. As Paulson greeted co-star Kathy Bates, Gooding lifted up Paulson’s dress from behind, generating a discussion on the internet.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

One day while picking up her daughters from daycare, Shirley Justice was attacked by her ex-husband. She was shot 14 times, and she survived.

Since 2013, photographer Kathy Shorr has chronicled people like Justice, survivors of gun violence in America. In her portrait, Justice stands near a window wearing a bra, revealing the scars writ across her chest and stomach. The expression on her face reads as mournful, even incredulous, yet at peace. 

“Fourteen bullets entered my body that day,” Justice recalled in her interview with Shorr. “Fourteen bullets that ripped through every major organ and artery. Fourteen chances to die. ‘I will live for you,’ I promised my girls as I lay on the ground watching my ex-husband flee the scene.” 

Shorr’s photo book, simply titled Shot, features 101 portraits accompanied by interviews and descriptions of her subjects, all of whom survived instances of gun violence in America. Shorr first began thinking about the project after she and her daughter were held up at gunpoint during a home invasion.

Neither Shorr nor her daughter were physically injured during the encounter, but the experience and the subsequent emotional trauma left the artist agonizing over the thousands of Americans each year whose lives are irreparably changed by virtue of a loaded gun. 

According to CNN in 2016, there are more mass shootings in the U.S. than in any other country in the world. That same year, The New York Times reported that gun homicides are a common cause of death in America, killing about as many people as car crashes. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that between 2001 and 2014 alone, 440,095 people died at the hands of a firearm on U.S. soil.

“People don’t always think about the survivors,” Shorr told The Huffington Post. “Gun violence survivors are here and have a voice, a very important voice. They have experienced something that is kind of indescribable to someone that hasn’t experienced it.”

To begin her project, Shorr reached out to a man named Antonius, whose story she’d learned while listening to the NY1 news. She approached him on Facebook, they emailed back and forth and eventually met in person. After talking through the details, Shorr and Antonius returned to the Brooklyn street corner where he had been shot only seven weeks prior. Antonius took a Xanax to stay calm. 

The shoot, according to Shorr, was overwhelmingly positive. People from the community came by to shake Antonius’ hand. He pulled up his shirt and Shorr photographed his scar. Antonius told the photographer how cathartic it was to return to the site and take back the space. “At that point I realized this was a project I could really do,” Shorr said.

“I always saw it as a book,” she continued. “I just felt that once I started there was no turning back. Especially once I started talking to people and learning their stories, I felt an incredible amount of responsibility to complete the project.”

Shorr’s subjects adhere to no single age, gender, ethnicity, class or occupation. Their stories are equally as far-ranging. There is 8-year-old Taniya, accidentally shot by a fellow third grader who brought his father’s gun to school, and Greg, a Georgia-based police sergeant shot by a drug dealer during a bust. There are victims of robberies, domestic abuse, hate crimes and stray bullets. The physical impact of the violence manifests in wheelchairs, prosthetic aids, purple contusions or scars of gauzy flesh. The emotional impact the viewer can only attempt to imagine. 

Shorr describes her style as part street photography, part documentary portraiture. Some images zoom in on the physical residue of where bullet met flesh, while others are more straightforward portraits, focusing more on the person than the tragedy that shattered their sense of normalcy. Many photos were captured at the location where each subject was wounded, which the artist described as a way of saying, “You didn’t get me, I’m here.”

“The project was always meant to bring a face to an abstract situation,” Shorr said. “To show how gun violence affects everyone, not only certain groups of people. Anyone can be shot, anywhere. Many of the people in the project are gun owners themselves; one is even a member of the NRA.”

Shorr hopes her portrait series serves as a non-partisan foil to the polarizing shouting matches on the subject of gun violence. “It’s time to start talking about these issues so we can grow and learn from each other,” Shorr said. “When people can see both sides of an issue, and both sides have valid points, we can talk to each other rather than at each other. It’s not a black and white issue.”

Kathy Shorr’s Shot: 101 Survivors of Gun Violence in America is available now. On Thursday, April 13, Shorr will join Lyle Rexer for a discussion and book signing at Brooklyn’s Powerhouse Books. All captions were provided by the artist.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

A paraplegic man died an unspeakably cruel death after his ex-girlfriend abandoned him in the cold at a remote Georgia hunting camp, the local sheriff said.

Troymaine Johnson, 33, had been in the woods “a good two nights and part of one morning.” before the ex-girlfriend’s disturbing statements sent deputies on a search, said Upson County Sheriff Dan Kilgore.

“I can’t imagine the desperation he must have felt while lying in the middle of a cold, dark forest, waiting on death to take him,” Kilgore told The Huffington Post.

