There’s an excerpt:

The study’s researchers reviewed over 800 local and national news pieces published or aired between January 2015 and December 2016, sampling major networks such as ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC as well as major print publications such as The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.

The study — conducted by  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign communications professor Travis L. Dixon — found that national news outlets were more likely to show black families as broken and dysfunctional while white families were depicted as possessing social stability. 

These images are not only distorted, but contradict government data.

Dixon found that black families represented 59 percent of poor people portrayed in media, but actually only make up of 27 percent of Americans living in poverty. In contrast, white families only make up 17 percent of the poor representated in media, but make up 66 percent in reality. As far as criminal depictions go, black criminals represented 37 percent of the media’s criminals while only 26 percent of those arrested on criminal charges are black in real life. White criminals represented 28 percent the criminals portrayed in the media, but make up 77 percent of real life’s crime suspects.

The report argues that constant depictions of black people living in poor, welfare-dependent and broken homes due to absentee fathers has created a negative image of black families in general.

“This leaves people with the opinion that black people are plagued with self-imposed dysfunction that creates family instability and therefore, all their problems,” said Dixon.

If you want to read the entire article, click here.

Again, this observation has been an examined and discussed for years. TheGuardian writes about how negative media portrayals of black men have real world consequences.  The Huffington Post highlights racist stereotypes of black men in popular media.

The successes and accomplishments of black women have been eclipsed by many disparaging and disheartening images of black women in the media. It has prompt black women to combat these images as they too have to struggle in a world that listens to a racist and sexist media landscape as opposed to actually meeting and talking to real black women.

The funny thing is that whenever a black person reveals something so blatantly obvious, the racism in Western media being just one example, a study has to be done. Black folks are never listened to or believed when it comes to matters of racism and discrimination unless it goes along with whiteness and its many, many defenses. A study has to be conducted to see if we’re right if it’s not what a white person says.

Black people are always assumed that we’re wrong in the case of racism. I’ve seen white-laced attitudes that reject or destroy any and everything a black person says whether it’s actual data and evidence to personal experiences. Black people try their hardest to prove the unfair case against them, but to no avail. They refuse to listen and understand. Whiteness gives them the arrogance to think they know more about racism than the actual victims of racism, the ignorance to shield them from much-needed differing views and the cruelty to insult and guilt trip them all in an effort to avoid the reality that only black people know.

So, even though this study solidifies what was said all along and when it’s evidenced by constant, uninterrupted TV viewing, the problem will still be thrown out in favor of a half-baked explanation not rooted in facts or reality concocted by a someone who claims white people are victims of racism.

The post New Study Finds News Outlets Promote False, Negative Portrayals Of Black Families appeared first on Madness & Reality.

So, with that said, I’m going to speak about what happened last weekend in Charlottesville Va. And I know some readers, don’t want us to harp on it anymore. They’re afraid of feeling any sort of guilt for cradling the mindset that fueled that and other fires. But the rest of us, like those knuckle-draggers that converged on that town, don’t give a fuck about their fee-fees. It’s time we call them out for the cowardly snowflakes they truly are.

Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist drone Christopher Cantwell who was present during that riot is now scared for his life. During an interview with Vice.com, he starts balling like a baby for fear of his impending arrest. You can read more about it and check out the video here.

Prior to the incident at Charlottesville in which a man plowed his car through anti-hate protestors, conservative media outlets, including Fox Nation, circulated an article originally by The Daily Caller entitled, “Here’s A Reel Of Cars Plowing Through Protesters Trying To Block The Road.” According to CNN Money, it had a video of vehicles “driving through demonstations” set with Ludacris’ “Move Bitch” as its background theme.

The article was published several months prior but gained attention following the events of Charlottesville. After it got slammed by Twitter followers, the video was quickly deleted. As expected, The Daily Caller declined to comment. So much for white pride.

Right-wing pundits and commentators rushed to dismissed the riot in Charlottesville as a case of white racist violence galvanized by the Cheeto-in-chief who laid blame on “both sides“. Rush Limbaugh claims it was a conspiracy set up by Democrats to gain political power. Tucker Carlson tries to defend slavery by using the tired old “Africans had slaves too” bullshit excuse while comparing the removal of Confederate statues to the extremism of the Taliban, Khmer Rouge and China. And CNN’s resident, right-wing racist cop commentator Harry Houck argues that the left shares blame for the death of Heather Heyer, the young woman tragically killed during the riot and those brutally injured from the onslaught of right-wing extremists. Oh, and of course, he blames Black Lives Matter for what happened.

These are just a few examples that cancel out white supremacy bravado exposing the spinelessness of their mind frame. The whole concept of whites being the best of all groups is governed by ignorance and predicated on emotion; especially the emotion of fear which it converts into a tool of racial empowerment. But these current examples show that that power is born of hollowness and dichotomous thinking. They’re only “brave” from a safe place. They can’t be proud of who they are if they don’t trash those they fear. And one of those fears is responsibility.

