Category: Viral

Harvard historian Donald Yacovone didn’t set out to write the book he’s writing. His plan was to write about the legacy of the antislavery movement and the rise of the Civil Rights era, but as he delved into his research, he ran into something that changed the focus of his book completely: Old school history textbooks.

Now the working title of his book is: “Teaching White Supremacy: The Textbook Battle Over Race in American History.”

The first book that caught his attention was an 1832 textbook written Noah Webster—as in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary—called “History of the United States.” Yacovone, a 2013 recipient of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois medal—the university’s highest award for African American studies—told the Harvard Gazette about his discovery:

“In Webster’s book there was next to nothing about the institution of slavery, despite the fact that it was a central American institution. There were no African Americans ever mentioned. When Webster wrote about Africans, it was extremely derogatory, which was shocking because those comments were in a textbook. What I realized from his book, and from the subsequent ones, was how they defined ‘American’ as white and only as white. Anything that was less than an Anglo Saxon was not a true American. The further along I got in this process, the more intensely this sentiment came out. I realized that I was looking at, there’s no other word for it, white supremacy. I came across one textbook that declared on its first page, ‘This is the White Man’s History.’ At that point, you had to be a dunce not to see what these books were teaching.”

Yacovone went on to explain that white supremacy preceded the founding of the United States—it wasn’t born from our history of race-based, chattel slavery—and that white identity dominated every social interaction in the 1700s and 1800s. Even many abolitionists didn’t believe in true racial equality—Africans weren’t generally viewed as equals; they just didn’t deserve to be enslaved like animals. Yacovone explained:

“Even people who opposed slavery believed that African Americans could never be absorbed by white society. Samuel Sewall, who wrote the first antislavery pamphlet in 1700, condemned slavery, but he also characterized people of African descent as ‘a kind of extravasate Blood,’ always alien. His idea remained central to the American mind for the next 200 years.”

Yacovone said textbooks began to change a bit—briefly—just after the Civil War, when African Americans finally began to be included. But it didn’t take long for white supremacy to dominate education again, this time through positive depictions of slavery as a benevolent institution and dismissal of slave narratives as “propaganda”:

“For the most part, the textbooks from the pre-Civil War period through the end of the century followed a basic format: They would go from exploration to colonization to revolution to creation of the American republic, and then every succeeding presidential administration. Anything outside of the political narrative was not considered history and was not taught.

During the brief period of Reconstruction (1863-1877), the story emphasized the fulfillment of democracy, and the ideology of freedom suffused many books. This was a dramatic change. I even came across a couple of books that contained pictures of African Americans, and I was flabbergasted when I discovered one that had a picture of Frederick Douglass — that was unheard of. Prior to Reconstruction, textbooks had a few pictures, some engravings. But they disappear pretty quick once we get into the 20th century, because the ‘Lost Cause’ mythology takes over academia and white supremacy reappears with full force.

During the 1920s, the 1930s, and the 1940s, it was astonishing to see positive assessments of slavery in American history textbooks, which taught that the African American’s natural environment was the institution of slavery, where they were cared for from cradle to grave. There was a legacy of African American writing about freedom, but the white power structure simply wouldn’t accept it as legitimate. They dismissed the slave narratives as propaganda, downplayed the history of Africans before slavery, and ignored the work of African American scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois and others.”

Yacovone said textbooks began to improve after the Civil Rights movement. Today, the issue is not so much about the materials available as the collective will to teach it. We are no longer bound by limited texts—we have online curriculums that provide a broader picture of the true history of race and racism in the U.S.—but teachers have to be willing and able to teach that history.

