Susan X Jane

A House On Fire

Imagine a world where there are 5 Parkland School shootings every day. Imagine a world where there is a 9/11 every month. Now open your eyes to a country where 45,000 people a day die by suicide every year. The suicide of two high profile celebrities–designer Kate Spade and bon vivant Anthony Bourdain–along with recent information released by the CDC have cast light on a subject that frequently goes unaddressed. Suicide–the 10 leading cause of death– claims more lives than school shootings and terrorist acts combined.

Kate Spade was a wildly successful fashion designer who built an empire on whimsy. Healthy, beautiful, successful. Anthony Bourdain was if nothing else a lover of life, taking us with him to connect with humanity over a bowl of food. Again, wildly successful by any measures of our culture. While we are familiar with the dark face of school shooters and struggling addicts dying from mental health issues, what does it say when those who live the lives we all fantasize about no longer want to live their lives?

The airwaves and interwebs are full of messages about what to do if you are in crisis, ways to combat depression, helplines that are lifelines, and exhortations to check on your friend. This is important. Destigmatizing mental health and providing adequate supports is awesome and helpful.

Lurking beneath this mountain of advice is the subtle blame that problems with mental health occur because individuals are not maintaining their own shit. But how can one be mentally healthy in culture so permeated with hate and violence? How can one rise above crisis when crisis is the soup of the day every day? What role do our wildly unstable world and crumbling communities hold in this uptick in mental health issues?

Despite the myth of the American dream, beneath the sheen of instagram feeds are lives of anxiety, sadness and loneliness. While we can acquire the goods that mark a good life–our systems are calibrated to help us achieve the material success–we work long hours, and often end up with stuff but no satisfaction. Exhausted at the end of the day we have little energy for putting in work to sustain the relationships that sustain us. Our communities seem to be drifting away from an orientation of connection–people lost in their own virtual worlds building bridges online instead of next door. Our heads are bent over screens instead of lovers. And all around us, chaos and a deconstructed democracy.

If we are a developed nation, what have we developed? Our country is permeated with sadness that sits just at the edge of our culture, a borderland on our beautiful dream, a place that some people journey to more than others, but a location available to everybody in this automated world of separation. Mental health is a problem not just of individuals, but for the nation. The National Suicide helpline and other organizations are important resources for people in crisis, but no call center can shift our damaged culture to create a space where more people feel safe and held and connected.

There is a deep malaise at the heart of America. you might say that the dream has become a nightmare, but it always has been. This is a country literally built on a Native American burial ground. If you’ve even seen a horror movie, you know that this is not good. With high rates of suicide, massive amounts of anxiety, rampant addiction to pain killers and drowning even at the highest levels of success–maybe especially at the highest levels– the lie is exposed for all its terribleness. Sadness and loneliness and racism and sexism and capitalism and this unattainable life: we eat and are consumed.

David Foster Wallace compared suicide to jumping out of a burning building:

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

A quick trip through the headlines is enough to see that America for all it offers is a house on fire. To live in a home that is burning is bad for all the inhabitants, not just people with identified mental health issues. The culture is not good for any of us. Those that are struggling are an alarm– it’s past time to respond.

If suicide is people jumping from burning buildings, then we have to start to knock down the fire in order to create healthy environments to support healing. We cannot always know or understand the inner lives of those we love, but we can be firefighters helping to battle the flames that threaten them. We need to care about each other. We need to check on each other. We live here in this home together, and the roof, the roof is on fire.

While we wait to rebuild our culture is you or someone you know is struggling please know that there is help. Check on all your friends.

I’m Just A Threat: Childish Gambino on America

Donald Glover wasn’t content to just reawaken our childhood trauma on Thursday’s episode of Atlanta and then round out his triple threat credentials hosting and as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live.

He had to remind us what kind of threat he really is in his Sunday morning video release of This Is America. This dark minstrel-show video is more complex than a Kanye West history revision, swinging wildly from Bo Jangles shuck and jive to a roleplay of America’s dark chaos.

The video starts with the sound of light Caribean guitar played by a barefoot man in linen pants–a moment of black joy and happiness. Childish Gambino jerks to life to the music, contorting to adopt the tune like a demon taking possession of the black body. The happy tune is short lived as a stalking shirtless Gambino mercs his diasporan brother, menacing “This is America” to the throb of heavy bass. He adopts the famous pose of dancing Jim Crow when he pulls the trigger: this is the black experience in America, our connection killed, our bodies possessed by the leering dark energy of American supremacy, turned into shucking zombies. This is probably what it looked like when Kanye lost his mind.

