Donald Glover talking about the comments he received during his campaign to be the next Spider-Man (x)
“I was talking about it with Dan Eckman, who directed my Bonfire video. Can you imagine that trailer? That would be dope. Like it makes sense… a poor black kid in Queens. Like it just fits.”
![In the 1800s, part of the West Village was known as “Little Africa, or less kindly as Coontown,” writes John Strausbaugh in his fascinating new book “The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village.”
“Little Africa also drew free blacks and ‘mulattoes’ who’d come to New York from the West Indies. Often better educated and with more skills than the city’s freed slaves, some of them thrived, within the limits imposed on them. One [William Henry Brown] started America’s first black professional theater company in Greenwich Village in 1821….the African Grove, with an all-black company….Its first full-lengthproduction was Richard III.”
“As other productions followed — Othello, some farces and pantomines, and most controversially Brown’s own The Drama of King Shotaway, about a slave rebellion in the Indies — whites began to join blacks in the audience. They didn’t sit in respectful silence. Black actors performing Shakespeare represented to them an amusing novelty. A newspaper from 1822 reports that ‘the audience was generally of a riotous character, and amused themselves by throwing crackers on the stage, and cracking their jokes with the actors.’
“The seating policy at the African Grove, amazingly, instituted reverse segregation: whites were relegated to the back rows because, as a handbill stated, they didn’t know ‘how to conduct themselves at entertainments for ladies and gentlemen of color.’”
Brown closed down the Grove in 1823, but one of the company’s star actors, Ira Aldridge (shown above, in Titus Andronicus) moved to England, “where he became renowned for his Othello, as well as his Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, and Shylock, the latter roles sometimes performed in whiteface makeup.”
More on “The Village,” by John Strausbaugh](http://25.media.tumblr.com/973dcbe491a97fc20e93c89c71f07815/tumblr_mmhobosbRQ1rbynwco1_400.jpg)
In the 1800s, part of the West Village was known as “Little Africa, or less kindly as Coontown,” writes John Strausbaugh in his fascinating new book “The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village.”
“Little Africa also drew free blacks and ‘mulattoes’ who’d come to New York from the West Indies. Often better educated and with more skills than the city’s freed slaves, some of them thrived, within the limits imposed on them. One [William Henry Brown] started America’s first black professional theater company in Greenwich Village in 1821….the African Grove, with an all-black company….Its first full-lengthproduction was Richard III.”
“As other productions followed — Othello, some farces and pantomines, and most controversially Brown’s own The Drama of King Shotaway, about a slave rebellion in the Indies — whites began to join blacks in the audience. They didn’t sit in respectful silence. Black actors performing Shakespeare represented to them an amusing novelty. A newspaper from 1822 reports that ‘the audience was generally of a riotous character, and amused themselves by throwing crackers on the stage, and cracking their jokes with the actors.’
“The seating policy at the African Grove, amazingly, instituted reverse segregation: whites were relegated to the back rows because, as a handbill stated, they didn’t know ‘how to conduct themselves at entertainments for ladies and gentlemen of color.’”
Brown closed down the Grove in 1823, but one of the company’s star actors, Ira Aldridge (shown above, in Titus Andronicus) moved to England, “where he became renowned for his Othello, as well as his Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, and Shylock, the latter roles sometimes performed in whiteface makeup.”
“There are more black men in jail than in college.”
True or false?
For years, it’s been an article of faith that an African-American man was more likely to end up in prison than in an institute of higher education.
Even President Obama, in his first campaign, said, “We have more work to do when more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities across America.”
Charles Barkley said the same thing to Bob Costas.
But the statement is wildly off the mark. An urban legend.
“Today there are approximately 600,000 more black men in college than in jail, and the best research evidence suggests that the line was never true to begin with,” wrote Ivory A. Toldson, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Negro Education, in an article for The Root, last week.
The original myth, which he called “arguably the most frequently quoted statistic about black men in the United States,” was created by the Justice Policy Institute in a report called “Cellblocks or Classrooms.” It came out in 2002.
Toldson wrote that today, “black male representation in higher education is proportional to black male representation in the adult population.” The problem is that most of those students are under-represented at competitive colleges and over-represented at community colleges and online institutions.
In New York, where the overall prison population has dramatically come down — along with crime levels — Toldson told me the numbers reflected the changing scenario across the nation.
“In 2009, the total (all race) male prison population in New York state was 57,177. (DOJ) In 2010, the number of Black male college students in New York state was 90,558. (American Community Survey, U.S. Census)”
-Photo from the Gates Foundation via Flickr
Jewish politician does blackface, gets into trouble.
Dov Hikind, a state assemblyman from Brooklyn, was celebrating the Jewish festival of Purim, and decided to wear an afro, sunglasses and orange jersey to a party he was throwing. Oh, and dark makeup.
“Someone gave me a uniform, someone gave me the hair of the actual, you know, sort of a black basketball player.”
Hikind is now catching heat from other New York politicos but says the reaction is overblown and that it was all in “good fun.”
“This is political correctness to the absurd,” he wrote on his blog, even going so far as to say, “I would do it again in a minute.”
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I met Sha’lik Harford, celebrity wardrobe stylist, at New York Fashion Week, and asked how it feels that the vast majority of runway models are white.
“It has a huge effect on the African American community as a whole,” he said. “We want to flip through the pages of Vogue and Cosmopolitan and Glamour and see our people there.”
“And so when our people look into the magazines, it’s like, “Where are we?”
![Why aren’t there more minority models in the pages of fashion magazines?
The answers are often disturbing, and speak to a form of racial bigotry found in the fashion centers of New York and London — as well as a deep-rooted aesthetic that equates prestige and elitism with stereotypical whiteness (and thin-ness).
Here are a few highly-revealing quotes from fashion industry employees, from an analysis of the industry by Ashley Mears, a sociologist and former model. Her article is called “Size zero high-end ethnic: Cultural production and the reproduction of culture in fashion modeling,” and was published in 2009. Mears kept the identities of her sources private.
“A lot of black girls have got very wide noses… The rest of her face is flat, therefore, in a flat image, your nose, it broadens in a photograph. It’s already wide, it looks humongous in the photograph. I think that’s, there’s an element of that, a lot of very beautiful black girls are moved out by their noses, some of them.” —H, London Agency Director
“But it’s also really hard to scout a good black girl. Because they have to have the right nose and the right bottom. Most black girls have wide noses and big bottoms so if you can find that right body and that right face, but it’s hard.” —A, NYC Agency Scout
“Okay let’s say Prada. You don’t have a huge amount of black people buying Prada. They can’t afford it. Okay so that’s economics there. So why put a black face? They put a white face, because those are the ones that buy the clothes.” —L, NYC Stylist
“We don’t like using the same model too often, but it’s harder to find ethnic girls. And…well, I don’t want to sound racist, but— well for Asians, it’s hard to find tall girls that will fit the clothes because most of them are very petit. For black girls, I guess—black girls have a harder edge kind of look, like if I’m shooting something really edgy, I’ll use a black girl, it always just depends on the clothes.” —A, NYC Magazine Editor
“Me personally, in my opinion, there really is no good, good, black girl around. The really good, good black girl around are still the same, and are still the one that everybody wants… It’s very difficult to find one. The agency don’t deliver enough choice to make happy the client [sic].” —O, NYC Casting Director](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_meklm8oCAx1rbynwco1_400.jpg)
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Why aren’t there more minority models in the pages of fashion magazines?
The answers are often disturbing, and speak to a form of racial bigotry found in the fashion centers of New York and London — as well as a deep-rooted aesthetic that equates prestige and elitism with stereotypical whiteness (and thin-ness).
Here are a few highly-revealing quotes from fashion industry employees, from an analysis of the industry by Ashley Mears, a sociologist and former model. Her article is called “Size zero high-end ethnic: Cultural production and the reproduction of culture in fashion modeling,” and was published in 2009. Mears kept the identities of her sources private.
“A lot of black girls have got very wide noses… The rest of her face is flat, therefore, in a flat image, your nose, it broadens in a photograph. It’s already wide, it looks humongous in the photograph. I think that’s, there’s an element of that, a lot of very beautiful black girls are moved out by their noses, some of them.” —H, London Agency Director
“But it’s also really hard to scout a good black girl. Because they have to have the right nose and the right bottom. Most black girls have wide noses and big bottoms so if you can find that right body and that right face, but it’s hard.” —A, NYC Agency Scout
“Okay let’s say Prada. You don’t have a huge amount of black people buying Prada. They can’t afford it. Okay so that’s economics there. So why put a black face? They put a white face, because those are the ones that buy the clothes.” —L, NYC Stylist
“We don’t like using the same model too often, but it’s harder to find ethnic girls. And…well, I don’t want to sound racist, but— well for Asians, it’s hard to find tall girls that will fit the clothes because most of them are very petit. For black girls, I guess—black girls have a harder edge kind of look, like if I’m shooting something really edgy, I’ll use a black girl, it always just depends on the clothes.” —A, NYC Magazine Editor
“Me personally, in my opinion, there really is no good, good, black girl around. The really good, good black girl around are still the same, and are still the one that everybody wants… It’s very difficult to find one. The agency don’t deliver enough choice to make happy the client [sic].” —O, NYC Casting Director
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What’s it like to grow up with a turban in New York City?
I asked Naunihal Singh, a professor of political science at Notre Dame, whose much-circulated essay at the New Yorker examines why the mass killings in Aurora, Colorado received so much more coverage than the shootings at the Sikh gurudwara in Wisconsin.
Singh is Sikh, and grew up on the Upper West Side in the 70s.
“I got hassled so often,” he told me over burgers at Big Nicks, on Broadway, “that when I would be walking down the street with friends of mine from high school, they would hear things that people would yell at me that I would completely screen out.”
Such as?
“‘Raghead’ sort of stuff. Or ‘sand nigger.’”
Occasionally, he had stuff thrown at him, or guys on Central Park West trying to pick fights, as their girlfriends stood nearby.
Singh learned to walk away. “It hurt my pride,” he said. “You also flip people off.”
In one sense, he said the city was just generally more “aggro” back then, recalling the Jewish friend who “had his face kicked in” on the way to CBGBs. His old Jewish neighbors counseled him to “always be careful about Gentiles.”
9/11 changed some things: he said he’s been much less likely to get harassed by black people than by whites. He reasons that African Americans are simply more skeptical of the war on terror. It’s invariably white people, he said, who call him a terrorist (Chicago) or threaten to pull his turban off (South Bend, Indiana).
What is it about the turban?
“It’s not about thinking I’m a Muslim. It’s this sense about someone being an outsider.” A “visceral effect,” he said.
“It’s one of the reasons why I applaud every time I see a bearded hipster get on the L train out in Williamsburg. I figure the more people there are with beards in society, the less the beard is a mark of difference.”