“In the mid 1960s, textbooks began noticeably to change because attitudes and scholarship were changing in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement…There was a gradual reintroduction of the African American element in history textbooks. And now, many history teachers don’t even use textbooks. They’re using online resources. Some of the best work is being produced by the Zinn Education Project, the Gilder-Lehrman Center, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

But even when textbooks are accurate, teachers have to be willing to teach it. We know there are many white teachers who are afraid of doing it. And you have to have school systems, both public and private, committed to doing this work and not to punish teachers for doing so, which is happening…”

Let’s pause for a moment think about the impact of generation upon generation, right up until our current Baby Boomers, being overtly taught white supremacy in their school textbooks. That generation taught the next, who is teaching the current young people. While the materials have vastly improved in the past sixty years, there’s a long legacy there to overcome.

And what happens when we ignore our legacy of teaching white supremacy? What happens when we don’t acknowledge that that’s how Americans were taught for most of our country’s history? What happens if we don’t teach the full history of slavery on our soil?

Yacovone addresses that too:

“If America is to be a nation that fulfills its democratic promise, the history of slavery and white supremacy have to be taught in schools across the country. We need to acknowledge that white supremacy remains an integral part of American society and we need to understand how we got to where we are. The consequences of not doing so are lethal. White supremacy is a toxin. The older history textbooks were like syringes that injected the toxin of white supremacy into the mind of many generations of Americans. What has to be done is teach the truth about slavery as a central institution in America’s origins, as the cause of the Civil War, and about its legacy that still lives on. The consequences of not doing so, we’re seeing every day.”

You can read Yacovone’s entire Harvard Gazette interview here.

On September 14, Charles “Chuck” Feeney signed the paperwork to shut down Atlantic Philanthropies. The ceremony was attended via Zoom by the philanthropies’ board which included former California Governor Jerry Brown, Bill Gates, and Nancy Pelosi.

While most would think the shuttering of a philanthropic endeavor would be a sad event, it was just how Feeney planned. It marked the competition of four-decade mission to give away almost every penny of his $8 billion fortune.

Feeney has saved $2 million to live on for the remainder of his life.

“We learned a lot. We would do some things differently, but I am very satisfied. I feel very good about completing this on my watch,” Feeney told Forbes. “My thanks to all who joined us on this journey. And to those wondering about Giving While Living: Try it, you’ll like it.”

Feeney was one of the first signatories on the Giving While Living pledge that encouraged the super-wealthy to give away 50% or more if their fortunes while still living.

His generosity was the inspiration for Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to sign their giving pledge in 2010. “Chuck was a cornerstone in terms of inspiration for the Giving Pledge,” Warren Buffett told Forbes. “He’s a model for us all. It’s going to take me 12 years after my death to get done what he’s doing within his lifetime.”

Feeney co-founded retail giant Duty Free Shoppers in 1960 which now operates in 11 major airports and 20 Galleria stores. In 2017, nearly 160 million travelers visited Duty Free Shopppers locations.

In 1984, he secretly transferred his entire stake in the company to Atlantic Philanthropies which he started two years earlier.

Not even his business partners knew that he no longer owned a portion of the company.

From there he began donating his massive fortune completely anonymously with the plan of giving it all away before he died. His cover was blown in 1997 when a lawsuit required him to reveal his charitable donations.

Feeney was able to amass even larger sums of cash because he was incredibly frugal.

“Until he was 75, he traveled only in coach, and carried reading materials in a plastic bag,” a New York Times feature read. “For many years, when in New York, he had lunch not at the city’s luxury restaurants, but in the homey confines of Tommy Makem’s Irish Pavilion on East 57th Street, where he ate the burgers.”

He currently lives in a modest apartment in San Francisco with his wife, doesn’t own a car, and wears a $10 Casio watch. On a table in his apartment he has a small, Lucite plaque that reads: “Congratulations to Chuck Feeney for $8 billion of philanthropic giving.”

Feeney gave nearly half of his fortune to education, including $1 billion to his alma mater Cornell. He has given $860 million to social change and human rights causes, $700 million to promote global health, $62 million to abolish the death penalty, and $76 million on a campaign to support the passage of Obamacare.

He has personally supported Sinn Féin, a left-wing Irish nationalist party.

