If you think this case doesn’t affect you, you’re not paying close enough attention.
The implication of the court’s ruling, Sotomayor explained, is that “you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.”
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor added to her growing list of notable dissents on Monday with a blisteringly fierce objection to a major Fourth Amendment decision. Sotomayor’s dissent touched on individual rights, police authority, and how people of color feel when they’re constantly stopped, searched and catalogued by the state. For good measure, she…
Zootopia continues Disney’s time-honored tradition of using animated creatures to talk about something else, whether it’s covering….Hamlet with lions or depression with walking, talking emojis (I’m talking Lion King and Inside Out here, in case you couldn’t tell). But Zootopia manages to do a little more, by drawing a charmingly insightful view of the world that still manages to talk about the prejudice and stereotypes that plague us.
Are you in it for the animal puns and inventive world-building? Sure. There are little sparks of pleasure throughout the entire movie, as the animators recreate familiar technology in an “evolved” world where animals, predators and prey, live together in a modern metropolis. How would subways accommodate both giraffes and hamsters? Do rabbits facetime? Are leopards pop-star fanboys who know how to use apps? All of your questions will be answered. (Bonus: this makes the film’s address of bigotry, racism, and prejudice even more compelling, as there’s a clear parallel drawn between Zootopia’s world and ours).
Photo from Zootopia \\ Twitter @DisneyZootopia
Its main character, Judy Hopps, is an amibitious young bunny bent on becoming the first police officer of her species. To do so, she works twice as hard as anyone else, insisting that she’s not just a “token.” She is a creative problem-solver who works collaboratively, respects her friendships, and knows when to acknowledge her own mistakes and shortcomings. She’s a great cop who got there mostly by the dint of her own hard work, but also through the love and support of her community. She is defined more by her ambitions than anything else (and thank god there was no love story in this movie, because how would that even work…?). My cynical heart swells thinking of the young girls watching this movie who will absorb this film’s subtle, but strong message about the potential and abilities of the underestimated.
But Zootopia is more than a girl-can-do film, and its address of bigotry is what makes it one of the best and most important movies Disney has put out yet. In the beginning, Judy’s naive worldview presents Zootopia as the harmonious, “race-blind” melding of two distinct classes of animal: predator and prey. Part of her journey is through the disillusionment of that idea, and toward a concrete plan of action to remedy it. There are forces at work in the city who feed off of the distrust and prejudice that still surround “predators” and their unavoidable “biological instinct”—an early lesson for young viewers in the insidious power of coded language to shape public opinion, as Judy also learns. Through Judy’s friendship with the street-hustler fox Nick Wilde, she learns what it means to confront the lingering animosity between “predator” and “prey,” and how to forge a strong friendship from this unlikely, but very effective, partnership.
Image from Twitter @DisneyZootopia
The film is also seeded with references for the adults or particularly savvy kids—like how the “nighthowlers” drug can be seen as a parallel to the crack epidemic, or how Judy tells another animal that bunnies can call other bunnies “cute,” but if another species does it….(you can almost hear the n-word echoing in the background). Zootopia depicts how quickly people (or animals) can fall into the traps of fear-motivated thinking, how bigotry and racism feed off of misinformation and fear. It also shows how much is lost when one’s world is circumscribed by these prejudices. And it does so in terms that both children and adults can understand and use to discuss racism, bigotry, and prejudice in the real world. That is a refreshing antidote to the hate-mongering and racism being peddled by election frontrunners—and the positive reaction to Zootopia bespeaks more than just our love for cuddly animals. Is it perfect? Probably not. But it brings the problems of bigotry right to the front and center. That’s a hell of a lot more than Disney movies used to do. We need more children’s movies like this, which are driven by interesting storylines and use world-building to open up discussions about the pressing problems of our own world.
“Shadow” and “Supreme” from Wu Tang Killa Beez | Photo cred: Yahsure Wright from SkinnyHeadTv
By B.C.
Supreme of the Mighty Wu-Tang Killa Beez grew up in the struggle. His father, known as D.C., was prominent in the Black Panthers Party, a Black Nationalist and revolutionary organization pivotal in the Civil Rights Movement. D.C. was instrumental in structuring the widely-known “Free Breakfast for Children” program. This fed thousands of poor inner city kids throughout the country and eventually got the FBI’s attention. They halted the program because they saw the Black Panthers as a threat to internal security.