Johnson’s ex-girlfriend, 27-year-old Ruby Kate “Katie” Coursey, of Fort Valley, admitted abandoning Johnson, authorities said, and has been charged with felony murder and felony neglect of a disabled adult. She was held at Upson County Jail. It wasn’t clear whether she has an attorney.

Deputies on March 17 found Johnson’s body in a heavily wooded area some 70 miles south of Atlanta. The search began after the sheriff received a call from relatives of Coursey, who said she’d admitted leaving Johnson in the woods.

“I did a bad thing,” Coursey allegedly said, according to police. “I hurt Troymaine. I took him out of the car and left him in the woods.”

Coursey told deputies she couldn’t remember exactly where she’d left Johnson. Nevertheless, investigators began scouring back roads in southeast Upson County. It was about 1:20 a.m. on March 17 ― more than two days after Johnson had been last seen ― that deputies on a remote road came upon a driveway with a damaged entry gate.

“The gate had been pushed in ― hit so hard the concrete posts had pulled up,” Kilgore said. “They drove down in, some 150 to 200 yards off the road, and located his body on the ground near a hunting camp.”

Because there was no obvious trauma to Johnson’s body, authorities didn’t immediately charge Coursey in Johnson’s death. However, they jailed her on an unrelated probation violation.

The investigation determined Coursey had borrowed a friend’s vehicle on March 14, authorities said. The vehicle had front-end damage, consistent with hitting a gate, and paint from the vehicle matched paint found on the damaged hunting camp gate, police said.

Johnson had very limited mobility and only partial use of one arm, his grandmother told investigators. He was 11 years old, his grandmother told police, when a friend playing with a handgun accidentally shot him. From that point on, Johnson was dependent on a wheelchair and the care of those around him, the sheriff said.

Johnson’s grandmother told police she’d last saw Johnson at their Thomaston home on the evening of March 14.

Johnson and Coursey “had a previous relationship, which had deteriorated,” Kilgore said. “That evening, she went to his home and picked him up. [His grandmother] assumed, since they didn’t take his wheelchair or anything else he needed, that they were just going to ride around. They were last seen near there around 8:30 that night.”

Coursey, according to police, has refused to speak since providing investigators the vague details on Johnson’s whereabouts.

Johnson’s funeral was held March 24.

“His father’s dead his mother’s dead … so he’s leaving his earthly family to go on and be with his heavenly family,” his aunt, Sharon Rumph, told Macon’s WMAZ-TV.

Johnson’s cousin, Sade Owens, described him as someone who was easy to like. 

“You didn’t even have to know him, but you just loved him because he was himself and that’s probably what we’re going to miss the most,” Owens told WMAZ-TV.

Autopsy results showed Johnson died from hypothermia due to exposure, Kilgore said. It was unclear just how long Johnson, who Kilgore described as “completely defenseless,” had suffered.

“It’s very hard to prove how long he lived after she cruelly left him out in that,” the sheriff said “One would hope it wasn’t long. It was uncharacteristically cold here that week. Temperatures got down into 20s.”

Motive also remains unclear.

“I cannot imagine what would cause anybody to do something like that,” Kilgore said.

David Lohr covers crime and missing persons. Tips? Feedback? Send an email or follow him on Twitter.  

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— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

NEW YORK ― It’s been five months since Hillary Clinton lost the presidency in a divisive election against now-President Donald J. Trump. She spent the weeks after the 2016 election doing some self-reflection, taking long walks in the woods and staying largely out of the public eye. 

But judging from her first post-election interview, she’s back ― and with gusto. 

Clinton, who has largely focused her speaking engagements on the empowerment of women and the structural barriers that women face since she lost the presidential election, sat down for a candid conversation with Nick Kristof of the New York Times at Tina Brown’s Women in the World Summit. She was razor-sharp, honest and spoke movingly about everything from health care to Syria to women’s rights around the world. (”The more we support women, the more we support democracy,” she said in a particularly strong moment.)

But while she was delivering these impactful remarks, she also managed to sneak in some pretty sharp jabs at President Trump, Putin and the exhausting reality of being a woman in the public eye. Spoiler alert: A Hillary Clinton who has nothing to lose is a delightful Hillary Clinton. 

On men ― cough Putin cough Trump ―  who can’t handle powerful women:

“[Putin] wasn’t fond of strong women… though he did shake my hand.” 

On right-wing men who question why they should have to pay for maternity care:

“The things that come out of some of these men’s mouths ― like why do we have to cover maternity care? Oh I don’t know, maybe you were dropped by immaculate conception?”