The new Jim Crow two steps with South African school children against a backdrop of increasing chaos. The stereotypical images of blacks dancing and singing ‘cars, clothes, hos’ are hip hop’s most marketable products. Against the backdrop of hundreds of years of oppression, rappers that preach the prosperity+bitches gospel reinforce the slavery-era idea that blacks were greedy, lazy bucks, undeserving of freedom or justice. Simultaneously, they lull listeners into focusing on a little cash instead of economic justice, a little flash instead of freedom These are the kind of images mass media loves to reproduce–and ship worldwide: they support hegemonic thinking about blacks and keep everyone sipping the white supremacy juice. A twin set of school children dance in the back under the rain of a red money gun. Jim Crow is for the kids

Speaking of the prosperity gospel, a choir preaching “get your money, black man” sings in a room removed from the chaos. Jim pops through a door to join them in joyful worship–for a moment–before mowing them down with an AR-15. He punctuates his shots again with, “This is America.” The scene calls the Charleston church shooting to mind. It also reminds us that as black people, buying into capitalism as a way to salvation is a dangerous business: “Don’t catch you slippin.”

Throughout the video, the background is increasingly populated with people running in all directions. black people and white people, cops, people wielding sticks or bats. The direction of the actions isn’t clear–who is chasing who? Is this an uprising like Baltimore or a street war like Charlottesville? Like the news on any given day, it is hard to make sense of the chaotic images broadcast salaciously without context.

Above it all, young men in white masks bear witness, cell phones out. “This is a celly. That is a tool.” They sit above the chaos watching and recording. Below the school kids circle Jim Crow while the apocalypse’s horseman rides through on the white horse of death (is everything apocalyptic? [yes.]). With cars burning and police and people rioting, it is Jim Crow’s hand extended like a gun that sends everyone running, the scene dropping into silence as he nods off high on America’s heroin, violence.

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His dance is brought back with a couple quick puffs on a joint. He perches atop a car doing his best Michael Jackson. Scattered around is a field of cars. These are not your usual rap-mobiles. There are no spinning rims or chrome kits. Instead, the cars call to mind the hundreds of cars we have seen pulled over in police shooting videos. Sandra Bland’s car, or Samuel Dubose’s–cars that belong to working people just trying to get through the day without being turned into a statistic by the state. Jim Crow dances among the graveyard of cars, with just his linen legged brother, hooded head and guitar restored and a sister wavering sexily on the hood of a Philando Castile look-a-like car.

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Even the black man that dances possessed through a wasteland of black pain, shucking and jiving to the gospel of white supremacy, mowing down his brethren, is not free (take note, Kanye). The video ends with our Jim Crow now terror-stricken, running from the faceless unfocused chaos he was dancing above. He is no longer funny or silly or swaggy, his face full of raw fear, his body pumping all his energy towards surviving. Judging by our present state of affairs, he’s not going to make it.

The video gives us a lot to examine. Childish Gambino has created this layered stew worthy of reflection and not just reaction–so what do you take away? Some have written that he is condemning black America for embracing shallowness while massive problems loom in plain sight. Others have said he is pointing to a cycle of violence and numbness as we try to mumble rap our way past problems we can’t ignore. I think both of these analyses put too much burden on black America alone to do the heavy lifting of eradicating white supremacy.

To lay white supremacy at the feet of black people who like to have a good time is also to deny black people their humanity. In the last few years, I have seen activists go so hard that their life energy was depleted like a phone charge. We plug ourselves into pop culture to get a boost, a little levity to remind us why we fight, a little art to remind us that to be free is to take joy where you can find it. The trick is to plug into pop culture that fills you up to fight another day, and these days black excellence is giving us plenty to sup on. Childish Gambino’s song and video are another in a long line of important work being created by black artists–Cole, Lamar, Kweli, and Buddy and Caleborate, and Beyonce, and Solange, and, Joyner, and Vic Mensa and on and on.

Yes, yes, the commodity factory of American media keeps pumping out crap-get-money-fuck-bitches-rap. You don’t have to eat that fast food. You shouldn’t let the fast food being produced by corporations define what hip hop is or isn’t. Don’t be fooled: there is always conscious rap happening. Sometimes it is harder to find than others, but it has always been a part of hip-hop, and more broadly black culture. In every era, the rebellion leaders and freedom fighters also consumed the pop culture of their day. In other times as in our own, artists and seers showed us the way through their painting, writing, singing, and dancing. Let’s not let each new track make us declare consciousness is now alive, now dead. Let’s just sit in the complexity. Let’s acknowledge that our world is not binary.

America is this– forcing all experience into a simple dichotomy of good and bad, violence and justice, joy and chaos. We have to tease out what the relationship between these elements is–where is the cause? which is the side effect? who loses and who loses more? This Is America juxtaposes our country’s many masks so that we can see the complexity of moving through this world. The video is a Rorschach test, the video sows both shame and sympathy, letting you grow whichever you choose. It is we who must do the choosing: not just for this video, not in the abstract but at this moment. To get beyond the binge/purge cycle that devours black life, we have to rise above the choice to devolve into the chaos America allows for or to rest in the embrace of the joy and lightness that we need sometimes to survive. To do both, to be all that humanity can be–this is America.