“I see little reason to delay giving when so much good can be achieved through supporting worthwhile causes,” Feeney said. “Besides, it’s a lot more fun to give while you live than give while you’re dead.”

The super-rich are often rightfully the target of criticism for having ungodly wealth while others struggle to get by. But Feeney is a fantastic example of the power of wealth and how industriousness and greed don’t necessarily have to go hand in hand.

While Kanye West tweets seemingly-indiscriminately about… whatever the hell he’s tweeting about these days, Kim Kardashian West continues to use her platform to bring awareness to serious modern-day issues — from wrongful imprisonment to the spread of disinformation, propaganda, and hate that has found a home on platforms like Facebook. In a tweet posted today, Kim announced that she’d be freezing her Instagram and Facebook accounts tomorrow as part of the #StopHateForProfit campaign, joining other celebrities like Sasha Baron Cohen, Orlando Bloom, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

“I love that I can connect directly with you through Instagram and Facebook, but I can’t sit by and stay silent while these platforms continue to allow the spreading of hate, propaganda, and misinformation — created by groups to sow division and split America apart,” tweeted Kim to her 66.7 million followers. #StopHateForProfit is a coalition with support from over 1,200 businesses and non-profits, as well as consumers, that are attempting to make Facebook accountable for the way it handles racism, disinformation, and hate on its platform.

This year brought increased calls to boycott Facebook from both users and advertisers, as the platform continues to grow as a breeding ground for misinformation and hate speech. Just yesterday, Buzzfeed News reported that Facebook either ignored or was slow to act on evidence that fake accounts on its platform had been working to undermine elections and political affairs around the world, according to a 6,600-word memo written by a former Facebook data scientist.

While some Twitter users congratulated Kim Kardashian West on the move, a few noted the irony of Kim’s call in the face of Kanye’s presidential run, which many see as a distraction meant to benefit Trump’s reelection.

We’re one week into the NFL season, and after one game, a prominent player has apparently asked for a trade. According to Brad Biggs of the Chicago Tribune, Bears wide receiver Allen Robinson — who is in the midst of contract talks with the team — has requested that the franchise sends him elsewhere.

Robinson is in the final year of his contract, and negotiations have occurred between 27-year-old pass catcher and the franchise. But on Tuesday — two days after Chicago won its Week 1 tilt against the Detroit Lions and he caught five balls for 74 yards — something seemed amiss when Robinson removed all mentions of the Bears from his social media accounts.

Soon after, Biggs bought word that Robinson “has asked about a possible trade” from the team, which he joined during the 2018 offseason as a free agent following four years in Jacksonville.

Via Chicago Tribune:

How far apart the sides are in negotiations on a new contract is unknown, but it’s highly unlikely Robinson would inquire about the possibility of being traded if they were anywhere near an agreement.

Robinson is in the final year of a three-year, $42 million contract, and typically the Bears have been able to complete extensions for their top players before they begin a contract year. Despite that precedent for avoiding in-season negotiations, general manager Ryan Pace said last week he wasn’t opposed to continuing to work toward a deal.

The team’s top receiver and a Pro Bowl selection back in 2015, Robinson caught a career-high 98 balls for 1,147 yards and seven touchdowns last season. Some of his teammates have been campaigning for the Bears to pay the star receiver on Twitter in light of his frustration.

Today Apple held its big annual September event, including a wild pre-taped presentation that saw the camera shuttling between Apple CEO Tim Cook and other famous faces on the Apple campus in Cupertino as they ran through new announcements. Apple fans hoping to hear some news about the iPhone 12 or new Macbook or iPad Pro models will have to keep waiting, as today’s presentation focused on the Apple Watch, Apple’s new premium package subscription Apple One, and the base level iPad, offering a more practical drop of items aimed at a casual market, likely to coincide with the holiday season.

The lack of any iPhone news shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, as Apple had previously announced that the new iPhone would be delayed due to pandemic-related supply chain issues. Despite the minor upset, Apple still pulled off a pretty packed presentation, filled with new announcements. Let’s get into them!

