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Society

Spike Lee Attacks ‘Christopher Columbus Syndrome’ In Epic Rant On Gentrification

February 27, 2014·Business·by MMXLLI·60 views

Film director Spike Lee was speaking at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn for Black History Month last night when an audience member asked for his opinion about “the other side” of the gentrification debate.

Lee responded with a 7-minute expletive-filled rant about New York City’s gentrification. He decried what he called the “Christopher Columbus Syndrome” in trendy, rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods like Harlem and Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn that wealthy white people purportedly believe they “discovered.” From his rant:

Then comes the motherf—ing’ Christopher Columbus Syndrome. You can’t discover this! We been here. You just can’t come and bogart. There were brothers playing motherf—ing’ African drums in Mount Morris Park [in Harlem] for 40 years and now they can’t do it anymore because the new inhabitants said the drums are loud …

Nah. You can’t do that. You can’t just come in the neighborhood and start bogarting and say, like you’re motherf—in’ Columbus and kill off the Native Americans. Or what they do in Brazil, what they did to the indigenous people. You have to come with respect. There’s a code. There’s people.

Lee’s speech came a few days after a controversial New York Times article by a woman who wrote about being groped on the street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn but praised the “literary scene” there and a bakery where she can “banter” with the baker in French. Indeed, Lee called out the Times for playing up supposed “good of gentrification.” (It’s unclear what specific article he was referring to, though.)

The filmmaker suggested that places like Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy are just getting better schools and maintenance services now that white people are moving in.

“So, why did it take this great influx of white people to get the schools better? Why’s there more police protection in Bed Stuy and Harlem now? Why’s the garbage getting picked up more regularly? We been here!” said Lee.

Lee was prescient about the changing face of the city back in 1989 with his landmark movie “Do The Right Thing,” which chronicles simmering racial tensions in Bed-Stuy. Check out this clip, which Lee name-checked last night.

The full audio is below, but you can check out the transcript at New York here:

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[Infographic] The Oscars Diversity Problem

February 25, 2014·Entertainment·by MMXLLI·60 views

Well this really doesn’t look good. It’s not news that the Academy Awards have lagged behind when it comes to recognizing actors, directors, producers, and other pros who aren’t white. The blame for that failure could fall in a few places: our culture at large, risk- and change-averse producers, the oddly regressive dynamics of the Academy voters. Either way, it’s not great.

An infographic published on The New York Times‘ Carpetbagger blog has spelled out the Academy Awards diversity gap in stark, visual terms. Created by children’s book publisher Lee & Low Books, the chart reveals just how stacked the deck is against anyone hoping to see a shift in the racial make-up of Oscar winners. One stat sticks out like a very sore thumb: Of the Academy’s 85 Best-Actress winners, only one — Halle Berry for 2001′s Monster’s Ball — has been anything other than white. That’s inflated to 1% for the purpose of being visible on a pie chart.

Over the past few years, the field of Oscar nominees has been inching into more-inclusive territory — which could give us a glimmer of hope for change. Then again, with 94% of all Academy voters being white, that change may still be a sad many years away. (New York Times)

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Countdown to 2042 with Camille Joseph of Native LA

February 25, 2014·Business·by MMXLLI·55 views

2042 (MMXLII pronounced MIXLY) is the estimated year where there will be no single ethnic majority in the United States. In this episode of Countdown to 2042, MIXLY sat down with Camille Joseph, co-owner of NATIVE LA accessories and vintage to discuss the challenges young female entrepreneurs face and what the future will be like for women with different racial backgrounds who own a successful business together.

Check out previous episodes of Countdown to 2042 with Casey Veggies, The Internet and Riff Raff on YouTube

Why Major Creative Breakthroughs Happen in Your Late Thirties

February 25, 2014·Millennials·by MMXLLI·76 views

James Murphy, the former frontman of the band LCD Soundsystem, made what he called the biggest mistake of his life at 21, when he turned down a writing job on a sitcom that was about to launch.

The sitcom’s name was Seinfeld.