This is not to say these types of losers aren’t to be feared. If pushed far enough, they will unleash hell. However, it further makes the point that they’re deathly afraid, and as long as long as you have fear-pushers to intoxicate the lost masses, fear will continue to be a weapon of mass destruction.That’s white inferiority masked as white supremacy.

The post Don’t Be Skurred: The Cowardice of White Supremacy appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Known as alternate history, it is a well-flourishing literary and film genre. The genre’s basic premise is to go back to a historical event, posit a different outcome and build a world with characters and plot based on that alternative timeline. This genre is not to be confused with dystopian future tales that often create or assume a not-yet event that throws the world off of it’s current course.

A quick search for alternate history literature in Amazon or even Google shows that the American Civil War and World War II are the two most popular niches in which people write both fiction and non-fiction. Historians always play the “what if” game in non-fiction tomes focusing on one battle or one decision made by a war general. The sheer number of books and articles teasing out the “what if” hypotheses has shown that the consuming public has a voracious appetite for this. Currently, Amazon Prime is producing “The Man in the High Castle,” based on a novel of the same title that is an alternate history dependent on the United States and the Allied powers losing World War II with Nazi Germany occupying the eastern half of the United States to the Rocky Mountains and Japan occupying the Pacific coast. And as much flak as he received, Quentin Tarentino’s “Django Unchained” was not just a box office smash, but also critically acclaimed fictional telling of a one-man slave revolt in the antebellum South. Even I went to go see the movie twice! Less critically acclaimed, but equally as important to this essay, “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer” featuring a machete-wielding, vampire-hunting Harriet Tubman was certainly a movie that fell into the genre of alternate history.

I’ll admit, there’s a personal fascination to this as a genre. Much like the consuming American public, the “what if” fascinates me. Especially the “what if” around slavery and the potency of a real Confederate States of America. These are things that have relevance in a day and age where discussions around race, white supremacy and racism are rhetorical mine-fields for people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Not to mention the political connections of the current White House to alt-right operatives that closely have aligned themselves with white supremacist ideology and organizations, the way the United States uniquely engages in race both historically and currently continues to hold our collective fascination.

If I had to guess, I think the gist of pushback that HBO received from this wasn’t a result of people being against the genre, or even specifically black folks not having the collective willful imagination to ask “what if” on such as divisive topic, nor even that the two black co-producers didn’t get equal billing as Joy Reid points out, but rather it was based on this history of how films and TV shows centered around race set in the historical past–alternate histories or not–have been ingloriously handled. More often than not, many of these historical  and contemporary (re-)tellings, fiction and non-fiction, are based on the gaze of the white liberals characters. These movies rely on a white savior narrative that highlight the moral bravery that the one white person had in the face of racial injustice, especially on behalf of the persons of color. Think of Skeeter in “The Help,” or Jake Briggance in “A Time to Kill,” where they are fictional stories created on the horror of race, but still centered around the valiant and triumphant stories of the white central character. Parenthetically speaking, the vigilante justice of Carl Lee Haley in “A Time to Kill” seems even less plausible in 2017 than it did in 1996–even after an O.J. Simpson trial and acquittal!  While on one hand, I agree that it’s worth telling the story of white folks who weren’t rabid racists, since they did exists, it’s usually told in a way that subordinates the story of black folks. It provides a point of sympathetic entry for well-meaning whites in contemporary audiences at the expense of the narrative of blacks. Given that Hollywood has been absolutely obtuse over centralizing black narratives over the years, the stories told in “12 Years a Slave,” “Hidden Figures” and “Fences” can hardly make up for the last nine decades of filmmaking in this country.

While movies like “Django Unchained” and “Get Out” that focus heavily on black characters, they function as “must see” movies to watch rather than “can’t wait to see movies” akin to “The Fate of the Furious” or another Marvel comic release. “Django Unchained” and “Get Out” are two well-known and recent movies that challenge that abscond the white savior narrative and allow black characters to save themselves against white antagonists. While yes, Schultz character in “Django” did have soteriological characteristics, I’d like to think the final scenes of with Django blasting any and all white people to kingdom come should account for something. And certainly with “Get Out,” every white person with a speaking role functioned as an enemy of the central character, Chris, who survived as the credits began to roll. Even writer, producer and director Jordan Peele said that “the ending needed to transform into something that gives us a hero, that gives us an escape…”

But these movies provided a type of dual representation, something that most movies aren’t able to do. On the one hand, black audiences cheered at the end of “Django Unchained” and “Get Out” for seeing not just the moral victory, but the realised victory of a black face on screen. Based on that simple fact, one could even argue that both these films dabble in the genre of Afrofuturism providing a revisionist history that shows preference for black characters. That makes it all the more easy for white audiences  to disassociate from the evil white characters because it was just a movie; a kind of anti-representation. Many white liberals watching those two movies would never identify with the Calvin Candies of the world. Or the Armitages, even though they would have voted for Obama a third time.