“[My father] basically got told by our government to shut up. They did that in a way that was pretty bad,” recounts Supreme. “Some people basically entered our house and I was the one who was threatened because I was his only child. So it was like, Shut the f–k up and take this job and retire or else. That’s the other side of the government that people don’t know about.”
The West Coast Wu-Tang producer-turned-rapper says his dad had to make a choice and live under the radar. When Supreme was twelve, his dad told him that if he wants to speak the truth, he either has to be willing to die or go to prison. But that didn’t stop Supreme from lecturing, marching, fighting and “empowering the people.” The rapper has a business degree from UC Berkeley and is soon releasing an album that addresses serious social issues, including racism.
Supreme is finalizing tracks on his album and recording some music videos in Cincinnati, Ohio. Earlier this year in July, unarmed black man Sam Dubose was shot by white Officer Ray Tensing in Cincinnati. Tensing was indicted but is still waiting to go on trial, which should be happening next month. It seems almost serendipitous that as Supreme works on his music here, the trial is upcoming and expected to draw national attention as the shooting and indictment did. I spoke with Supreme about his new project and making the choice to not shut the f—k up:
ACRO: Tell me about your new project:
Supreme: This new project is called “Supreme Life Volume 1.” We’re gonna drop the album in the spring. It’s done but we’re just mixing down and mastering. It’s going to be a set of three albums. The first album is predominantly hip-hop and rock. The next album will transition into more rock. It’s the first album on Wu Rock, the new label that I created, which will be another branch and continue the legacy of Wu Tang. It’s pretty high energy. It’s geared for performance; it’s geared for stage. It’s geared to incite the people to learn, to seek, to open their minds and hearts, and it’s geared to ultimately unite the people through the music and to address issues and to heal. That’s what our mission is. We say Wu Tang is for the children. It’s for the people. It’s for the masses. It’s about the human family. We’re trying to get out of racism and classism and gender issues and biases and get people back down to the basics of humanity, love and peace.
Can you talk about one track you’re working on that highlights all of this?
I have a track called, “White Man.” It’s a song that is greater in content than “Fight the Power.” I won’t say it’s a greater song than “Fight the Power” because all respect due to Chuck D, to Flavor Flav, and to Public Enemy as a whole. That song definitely inspired this song. We came from that. So it’s no disrespect to our elders and to our mentors, our predecessors. We can say the white man this, the white man that, but we have become that which we hate. We have become our own slave masters. So this is what “White Man” is really about. We got classic Wu-Tang stuff. We got stuff that’s entertaining. But we want to address issues. Yes, we did go through slavery. Yes, we are affected by slavery. Yes, there is still slavery today. Yes, there is racism and biases and ignorance, but there still is no excuse [for our own actions]. We’re going to be responsible for self first. These are the things we need to rectify and correct first. Black Lives Matter, you f–king right they do. Why do Black Lives Matter? Because black lives are human lives.
So you’re here in Cincinnati where in July, unarmed black man Sam Dubose was shot by white officer, Ray Tensing. Do you have anything to say about this case?
It’s a tragedy in every sense of the word. Our love, our respect and our prayer go out to the family of not only Sam Dubose but Officer Tensing. Just because a white officer shoots a black person doesn’t mean his family or friends support him; they’re affected by that too. They’ve had a lot of white people fight and die for black people. [However], the fact that [police brutality] is tolerated, the fact that [Tensing] even had it in his mind that it was okay to take another person’s life, regardless of race [is the problem]. Was race a factor? You’re f–king right it was. And you can’t deny that, because he’s had issues and encounters with Caucasian people and he didn’t shoot them. He knows and everybody in the United States and world knows right now what’s happening — how many thousands of black men are getting killed. They know what they’re doing. Why are they putting black men and men of color in jail? But the root of it all is the fact that it is condoned. It’s tolerated. It’s accepted. It’s overlooked. We need to go to the root of the issue and until 350 million correct 8,000 people in power, nothing is going to change. Until people fix this and rectify this in themselves, [nothing will change]. Marching. We’ve been marching. What does that do? These people been killing us and they’ve been getting away with it. The reality of justice in this country is the reality of what has transpired in each individual case. We’re already geared and programmed to expect this guy to get off.
How do you want to address this kind of police brutality through your music?