Instead, he lurched around, working as a bouncer and later a DJ before finally releasing the first LCD Soundsystem album at the not-so-tender age of 35.

Murphy might have been older than some of his dance-rock peers, but his experience is fairly common among people who experience major creative breakthroughs, according to a new paper from NBER.

The authors examined the high points of the careers of both great inventors and Nobel-Prize winning scientists, and they found that the late 30s were the sweet spot for strokes of genius:

Innovators have been peaking slightly later in life as the 20th century has progressed, in part because today’s scientists have more to learn than their predecessors did:

What’s more, people who excel in abstract fields, like art or physics, tend to be younger than those who win prizes in fields that require more context, like history or medicine. Another 1977 study found that physics Nobel winners were 36 on average when they did their prize-winning work, while chemists were 39 and medical doctors were 41.

So why the late 30s? The most obvious factor is education: Scientists spend ages 5 through 18 in school, and then ages 18 through 30ish getting their academic degrees. Then a few years of learning on the job, and presto! You dig up an uncertainty principle. Meanwhile, scientific breakthroughs tend to be less common in old age because we invest less in learning as we get older, and our skills gradually become less relevant.

There’s evidence from the humanities, though, that genius doesn’t decline with age at all. Over 40% of both Robert Frost’s and William Carlos Williams’ best poems were written after the poets turned 50. Paul Cézanne’s highest-priced paintings were made the year he died.

The NBER paper found that scientists who are theoretical (coming up with new ways of thinking) tend to peak earlier than those who are experimental (coming up with answers based on existing knowledge) by about 4.6 years.

This happens for two reasons: First, theoretical scientists don’t necessarily have to wait for a bunch of experiments to get completed and published. Second, and perhaps more importantly, being relatively new to their fields allows them to see the holes and fissures that veterans might not.

Here’s how the study’s authors explain it:

The most important conceptual work typically involve radical departures from existing paradigms, and the ability to identify and appreciate these radical departures may be greatest shortly after initial exposure to a paradigm, before it has been fully assimilated.

They quote Sigmund Freud in Civilization and its Discontents as writing, “The conceptions I have summarized here I first put forward only tentatively, but in the course of time they have won such a hold over me that I can no longer think in any other way.”

Genius, it seems, happens when a seasoned mind sees a problem with fresh eyes.

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What to Watch: The Tanning of America One Nation Under Hip-Hop [Documentary]

February 24, 2014·Advertising·by MMXLLI·55 views

VH1’s The Tanning of America will explore hip-hop’s influence and debuts today.

Over the past 40 years, a cultural shift, marked most recently and vividly by the election ofPresident Obama, has been underway. Hip-hop culture, and its luminaries including Fab 5 Freddy,Dr. Dre, Diddy and Russell Simmons, has been the driving catalyst and laid the foundation for the development of this new generation.

Entrepreneur, advertising and record executive Steve Stoute has had a front-row seat and been an active participant while this transformation has taken place, distinctly conveying those thoughts in his 2011 best-seller The Tanning of America: How Hip-Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy.

“Tanning” is not simply the process of hip-hop culture being accepted by mainstream culture. Rather, it’s the creation of an entirely new culture. “It’s an entire new language, [and] an entire new approach that comes from an openness to borrow and learn and share cultural data,” Stoute says. “People are now hopefully willing to visit, accept, deal with and participate in other cultures. You’re seeing a generation that has adopted that to their lifestyle. That’s the reason why I go back to [saying], ‘You can’t just predetermine someone’s cultural values,’ because we are all borrowing from each other’s culture. There’s so much cultural sharing and tanning happening, that you have to be able to really deal with somebody for who they are. You can’t just hedge on anything because of the amount of sharing and the amount of information that’s being transferred.”

Stoute joined forces with VH1 and filmmakers Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman for a four-part documentary series, The Tanning of America: One Nation Under Hip-Hop, based on his book. Life+Times caught up with Stoute to discuss his ideas about recent tanning moments, and the documentary, which is set to air on VH1 February 24-27.