I would allege that the fear expressed by the likes of Joy Reid and Roxane Gay are worries about are there a certain type of white people who watch a show like “Confederate” simply to scratch the itch of what if or watch secretly wishing it was reality. There is a fear that a show like “Confederate” becomes a type of white existential pornography, hoarded and passed around in secret white-only social groups that quietly express glee and mirth that such representation still exists. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Peele said

Slave movies can be amazing, but it is interesting to me that the industry and this country have found a certain safety in the American slave narrative — I think because these films take place a long time ago, there is a certain protection and we don’t have to face current issues of racism

And for black folk, that’s a scary prospect. Is the lady at the DMV who serves you or your co-worker on a work team possibly one of the ones who falls into the  “I wish this was reality” ideological camp? Given that the stories of white municipal officials sending racist emails to one another is a recurring theme suggests that black folks may be operating in work and communal spaces where deep-seated racial resentment is real. Or the fact that a mayoral candidate in St. Petersburg, Florida publicly stated that blacks received reparations in the personhood of Barack Obama and that black folks need to “go back to Africa” in 2017 presumes that there are many white people who believe these ideas, but know better than to say them aloud. Especially concerning the racist interdepartmental emails in Ferguson, Missouri between a former municipal court employee and a police officer, the subsequent Department of Justice investigation connected the racial bias displayed in the emails to the outright discrimination of black citizens of Ferguson. These are real and founded fears. Far too often, for black people, the boogeyman is very real.

If I had HBO, I’d watch it. More because of my affinity for the genre than anything else. But, as an American consuming public, we need to be aware if we watch and read things like this for the sake of an intellectual exercise or do some of us tacitly wish for an alternate reality.

The post HBO’s ‘Confederate’, Black Fears, & White Tears appeared first on Madness & Reality.

However, all good things must come to an end. Moving forward, I cannot see myself giving anymore of my time and earspace to The Breakfast Club.

The reason for my decision is simple: The Breakfast Club has become a radio show that promotes fuck shit. Either that or they have always promoted fuck shit. Whichever one comes first.

The Breakfast Club Being On Some Bullshit

In recent weeks, The Breakfast Club has had some of the most colorful interviews with questionable characters that said profoundly shaky things or did even worse.

Let me run down the line so it all makes sense:

• Umar Johnson has been on there a couple of times in recent history. The last time, he made some off-putting remarks about interracial marriage. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, his ideals on interracial marriage aren’t supported by any worthwhile evidence. And all that conjecture lead to him being on Roland Martin’s show to defend his “honor” and his “credentials”. An infinite waste of time over someone that exudes arrogance and allocated Gofundme funds.
• Wesley Muhammad was on the show trying to educate the masses on the weaponization of marijuana. You know: because marijuana is put out there to make sure that black men become feminized and black women become manly. Mind you, he didn’t bring up any relevant evidence. Also, Muhammad did very little to explain how any of this will affect white people and other races that smoke as much marijuana as black people do. Still, we all should trust Muhammad because he sounds good. I get it now.
• Rick Ross was on the show mentioning how he could never sign a female artist. His reasoning: because he would try and fuck her. You guessed it: all that money being spent would have him feeling like that pussy is his to have. Plus, the picture he took with Angela Yee was extremely creepy and mad suspect.
• The final straw: Lil Duval’s transphobic commentary. A day after having Janet Mock on the show, they bring in Lil Duval. And Lil Duval unleashes under the guise of not “being politically correct”. He stated these exact words: “This might sound messed up and I don’t care — but she’s dying. I don’t care. If one did that to me and didn’t tell me, I’d probably be so mad I’d kill them.” Meanwhile, DJ Envy, Charlemagne The God, and Yee entertained themselves with his nonsense.

Yeah, I’m done with that show.

The Breakfast Club Are Trash Peddlers

The Breakfast Club has a sanitation problem when it comes to what they put out on the airwaves. It didn’t cross anyone’s mind that certain things do not need to be said? In less than a week, there has been nothing but ideas of misogyny, transphobia, misogynoir, murder, and mayhem being promoted on the show. The hosts did very little; half the time, they entertained the trashiness. I thought this was a radio show and not waste pick up. But, I digress.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I can leave them alone. I am not going to support a show that doesn’t have the simple respect for the lives of women or people within the LBGTQ community. And I am damn sure not going to give time to people that allow the promotion of murderous ideas within realistic situations. Maybe they are trying to keep up with ratings. Or maybe they are just proficient at promoting rubbish.

I don’t listen to trash; I put it in the garbage where it belongs.

The post The Breakfast Club Is The Radio Show For Fuck Shit appeared first on Madness & Reality.