Apple Watch Series 6/ Apple Watch SE

With the absence of any new iPhone news, Apple spent a considerable portion of today’s event focused on the Apple Watch — unveiling of the Apple Watch Series 6 and the budget-minded Apple Watch SE. The Series 6 is Apple’s “most colorful lineup” and boasts all sorts of new health-focused tech that really positions the device as a fitness-focused health device, rather than a communication device. Its biggest new feature is the ability to measure the wearer’s blood oxygen level using infrared sensors that scan the color of your blood in just 15 seconds.

The Series 6 will also increase enhancements to Apple’s heart-monitoring technology and will feature a sleep app that tracks your sleep quality, a COVID-19 appropriate hand washing detector that encourages you to wash your hands for a full 20 seconds, and a new watch face interface that makes it easy to keep track of your elevation in real-time to better monitor your blood oxygen levels.

The internals of the watch also get a boost — with a high-performance processor that works 20% faster than the previous Apple Watch generation with a display that is 2.5x brighter when outdoors in the wrist down position. The watch face has also been given several new design tweaks, including a Memoji display (for extra vain people), GMT Time Zone display, a racing inspiring design, and a few more customizable options, including special features for surfers, photographers, doctors, and creatives.

The Series 6 Watch also features new band designs, including an option to go clasp and buckle-less with the Solo Loop, a continuous piece of stretchable material made in your choice of two different band designs in multiple colors. The Apple Watch Series 6 will retail for $399.

On the budget end of the spectrum, Apple unveiled the Apple Watch SE which will retail for $279 and features the discontinued Series 5 chip, which is twice as fast as Apple’s Series 3 model (now priced at $199) and will run the latest version of Watch OS. It doesn’t appear that the SE will be able to measure blood oxygen though, so that’s a bit of a bummer.

The Apple SE is set to drop this Friday.

Apple One

Apple now has several premium subscription services under its belt, so it was only a matter of time before they’d bundle them all together and find a way to sell them to us. Again. Today, Apple unveiled Apple One, a three-tiered monthly subscription service that bundles Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, and bumps up your iCloud storage for an individual price of $14.95 a month, or a $19.95 Family Plan.

For those looking for a more premium experience, Apple has the Premier tier, which is $29.95 a month, and features all the other premium services plus Apple News+ and the new Apple Fitness+, with yoga and cycling classes.

Apple One will launch this fall.

iPad 8th Generation/iPad Air

The base-level iPad finally got a refresh with the unveiling of the 8th Generation iPad which features an all-day battery, a better camera, an upgraded A12 Bionic chip, and Apple Pencil support — for a retail price of $329, with a discounted $299 education price.

The more exciting announcement was the new iPad Air redesign, which is a complete cosmetic revamp of the iPad Air with a larger 10.9-inch display, an A-14 silicon chip powering the insides, USB-C compatibility (about time!), and five different eye-catching colorways that include rose gold, green, blue, grey, and silver. The new iPad Air will perform 40% faster than last year’s model and features a 2x jump in graphics. The new iPad Air will retail for $599 with availability beginning sometime next month.

Apple also announced a new operating system for the iPad, dubbed OS14, which includes some serious advancements in the Apple Pencil technology, including the ability to recognize shape, which helps the iPad differentiate your notes from your doodles, allowing you to paste handwritten notes directly into text boxes. It’s not exactly a new iPhone, but if you’re a fan of the Apple Pencil, there is a lot to love here.

iPhone fans aren’t totally out of luck though, as Apple also announced iOS 14, which will add widgets to the home screen, and features a new app library, adds the iPad’s picture-in-picture mode, as well as includes improvements to the Messages, Maps, and Music app.