Read Life+Time’s interview with Steve Stoute here

Jason Collins Becomes NBA’s First Openly Gay Player

February 24, 2014·Business·by MMXLLI·55 views

Jason Collins has become the NBA‘s first openly gay player on an active roster, after signing a contract with the Brooklyn Nets.

Collins signed a 10-day deal with the Nets on Sunday, and will be available to play Sunday night against the Los Angeles Lakers. The veteran center had not been in the league since a six-game stint with the Washington Wizards in 2013. Collins is also the first active openly gay player in any of the four major U.S. sports (i.e. baseball, basketball, football and hockey).

Collins came out last May during an interview with Sports Illustrated. He was a free agent at the time, and was not signed until Brooklyn picked him up.

The signing comes just weeks after Michael Sam, a college-football player that will enter the upcoming NFL draft, came out. If he is drafted and signed, Sam would be the first gay NFL player.

Film, TV industry’s Diversity Doesn’t Look Like America’s, Report Says

February 20, 2014·Entertainment·by MMXLLI·74 views

UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies issues ‘Hollywood Diversity Report.’ Its lead author says ‘Hollywood is woefully out of touch with an emerging America.’

Hollywood still isn’t reflecting the nation’s diversity in its entertainment products, and that omission is costing the industry considerable amounts in lost revenues.

That’s the main conclusion of a comprehensive report about diversity in the film and TV industry released Wednesday by UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. The study, which is titled “2014 Hollywood Diversity Report: Making Sense of the Disconnect,” finds that minorities and women are represented far below their corresponding percentages in the general population.

“The fact is that America is becoming more and more diverse, but the Hollywood industry hasn’t kept up,” said Darnell Hunt, the lead author of the report and the center’s director. “There’s been a little progress, but it’s been at a glacial pace. Hollywood is woefully out of touch with an emerging America.”

Hunt said that while executives at Hollywood studios and networks repeatedly maintain that diversity is important, there seems to be little progress.

“They don’t see diversity as being good for the marketplace,” said Hunt. “They only address it when there’s protest and the cage is rattled.”

The report analyzed more than 1,000 TV shows on 68 different cable and broadcast networks during the 2011-2012 season, and also 172 American-made movies in 2011. Researchers examined the level of diversity in front of and behind the camera, the rosters of Hollywood’s most prominent talent agencies, and the winners of Oscars, Emmys and other honors.

The year in film in 2011 seemed to typify the underrepresentation of minorities. In that year, minorities had lead roles in just under 11% of the 172 films considered. Meanwhile, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census, non-white minorities account for about 36% of the nation’s population.

The failure of Hollywood to accurately mirror the nation’s multicultural nature is putting a major dent in potential box office and ratings, added Hunt. Audiences tend to gravitate toward films and TV series that feature diversity, which translate into higher profits for networks and studios.

“The motion picture and TV academies are overwhelmingly white and male and they’ve been setting the standards for what they feel is successful or funny or good,” Hunt said. “But the demographics are changing and those standards are not as solid now. Increasing diversity should happen not just for the social good, but because it makes perfect business sense.”

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Is America Afraid Of Its Black Kids?

February 17, 2014·Society·by MMXLLI·77 views

A verdict in the city of Jacksonville is again raising the issue of self-defense and race in Florida, just seven months after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting of a black teenager, Trayvon Martin.

Michael Dunn, a white 47-year-old software developer, could face 60 years in prison following his conviction Saturday on multiple counts of attempted murder for shooting into a carful of teenagers outside a Jacksonville convenience store in 2012. Jordan Davis, a black 17 year old, was killed in the shooting, but the jury couldn’t reach a verdict on the first-degree murder charge against Dunn. A mistrial was declared on that count.

The verdict is a far cry from one delivered in the Zimmerman case, when he was acquitted in July in the shooting death of 17-year-old Martin in Sanford, about 125 miles south of Jacksonville.

Like Zimmerman, Dunn said he felt his life was in danger when he fired the shots. But the verdict suggested the jury struggled to see it that way.