It was 2004 and social media as we know it didn’t exist. The black blogosphere was still in its gestational phases, and online dating for black folks was relegated to hook ups on Black Planet websites and college students who discovered the joys of flip phone cameras to plaster their MySpace pages. And then Oprah Winfrey invited an author by the name of J.L. King who wrote the book On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of Straight Black Men who Sleep with Men to her show and the phenomenon of the “DL black man” was brought to light. At the time, even for me, it fixated my interest because, well, I was in college and some of what became fodder for young minds was evident on the college campus, but it reinforced to yet another generation, the millennials, that “Black men aint shit.” I got into countless arguments and conversations in dorm rooms and at the cafeteria at Fisk during my senior year with black women who said, almost verbatim, “Half of y’all aint shit and the other half of y’all are gay.” I blame Oprah for this.

Only through age and some sense of wisdom that comes with it have I realized that Oprah is not the progenitor of this conversation, it’s something that has been going on for quite some time. But, Oprah at the time that she said it had the weight of pop culture behind it. No longer was it something that was discussed on three-way phone conversations, no longer was it something that black church women tsk tsked about at the afternoon church dinner, it was something worth displaying for the whole world to see on the big screen.

Filmmaker, producer, actor, director, writer and all-around cinematographic maven Tyler Perry found his niche in writing stage plays that was the right mix of comedy, drama and black churchified frivolity. Even prior to J. L. King appearing on Oprah’s show, Perry had received ticket-sale success from the chitlin’ circuit by the turn of the century. While getting his start with stage plays in the 1990s, his box office success came in 2001 with “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” which was eventually turned into a movie and introduced his famous Madea character to the wider world. By this time, Oprah had already invited Perry to her show and his inspirational story of being homeless and pouring his life savings into his work was a success story Oprah glommed on to. It was no turning back for either one of them.

“Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” to say the least was not cinematic greatness. But no one was necessarily expecting it given that it was Perry’s first feature length movie. However, it set the foundation for Perry’s characters throughout his later productions. (I want to list some of the movies that I’m speaking about for the sake of making a larger reference point: “Why Did I Get Married?,” The Family That Preys,” “I Can Do Bad All By Myself,” Daddy’s Little Girls”) Most of these movies took stereotypical and archetypical images of black women and placed them into characters that some times fit and some times didn’t. And more often than not, they didn’t. But still, his movies were box office success. Without fail, if a Tyler Perry movie was released, he was going to make his money back in box office sales that was spent on production, and usually with profit. Perry found the right mix of black buffoonery in the Madea character, and finding ways to dispense platitudinal wisdom, making sure that Cicely Tyson or Maya Angelou had speaking roles, so that a wide range of black folks–and white looky-loos–would show up at the box office. It is worth noting that behind all of this Oprah Winfrey was walking directly to the bank.

Oprah’s success model, as she noted herself, changed when she saw the tide of daytime talk show moving away from the Morton Downey, Phil Donahue and Jerry Springer model of confrontation, and moving toward inspiration. At least there was a glimmer of hope that you can be success by appealing to the American public’s higher angels rather than their lust for displays of violence. Oprah rose to the top. By herself. She owned and operated her brand. Her race aside, it’s still a marvel that she was able to do it. The poor black girl from Kosciusko, Mississippi actually made it. Part of me thinks that she backed Tyler Perry as a result of criticism at the time that she, as a black woman in this country was 1) not a real Christian and 2) wasn’t really black.

Seeing the sea change from confrontational to inspirational, Oprah was not shy in having people on her show that spoke of spiritual transformation in decidedly non-Christian ways. Note, not necessarily un-Christian ways, but through modes that would speak more to philosophical metaphysics than through Christian theological methods. This was superbly expressed throughout many of the books that she selected for Oprah’s Book Club, almost culminating with author Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth in 2008.

Similarly, Oprah had one of the most damning ontological charges levied against her: that she wasn’t black. Most of her in-studio audience were white women. And frankly, very few television shows across the board become number one solely off the viewership of black viewers; even “The Cosby Show” was made number one because the majority of viewers were white (honestly, I think “Empire” on Fox might be one of the few if not only that’s been able to do this). And Oprah received a lot of criticism through the Oprah’s Angel Network, the charity arm of her vast empire started in the late 1990s, for donating to schools in South Africa and seemingly turning a blind eye to the poverty and schools in her backyard of Chicago. It seemed as though Oprah started going out of her way to build homes and do for black women in visible ways on her show. One of the most famous clips of Oprah building a house for a single black mother made its way to the movie “Ocean’s 13.” All of that combined, I speculate, fueled Oprah’s alignment with Tyler Perry, but she didn’t stop there. And neither did Perry.