I was in an organization called Copwatch. I went to UC Berkeley. I had a group back in the nineties called Black Underground Movement — the BUMS. That was before we did the Wu-Tang jump-off. [Cops] shot their 15-year-old kid at the BART Station in 1991 or 1992 for a [having a] Walkman. [The cop] said he had a gun and saw a flash and shot him. He was 15 and had a Walkman. Jesse Jackson came out. We performed. [Jackson] spoke. Nothing happened. What can we do with our music to curb this? We can correct it, speak out against it, educate people against it, confront people with it and convict people. The same issues that we’re facing are the same issues that have been transpiring not only now but a million years ago. We’re occupied! We’re occupied by Europeans. This land belongs to the Native Americans and the Mexicans. We’re in an occupied country but people can’t see. Why is it taking us dying to wake up? We just came out of slavery. Women just got voting rights. People are still getting hung. This sh-t is still here. Music is the universal language so we’re going to utilize music to lead a vehicle and be a medium for us to get to the people, man. Because everybody responds to love, everybody gets hungry, everybody hurts, everybody cries — we’re all one and the same.
By now, you should know about the incendiary and distressing events at Yale and Mizzou. Regarding Yale: understand that this is about more than an email or even offensive Halloween costumes. This is about the daily struggle of minority students and students of color for dignity, a sense of belonging, and a respectful environment free of psychic traumas. Viet N. Trinh, a doctoral student at Yale, answers Erika Christakis’ perhaps well-intentioned but ultimately thoughtless and insensitive letter about racism and “free speech” in a more nuanced way than we, as outsiders to this struggle, perhaps could.
To that point, this New Yorker article by Jelani Cobb is a thoughtful response to the Atlantic’s finger-wagging pieceabout student activist ‘intolerance,’ (as if students with material privilege cannot experience racism), centered on the protests and debates at Yale.
Cosmopolitan, of all places, has a urgent and important take on the case of Daniel Holtzclaw, a former police officer accused of trading on his power as a law enforcement official in order to sexually assault black women. Why isn’t this getting the attention it deserves?
The Nation has an important take on the resignation of Tim Wolfe, and the ways in which exploited student athletes can fight back against administrations. In the article’s words: “The administrators created a world in which universities revolve socially, politically, and economically around the exploited labor of football. Now let them reap what they sow.”
On decolonizing the kind of yoga that exploits the exotic for profit: “As an Indian woman living in the U.S. I’ve often felt uncomfortable in many yoga spaces. At times, such as when I take a $25.00 yoga class by a well-known teacher who wants to “expose us to the culture by chanting Om to start class“ and her studio hangs the Om symbol in the wrong direction, my culture is being stripped of its meaning and sold back to me in forms that feel humiliating at best and dehumanizing at worst.”
And finally, news that’s a little more lighthearted: I love advice columns, and I love Mallory Ortberg. Two great things collide!
This past week’s popcorn.gif moments come courtesy of the reddit debacle. Former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong is just over in a corner giggling about this whole thing. Meanwhile, Ellen Pao was never the feminazi monster she was made out to be. Oops. Reddit is a fascinating place, and harbors some productive/fun communities in addition to its cesspools, but let’s not pretend we won’t survive without it.
In more serious news, we continue to ask: What happened to Sandra Bland? The latest, highly suspicious case in continuing police violence against black lives.
Bigotry nestled deep within niceness: how lack of empathy, and lack of humanization, often comes with a smiling face and sincerity, rather than vitriolic hate.
Study confirms implicit biases against female bosses, even in cases where such biases are explicitly disavowed. Look closely at yourself, look closely at your practices.
And lastly, simply because it’s heartening: these young ladies celebrated their hearts out at the ticker tape parade for the US Women’s Soccer Team, and it’s great.
I had gotten used to the droning of the LAPD chopper helicopters. They circled above my apartment almost every night and became soothing in their familiarity. I was always awake to hear them, whether it was 1 a.m. or 4 a.m., because I lost the ability to sleep. It wasn’t insomnia. It was anxiety at its zenith. I’ve suffered from all kinds of anxiety and neuroticism all my life, but this was something new. It was unadulterated fear for my safety. And it was fucking awful.