Following an argument over loud music coming from the car that Davis was in, Dunn said he shot at the car with his 9mm handgun — he said he was afraid and thought he saw a shotgun in the car.

Legal experts say it’s likely that at least one member of the jury believed Dunn’s story — about being scared, pulling a gun in self-defense and firing the first few shots, which killed Davis. After more than 30 hours of deliberations over four days, the jury couldn’t agree on the first-degree murder charge.

“Although I don’t think the evidence supports this, it is possible that the jury felt that Dunn was proper to stand his ground as to Davis, but his shooting of the others in the car was excessive,” said Kenneth Nunn, a law professor at the University of Florida.

Nunn and other experts said Sunday that it’s possible the jury was confused regarding first-degree murder and the concept that it must be “premeditated.”

Another area of confusion for the general public is Florida’s stand your ground defense law, which was a flashpoint during the Zimmerman case and, to a lesser degree, in this case.

Zimmerman told police he shot Martin only after the African-American teenager physically attacked him; Martin’s family and supporters say Zimmerman, who identifies himself as Hispanic, marked Martin as a potential criminal because he was black.

In both the Dunn and Zimmerman trials, lawyers decided not to pursue a pretrial immunity hearing allowed by Florida’s stand-your-ground law. But in each case, jurors were told by the judges that they should acquit if they found the defendant had no duty to retreat and had the right to “stand his ground.”

That phrase is part of standard instructions given jurors when they weigh a case involving a claim of self-defense.

But the state’s stand your ground law was technically not part of either trial.

“Dunn’s attorney argued self-defense, which has been around forever,” said Miami defense lawyer and former assistant U.S. Attorney David Weinstein. “I think people will say that because some of the language from the stand your ground statute gets embedded into the jury instructions, that stand your ground has an effect.”

Judge Russell L. Healey could impose a 60-year sentence — state statutes call for a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years on each second-degree attempted murder conviction.

But the Florida Supreme Court could reduce the total sentence to 20 years if it decides that consecutive sentences are not appropriate when the sentences arise from one criminal episode, said Weinstein.

“This will make the decision to retry Dunn on the murder charge a little more complicated,” Weinstein said. “Agreeing on a sentence of less than 60 years and forgoing an appeal might be something that Dunn would be willing to do and it would provide finality for the Davis family.”

Dunn could also face 15 years in prison for shooting into the car. A sentencing date won’t be set until a hearing next month.

Meanwhile, Dunn’s attorney vowed to appeal.

“I basically told him to stay strong,” Strolla said Saturday night, “and we’re still going to fight.”

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Facebook Adds New Gender Identity Options for Users

February 14, 2014·Society·by MMXLLI·78 views

Facebook has always pushed users to reveal their true identities on the service, and on Thursday, it took that commitment to a new level.

The social network now allows users to select a “custom gender” for their profiles, meaning users who do not identify as male or female can select a neutral gender identity.

Until Thursday, users could only select their gender as female (“she” and “her”), or male (“he” and “his”). Now, users in the United States can choose gender neutral (“they” or “their”).

“While to many this change may not mean much, for those it affects it means a great deal,” a Facebook spokesperson wrote in an email. “We see this as one more way we can make Facebook a place where people can express their authentic identity.”

When a male user celebrates a birthday, friends may be alerted with a message that reads, “Write on Matt’s wall for HIS birthday.” If a user elects to identify as gender neutral, the Facebook message would change to, “Write on Matt’s wall for THEIR birthday.”

Facebook announced the change on the company’s Diversity page, and says that it worked with “a group of leading LGBT advocacy organizations” to compile a list of gender options. Users can change their gender settings by clicking “About” and selecting the edit icon in the upper-right hand corner of the “Basic Information” tab.

There, users can set their genders to “Custom” and then select from a long list of specific gender options. New option include transgender, bigender, cis, and gender questioning, among many others. (Cis, or cisgender, refers to those who identify as the same gender that they were assigned at birth.)

It’s unclear how many Facebook users self-identify as gender neutral, and a spokesperson did not provide numbers.

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