On the double-edged sword of female likability ― loved when you’re doing a job, hated when you ask for one:

“When they were done with me, I was Typhoid Mary. And poor Mary. She didn’t deserve it either, if you look back at the history.” 

On Trump’s all-male photo ops:

“All of the men sitting around the table deciding how they were going to defund Planned Parenthood, end maternity care and access to contraception ― looking at that picture, you just think it’s got to be from a skit on ‘Saturday Night Live.’” 

On the caveat you just have to include if you’re talking about Hillary Clinton (even if you are Hillary Clinton): 

“I’m not perfect ― everybody knows that by now.”

On Republicans who said “repeal and replace” for seven years and then failed spectacularly to do so: 

“I will confess to this. Having listened to them talk about ‘repeal and replace’ for seven years…. I don’t know that any of them had ever read the bill or understood how it worked… I do admit that was gratifying.”

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— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Comedian Mike Epps is under fire after bringing a kangaroo onstage during a recent show in Michigan. 

The “Hangover” actor performed a comedy show in Detroit Friday for his Festival of Laughs tour that included an appearance by a leashed kangaroo. The kangaroo was brought out by a handler and Epps danced with it. The animal seemed agitated and appeared to take a swing at the comedian. 

Angry commenters took to Twitter to criticize Epps for the stunt. 

Epps had posted a video of himself feeding a kangaroo with the hashtag #nevertriedtohurthhim among others, but later deleted it.

According to TMZ, the kangaroo is part of a traveling exotic zoo and its handler Javon Stacks ― who went viral last week after he was recorded walking the kangaroo around Detroit streets ― claimed to have proper licensing. 

PETA was disappointed, as well. 

“Traumatic situations can be fatal to kangaroos — who are not hardy animals — and this individual was subjected to a great deal of stress by being dragged in front of a boisterous crowd and forced to ‘dance,’” PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange said in a statement to the media. “PETA hopes the U.S. Department of Agriculture will conduct an immediate investigation and that the backlash over this stunt will remind all comedians that there’s nothing funny about cruelty to animals.”

Epps apologized in an Instagram post, claiming he would donate to Save the Kangaroos in light of the backlash. 

The Huffington Post reached out to a rep for Epps but did not hear back as of press time.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

A 911 call captured a man confessing he killed the driver of a car who accidentally hit a preschool child in Cincinnati.

“I took care of dude,” says the man, apparently speaking to a crying child. “I killed him. He dead. He dead. The dude that hit you by the car. He dead. I killed him. I’m serious he’s dead. The dude that him you with the car, I killed him Jamal.”

Police said numerous people called 911 after a car struck the child last month and people nearby rushed to the scene. Three men ordered the driver and passenger out of the vehicle and repeatedly shot 44-year-old Jamie Urton, of Mason, police said. 

It wasn’t clear whether the man speaking on the 911 call knew he was being recorded. 

“You hear me,” he continues. “He dead. I killed him. He dead. You good. Your daddy got you. You know I love you don’t you. I’m here with you. I love you baby.”

Cincinnati police issued an arrest warrant for the child’s father, Jamall Killings, 25, of Walnut Hills. Police didn’t specifically say Killings was the man recorded on the 911 call. Authorities also were seeking Deonte Baber, 25, of Cincinnati.

Witnesses told police the child ran in front of Urton’s vehicle on March 24. Urton stopped with his passenger to check on the child ― police said the boy’s injuries weren’t life-threatening ― and three men approached.

Another 911 caller described what happened next.

They “made the people in the silver car get out of the car,” the female caller said. “One laid on the street and they had him lay on the street on his hands and knees. The other one on the other side is the one they shot, I think, because that was where I heard the boom, boom, boom.”

Urton was dead on arrival at University of Cincinnati Medical Center from multiple gunshot wounds. His passenger sustained minor injuries.

Urton worked for the Cincinnati Association for the Blind. According to his obituary, he was “a sports fan who had a very caring heart and brought joy to those he surrounded.”

A witness told Cincinnati’s WLWT News Urton had pleaded for his life.

“He didn’t mean to do it, he was bawling his eyes out, saying he was sorry, begging for mercy, basically, and they shot him,” said the witness.

Killings spoke with Cincinnati’s WCPO-TV a day after the shooting ― before police named him as a suspect.

“My job as a father was to get my son face-first off the concrete and take him to see medical attention, and that’s what I did,” said Killings. He denied any knowledge of the shooting and expressed condolences to the dead man’s family.

“I apologize for your loss,” Killings said, according to WCOP-TV. “I don’t condone violence. I don’t teach my kids violence. That should never have happened … I hope we all can learn from this.”