I had gotten used to the droning of the LAPD chopper helicopters. They circled above my apartment almost every night and became soothing in their familiarity. I was always awake to hear them, whether it was 1 a.m. or 4 a.m., because I lost the ability to sleep. It wasn’t insomnia. It was anxiety at its zenith. I’ve suffered from all kinds of anxiety and neuroticism all my life, but this was something new. It was unadulterated fear for my safety. And it was fucking awful.
I was afraid to drift into unconsciousness because that would mean that I would lose awareness of my surroundings. I was hyper-alert even when my brain was so foggy that I couldn’t remember what day of the week it was or what I had for dinner. I’d hear the slightest unfamiliar sound — hushed voices, thumping, footsteps, drunks being drunks — and go into fight or flight mode while lying in bed, my heart racing, tortured by my lack of agency… my inability to relax.
I didn’t own a gun or any kind of actual weapon. I had my pepper spray, but that was barely reassuring. There were knives in the kitchen, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to stab someone even if I was in danger. But this was all nonsense, because I was probably fine. I was on the second floor of a gated (although tenants usually forgot to close that gate) apartment building that had a gated door and four locks, for god’s sake. “You’re fine,” I would tell myself over and over again, “Seriously.” Yet I couldn’t shake this feeling of vulnerability.
I lived alone on the northern cusp of South L.A. near the University of Southern California, where I attended graduate school. This is a notoriously “bad” part of town, said the cop who showed up at my apartment one night. He said he could see why I was nervous. I was a young woman by myself, and he understood my concerns. It wasn’t crazy to him that I had called 911 in the early hours of the morning because I heard a “suspicious noise.” That noise, it turned out, was a washing machine. I felt irrevocably stupid as the cop explained this to me. I was standing in my PJs and sweating, my glasses slipping down my nose. But really. Who the fuck does laundry at 3 in the morning?
Loud washers aside, there’s a lot I love about South L.A. There is so much culture and community there, despite its bad rep. As a journalism student, my peers and I had done a lot of valuable reporting on the many positive changes in the area. My first multimedia package was on health initiatives and wellness trends in Crenshaw/Baldwin Hills of South L.A. When I did a radio piece on Proposition 47, I loved standing outside of Community Coalition on Vermont and 81st and speaking to passerby who had an opinion about it. None of these surroundings bothered me by day.
However, once nighttime fell, I went into insanity mode. I felt frenetic; I wanted to tear my hair out piece by piece and scream until my throat bled. But that wouldn’t even help soothe the trepidation bubbling inside. This discomfort began with what I suspect was an attempted break-in one evening. This was before I lived alone, but it happened at the same apartment. My ex-boyfriend lived with me at the time, but was out, when two men banged on my door and yelled, “LET US IN. OPEN YOUR DOOR.” I ignored it, assuming it would stop. Ten minutes later, it didn’t. I was too afraid to even look in the peephole to see who it was, so I went into my bedroom and locked the door, hoping they would leave.
The knocking only got louder and much more aggressive. “OPEN YOUR DOOR! OPEN YOUR DOOR! OPEN YOUR DOOR!” I called the police. By the time the officers had arrived, the men were gone. That incident left me with mild PTSD. That violent knocking stuck with me, and I found myself on edge whenever I’d hear a tap on a door or footsteps coming up the stairs, weeks later.
When my ex lived with me, I somehow felt much safer. He wouldn’t have been able to do too much in the case of a, say, armed break-in, but knowing that I had someone else there with me was comforting. Plus, he was a person I had known for years and trusted. We moved across the country together and eventually broke up, in what was a completely mutual and respectful development, two months after moving into our South L.A. apartment. He lived there another five months, us alternating sleeping on the couch, before moving out.
I had never intended on living alone, and especially not in an area that is crime-ridden. A dark tone was set for me when, last summer, a Chinese international grad student was murdered blocks away from my apartment. Since then, there has been a stabbing at the burnt-down church across the street, a gunman on the loose and a series of sexual batteries. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d been catcalled even walking across the street to the grocery store in the daytime. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy that area — I did. I liked the businesses and the people. The crimes just made me paranoid, leaving me with this subconscious, constant dread.
This urban environment was new to me. Prior to living in South L.A., I lived in Oakley, Cincinnati with the same ex who moved out to L.A. with me. It was residential and largely safe, filled with white joggers and yuppie dog-walkers. There was maybe a pot dealer around the corner every now and then, but nothing more menacing. Prior to that, I lived near campus at The Ohio State University, always living with roommates, always surrounded by friends. Before that? My parents’ wealthy, conservative neighborhood in West Chester, Ohio.