What’s Wrong with Kanye?

Just days before his new album drops. Kanye West has been trolling the world with a series of provocative tweets, comments, and hat choices. Whyyyy? First, in case he hasn’t been able to reach you with his blankets of bullshit, here are some highlights. He started off professing love and shared dragon energy with Donald Trump. This sounds like something Stormy Daniels’ lawyer should be in on, but Kanye promises us the love is real. Looking back, this really is some expert-level clickbait

His comments about Trump were enough to prompt Questlove of the Roots to wear a shirt that says “Kanye West Doesn’t Care About Black People,” a take off Kanye’s own comments about George Bush during the Hurricane Katrina crisis. Questlove sported the shirt this weekend in Montgomery, Alabama at the Concert for Peace and Justice celebrating the opening of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Memorial to Peace and Justice commemorating lynching in America–peak black excellence. Kanye’s cookout privileges have been revoked.

Not to be denied the right to scream from the sunken place, Kanye told a TMZ reporter that slavery was a choice.

Kanye West stirs up the TMZ newsroom over TRUMP, SLAVERY and FREE THOUGHT. There’s A LOT more that went down … and the fireworks are exploding on @TMZLive today. Check your local listings for show times. pic.twitter.com/jwVsJCMPiq

— TMZ (@TMZ) May 1, 2018

Wooooooooooooow. At this point, it seems like his Brittany Spears level meltdown is too crazy to be anything but an act, right? I mean he went to TMZ. He’s breaking the internet without even taking his pants off. Can it be that the person who called out George Bush and Taylor Swift has become race traitor numero uno?
There is another explanation, maybe less interesting but also more insidious. Kanye has been drinking the elite Kool-Aid and it has scrambled his brain. A lot of the hoopla is about these crazy words coming out of the mouth of Kanye West who, in case he forgot, is a black man in America. When so much of the black community is trying to get their passport stamped for Wakanda, Kanye West seems to have bought a one-way bus ticket to the heart of white supremacy.
Here’s the thing, being woke isn’t automatic. When someone *cough Kanye cough* is disconnected from their community and buys into the hegemonic ideas that the elite chomp on all day, they start to believe some crazy shit. Like a lot of other people in the 1% Kanye is driven to amass wealth knowing their business directly contributes to rising income inequality, especially among their target consumers. Kanye has no problem exploiting cheap labor to manufacture his overpriced clothes. Kanye has no problem marketing said clothes to young people who can ill afford it but are enamored of the lifestyle marketing he employs. The mindset that feeds on exploitation and degradation is the same mindset that ignored the brutality of slavery as profits piled up. It’s the same mindset today that ignores the demands of the resistance as the rich and powerful continue to reshape our democracy into an oligarchy for their own profit. Its the mindset that says sure Trump is a nightmare but hey, my taxes are great!
There were black slave owners. There are black people today who continue to believe in the ideology of white supremacy even though their skin is black. This small but real group remind us of the power of the lies the elite tell to maintain their ability to manipulate others for profit. You don’t have to be white to believe in white supremacy. Hmmm, maybe that’s what Kanye meant when he declared his right to free thought. He’s right–he has the right to believe in white supremacy and the lies it tells about black people and their history. He won’t be the first black person to believe it, and maybe not the last so check your cousins and them.

When I say stay woke, I recognize that staying woke is an intentional act, a place not of race but choice. A place anyone can decide to stand when they stop believing the lie that some people deserve more than others. So stay woke, no matter who you are. We’ll be here when you’re ready, Kanye

Every End A New Beginning

Dear Students of Wheelock

We find ourselves this week in a mini-apocalypse of sorts. Wheelock will merge with Boston University, and the school in its current format will come to an end. With it, the Communications and Media Literacy program will close after a 9-year run where I had the pleasure to teach many of you. Full disclosure, I learned as much as I taught. In the time since I started teaching Media and Race in 2006, the world has changed. The work we did in class around media and the way it shapes our society, particularly around race, was grounded in theory but splashed across the headlines more times than I would have liked—I taught through attacks on Muslims, the Occupy Movement, the birth of Black Lives Matter and the Rise of the Alt-right to the White House. As the world seems to descend into chaos I have been blessed to see the shining hope that each of you represents to the world. In our darkest hours, I have assured people around me that the next generation—your generation—are truly the heroes that we need to navigate these treacherous times. Your own hopefulness in the face of pain, your development of a deep knowledge of injustice and the systems that support it, your tireless persistence in chanting down those who would oppress the marginalized makes me believe that the apocalypse will find us in a brave new world, one that truly manifests the most beautiful of American ideals—equality and justice for all.