YG’s new album, My Life 4Hunnid, finally has a solid release date: October 2. The Compton rapper has been teasing tidbits from the album — the second-to-last of his current record deal with Def Jam — all year, including singles “Laugh Now Kry Later!” (not to be confused with Drake’s song with a similar title), the contoversial “Swag,” and the Day Sulan-featuring future gym playlist staple, “Equinox.”

Since the beginning of the year, YG’s been on something of an emotional rollercoaster, beginning with arrest for alleged involvement in a robbery, his breakup from Bay Area singer Kehlani, and the fallout thereof. Since then, he signed Day Sulan to his label, drew criticism from multiple sources including Kamaiyah, Chika, and fans who thought his “Swag” cover was disrespectful, and put out the inspirational but controversial video for his song “FTP,” which both captures the overall mood of anti-police protests across the nation and (some say) exploited their imagery to promote his own pockets.

My Life 4Hunnid arrives a little over a year after YG’s fourth album, 4Real 4Real. With three singles out, we have a pretty good idea of what to expect: More upbeat, gangsta rap anthems with a few introspective moments in between.

My Life 4Hunnid is due 10/2 via Def Jam Recordings.

If nothing below suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now.

The Public (Peacock Original film) — Emilio Estevez directed and wrote this film (in which he also appears) about Cincinnati becoming ground central for an act of civil disobedience-turned-standoff with police. Alec Baldwin, Jena Malone, Taylor Schilling, Christian Slater, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, Gabrielle Union, Jacob Vargas, Michael K. Williams, and Jeffrey Wright star.

Hope Frozen: A Quest to Live Twice (Netflix documentary) — A harrowing journey gets the spotlight in this award-winning documentary feature from film from Thailand. The documentary follows two Thai Buddhist parents who have their two-year-old, Einz, cryopreserved when she dies from brain cancer.

Dead Pixels (CW, 8:00pm EST) — Nicky’s dad attempts to bond with him over Kingdom Scrolls, but the plan backfires in a morbid manner.

Tell Me A Story (CW, 9:00pm EST) — Hannah heads back to NYC in search of Gabe, who’s being held captive, and Jordan discovers a terrible truth.

Transplant (NBC, 10:00pm EST) — Besh is under fire, facing immense scrutiny, and finding his days York Memorial Hospital to be numbered.

Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Janelle Monáe, Jacob Soboroff

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Rainn Wilson, Anthony Ramos

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon — Ewan McGregor, Willie & Bobbie Nelson, Kesha

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Wendy Williams, Blake Griffin, Yola

Jimmy Kimmel Live — John David Washington, Snoh Aalegra

The Houston Rockets followed a familiar script this season, winning a bunch of games while boasting one of the league’s most potent offenses led by MVP candidate James Harden. Unfortunately, they also perpetuated their history of unceremonious postseason exits.

After being ousted by the Lakers in five games in the conference semifinals, a shakeup was inevitable, and it wasn’t long before head coach Mike D’Antoni announced he planned on letting his contract run out and become a free agent instead of working out a new deal with the franchise. It raised the specter of whether head exec Daryl Morey might find himself on the hot seat as well, given the growing skepticism about the Rockets’ philosophy toward roster construction and the hefty price tag they paid, and will continue to pay, for acquiring Russell Westbrook.

However, Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta put those questions to rest on Tuesday, throwing his full support behind Morey.

The Rockets front office will face plenty of questions this offseason about they plan to retrofit their roster, given the financial realities involved, as well as what direction they want to go in terms of coaching. Morey Ball was as much a product of their data-driven GM as it was D’Antoni’s run-and-gun philosophy.

But another disappointing playoff run once again threatens to undermines the efficacy of that approach. Finding a coach to navigate the treacherous waters ahead will be no easy task. There are plenty of intriguing candidates. Alvin Gentry, Dave Joerger, Brett Brown, Kenny Atkinson, and Nate McMillan have all found themselves in the market suddenly, and there are a host of others.

It’s unclear whether Morey will stay the course with what’s carried the team this far or whether he plans to recalibrate his approach. Either way, it will be fascinating to watch, and he has ownership’s support to back him up.