As The Oprah Winfrey Show was wrapping up in 2010, she announced the launch of her own network, OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) in 2011. The network predictably struggled, but has essentially found its footing in the present. But the network was buoyed by, wait for it, sit-coms and drama productions by Tyler Perry. Perry had already produced “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne” for Atlanta-based networks and then for TBS, but later worked out a deal for scripted shows for the then-new OWN network. “Tyler Perry’s For Better or for Worse” was picked up by OWN after cancellation on TBS, and “Love Thy Neighbor,” a sit-com and “The Have and Have Nots” a soap opera-esque drama were specifically designed for OWN. Essentially, the writing and depth of the characters is flat. The one-liners of the sit-coms appeal to niche brand of entertainment that edges up to shuck-and-jive adjacent; the drama shows are melodramatic: imbecilic in one line, stark histrionics the next. All the while employing the same tropes of black women and black men. What do I mean by that? Many of the Perry characters singularly embody a trope. Where one single woman is the Mammy character, one single man is the Buck, and one single woman is the Jezebel, so on and so forth. It’s a failure to understand not just the complexity of humans, but unique complexity of black life in America.  All of which, seemingly is supported by Oprah Winfrey of all people.

I think when I had this revelation, connecting all of these problematics of Perry’s characters throughout the years to Oprah, it was a bit disturbing. I wasn’t so much concerned about how Perry portrayed black women, usually because they obtained some type of moral victory in the end, but I couldn’t help but wonder Was this how Oprah viewed black men? Obviously, this is all a theory, pure speculation, but I can’t help but imagine Oprah sitting… wherever someone as rich and wealthy as Oprah sits… disconnected from so many parts of black life positing what she wants to green light as far as production. I don’t have a vantage point into the lives of the rich and famous enough to honestly know how these decisions get made and ultimately carried out, but its worth noting that this, this connection from understanding the black man as this sexually violent DL man–or just “ain’t shit”–was perpetuated by Oprah! She had him back on the show and some of that dichotomous rhetoric was tampered, but as everyone knows, it’s no point in closing the barn door once the horse has left. Also, without going down the rabbit-hole of Lee Daniels and his artistic interpretation of black life, it’s no secret the projects in which Oprah decided to align herself with post-2004 certainly flattened and narrowed the concepts of black masculinities to the point of detriment to the larger conversations that happened on morning talk-radio and even at the family reunions.

By 2017, our concepts on sexuality and sexual orientation seem light years beyond what I understood in college and what the collective country has understood. Even though we all know, it bears repeating just how unfathomable it would have been in 2004 to imagine that same-sex marriage would be legal and that it would exist as a mandate from the Supreme Court. Our conversations on sexual orientation and sexuality have grown to include transgender individuals, again something we couldn’t imagine. Yet, our conversations around black male sexuality, sexual orientation and black masculinities in general seem to be moving at a glacial pace. For black women, there’s elasticity around being attracted to both women and men; concerning black men, to be attracted to both men and women is simply to be “gay.” Granted, this is not helped by the ankh-left and the more Hoteppian perspectives of current black culture that seem to ascribe to an idea that homosexuality was something introduced by the “white man” to destroy the black family, it’s also a real undercurrent in black culture. This was exposed in Issa Rae’s “Insecure” television show on HBO when one of the ancillary characters noted that he had had a sexual encounter with another man and the black woman was absolutely repulsed. The double standard was real. While “Insecure” was clearly trying to force the conversation and challenge the narrative, Perry’s Oprah-supported productions of nearly a decade enforced so many bad cultural norms around heteronormative patriarchy and tragic Christian values that I can’t help but wonder do we owe our slow collective progress around black masculinities to Tyler Perry and Oprah?

MATURING BLACK MASCULINITIES

Growth and maturity happen for all. Irrespective of age. The so-called light bulb moment can happen at 15 or even happen at 105; the genius of wisdom is able to dispense even unto death. Jay-Z released his latest album 4:44 and in an eponymous track, he spoke of his own maturity directly related to his relationship with his now wife, Beyoncé. On the track “4:44,” he apologizes for the ways in which his own immaturity hurt her, but in a slightly later-released video clip, he plunged a bit deeper into the recesses that fueled his immaturity. On a documentary-style 11 minute clip of who’s who of black male celebrities, Jay-Z hosted a discussion around black masculinity and the “invisible wisdom” that had been dispensed on to them as black men living in the American empire. Will Smith spoke of the wretched advice he received from an elder, not his father, on how to interact with women that spiraled down a drain of absurdity culminating in the u-bend of a violent display that seemed lifted from a 1940s Hollywood gangster movie. Kendrick Lamar spoke of the “hardness” that he was taught to have; Anthony Anderson stared off into space lamenting his emotional selfishness; Jesse Williams displayed impassioned anger at how he had been reduced to words in innumerable think-pieces.