I want to thank each of you for allowing me the honor of being your professor, your advisor, and your mentor. I stand in awe of your collective power. I am moved by the hundreds of personal stories where you have overcome hardship to work for an education. I am grateful to bear witness to the thousand times you struggled to learn and to grow to prepare for the singular purpose of making the world a better place. I will forever hold the memories of you in your pivotal moments at Wheelock—times that you stood up and pushed back, the hard times where we all grew the most, and the fun times from battle rapping in class to dancing with Xclusive.

I am eternally grateful to have the chance to touch so many of your lives, and I hope only that you will remember and pass on the knowledge that we built and shared together. We know that the apocalypse is never an end, only an unveiling of the truth, of the world as it is, though perhaps not what we want it to be. But it is only in the cold light of truth that we can see clearly enough to build. I feel I armed each of you with the weapons I have to share to fight injustice. I hope you will use them to carve out the new worlds we have imagined together.

I love you all.

SXJ

Departures

Her I’m in line at the airport. The woman in front of me is shepherding a flock of four kids in tropical board shorts dancing excitedly through the security
line. Her brightly lettered bag declares “life’s a beach!” I wonder if it is. I have no doubt that if I cross paths with this happy brood in a week at this same airport they will be a little sunburned, the girls with cornrows, the boys swaggering drunk with adventure. The mother will be slightly less harried, the ghost of the woman she was before motherhood peeking out of her sandals between French manicured toes.

Me I’m going to the south. I’m going to Atlanta and Selma and Montgomery to trace the path of civil rights, winding through slavery, through
Jim Crow, through a motel room where a movement staggered beneath the weight of assassination. I’m going to the opening of the Lynching museum, to a place that will commemorate the dark legacy of strange fruit, that will put faces and stories to the burned bodies hanging like picnic decorations in old postcards.
What will I come back with?

Us If that mother sees me a week from now, what souvenir will she she me carrying back from my trip? What trophy can I claim from this visit? Maybe only the names, all the names. Maybe I will need to buy a suitcase while I am there to carry back the memory of so much black pain. Maybe she will see me in the airport, walking slowly, a dark look on my face dragging a club behind me to smash white supremacy followed at an unsafe distance by wary TSA agents. She might notice my eyes bloodshot from bearing witness to all that America is. She might see my hair dull from restless sleep, my whole being hollow from seeing what has happened to my kin. Her kids will push past me at the baggage claim, pulling luggage and bright colored duty free parcels while I stare blankly, processing all that there is to see when one looks at the heart of race in America.

Or maybe she won’t see me at all. What a beach.

My Beef With Bias Training

Just when I learned to order my venti-hot-soy-chai-two-extra-pumps-no-foam-no-water in a single breath, Starbucks joins the list of companies I have to boycott because racism. Bad enough that my Sundays are spent football free, now every morning will be an exercise in fuming on all black people are left out of in America–peace, justice, Starbucks single stall bathrooms and lemon loaf. Unlike the NFL, Starbucks is already hard at work to win back my daily $7.65.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/b1e1ebee-403a-11e8-955b-7d2e19b79966

Starbuck CEO announced in an earnest apology video that they will be closing stores on the afternoon of May 29th to train all of the employees in the whole company with a mandatory “implicit bias and conscious inclusion training” He describes below that this is the first step in trying to live out their company values. Ahh, back to chai heaven, right?

Wrong. While I applaud the company’s willingness to respond and respond big with a company-wide shutdown, I wonder if this reactionary-proactive-action will have the desired result. As someone that frequently engages in racial dialogues and trainings, I have lots of questions. The massive scale of this concurrent training sounds grand, but I wonder about how you could effect such a training with consistent results at 8,000 stores in different geographic areas and different local contexts, with thousands of different trainers of varying experience and tens of thousands of people with varying lived experiences and beliefs. (I picture an army of facilitators armed with lattes and flip charts deployed en mass–but from where? ) And what will they learn? And if they discover they have implicit bias, will this trigger any work on company policies and practices? After the training, how will we know if they’ll arrest us if we go there if we don’t go there anymore?

My other question is aimed not at Starbucks alone: is implicit bias the tool we need to help private companies address racism in their practices and customer interaction? There can be no doubt that implicit bias training is all the rage these days–and it is an important and eye-opening first step for people unaware that humans carry biases. When discussing race, it can be a helpful entry point for conversations–we all carry around ideas that we are not in control of, some of which relate to race and dominant cultural ideas about race. We all have implicit biases– it’s important to know that and think about where we each may have an inclination to shut down or react strongly.