Looking at Ali’s photos as a series, you’re left with the comingling senses of sensuality, vulnerability, and power — a mix that demands the viewer’s deep attention. So it comes as little shock that last year his work attracted the eyes of festival spaces like Afropunk and ENVSN as well as outlets like Forbes. In the second half of the quarantine, Ali has returned to the series, sending prop kits via mail and guiding his subjects on framing and poses over the phone.

As #BlackKings ramps back up, we linked with Ali for an in-depth chat about what he hopes to achieve with the project and why public art is so vital right now.

What was the inspiration for the #Blackkings Project?

#Blackkings is a portrait series I put together about two years ago. It was inspired, truly, by me wanting to connect with people around me that I may not have had a chance to connect with before and reach out to certain individuals that I felt were moving and shaking the world. Now I have this mission statement where I talk about what representation means and what the project means to me but it just started out by me reaching out to friends and reaching out to people around me that I thought were dynamic.

The project in itself is 100 Black men of distinction. I’ve been trying my best these last two years to capture as many men as I could who were intersectional and intergenerational. I’ve been able to shoot people like RZA, Trayvon Martin’s older brother, who is just amazing and has kind of held Trayvon’s legacy up by his activism and continuing to fight for social equality. I’ve been able to shoot even younger people like 10-year-old Jeremiah Harvey who had a viral moment a couple of years ago when he was wrongly accused of theft. The picture to come out of that international story was of him crying and for at least 10 pages you’ll see pictures of him crying on Google. I thought it was my duty as an artist to capture him smiling at 10 years old.

An important part of your work is exploring the beauty of black men, sometimes even after or in spite of personal trauma. Why is it important for you to explore beauty in the face of tragedy?

I feel like we’re at a point now where Black stories are being told. However, I feel like we need more Black people telling those stories. Blackness is more than just a color, or culture, it represents so much to me and to other Black people, it represents struggle, it represents joy, it represents all these things. A big part of our story just so happens to be pain, but I wanted to show how we can move through pain and I want to show you what comes through the other side of that. Even though a lot of the guys that I’ve shot have gone through these life-changing events or had to struggle to get to where they are, they’re living proof — from pressure makes diamonds.

I really wanted to show that and I wanted to do it from my Black male perspective.

Your art has brought you both acclaim and followers, what do you think about the images is resonating so strongly with people right now?

I think that it’s really just the subjects that have helped me do that. It’s my job to show up and mirror who they present to me, but it has truly been amazing to watch this organic movement happen with the photos. As an artist, I feel like I have one definition of what I’m trying to show, and I feel like it has really been a testament to these men and their lives and what they mean to other people.

I think that also, a lot of these men work in media, or work in the industry, but some of them are just first-generation college students. It all happened very organically.

You like to photograph people who you find inspiring or phenomenal, what makes somebody interesting enough to photograph for you?

I didn’t have any rules or guidelines in the beginning. I really was only shooting people who I thought were interesting myself or people who I’d wanted to shoot with and never had an opportunity to do so. As the project grew, and I saw what it meant to other people, I started to dial back on the scope of people who I had been shooting. I like to see people who are out there living their best lives, living up to their true potential, or helping somebody else live up to their full potential.

You don’t have to move the world, but I would like to think the people I’m shooting are moving the world just by being their authentic selves.

You mentioned shooting RZA — what does he mean to you personally?

Still hard to put into words! RZA is not human, he’s a spiritual force. It’s an interesting feeling, I feel like you only see people like him in cartoons or Quentin Tarantino movies. He’s so enigmatic but at the same time so real. I think that before meeting him, I thought of him as a founding father of hip-hop and especially New York hip-hop, but after meeting him… I think he’s got so much to share.

He’s one of those men that are just oozing from the pores with wisdom, being able to sit with him and talk and get into his mind a little more was really inspiring.

He’s a nod to the past, but he’s able to stay current and he’s a true testament to resilience.