Perhaps, just perhaps, we’ve entered an age where we can discuss the complexities of black manhood. Maybe even Oprah has progressed herself. As Ava Duvernay has produced and director “Queen Sugar,” a story of three siblings struggling what it means to carry on their father’s legacy as a sugar cane farmer in the rural South as well as manage their own personal lives, there’s a glimmer of hope around telling the narrative of black masculinity that isn’t toxic, that isn’t flat, that isn’t one-dimensional. And the fact that Duvernay is able to do it without compromising the central narrative of the black women as well seems to be a feat unheard of before. And all of this is on the OWN network. Specifically (spoiler alert somewhat), there are three (and-a-half) black male characters, Ralph Angel (one of the siblings), Micah (the son of one of the siblings), Hollywood (the beau of the sibling’s aunt), and Blue (Ralph Angel’s grade school son), and all of them have the stinging portrayal of reality. These are complex black male lives that are much like the black men who we all encounter on a daily basis. As Ralph Angel vacillates between protecting his son’s agency to play with a Barbie doll and still call Micah “soft” illuminates a complexity and depth that I’m not convinced Tyler Perry could ever pull off and one that Lee Daniels wouldn’t be interested in advancing.

Ralph Angel’s character is where many American black men are existentially. Negotiating just how emotionally vulnerable do we want to be and how emotionally vulnerable do we need to be. We play the game of navigation at our jobs, with our girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, live-ins, with the people at church and sadly even on the street: how do we manage our authentic selves and people’s perception of us. Some would argue that’s what it means to live in modern society. That may be true, but when the perceptions are almost wholesale negative that makes a difference. If the perceptions of black men are “half of y’all aint shit and the other half are gay” what does that do to the trust and communication of a relationship between a black woman and a black man? Or even that black men have a predisposition to violence–how does that effect a black man who’s 6’2″ and 220lbs and he chooses to be impassioned in a meeting at work and all of his colleagues are white?

We can’t undo what Oprah did 13 years ago, and unfortunately we can’t unsee all of the Tyler Perry movies and him running around in drag as what should have been a cartoon character on the Disney Kids network (think Suga Mama’s character from “The Proud Family”) and what that’s done to how we see black women and also how we see black men. My only hope is that as black cultural art forms on TV and the silver-screen seemed to rise to greatness under the Obama-era (think: “Moonlight,” “Hidden Figures,” “Fences” and “Get Out”), I hope that the divergence that the likes of Barry Jenkins of “Moonlight” and Duvernay with “Queen Sugar” have provided will be the new norm.

Finally, I hope more black men are encouraged to do what Jay-Z did: sit around with each other and talk about their emotions. And not at the barbershop. The performance of black toxic masculinity needs to be shed in order to have a real conversation. One where we can bear our souls to each other. I watched “Footnotes of ‘4:44’” and I wished I could hand each of them a referral to see a therapist. All of them spoke with a vacant look in their eyes, staring off into space as much of them, like Ralph Angel’s character, simply lacked the vocabulary, the blueprint, with which to construct an emotional structure of their own lives; just pieces of their soul scattered on the ground of their life lacking the tools to put it back together. It seemed as though the only forethought most of them had was that those pieces were theirs, and that it should be a way to put it back together (or simply construct it to begin with), but no one had showed them the way. Ever.

My hope and prayer is that somewhere, somebody is doing the work of making sure that black men know that they are enough.

The post Black Masculinity, Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, & “Queen Sugar” appeared first on Madness & Reality.

The W.H. is functioning perfectly, focused on HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many other things. I have very little time for watching T.V. – Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2017 Donnie Dingbat tweeted that out this morning, earning him more scorn and ridicule as a bullshit artist, non pareil. His claims were shot down by White…

The post Trump Tweets: ‘I Have Very Little Time For Watching TV’ appeared first on Madness & Reality.

The struggles of the homeless in the major cities is too often overlooked. In a nominally civilized western society, there is a collective “out of sight, out of mind” approach to this enormous issue. They are stigmatized as people who have somehow failed, and are written off as such. It’s going to take a major policy shift to address this concern, but part of that struggle is to humanize those affected.

Filmmaker Delila Vallot aims to do just this with her latest documentary, Mighty Ground. Mighty Ground tells the story of Ronald Troy Collins, a homeless man who is struggling to turn his life around. With the help of unlikely friendships along the way, a homeless songwriter tries to kick a hard-core crack addiction and escape the grisly streets of skid row via his love of music.

Vallot, who is also based in Los Angeles, in an interview via telephone sheds some light on the extent of the homeless problem in downtown LA and how Ronald’s story encapsulates it. “It just seems barbaric, for there to be homelessness,” said Vallot. Going further, discussing the resources available, she noted that this country can eradicate homelessness. Speaking of how gentrified LA is, Vallot as a filmmaker wants to illustrate how easy it is for people to fall through the cracks.