But the thing about implicit bias is that you are not in control of it–it is operating unconsciously, ticking away in your brain with no help from you. Racism, however, is not something lurking beneath our id waiting to stir our sleepwalking self to acts of discrimination. Racism is systemic, embedded in principles, practices, policies, and actions of institutions and the individuals who work in them. People not only have implicit bias BUT ALSO act out on subjective ideas and beliefs about race. Learned behaviors and attitudes about race are conscious parts of how people interact with each other, how they make decisions–conscious decisions–about how and when to enforce policies. Acknowledging and taking responsibility for the ways that we reproduce racism in our own environments takes more agency and deeper engagement than acknowledging implicit bias alone.

Implicit bias is one of the few places where we can measure the trace of racism or sexism in the brain. Since implicit bias is data-driven and testable, it appears to be a “more scientific” approach to talking about racism than examining history or acknowledging the political significance of race. But race is a social construct, and years of social science, political science, and historical research has afforded us deeper, more nuanced and more complete ways of talking about and addressing race. While implicit bias training is a nice start for an afternoon, it lacks the depth needed to address racism in all its complexity. Well begun is not half done in this case. If we really want to go there, Starbucks and our country would be well served to look at the many conscious ways discriminitory practices are enforced, reconcile them with their company values and build a new more equitable relationship with the communities they serve.

When they do, I’ll take a venti soy chai with two extra pumps, no foam, no water, no racism.

Uncivil, Rights

Today mark 50 years since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. While his name glosses the lips of Americans every time the struggle for racial equity comes up, his legacy and his work atrophy even as we speed towards a majority-minority population. It has been a lifetime since King bespoke his famous dream–my lifetime in fact. Born after the civil rights act was signed, I was supposed to be a child of a new era. New era same as the old era, though.

I know of a time, not unlike our own, when black people wore dashikis, embraced Africa and put their fists up to the sound of black power coming from a thousand lips. I remember Malcolm X jackets, red gold and green everything and an army of babies with African names. I see today pure joy as people greet each other with ‘Wakanda forever’. But in none of these eras did I see racism eradicated. Instead, each time black people have endeavored to rise up above the thorny ugliness of racism, I see too the right rise up in arms ready to beat back the forces working to dismantle systemic racism.

Laws, practices, policies, and norms are all biased to maintain the system of white supremacy that is the very foundation of this country. The goal of these laws is to conserve wealth and power among a few, rather than make it equally available to all, as the framer’s documents promised. Dred Scott, the 13th amendment, The Voting Rights Act, sentencing laws and the prosecution of police brutality cases–there is an America-sized line of laws that continue even now to restrict, dehumanize and delegitimize black people in America. Hard work by many hands has pulled at these very real social structures for half a century. And yet they still stand.

Fifty years after we passed the Civil Rights Act to address racial inequity in housing, employment education, and economics, we are worse off in every one of those areas. Evidence from a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute confirms that Black America has seen losses in the 50 years since King’s death, contrary to many Americans’ belief that we are post-racial.

Our own time finds many people more disposed to engage in activism–marching for gun reform, fighting the #MeToo battle, donning pussy hats in droves. The students of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas were able to raise 3.7 million dollars in just a few days. There is energy and excitement around making change in the face of chaos. Activism is as common as yoga.

But students supporting Black Lives Matter have been labeled terrorists by the FBI. The Voting Rights Act is under assault. Police killings continue unabated. White supremacy today recites the words of Dr. King while still standing on the neck of Black America.

Each year America at large likes to acknowledge the dream, but forgets the radical spirit of King’s vision.Martin Luther King, Jr.’s tenents– fighting poverty, securing equal voting rights, and achieving racial equity–are lost in the exuberant activism of this moment. It is long past time for the whole of America to put real energy and commitment to do the hard work dismantling the system of white supremacy his dream requires. The need for real solutions to poverty and inequality is more important now than ever. The need to heal America’s Black and White problem is urgent for all Americans. Don’t put away your marching shoes and your GoFund me funds yet. Don’t let the silos of old keep our movements apart.

Don’t forget none of us is free until all of us are free.

Time, Honored: A Wrinkle Gets a Lift

Happy Wrinkle In Time Day! Fifty-six years after the publication of Ursula Le Guin’s novel of a young heroine traveling through time, the motion picture version is shepherded onto the screen by shaman of black girl magic Ava DuVernay. After weeks swooning over Black Panther, now is not the time to forget how much representation matters. A Wrinkle In Time is more than just a breakthrough in casting: it challenges the notion of who gets to be a hero and how.

DuVernay’s adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time will star Storm Reid as Meg, a girl who travels in time to save her scientist father (Chris Pine) with help from three celestial beings played by Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kialing and Oprah (who may in fact have just been playing herself). Like other films of late–Get Out, Hidden Figures and most notably Black Panther–the casting of A Wrinkle in Time brings a fresh face to the tired trope of the rugged Rambo-like hero.

