Entries Tagged 'Race' ↓

What Obama supporters feel, now that the campaign is over, according to The New York Times‘ “Election Day WordTrain.”

It may be the most iconic moment in all of sports history. Forty years ago, this week, U.S. athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, center and right, above, having placed gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the 200m dash at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, went to the center of the field to accept their honors.

They stepped onto the podium, shoeless, wearing black socks, and, as “The Star-Spangled Banner” sounded forth, lowered their heads, and raised gloved, Black power fist salutes to the heavens. (LIFE magazine photographer John Dominis snapped the powerful image.)

The reaction was immediate and passionate. The stadium audience hotly booed the duo as they walked away, and the International Olympic Committee, which governs the games, expelled the athletes, as their protest made headlines around the globe.

In her 2002 book, Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete, historian Amy Bass deeply diagrams the backdrop against which the protests took place, but, even more, shows how the act powerfully redefined the concept of the Black athlete in the popular imagination.

Dr. Amy Bass is the guest, today, on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, October 17, 2 pm ET.

If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, you can check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, check out our archive for up to two weeks after broadcast.

Mother Jones is running a photo essay by Great Neck, NY photojournalist / former Marine Anthony Karen, 42. The piece, utilizing text, audio, and pictures, documents the work of Ku Klux Klan seamstress, above.

Coming from five generations of Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old “Ms. Ruth” sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it’s done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, “Lilbit,” who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.

Amazing. You gotta admire their dedication to arts & kkkrafts.

That’s what humorist Sarah Silverman, above, says she’s going to do if Barack Obama doesn’t become the next president of the United States. It’s all caught on tape in the racially prickly, mildly NSFW political promo, The Great Schlep. Schlep is an effort by JewsVote.org, itself a project of the Jewish Council for Education & Research (JCER).

Its noble ends? “The Great Schlep aims to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Obama, and therefore swing the crucial Florida vote in his favor.”

(Schlep, for non-Yiddish speakers, means to carry, or drag. So, the idea, as the stylish logo, right, may indicate, is that young Jews from across the nation—moving by plane, train, and automobile—congregate en masse in Florida, between now and Election Day, and persuade their oldest living ancestors to vote for Obama.)

Huh?

This is the strangest thing I’ve ever heard.

I mean, first of all, why Florida, as opposed to any other state, and why does the geriatric Sephardic demographic require a special effort, of this unique kind: one made by, of all people, their own grandkids?

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Hey, had to get this in: Remember the LeBron James / Gisele Bundchen controversy, back in March? Well, when the numbers came in some months later, it turned out that the issue sold like vomit.

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O.K., friends: The world got just a little bit bigger today. Thanks to my high school friend, Angela Renee Simpson—no singing slouch in her own right—I now know the name of countertenor Matthew Truss, an ’06 Boston Conservatory grad, and apparently one of the hottest new talents out.

If, like me, you get to the opera about once a kalpa, or you confuse the word “countertenor” with “counterterrorist,” prepare to be stunned by Mr. Truss’s rendition of “Addio, addio miei sosprir,” from 18th century Bavarian composer Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera, Orfeo ed Euridice.

The video is from the Intermezzo Foundation’s Elardo International Opera Competition this past summer in Brussels, at which Truss won the $5,000 Jerry Hadley Award. While you listen, remember: Your eyes do not deceive you.

Affianwan, Calabar South, Nigeria, 2005 (Photo by Phyllis Galembo)

Photographer Phyllis Galembo burrows deep into what she calls “the transformative power of costume and ritual” by shooting large-format chromes of revelers and worshippers in remote parts of Nigeria, Haiti, and other Caribbean and African countries.

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That’s an artist’s photographic rendition, above, from The Daily Mail, of what Michael Jackson, who turned 50 this past Friday, might have looked like today had he not fileted his face, over the past few decades, with what presumably turns out to be weeks of plastic surgery.

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Who is this? Don’t name him, and win a $1.6 million cash prize

Jesse Washington, my colleague, former editor, and the recently named Associated Press race and ethnicity writer, said it best and most succinctly: “Obama avoids race on King’s ‘Dream’ anniversary.”

In the entirety of his DNC acceptance speech, notes Washington,

Obama did not utter the words “black” or “African-American.” He said “McCain” 21 times, according to the transcript released beforehand. He said “American” 25 times and “promise” 32 times as he sought to create a new definition of, and a new path to, that immortal dream.

But even more so, adds Washington, on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech,

Obama accepted the nomination Thursday night standing on the shoulders of King and thousands of others who suffered and bled to give blacks the right to vote — yet Obama did not speak King’s name. …

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