Of the people you’ve shot, who has left you the most in awe?

There have been a couple! Meeting Jeremiah Harvey was definitely a moment for me. One because I had stalked his mother for a good year leading up to the shoot. His initial viral moment… it really wasn’t planned, of course, and they kind of had to go into hiding because the media and the press and all the journalists coming after them. So after about a year of searching through pages and pages, I finally got a moment to sit down with them and spend the day with them. Afterward, Jeremiah told me he wanted to be a photographer.

That really made my heart, bro. I never had a moment like that before, but I could truly see that in me he saw himself, and in him, I saw me.

Meeting Walter Fontroy was also an amazing thing. Walter is a little up in age and he also organized and marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and just to sit with him and hear him talk about Martin and everybody else that was involved with helping him get to where he is was also beautiful.

Meeting Jahvaris Fulton was a beautiful moment, too. Again, shooting people in spite of trauma is important to me. The person I met — I would’ve never known that he had lived through such a traumatic experience. To be able to see who he has become since this terrible tragedy was powerful. He came across very transparent. He’s just a ball of energy that I didn’t know I needed in my life. But after I met him we’ve been very consistent and the best of friends.

I think with this project I’ve not only gained mentors, I’ve gained good friends, and I’ve gained a lot of people that I’m learning from.

You’re part of casting Black men in a new light. In what ways do the media and society continue to fall short when it comes to depicting Black men?

A big part of this project was me showing 100 intersectional and intergenerational men because I wanted to show the different facets of us. When we’re shown, it’s a binary. They show the highly successful exceptions to the rule — like the Jay-Zs and the Diddys and the people on TV — and then we get the opposite side of the spectrum: us on the news, mug shots, and all this conditioning and framing that we’ve been so used to for decades now.

Personally, I wanted to shoot this because one of my favorite photographers is a white male photographer. I really love Robert Mapelthorp. I loved his series called: The Black Book. I have it on my coffee table. When you look at this book you see dozens of Black men, but they don’t have a name and they’re very anonymous and they’re in very compromising positions. When you look at them they’re highly sexualized. One thing I wanted to do was show these men in their truest forms. I didn’t ask anything of them, I just let them show up as they are, but I wanted to take away this fetishized gaze that we typically view Black men through. I also wanted to show that Black men with Berets on can be joyful, they can be all these different things, not just militant.

I think that’s why it resonated with so many people. Black men are just Black men, in general. But with a beret, we start to think of the Black Panther movement and this highly militarized highly masculine highly dominant individual, but no one does a deep dive into these individuals characters and who they are or what they stand for.

I just wanted to show these men, in that way. So far I’ve had trans, cis presenting, gay, bisexual, straight, light-skinned, brown-skinned, dark-skinned — all physical characteristics I’ve sought out. I even had the opportunity to shoot two of my very close friends, one who has vitiligo and is out here living his best life as a model and one who is out here with albinism and is the first person with albinism who has been able to grace an international runway.

You want to take the Black Kings project to the subways of New York City and other large public places, why is this series landing in a public place so vital to you?

I truly believe in public art, I believe public art can be very healing and bring together communities. When you put a project like this out in the public, it gives people a chance to stand still and empathize with whoever it is that they’re viewing. My whole mission of this was just to show these men in their true form, I think during Black History Month we only focus on a good five people. I want to show 100 people who are out here doing stuff right now, whether they are out here protesting, or simply going to college.

Put these in the subways and on public transit and places where ads typically are will recondition how people view Black men and how Black men view themselves. I really wanted to show not just people like RZA but the everyday person as well, so that the everyday person can see something of themselves in the photo.

It would be refreshing to be able to enjoy art instead of ads!

I work in Times Square now and I gotta tell you, most people who walk around here are desensitized. There are a million ads around us but I don’t think we’re consciously taking it in. The moment you take an ad down and put up some public art people are going to take notice and dial into that and try to figure out why it’s there in that space. That’s what I’m hoping to do, just get away from the distractions and give people a moment to focus on the beauty of Black men.