Black women are the fastest growing group of female entrepreneurs. They are the most educated group in America. They are also mothers to the next generation of black women who will shatter the ceilings still stifling the black excellence we are enjoying today. After the muck of video vixens and tragic mulattos their mothers waded through, our young girls deserve smart capable characters that reflect their courage, intelligence and agency. A Wrinkle In Time gives girls a expansive vision of potential, encouraging them to dream big and risk bigger without fear.

A Wrinkle In Time also challenges another convention of the hero tale: violence. No matter how courageous and conscious our heroes are they always need to open a can of whoop-ass to get their job done. Every superhero uses his power in violent combat. While they often throw in a few pithy lines along the way, it is brute force that ultimatly solves every problem. No wonder we have a hard time not believing that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun. Buried deep in the list of solutions to our gun problem is the need to address our cultural beliefs around violence. Our hero Meg is unlikely to do Bruce-Lee-level roundhouse kicks to save her dad. Instead, like people in the real world, her courage will take a different shape. The toolbox that she models for young girls has something other than an arm bar in it–solutions like knowledge, scientific thinking and compassion for others that girls (and the rest of us; looking at you,Trump) could use. We need more diplomacy, characters that aren’t afraid to do something other than destroy the world, and we need heroes who show us exciting solutions that are not based on killing other people.

Beyond the pettiness of our broken politics, human knowledge is advancing at a rapid pace. The ideas in A Wrinkle in Time about multiverses, fractured time, and infinite possibilities are not just science fiction like they mostly were in Le Guin’s own time. Quantum physics, gravitational waves and tesseracts are shifting from fantasy to provable theory–one step closer to becoming everyday reality. Our country is locked in a battle over simplistic binary ideas–left or right, black or white, Trump or the rest of us. Only by drawing on all the knowledge humanity has to offer and expanding our thinking into the multiverse of opportunities that exist can we free ourselves from the small minded structures of power created by small minded men to control the masses. A Wrinkle in Time encourages audiences to expand their minds, and evolve.

A Wrinkle in Time is a vision of a world beyond the flawed one we have built. This is what science fiction can do best–help us visualize our way beyond the boundaries of our knowledge, support the thinkers and creators in building a map to this new world. Meg is a girl of this moment, brave and empowered, afraid sometimes but unstoppable always. This movie is for the girls who are like Meg. May they see their own power writ large on the screen. This is for the world that needs to see those quiet girls, the ones off thinking, silently saving the world. May we see them, may we be them.

90 Years Old: Straight, No Filler

The Oscars are rolling out the red carpet tonight, with all the stars celebrating the very best films Hollywood made this year. Amidst all the glittery chandelier earrings and piles of silk gowns are a host of political issues that are giving the films a run for the best drama award.

After years of silence and complicity, Hollywood’s not-so-secret culture of sexual harassment and predatory employment broke wide open with the takedown of Harvey Weinstein and the wave of predators washed out of Hollywood in his wake. While the initial euphoria of the movement has passed, Hollywood’s heaviest hitters, like Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino, are behind the Times Up organization. Putting money where it matters, Times Up provides legal representation to victims of sexual assault that need it. While the black gowns at the golden globes were dramatic, the long-term effect of ongoing prosecution of predators across sectors has the potential to sweep in a new era of accountability. Now if we can just address the culture that makes the perpetrators, maybe we won’t see any more remakes of the same old Hollywood horror story.

OscarsSoWhite shed light on–der–a Hollywood so white that a director of color had never won in nearly 90 years, until last year’s win for Barry Jenkins for Moonlight. Now finally 90, Oscar has tipped its golden rod to diversity with the inclusion of directors Jordan Peele for Get Out and Guillermo Del Toro for the Shape of Water. From red carpet chatbot Michael Strahan to presenters and luminaries, there is a lot more color at the Oscars than there used to be. Sure rumors persist that older Oscar voters refused to even watch Get Out, never mind vote for it. Sure the Oscars continue to be mostly white, even amidst growing challenges from amazing artists like Dee Res, Ava DuVernay, and the aforementioned Jordan Peele. Let’s hope we can change a couple years with increased diversity into an inclusive new normal for Hollywood.

A year ago, the Oscars happened in the wake of Donald Trump’s inauguration and the chaos that followed. The tone was somber with lots of people pledging to resist and #nevertrump in their acceptance speeches. far from being overstated, the in the moment activism reflected the angsty zeitgeist of the year. It felt like Hollywood climbed out of the clouds to throw in for the resistance with the rest of the plebs. This year, not so much. Oscar producers are encouraging both attendees and the presenters to tone it down a little.