During the conversation, she mentioned a disturbing statistic: For every $100 dollar rent raise, it creates a 15 percent rise in homelessness. This, is a pressing problem, and threatens the working poor with destitution. When you factor in the cost of policing and hospitalizing the homeless, it would actually cost less to house people than to leave them on the street. To go even further, the predicament of being undomiciled makes it more likely for the person affected to develop mental illness or wind up in jail. “The longer you are out on the street, the harder it is to get out of the street, ” said Vallot. In noting the obstacles that homeless people face, the purpose of the documentary is to help change the mindset of the viewer toward this neglected population. A sizeable portion of this population are women and children. This is often forgotten when people have an archetype of who the homeless are.

Mighty Ground made its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June, and will be on the film festival circuit for the rest of this year. Vallot also said that there are talks in bringing the documentary to video on demand and cable. To learn more about this documentary, visit the Mighty Ground Facebook page.

The post Delila Vallot Humanizes Plight of Homelessness in “Mighty Ground” appeared first on Madness & Reality.

When Carlson asked Durden why would an organization founded on equality for black people institute such a ban, Durden’s response was racially charged and quite shocking.

“Boo hoo hoo!”

“You white people are angry because you couldn’t use your white privilege card,” she responded. She continued with a rant that was eventually stopped by her mic being cut off.

After which, Carlson asked, “If you don’t like people excluding others on the basis of their race… then why are you doing it and why are you defending it now?”

Durden replied and talked about how “you’ve been having White Days forever!” and invoked the “all-white Oscars” and movies and TV shows with all-white casts. She added, “It took eleven seasons to get a black Bachelorette!”

At that point, Carlson accused Durden of being “hostile,” and “crazy.”

“You’re demented, actually.” Carlson blurted out during Durden’s extremely incoherent lecture. “You’re sick and what you’re saying is disgusting and if you were a Nazi, I’d say the same thing to you because what you are saying is indistinguishable to what they are saying.”

You know what? Tucker Carlson was right. As I watched the exchange, I found myself asking, “Who is this woman, and what the hell is wrong with her?” Seriously, she was totally unhinged. So you can imagine the look on my face when I later read that she was a college professor. No shade, but her entire argument had no measure of intellectualism.

She really did Black Lives Matter or herself any favors. And to be perfectly honest, I thought Carlson had a legitimate line of questioning. It was a line of questioning that even I had on the issue. But I understand that Durden wasn’t representing Black Lives Matter, and her views were her own. However, she came off like a nutjob in trying to defend the indefensible.

On June 8th, two days after her appearance on Fox, Durden arrived on the New Jersey campus and was told to cancel her classes. According to Mediaite, Durden was instructed to report to Human Resources. She was handed a signed letter by the Vice President of academic affairs. In the letter, she was informed that she was suspended “until further notice.” Apparently, the college didn’t take too kindly to her divisive anti-white rhetoric.

“They did this to humiliate me,” Durden reacted. “Essex County College publicly lynched me in front of my students.” Seriously? They “lynched” her? No, ma’am, I’ve seen lynching photos, and that wasn’t a lynching. While I understand that she was speaking figuratively, her hyperbolic and exaggerated reaction is emblematic of what got her fired in the first place.

I don’t care who you are. And it also doesn’t matter what color or ethnicity you are. Bottom line: you can’t get on national television and express those views. Yes, you’re entitled to an opinion like everyone else. However, what you do is get a blog like I did and write that shit anonymously. Hell, and even when you do like I and so many others do, you have to be careful. There are consequences for what you say or do in spaces of public consumption.

When asked to comment on her termination, Jefferey Lee, the Vice President of Academic Affairs told the press: “The college promotes a community of unity that is inclusive of all. The general counsel has handled this matter in a way that complies with New Jersey state law. I am not at liberty to provide further details.”

This isn’t rocket science, folks. Professor Lisa Durden essentially did the equivalent of posting naked pics of herself online and got fired for it. Sorry, but unless you work at a strip club, anyone working in a high-profile job will get fired for doing just that. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t seen other college professors get fired for saying racist stuff on Facebook.

Yep, as much as I disagree with the views of Tucker Carlson, this sister should’ve known better. But like the old folks would say, apparently Lisa Durden forgot her color. Which is funny, because if she was white and she said some foul shit as many folks on Fox News normally do, we’d all be calling for that person’s job.

The lesson here is that you can’t be on your “Kill Whitey” steez in public.

You have to save that for the Black Lives Matter gatherings where non-blacks are banned.

The post Professor Lisa Durden Fired After Appearance On Fox News appeared first on Madness & Reality.

It’s bad enough to live in a community disadvantaged by centuries old institutional racism. Even worse, however, is living in a community where your quality of life and overall lifespan, can be impacted by environmental racism. Again, environmental racism is very real, folks.

