Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 167

Living While Black, In Japan

'In the wake of the 2020 killing of George Floyd, African-Americans and others mounted ongoing street protests. But African-Americans living abroad felt the anguish as profoundly as their families and friends back "home." Some have chosen to live in Japan, one of the most homogeneous nations in the world. Despite being in a smaller minority in Japan than in their home country, they express feelings of safety and freedom. Yet, racism in the U.S. still plays a role in their lives. In this short film directed by Keith Bedford and Shiho Fukada, several African-Americans living in Japan discuss how their encounters with police and racism in the U.S. played into their decision to live abroad and how leaving the U.S. changed their perceptions of who they are and their connection to the country of their birth.' -- All Things Considered

How a Brewery is Battling Gang Violence One Pint at a Time

'Something special is brewing at a North Carolina brewery. They’re using beer to fight gang violence, but the brew masters might be getting more attention than the new lager. Matter of Fact correspondent Jessica Gomez takes us inside Wilmington’s TRU Colors.'

Left Bank Books Presents ONLINE: Jewell Parker Rhodes - Paradise on Fire

'Left Bank Books welcomes beloved award-winning and bestselling author Jewell Parker Rhodes, who  discusses her new book, Paradise on Fire. Jewell is in conversation with Left Bank Books' Cliff Helm & Shane Mullen.' 

The Kaepernick Effect: How A Knee Inspired a Generational Revolt 99 – Dave Zirin and Eddie Glaude in Conversation

'Critically acclaimed sports journalist and author of A People’s History of Sports in the United States, Dave Zirin chronicles “the Kaepernick effect”, through interviews with a broad cross-section of professional athletes across many different sports, college stars and high-powered athletic directors, and high school athletes and coaches. In each case, he uncovers the fascinating explanations and motivations behind a mass political movement in sports, through deeply personal and inspiring accounts of risk-taking, activism, and courage both on and off the field.'

The Multi-hyphenate Cedric the Entertainer

'Cedric Antonio Kyles – comedian, actor, director and producer – boiled his stage name down to Cedric the Entertainer, but he still wears many hats. The star of the sitcom The Neighborhood, and host of the 2021 Emmy Awards on CBS, sat down with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz to talk about his career and the joy he hopes to bring to audiences.'

Industrial Residue in the Rust Belt: LaToya Ruby Frazier and Taylor Renee Aldridge in Conversation

'To inaugurate The Last Cruze exhibition at California African American Museum, the artist LaToya Ruby Frazier will be joined by CAAM Visual Arts Curator Taylor Renee Aldridge to discuss Frazier’s ongoing work in documentary film and photography. In various interconnected bodies of work, Frazier uses collaborative storytelling with the people who appear in her artwork to celebrate working-class individuals and to address topics of industrialism, environmental justice, workers’ rights, human rights, and family. The Last Cruze extends this impulse by offering a monument to the workers of the former General Motors factory in Lordstown, Ohio, which was “unallocated” in 2019, leaving many of the factory workers unemployed. Frazier and Aldridge will discuss Black Americans’ contributions to the history of industrial advancement in this country, and how post-industrial decline continues to negatively impact working-class communities in Rust Belt cities, like Frazier’s hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania.'

Percival Everett's Novel 'The Trees' Parses Through Race's Part In A Southern Murder

'Special detectives Ed Morgan and Jim Davis are the big-city heat from Hattiesburg. They're with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, and they're in the small town of Money to investigate the murder of two men in the back room of the same shotgun-style house - one, a white man who's disfigured in a way so gruesome we can't tell you without a trigger warning, if you please; the other, a Black man, seems to just walk out of the morgue. The Trees is a novel by Percival Everett, the author of more than 30 books and the recipient of a Guggenheim. He joins Weekend Edition Saturday from South Pasadena, Calif.'

Researchers Alarmed By Rising Suicide Rate Among Black Girls, Adolescents

'In 2018, researchers noted an increase in suicides among Black children over the last decade, but a new study shows that the biggest rise — nearly 7% a year from 2003 to 2017 — is among Black girls. So what's contributing to the increases? And what can be done to stop it? Here & Now host Tonya Mosley talks to Arielle Sheftall, lead author on the new study and principal investigator at the Center for Suicide Prevention and Research at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.'

ONIPA's 'Tapes Of Utopia' Channels Afrofuturism And The Influence Of African Mix Tapes

'Weekend Edition Saturday's Scott Simon speaks to Tom Excell and K.O.G., bandleaders of ONIPA, about their new album, Tapes of Utopia. It's dedicated to the mix tapes sold in Africa's markets.'

Jelani Cobb on the Kerner Report, an Unheeded Warning about the Consequences of Racism

'In 1967, in the wake of a violent uprising in Detroit, President Lyndon B. Johnson assembled the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to investigate what had happened. This seemed futile: another panel to investigate yet another uprising. “A lot of people felt that way—‘We don’t need more studies, nothing’s going to come out of that commission,’ ” Fred Harris, a former senator from Oklahoma and the commission’s last surviving member, tells Jelani Cobb in this episode of  The New Yorker Radio Hour. But the conclusions were not typical at all. In the final analysis, known as the Kerner Report, the commission named white racism—no euphemisms—as the root cause of unrest in the United States, and said that the country was “moving toward two societies, one Black, one White—separate and unequal.” The report called for sweeping changes and investments in jobs, housing, policing, and more; the recommendations went so far beyond Johnson’s anti-poverty programs of the nineteen-sixties that the President shelved the report and refused to meet with his own commission. The Kerner Report, Cobb says, was “an unheeded warning,” as America still struggles today to acknowledge the reality of systemic racism.'