“I think people are getting burned out and sort of want a little break and a little focus on the movies themselves,” Rebecca Ford of The Hollywood Reporter told Inside Edition. “In general, ratings for this have been going down for television over the years, especially when things get too political, we do see that people tune out.”

While the resistance keeps chugging along, this year’s Oscars will be presented from La La land. Parkland Florida student activists won’t be in attendance. Host Kimmy Kimmel will keep his comedy less pointed political and more puns and schtick. This year’s Oscars will give viewers a break from the chaos that has only deepened since last year. Enjoy tonight, but don’t forget this isn’t normal.

The stories this year’s Oscars are celebrating ask us to believe in love, to recognize those that are different, to honor our communities, stand up to indifference and fight for what’s right. We need these stories to help us navigate a world that is anything but normal right now. When you are done swooning over the gowns, get ready for reentry from La La Land, but for tonight, pass the popcorn and root for everybody black.

Black Panther is for the Kids

Kids love superheroes. Though recent decades have found superheroes skewing older with the explosion of comic cons and an indistry hungry for hot characters in barely-there costumes kicking ass and laying waste, let’s not forget that superheroes are also the bread and butter of childhood dreams. We already know that Black Panther is for black people, a love letter of ancestry. But did you know Black Panther is for the [age appropriate]children (Please read that in your best Old Dirty Bastard voice)?

Unlike lots of other superhero movies, Black Panther doesn’t include massive violence or hot chicks with their boobs out. There are a few intense scenes, but nothing as frightening as what your kids are seeing in an active shooter drill. More importantly, Black Panther challenges all sorts of stereotypes, giving viewers a different way of looking at blackness than we have seen in a mainstream American production. My sister in law is taking my niece and nephews this weekend, and I’m here to help with smntks Black Panther movie FAQ kids edition.

Alert: major spoilers. Please watch the movie first.

Overview

Black Panther is a movie about T’Challa’s rise to the throne of a fictional country Wakanda. Along the way, T’Challa must learn about what it means to be a good man and a good king. He learns about the mistake his father made and struggles to make a different choice. The film is set in Wakanda, a fictional African country that was never colonized by another country, and lives in peace and isolation. The country has a military–the Dora Milaje which is comprised of women. The country is made up of five different tribes, each unique, with their own skills, geographies, and styles, but these groups live in relative harmony under a king. The country’s well being is based on its possession of vibranium an extraterrestrial material hidden in a mountain in Wakanda. When outside forces conspire to sell some stolen vibranium, T’Challa must respond, but that opens the door to an unexpected challenge to the throne from Eric Killmonger, his long-lost cousin. The result of their conflict changes T’Challah, and Wakanda forever.

Why is everyone saying this movie is special?

Black Panther is different from other major American movies: for the first time in a Disney movie, Africans are represented as intelligent technologically skilled modern humans. Most representations of black people are very stereotypical, casting them as criminals, super sexy singers and athletes, gang members, and reality stars.

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In the movie, Black Panther black people are royalty, technologists, generals, and activists. This is the first action movie with a majority black cast set in Africa. This is the first time an American film has shown an African country that was not colonized.

Why is everyone black?

The film takes place in Africa. The majority of the population of African is what we would in America consider black. There are millions of European, Indian, and Chinese people in African, but with a population of nearly two billion people, it is safe to say they are a minority in every country. Most countries have a white population that is under 10%, 1 out of 10. That doesn’t mean that all Africans are alike.

There are over 3000 different ethnic groups across 60 countries in Africa. Just like the people of Wakanda, there are many different groups of people in Africa with their own ideas, culture, and ways.

Is it racist to have a movie with all black people?

No. Racism is when one race has power over a group of people from a different race. Racism is about unequal power, not just unequal numbers. Black Panther does not end inequality in our country. Black Panther does not give black people power over white people.

**Roughly Three-Quarters of Film Actors Were White in 2014** SOURCE: USC ANNENBERG’S MDSC INITIATIVE

Having a movie with a mostly black cast is unusual. This movie will not stop other movies with white people being made. This movie does not try to focus on white people or disrespect them.

What’s a colonizer?

A colonizer is a person who takes over another country in order to steal their resources for their own profit. England, France, Spain, Belgium, Italy, and Portugal all colonized large parts of Africa. They shipped people, gold, rubber and other natural resources and sent them to their home countries to build wealth and power. Colonizers controlled the countries they took over with violence. While colonization ended for most African Countries 60 years ago, the effects of having their resources a stolen and many people killed still linger today.

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Russell E. Train Africana Collection, Smithsonian Institution Libraries.

Is Wakanda real?

While the country of Wakanda is (sadly) not real, a lot of what you see in the film is. The fashion in the film is drawn from the whole continent of Africa.