I am privileged and always have been. This is something I recognize and something I am constantly aware of. It is something I don’t take for granted. But for someone as privileged as me, living alone in South L.A. — even for just a few months — was very testing. On top of all of this was 1. the stress and heavy workload of being a graduate student in my last semester, including my thesis 2. the inescapable loneliness of, well, living alone in a new city thousands of miles away from home 3. the fucking roaches that infested my apartment and wouldn’t die despite an exterminator coming in, me using roach poison and me yelling at them to go away. I was really hoping the last one would work, as a last resort, but nope. I took me two whole days to gather the courage to sweep up a dead roach that was at least two inches length-wise and had wings. Fucking wings.
Again, this is my privilege speaking. There are plenty of people who have had to deal with what I went through and much worse, and I sympathize with them and admire them for their tenacity. But for me, this was all new and difficult nevertheless. Because I was thousands of miles away from home and far from anyone I was truly close with, besides my ex, I had to force myself to accept my reality and make the most of it. I had to appreciate the positive aspects — that I was going to a top-rate university, that I would soon have my master’s degree, that I was living in Los Angeles, where I got to experience many luxuries, that I had the financial and emotional support of my family and friends across the country. I had to really let these positive factors seep in to begin to heal.
The author at her graduation.
And I just had to deal with shit eventually. Even something as insignificant as trapping a roach in a cup and flushing it down the toilet became a small feat for me. When I had lived with my ex, roommates or parents, I could barely have brought myself to do that. More importantly, being able to take out the trash at night, coming home to my apartment and feeling calm walking up the stairs to my unit, staying up late working on my thesis without freaking out and then getting some much-needed sleep; those things were all progress to me.
Eventually, the sound of drunks wouldn’t startle me anymore. Eventually, I learned to love my own company and appreciate the privacy, not resent it. By the end of my stay there, I felt somewhat… empowered. I could see my mental fortitude strengthening over the four months I lived on my own. Eventually, I could sleep again. The finish line got nearer and nearer. Not only would I soon leave my apartment — a place I both despised and finally called home — but I would soon be done with a stressful grad program that consumed all of my time.
I left L.A. with more than a grad degree. I truly have a clearer understanding of myself. This doesn’t just apply to my career path, which, for the first time, I am wholly confident about. I went through an emotional renewal that proved to me that I could be independent in a new way; that I can overcome adversities, even if they’re mostly mental. There were times when I thought I wouldn’t be able to make it — that I couldn’t handle the fear, loneliness, stress and bullshit of my current situation. But now I realize, that was life at its realest, and while things may get easier for me, I’m prepared to handle much worse.
Today is a National Day of Action for Black Women and Girls (though of course, this is an issue for every day and not just today). We know #blacklivesmatter, and that the issue of structural violence against black lives is a conversation that needs to keep happening. But all too often women are left out of the narrative, especially because a particular image of police violence circulates in the popular imagination—where the victim is usually a young black man. Colorlines published a great article that offers resources and a reminder of too-often forgotten women. If your city has a march, consider taking your participation beyond the level of discourse.
There is A LOT of information out there circulating around the protests happening in
Baltimore, the death of Freddie Gray, and the state of police power as a systematic tool of oppression. We won’t try to provide any kind of summary—a quick perusal of #baltimoreriotswill give you that.
Photo @TheDailyBeast // Twitter
We will, however, draw your attention to both the riots and their “bigger picture.” Violent looting and rioting is difficult to outright condone, but it is understandable once you begin to think of the context in which such actions occur. Baltimore is not an isolated incident (neither was Ferguson), but a culmination of a long, violent system of exploitation and abuse rooted in racial oppression.
Photo @Slate // Twitter
This article from The New Inquiry puts it better than I could, and I urge you to read it and consider the rhetoric that drives media accounts of “looting,” as well as the perverted logic that presents violence done to property as far more worthy of our outrage than violence done to human beings.
As the Vox article below states, the situation in Baltimore also highlights the way race and class intersect to create systems of oppression—because the police force in Baltimore is racially mixed, this is not just something that can be “boiled down” to black citizens versus a white police force, though that is certainly still operative. It is rather a reminder that violence against black communities is perpetuated not only through physical violence, but economic isolation as well.
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