Childish Trading and Manufacturing founder Maite Makgoba hopes her Mommpy Mpoppy doll will help change the way young black South African children look at themselves. In a market overwhelmed by whiteness, her dolls feature dark skin and natural-looking hair, giving black children an opportunity to insert images of themselves into their play fantasies. The Guardian takes a look at the toy and the uphill market challenges Makgoba faces.
Read the full feature at the Guardian.
“What’s going to happen in reality is that thousands of infiltrators are going to come here and make our lives hell, even more than they are now. … We are going to fight this with all our strength.”
Read the full story at Ynet News.
“Charging a reporter with trespassing and interfering with a police officer when he was just doing his job is outrageous. … You’d have thought law enforcement authorities would have come to their senses about this incident.”
Read the full story at BuzzFeed News.
(Image Credit: Jeff Roberson/AP, via BuzzFeed News)
NFL running back Arian Foster, currently playing for the Houston Texans, has come out as a freethinker and nonbeliever, one of very few professional players to have ever professed nonbelief. With little to no separation between church and field in the NFL, Foster sits down with ESPN to share his experiences being out to teammates, the evolution of his belief, and the ubiquity of Christianity in football.
Read the full profile at ESPN.
Four years following the protests and riots that broke out following the death of black Londoner Mark Duggan, relations between the black community and law enforcement remain tense. Black men in particular express anxiety over police interactions and face targeting through stop-and-search policies. BuzzFeed News reflects on developments since Duggan’s death and the spaces black men turn to for camaraderie and relief.
“When you fail to make people in your country feel like the country belongs to them, you have riots.”
Read the full feature at BuzzFeed News.
(Image Credit: Shyamantha Asokan/BuzzFeed)
“Instead of inclusion, there’s this culture of class that UC has created. … It’s like the people in the outside communities are voiceless to the administration and the administration just wants them to stay out of the way.”
Read the full story at BuzzFeed News.
(Image Credit: William Philpott/Reuters, via BuzzFeed News)
The New York Times released the results of a recent New York Times/CBS News poll surveying individuals’ attitudes on white-black relations in the U.S.. Here are highlights of the level of security expressed by black respondents only:
Belief in real progress made in eliminating racial discrimination
56% believe vs. 41% do not believe
Who has the better chance of getting ahead in today’s society?
Whites do: 60% (2015) vs. 46% (2014)
Blacks do: 1% (2015) vs. 4% (2014)
Both do equally: 35% (2015) vs. 46% (2014)
Feelings about personal interactions with the police
58% mostly safe vs. 37% mostly anxious
Belief that race has ever caused police to stop him/her
41% race-motivated experience vs. 57% no race-motivated experience
Further Reading
“A Growing Divide on Race” (NYT: full results)
“Poll Finds Most in U.S. Hold Dim View of Race Relations” (NYT: analysis)
“How the Poll Was Conducted” (NYT: methodology)
“India Clarke’s death is a tragedy that is made worse by egregious misgendering by local police and media.”
Read the full story at BuzzFeed.
Spanish photographer Elena Hermosa has trained her camera lens on the lives and culture of Garifuna immigrants in New York City. A genetic mix of African and indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, the Garifuna community has been pushed from Honduras by ongoing violence, with many having settled in the South Bronx of New York. From the precarity of the undocumented to endangered cultural traditions, the New York Times explores the subject and implication of Hermosa’s work.
View the full feature at the New York Times.
(Image Credit: Elena Hermosa, via the New York Times)
The New York Times has published a multimedia feature breaking down the legality of the police interaction with Sandra Bland, a black woman with professed mental health afflictions found dead in a Houston-area jail cell under contested circumstances three days after her arrest. Legal experts find improper police behavior involving statement of cause, escalation, and use of force as ongoing investigations have revealed a range of behaviors that have pushed and breached the boundaries of police power leading up to her death.
View the feature at the New York Times.
(Video via the Texas Department of Public Safety YouTube channel; the Sandra Bland interaction begins at 1:30)
Part of her “Black Eye” series in The Japan Times examining life in Japan for black immigrants, this Baye McNeil piece shines a light on the hardships of romantic life for black women in the country. From fetishism to “friend-zoning,” McNeil finds black women face challenges particular to the intersection of their identities in the search for romance and familial security in Japan.
Read the full feature at The Japan Times.
(Image Credit: Matsui Family/Courtesy, via The Japan Times)
“A female staff came out and tried to hush up the matter saying ‘Obama is the President of US’ as if that had anything to do with us. I want the management of the hotel to realise that this isn’t 1930. This is 2015. You cannot walk up to random black women and tell them you will not serve them because they are black.”
Read the full story at Gulf News.
(Image Credit: Wanderforth.com)
“When law enforcement views girls as perpetrators, and when their cases are not dismissed or diverted but sent deeper into the justice system, the cost is twofold: Girls’ abusers are shielded from accountability, and the trauma that is the underlying cause of the behavior is not addressed.”
Read the full story at the New York Times.
“It doesn’t matter to us how or why these churches burned down, we want to help our Black sisters and brothers get back in to their houses of worship as soon as they can. … Ramadan is a time of giving and what better cause to give to than one that rebuilds houses of worship where God’s name is constantly called, remembered and loved.”
Read the full story at the Huffington Post.
“I think most people know that we’ve had a significant problem with lack of diversity in decision-making roles in the criminal justice system for a long time. I think what these numbers dramatize is that the reality is much worse than most people imagine and that we are making almost no progress.”
Read the full story at the New York Times.
(Image Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images, via The New York Times)
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