Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
It isn’t hard to see why nothing bad has ever quite touched Kevin Johnson, mayor of Sacramento, Calif., even as he’s authored a long series of lurid sex and corruption scandals, any one of which would have ended the career of a less fortunate man. Johnson is a youngish, attractive Democrat with a reputation as…
What it’s actually like to be a Black employee at a tech company My fingertips danced with delight as I frantically typed away at my computer. “I just saw a new Black person! Does anyone know who it is?” I circulated the email to the “Blackbirds,” Twitter’s internal group for Black employees. In my three…
On Monday night, the Atlantic published Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” The article, the longest the magazine has run in a decade, limns America’s long history of believing African Americans are predisposed to lawlessness and using that assumption to justify a racist police state that locks up African Americans in huge…
Last night was the fourth season premiere of HBO’s Project Greenlight—a Matt Damon and Ben Affleck passion project where they give first time filmmakers the chance to make a movie. It also provided a platform for Matt Damon to deliver a masterclass in whitesplaining—a whitesplaining sermon, if you will. They enlist a group of producers…
Recently, black men lined up in suits to give high-fives and greet kids on the first day of school. These men were asked to wear business attire so that they could combat the stereotype of black men as unprofessional and thugs. Pictures and videos traveled around social media celebrating the greetings. The men were praised for their…
NEW YORK (WABC) — Former tennis star James Blake is calling for the firing of the officer who tackled him in an arrest mix-up Wednesday morning. “It’s not debatable if he should be out there ever again,” said Blake Saturday morning, noting that the officer has other civilian complaints against him. “You can’t let that…
“Let me just say up front: I hope that this conversation can be as much about humanity and dignity as it is about politics and polling, because I want to try to better understand to the extent that I can…the motivation behind your rhetoric and that of Donald Trump and some others,” is how Tavis…
Scott Walker has told the world that the shooting deaths of police in the United States are a major problem and implied there is really only one cure: to return to the bygone era of his youth, when life was safer and more idyllic. His language was vague, incorrect, and most importantly stokes a fear…
Photo Credit Alex Nabaum The Republican Party and its acolytes in the news media are trying to demonize the protest movement that has sprung up in response to the all-too-common police killings of unarmed African-Americans across the country. The intent of the campaign — evident in comments by politicians like Gov. Nikki Haley of South…
On her first day shooting her first feature, Zoë Kravitz wasn’t allowed to work. Cast as a goth babysitter in the Catherine Zeta-Jones romcom No Reservations, the teenager couldn’t go on set until her designated guardian had signed in. But Lenny Kravitz was running late, and when he eventually arrived, the rock star caused such…