In a video for The Atlantic, staff writer Vann Newkirk argues that environmental racism is the new Jim Crow. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. The environment isn’t a person. How can it be racist?” says Newkirk in the video. “But the most basic pieces of the environment, the air we breathe and the water we drink, are controlled and designed by people. And people can be racist.”

Watch the Video below:

The extent of the contamination came as a shock to residents of the complex, even though it is just north of a huge former U.S.S. Lead smelting plant and on top of a smaller former smelting operation, in an area that was designated a Superfund site in 2009. Now, in a situation that many fearful residents are comparing to the water crisis in Flint, Mich., they are asking why neither the state nor the Environmental Protection Agency told them just how toxic their soil was much sooner, and a timeline is emerging that suggests a painfully slow government process of confronting the problem.

These are children who will endure a lifetime of physiological defects much like the children in Flint. Like the children and residents of low-rent apartments with lead paint before them, they too will suffer. Why? Because by no fault of their own, they were born the wrong color.

 We can’t afford to ignore environmental racism, folks. Racism as a tool of capitalism is very real. And sadly, its fangs cut very deep systemically; and often with dire consequences.

The post Environmental Racism: The New New Jim Crow appeared first on Madness & Reality.

So why is this even news?

I know, I can hear you asking, “So what’s the big deal, RiPPa? People get divorced all the time. It’s really no big deal – it’s fake news.”

Well, it’s not that I’m heartbroken because they’re personal friends. It’s that some of my personal friends are a tad bit upset about this. Why? Because rumor has it, Jesse Williams is now dating a white woman.

For many of my friends, Jesse Wiliams has committed the most egregious, most ashy, and unforgivable sin. That would be, that he left his beautiful black wife and children for a white woman. I mean, total sellout move.

Yes, think of that scene in the movie “Waiting To Exhale” where Angela Bassett’s punk-ass sorry excuse for a husband of thirteen years, tells her that she’s not allowed to go to the company New Year’s Eve party. You know, because his office sidepiece – the alabaster angel with blonde hair – didn’t want to be alone that night. Remember that scene?

I imagine if you’re a woman and old enough like me, the news of Jesse Williams dumping his wife for – Derek Jetter’s ex, Minka Kelly – a white woman, will have you ready to spit in the face of random white women you see for the next month. You know, because, justice.

Ironically, my wife and I watched that movie last weekend. Guess what? My wife is still highly pissed at that brother; and even as a God-fearing woman, she would love to put a bullet in that fool’s ass for doing that.

But see, it’s not just my wife, people. Some of my friends now look at Jesse Williams as a total fraud. After all, Williams pretty much had his “black card” stamped and approved for life after his remarkable speech at the 2016 BET Awards.

The outspoken human rights activist and actor – who executive produced the documentary, Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement – delivered a very powerful political speech about the cause he has worked very hard on.

Today, however, for many, even while his wife beamed with pure unadulterated pride and joy as the cameras panned her way during Williams’ speech after accepting BET’s Humanitarian Award, he was totally fake.

“Before we get into it, I just want to say I brought my parents out tonight. I just want to thank them for being here, for teaching me to focus on comprehension over career, and that they make sure I learn what the schools were afraid to teach us. And also thank my amazing wife for changing my life,” said Williams in part during his speech.

He continued,”It’s kind of basic mathematics – the more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilize. Now, this is also in particular for the black women in particular who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you.“

This was what Williams said in a moment for which he was highly lauded.

It was a speech everyone remembers.

Yet here we are more than a year later, and some of us are ready to kick him to the curb like he openly campaigned for Donald Trump, and read a poem at the inauguration back in January. And believe me, Williams has been catching it on social media as well as the comment sections of blog posts.

But here’s the thing: does Jesse Williams divorcing his wife -who, again, happens to be black – and allegedly dating a white woman, invalidate any of his critiques of white supremacy and the injustice of state-sanctioned racial violence? If he is in fact now dating a white woman, does it even matter?

Well, does it?

After all, to my knowledge, it’s not even clear whether his divorce has anything to do with infidelity. Right now the assumption is that he cheated on his wife with a white woman, hence the divorce. Hell, for all we know they’re getting a divorce because his wife got tired of him leaving the toilet seat up and constantly drinking all the Kool-Aid.

Hell, for all we know, maybe he has picked up a drug habit. Maybe he was an abusive husband. But, again, this is only an assumption. We don’t know him and his wife personally. I’m not defending the brother – I’m just asking. 

Even so, assuming that him cheating with the white girl was indeed the case, does it really matter? I’m only asking because in thinking about this I’m reminded that Frederick Douglass (who by the way, is still alive) was married to a white woman. To be fair, Douglass didn’t speak at the BET Awards last year and isn’t as popular as Williams. However, again, at the end of the day, does it really matter if he is now dating a white woman? Should his commitment to blackness in the context of justice even be questioned?

The post Jesse Williams: From “Woke” to “Ashy” in a Year? appeared first on Madness & Reality.