Baber and Killings remain at large. Anyone with information is asked to contact Cincinnati police at 513-352-3542, or CRIMESTOPPERS at 513-352-3040.

David Lohr covers crime and missing persons. Tips? Feedback? Send an email or follow him on Twitter. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Oversexed. Catty. Stereotypical. 

These are the words director Terry Torrington uses to describe present depictions of black gay men in the media ― which is why he and his husband, Sean, are launching SlayTV, a global TV network for the black LGBTQ community. 

Sean and Terry, who are both in their 30s, came up with the idea for the network when they saw how well some of their YouTube web series were performing. “No Shade,” a dramedy about a queer black artist on a path of self-discovery, was their first online series. Its pilot episode, which premiered in February 2013, has received almost 110,000 views. 

“That’s how we really got noticed by the community,” Sean said. “Because at the time there was no other series like it. It really touched on a lot of issues going on at the time.”

The two were hesitant to create a second season for the show without a proper way to archive it. So they created Slay to catalog series they’d already made, premiere new productions and invite series ideas from the LGBTQ community. 

“Love At First Night,” a Slay series created by Terry, serves as an antidote to what Sean says is a lack of representation of queer black love on other platforms. 

“I feel like we are only looked at as sex objects,” Sean said. “There are no real representations in the media when it comes to black queer love and that’s really important to me. That’s why I created ‘Love At First Night.’”

The show, which they describe as being loosely based on their relationship, is a dramedy about a black gay couple and the lives they lead in New York City.

“It really shows the dynamic of two black gay men ― or queer men ― that are in love and the issues they go through,” Sean said. 

For gay black men, the show provides a sense of relatability that they don’t often get to experience while watching television. The show’s season finale premiered last August and the two are now working on the second season. 

While “Love At First Night” and “No Shade” offer the occasional laughing fit, the Torringtons also touch on more sensitive subjects on the network. 

The Slay documentary series “Other Boys” ― created by video producer Abdool Corlette ― explores what it means to be black and queer in New York City. The 50-part series, which premiered in February, discusses family, careers and socioeconomics through the lenses of queer and transgender black men, a perspective they made a conscious decision to include.

“We need to be more intentional about when we talk about LGBTQ,” Terry said. “I think a lot of times, we’re not including the L, G, B, T and Q. … We felt we needed to be able to bridge the gap between all those acronyms.”

But whether they’re serving up laughs or painfully relatable narratives, Sean said Slay’s overall mission is to “normalize black queer and trans people of color in media.”

“I don’t feel like we are represented in the right way,” he continued. “A lot of times, [media] reappropriates a lot of things that we do. I just want to let people know where all the cool and dope things come from.”

He mentioned the popularity of terms like “slay” and “shade.” While the words are enthusiastically used in mainstream culture, their origins in the black LGBTQ community aren’t often discussed or widely known. 

This lesser-known history is part of the reason they decided to name the network SlayTV. The other influence for the title comes from the sheer excellence of black gay men. 

“We have always been here and have always been killing it,” he said. 

SlayTV is available to view now but will officially launch on May 15. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” is still serving lessons in black womanhood.

That’s why James Arnett, an English professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, is dubbing the week of April 3 “Lemonade Week” at the college. From Monday to Thursday, the university will host daily events to discuss the topics explored on the visual album, such as the “lives, loves and pain of black women.” The event will also use Candice Benbow’s “Lemonade: The Syllabus” to guide discussions.

Arnett told The Huffington Post that inspiration for the week came after he and a colleague hosted a lunch discussion on the visuals and lyrics in “Formation.” The room was packed during the lunch and Arnett decided to take it a step further.

Even a year after its release, Arnett believes “Lemonade” is still relevant. 

“Thinking back on 2016, it was the text that felt, and still feels, like a rebuttal to the politics that were evolving,” he said. “The Super Bowl performance was a lightning rod and Rorschach test for the political horizon. Besides, it’s just a great piece of art ― beautiful music and evolution from Beyoncé as an artist, showing new range and affect, and showing her off in her best collaborative moments.”

“Lemonade Week” events will feature professors analyzing the different areas of feminism and womanism, performances by a drag queen, English and theater students showing off their work, a reader’s salon to celebrate black women writers and a “Formation” choreography lesson.

All events are free, except Thursday’s dance class, and open to the public.

“The week takes its time to celebrate Beyoncé and other groundbreaking black women,” Arnett said. “All in all, I think we were responding to the zeitgeist and trying to meet our students with thoughtful, intellectual content where they already enjoy themselves.”

Beyoncé’s latest visual album earned its way into college curriculum before. In September, University of Texas at San Antonio began offering a class on “Lemonade.”

View the full list of “Lemonade Week” events here.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices