Teena Marie and #BlackTwitter

Twitter conversations around singer's death speak to the lack of trust African-Americans have in mainstream media.

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Teena Marie and #BlackTwitter
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

I was doing my usual Sunday night multi-tasking of trying to meet a writing deadline, following the late NFL scores and eavesdropping on Twitter when I first heard the news about the death of legendary R&B singer Teena Marie. That Twitter has become a source of breaking news is not surprising — many producers and bookers from mainstream news sources from CNN to NPR have perches on Twitter. But Twitter also has the propensity to get the story wrong and to spread mis-information (as opposed to government sponsored dis-information), including ill-conceived rumors about the deaths of celebrities.

This later dynamic takes on an added emphasis within the phenomenon of #BlackTwitter — cited many times this past year for its ability to dictate what are the most popular trends on Twitter to the obliviousness of most non-Black Twitter users. Only months ago Twitter announced that Bill Cosby had died, which Cosby rebutted via his own Twitter account @BillCosby. And accordingly many within #BlackTwitter were skeptical and suspicious even after Ronald Isley announced Marie’s death on Twitter (and yes, even the recently incarcerated Mr. Biggs is on Twitter) and it was announced on Philadelphia’s WDAS.

Amidst what is certainly a tragedy for Ms. Marie’s family and for pop music in general, the #BlackTwitter response to Ms. Marie was a marvel to witness. Many resisted outright that Ms. Marie had died — citing Ms. Marie’s own Twitter account which was last used on Christmas Day — awaiting official word from a reputable news source, even as many also disregarded traditional sources like CNN as being viable to deliver news that was meaningful to Black audiences.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

Bill T. Jones: Kennedy Center Honoree

What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?

A nighttime raid. A reality TV crew. A sleeping seven-year-old. What one tragedy can teach us about the unraveling of America's middle class.

What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?
by Charlie LeDuff

IT WAS JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT on the morning of May 16 and the neighbors say the streetlights were out on Lillibridge Street. It is like that all over Detroit, where whole blocks regularly go dark with no warning or any apparent pattern. Inside the lower unit of a duplex halfway down the gloomy street, Charles Jones, 25, was pacing, unable to sleep.

His seven-year-old daughter, Aiyana Mo'nay Stanley-Jones, slept on the couch as her grandmother watched television. Outside, Television was watching them. A half-dozen masked officers of the Special Response Team—Detroit's version of SWAT—were at the door, guns drawn. In tow was an A&E [4] crew filming an episode of The First 48 [5], its true-crime program. The conceit of the show is that homicide detectives have 48 hours to crack a murder case before the trail goes cold. Thirty-four hours earlier, Je'Rean Blake Nobles [6], 17, had been shot outside a liquor store on nearby Mack Avenue; an informant had ID'd a man named Chauncey Owens as the shooter and provided this address.

The SWAT team tried the steel door to the building. It was unlocked [7]. They threw a flash-bang grenade through the window of the lower unit and kicked open its wooden door, which was also unlocked. The grenade landed so close to Aiyana that it burned her blanket. Officer Joseph Weekley, the lead commando—who'd been featured before on another A&E show, Detroit SWAT [8]—burst into the house. His weapon fired a single shot, the bullet striking Aiyana in the head and exiting her neck. It all happened in a matter of seconds.

"They had time," a Detroit police detective told me. "You don't go into a home around midnight. People are drinking. People are awake. Me? I would have waited until the morning when the guy went to the liquor store to buy a quart of milk. That's how it's supposed to be done."

But the SWAT team didn't wait. Maybe because the cameras were rolling, maybe because a Detroit police officer had been murdered two weeks earlier while trying to apprehend a suspect. This was the first raid on a house since his death.

Police first floated [9] the story that Aiyana's grandmother had grabbed Weekley's gun. Then, realizing that sounded implausible, they said she'd brushed the gun as she ran past the door. But the grandmother says she was lying on the far side of the couch, away from the door.

Compounding the tragedy is the fact that the police threw the grenade into the wrong apartment. The suspect fingered for Blake's murder, Chauncey Owens, lived in the upstairs flat, with Charles Jones' sister.

Plus, grenades are rarely used when rounding up suspects, even murder suspects. But it was dark. And TV may have needed some pyrotechnics.

"I'm worried they went Hollywood," said a high-ranking Detroit police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the investigation and simmering resentment in the streets. "It is not protocol. And I've got to say in all my years in the department, I've never used a flash-bang in a case like this."

The official went on to say that the SWAT team was not briefed about the presence of children in the house, although the neighborhood informant who led homicide detectives to the Lillibridge address told them that children lived there. There were even toys [10] on the lawn.

Read the Full Essay @ Mother Jones

Is Kwanzaa Still Important?

These days the holiday Ron Karenga founded 44 years ago may have more commercial than cultural significance.

Is Kwanzaa Still Important?
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

If you wanted to celebrate Kwanzaa this year, you could purchase one of dozens of books explaining it’s seven principles, purchase a Kinara and Kwanzaa cards from Macy’s, mail those cards with official Kwanzaa postal stamps, watch M. K. Assante Jr.’s film "The Black Candle," and attend any number of Kwanzaa celebrations in your local neighborhood. Even George W. Bush offered an official Kwanzaa message during his presidency. I note these points to highlight how accessible and mainstream Kwanzaa has become, despite the fact that it was founded more than 40 years ago in midst of the Black Power Movement.

Kwanza was founded in 1966 by Ron Karenga (born Ron Everettt) who also founded the Black Cultural Nationalist organization United Slaves or US. In the late 1960s, US was one of the many organizations targeted by the FBI counter-intelligence program COINTELPRO. The violent exchanges by US and the Black Panther Party (also targeted by the FBI) in Los Angeles in the late 1960s was instigated by the FBI to destabilize both organizations. That Karenga is one of the few figures from that era that has survived relatively intact—he is arguably more influential now as an Afrocentric scholar—has often raised questions about the true nature of his role in the ultimate demise of the Black Panther Party.

Kwanzaa was one of the many ritual celebrations that Karenga founded in an effort to counter the influences of White Supremacy and Christianity on African-Americans. Among those rituals were Kwanzisha, which recognized the founding of US, Kuzaliwa, a celebration of Malcolm X’s birthday and Uhuru Day which marked the beginnings of the Watts riots during the summer of 1965.

As USC Historian Scot Brown writes in his book Fighting for US: Maulana Karenga, the US Organization and Black Cultural Nationalism (2005), Kwanzaa “was part of a matrix of rituals, holidays and social praxis that effectively comprised a nationalist counter-culture capable of attracting a diverse body of Black Americans to the organization.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com

Teena Marie Backstage @ The Rhythm & Blues Foundation Award Ceremony

ReelBlack TV was privileged to encounter TEENA MARIE backstage at the 2008 R&B Foundation Awards. Here is the raw uncut footage from her press conference after receiving the award. She will be sadly missed. Camera Bill Tucker and Mike D.

Kamala Harris: Democrats' Anti-Palin

Kamala Harris: Democrats' Anti-Palin
by Ben Smith

It’s easy to understand why Kamala Harris, California’s next attorney general, is being called the future of the Democratic Party, a rising political star in the mold of one of her big supporters — President Barack Obama.

At first glance, the president and Harris have much in common: Both are mixed-race children of immigrants raised by a single mother; both are eloquent, telegenic big-city lawyers with strong liberal credentials who catapulted from relative obscurity to the national stage. And like the first African-American president, Harris has broken a long-standing barrier — she’s California’s first African-American attorney general and the first woman to hold the office.

But Harris, whose position, potential and glamour will most likely give her as high a national profile as she wants, resists the comparisons.

“It’s flattering,” she told POLITICO, just weeks after claiming victory in a photo-finish race against Steve Cooley, her Republican opponent. Nevertheless, “these comparisons make me uncomfortable because I know what I want to do. I am really excited about being attorney general.”

(Word that some eager Democrats have dubbed her the “anti-Palin” draws a one-word reply: “oy.”)

Instead, what Harris mostly wants to talk about is an issue that’s almost entirely off the national radar.

“What I would like to contribute to the conversation,” she added, “is an in-depth discussion about what we can do to create smarter criminal justice policy.”

But Harris will have to do it over the Democrats’ growing buzz about her.

When she broke out of a six-candidate primary field in the race for attorney general, the San Francisco prosecutor won big endorsements from party heavyweights, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, as well as endorsements from labor unions like the Service Employees International Union and all of California’s top newspapers. She also was the only down ballot Democrat for whom President Obama fundraised this year.

Read the Full Essay @ Politico

Onaje Allan Gumbs--"Inner City Blues" (Just Like Yesterday)

New Music from Pianist Onaje Allan Gumbs from Just Like Yesterday featuring Omar Hakim, Victor Bailey, Bill 'Spaceman' Patterson, Chuggy Carter and Marcus McLaurine.

Onaje Allan Gumbs / Just Like Yesterday

1. What You Won't Do For Love What You Won't Do For Love
2．Betcha By Golly Wow Betcha By Golly Wow
3．Hot Dawgit Hot Dawgit
4．Ribbon in the Sky Ribbon in the Sky
5．Inner City Blues Inner City Blues
6．I'll Be Around I'll Be Around
7．That's the Way of the World That's the Way of the World
8．Quiet Passion Quiet Passion
9． A Child is Born A Child is Born
10. The Tokyo Blues The Tokyo Blues
11．Dolphin Dance Dolphin Dance
12．Yearning For Your Love Yearning For Your Love