You’ve also expressed an interest in wanting to use augmented reality in your visuals, could you tell us more?

My hope with this project is to eventually get it published and to have it in these public installations outside through Instagram and social media. I’m hoping to have murals put up of these men in different places in New York City and eventually the US where images of black men like this don’t exist. I would like to partner with a Snapchat or some kind of AR platform that would allow me to tell their stories. Essentially what I’m hoping to do is get these photographs muralized so that when you look at them through Snapchat they’ll talk to you and tell you the history of the space it’s in or a little bit about the subject.

I think that’s important because this generation is a little different. I think older people are more inclined to stop and appreciate something but I feel like it takes a little bit more to get the younger generation’s focus.

So you want to take the gallery format and put it into the streets?

I’ve seen ad companies and all of these million dollar companies using this technology to sell products but I’ve yet to see people really using it for art. Typically people are pushing you to a sale, but I have yet to see this used in this way so I’m hoping to do that.

What do you have planned for the future: is there a Black Queens project in the works?

You know I want to do exactly the same thing. I have the same purpose for shooting black women and with that project, I don’t even see me shooting all 100 women myself. I would love to share the spotlight, it’s not about me, that’s what I’ve learned. This project is bigger and means more than it does to just me. I’d love to partner with 4 or 5 other black or brown women and do 25 collaborations with each to total out to 100 women and do collaborations with let’s say a painter or a sculpturist, or a muralist or a writer, and have these women showcase other women and their perspective. I’ll just be the help essentially, a collaborator.

That’s what I’ve started to form as a thesis for the next project.

Now that we’re living a more locked down less active lifestyle, how has the pandemic affected the project?

The job of the creator is to remain malleable and resourceful and while the nation struggles with both unemployment and empowering African Americans, artists have continued to create despite all odds. One of the most important things I personally continue to learn throughout life is the beauty in perspective. Simply put, what could look like a setback is really a chance to redefine your focus & that is oftentimes what needs to happen in order for you to get it right. So, while social distancing has kept us separate, one could also say it has also connected us even more digitally.

Whereas, I don’t find it my place to document the struggle for equality on the streets, being able to virtually photograph someone became a concept out of necessity for many including myself. Since this pandemic has started, I’ve been able to digitally host and photograph men for #BLACKkings including ABC Black-ish Star, Marcus Scribner as well as a few others. While this process is far from ideal, it’s helped hone my communication and reinspired me to think out of the box.

For the first time in its 23-year run, South Park will air a one-hour special that naturally focuses on the most incendiary and controversial topic of the moment: the pandemic.

In a new teaser released by Comedy Central on Tuesday, “The Pandemic Special” features the resident of South Park as they struggle to cope with “2020 problems,” which appear to go beyond the coronavirus. While the pandemic takes a front seat as Randy tries to use the global disaster to fuel his legalized weed sales, and Cartman refuses to wear a mask, the children also find themselves returning to a strange new school environment where their teachers are police detectives?

Here’s the official synopsis:

Randy comes to terms with his role in the COVID-19 outbreak as the on-going pandemic presents continued challenges to the citizens of South Park. The kids happily head back to school but nothing resembles the normal that they once knew; not their teachers, not their homeroom, not even Eric Cartman.

Given South Park’s penchant for skewering “both sides” of the political aisle, the special will undoubtedly be a lightning rod for controversy as it barrels into the contentious debate surrounding the pandemic. Unlike other hot topic issues satirized by the show, there is a real and ongoing death toll, which will be a tricky minefield for South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to navigate. That’s particularly the case after recent revelations that President Donald Trump is on tape admitting to journalist Bob Woodward that he knew about COVID’s deadliness while simultaneously downplaying its severity to the public.

South Park: The Pandemic Special airs September 30 at 8 PM EST on Comedy Central.

(Via South Park)