Marvel Studios' BLACK PANTHER..Mining Tribe Elder (Connie Chiume)..Ph: Film Frame..©Marvel Studios 2018

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Lip plates, neck rings, textiles, and hairstyles are based on real looks that originate all across the massive continent of Africa.

Is Vibranium a real thing?

No, there is no vibranium, but like the style in the movie, the idea is based on something real. African is rich in material resources: gold, minerals, oil, rubber, diamonds and more occur naturally in Africa. While these materials may not seem very modern, other lesser known resources are actually what fuels all our technology. Our wireless devices require a material called coltan mined primarily in the Congo. Like vibranium, this element powers all sorts of technological devices.

Like vibranium, many western companies would like to get their hands on it and are willing to go into the Congo to retrieve it for themselves. T’Challa is not wrong in worrying what will happen if they open up to the world. Many countries in African are still trying to ensure their natural resources are not stolen.

Can you really fly a spaceship or drive a car from far away like in the movie?

Sort of. While we don’t have vibranium models to navigate–yet–there are lots of ways that people use tools across distance using the internet. The internet of things allows you to close a garage door, feed the dog or turn on a light from your phone.

We can also use the internet to control robotic medical tools that will allow surgeons to operate on someone from another location. So we can control some things from far away.

Self-driving cars, like the one T’Challa rode, are also something inventors like Tesla and Google are working on now. Experts predict we will have self-driving cars on the road in the next 10 years, by the time my nephews can drive. Look out, T’Challa!

Why did they let the girls fight?

Women are able to do anything that men are able to do, and that includes fighting in the military. In America, women are barred from combat positions. Other countries, like Israel, allow women to be soldiers just like men.

Across the continent of Africa, there are lots of women who have fought in battles. Here is Yaa Asantewaa who fought colonialists in Ghana

Here are the Dahomey Amazons, an all-female fighting force that the movie’s Dora Milaje was modeled after. Like the Dora Milaje, they acted as security forces.

Why is the scientist a girl? Princesses can’t do computer stuff.

Girls and women can do anything they want. There are lots of women scientists who invent technology, map the stars, and fly to space. Girls don’t need to worry about their looks or chase boys. girls are smart and strong and want to do amazing things, just like boys. People of every gender and every orientation can choose any job, goal or friends that they want.

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson Theoretical Physicist

Dr. Mae Jemison, Astronaut and engenieer

Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green, cancer researcher

That means that people will have the best and brightest person doing work, like Shuri. Imagine if she wasn’t allowed to do tech because she was a girl: there would be no suit, not car driving from far away, no way to save Wakanda. That’s why it important to let all genders and races work in all the fields, especially science, math, and technology.

Why did T’Challa’s dad kill his own brother?

Because it is hard for a good man to be king. T’Chaka had to choose between caring for his baby brother and putting the people he led at risk. Knowing the history of colonization, T’Chaka chose to keep his country a secret so no one would know what they had. His brother had good intentions–to help back people struggling with racism, and police brutality–but his decision to use vibranium to commit violence was a way that T’Chaka thought would create more problems for Wakanda. It was a difficult choice, and even though he was a king that doesn’t mean he made the right choice. Leaders are not always right. We need to hold leaders accountable when they do the wrong thing.

If it was wrong for T’Chaka to kill his brother then why did T’Challa kill his cousin?

Because it is hard for a good man to be king. T’Challa is a king, but also a human. Like all humans, he sometimes has to make hard choices, choices where you aren’t sure what is right. He did not agree with Eric that they should use vibranium to start a war around the world. Eric was determined to use their technology as a weapon, and use violence to end racism. T’Challa removed him from the throne to stop him from doing this. But Eric was right that T’Challa had a responsibility to try hard to help black people all around the world. Eric reminded T’Challa that even though Wakanda was amazing, their black brothers and sister around the world still faced serious racism and need to be free. That is why T’Challa ended the film by opening up Wakanda to the world, to help all black people around the world who were his brothers and sisters be free.

What did Eric mean about the ocean?

In the end, Eric said:

Nah, just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships. Because they knew death was better than bondage.

During the transatlantic slave trade, slave ships carried Africans into slavery in the United Staes and the Caribbean. Slaves were chained below deck in torturous conditions. Rather than be turned into slaves, some Africans Jumped overboard while the ship was at sea.

This sad event tells us that the conditions that Africans were kept in were very very bad, and they chose death over imprisonment. Eric too decides he does not want to be imprisoned for trying to kill T’Challa and take over Wakanda to start a war. While Eric was trying to use violence, he still was T’Challas family. He cared about justice and hopefully, he will be back in the sequel.

Have a question you’d like added? Throw it in the comments! Hope you enjoyed the movie Ebin, Kaden, Seba, and Kelton!