# data[].attributes.headline
James Braxton Peterson Reveals Important Writing and Editing Skills for Success in Any Field

# data[].attributes.subject
James Braxton Peterson Reveals Important Writing and Editing Skills for Success in Any Field

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
James Braxton Peterson Reveals Important Writing and Editing Skills for Success in Any Field

# data[].attributes.headline
James Braxton Peterson Shares Easy Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills

# data[].attributes.subject
James Braxton Peterson Shares Easy Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
James Braxton Peterson Shares Easy Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills

# data[].attributes.headline
From Humble Beginnings: James Braxton Peterson Discusses Famous Comic Writers and How They Started

# data[].attributes.subject
From Humble Beginnings: James Braxton Peterson Discusses Famous Comic Writers and How They Started

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Comic writers are more than just people who have great imaginations. They are also skilled professionals who know how to captivate readers through conversations, scenes, and plot twists. The most outstanding ones are those who have published masterpieces known all over the world, with many fans patronizing not just the comic books, but also the merchandise born out of these brilliant ideas.

Based out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, James Braxton Peterson, an established writer and comic book enthusiast, has studied the lives of comic book writers and their beginning stages. He believes that each famous writer's humble beginnings are essential formative stages that led them to success.

In this post, Peterson will be sharing some insights about famous comic book writers, how they started, as well as some advice for aspiring writers.
Gail Simone
Gail Simone is the genius behind DC Comics' Birds of Prey. Initially, she was a theater graduate living in Oregon and had a day job working as a hairdresser. She gained attention back in the 1990s when she was a contributor to a website called "Women In Refrigerators."

"Women In Refrigerators" was a comic fan site where people discussed female characters who were abused and killed as a way to thicken the plot for the male characters in the story. By raising awareness of the injustices and unequal representation of women and their depiction in some of the most popular comics, Gail Simone proved herself to be a critical force and resource in the comic book industry. Eventually, Simone was contacted by comic book companies, asking her to write female-led storylines.

James Braxton Peterson believes that her courage to contribute and speak out on issues that challenged readers helps to advance the entire genre, making it more inclusive and equitable.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a former national correspondent for The Atlantic who is recognized for his work writing about socio-political issues related to racial injustice, reparations and equity. He has contributed to many legacy publications, including TIME Magazine, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Aside from being a journalist, Ta-Nehisi Coates also wrote Black Panther and Captain America series for Marvel Comics. These contributions highlighted the rich and complex Black experience that could be reflected in comics, emphasizing the possibilities for diversity and inclusion in the writing and characterization of superhero storylines.

Writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates succeed because of their exceptional talent and because they represent the expansive potential of the genre. When you stand by your core values as a writer and express these values through your work, your writing can truly stand out.
Stan Lee
Stan Lee remains one of the most influential comic book writers and creators of all time. As the creator or co-creator of Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, Lee's work is distinguished in his ability to merge the fiction found in comic books with real-life issues such as love, loss, vulnerability, and topical social issues.

According to James Braxton Peterson, the early days of Stan Lee's life were spent on refining his writing skills. As a high schooler in his hometown, Bronx, New York, the late Mr. Lee often participated in writing contests sponsored by the New York Tribune. After winning these contests for consecutive weeks in a row, some people suggested that he take on a serious career path in writing.

After several career changes working in various jobs as a writer, he landed a role in DC Comics. While in the company, he was asked to conceptualize superheroes with flaws, making them relatable to the human condition. This further led to the creation of his most popular superhero characters and series in Marvel Comics.

Stan Lee's story proves that people who find extraordinary success often start their writing careers by refining their craft through various, sometimes unrelated work experiences. With persistence and passion, they eventually match their preparation with opportunity in order to achieve professional success.
Dwayne Glenn McDuffie
Dwayne Glenn McDuffie is recognized for his work in Static Shock, Justice League, and Ben 10. Beginning as a staff writer, Dwayne Glenn McDuffie filled in minor roles before rising to successful stints as a writer on multiple comic books and animated series.

In his early years, McDuffie attended a school for gifted children and went to college at the University of Michigan, earning a degree in English and a Master's in Physics. The genius in him did not rest solely in science, but also in the arts. He worked as a copy editor at a business magazine, which then led him to new opportunities and referrals for an interview at Marvel Comics. He began working as a staff writer at Marvel before getting the opportunity to create his own work.

Some of his initial submissions include spoof series about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which made a subtle commentary on how comic book companies treated African-American characters. In the early 1990s, he expressed the desire for better representation of diversity in comic books. McDuffie went on to be a co-founder of Milestone Media, one of the most impactful minority-owned and operated comic book companies.

James Braxton Peterson explains that any writer can plant a seed towards their dream, and even if progress is slow, they will eventually see it through. Like McDuffie, the representation of African-Americans in comic books back in the 1990s may be minimal, but his voice planted a seed to advance diversity that we witness today in comics, animated series, television and major motion pictures.
The Road to Success: A Writer's Path
These stories mirror the path of success for any writer--it is never a straight line. It is filled with ups, downs, U-turns, and rocky terrain. The common factor among these famous comic writers is their grit, willingness to learn, and persistence to pursue their dreams which resulted in extraordinary success.
This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or the management of EconoTimes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
From Humble Beginnings: James Braxton Peterson Discusses Famous Comic Writers and How They Started - EconoTimes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Comic writers are more than just people who have great imaginations. They are also skilled professionals who know how to captivate readers through conversations, scenes, and plot twists. The most outstanding ones are those who have published masterpieces known all over the world, with many fans patronizing not just the comic books, but also the merchandise born out of these brilliant ideas.

# data[].attributes.headline
James Braxton Peterson Discusses The Science Behind Writer’s Block How To Break Through It

# data[].attributes.subject
James Braxton Peterson Discusses The Science Behind Writer’s Block How To Break Through It

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Over the last week, I have been seething about how the media has used de-contextualized clips from Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons to hijack the public perception of Sen. Barack Obama's historic run for the presidency. I was therefore eagerly, if anxiously, awaiting Obama's formal response to this situation.

Since I was en route to the nation's capital to conduct an interview on the morning of the speech, I did my best to time my travel so that I would be stationary by the time Obama began his remarks. Because the highways of the mid-Atlantic corridor are prone to congestion, and because I had other pressing errands to attend to, I ended up at a bank in Georgetown as the speech began. There, in the lobby of the bank, I was relieved to see a flat-screen TV tuned to CNN. Obama stood at the podium - looking ever-presidential. As I approached the counter, I realized that the sound was completely mute. So I began to read:

"And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States," read Obama's words scrolling along the top of the screen.

I read teletype daily on cable news networks or when I am watching the news in a café or coffee shop, and never have I been so mesmerized by digitized rhetoric.

I was running late; so I tried to leave, but the text would not let me go. I kept reading.

". . .[R]ace is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now."

I knew I had to sit down. The bank clerks could see me but not see the screen, so they looked at me strangely. I'm not sure if I've ever been in a bank with a television, and they looked at me as if no one ever deliberately sat to watch this particular TV. But I did. I sat there for the whole speech, completely entranced by Obama's words and my inability to stop reading them.

An older, African gentleman joined me. He too sat down, entranced by the teletype on the screen. We did not say a word to each other, but I knew he was African, he knew I was African American, and without speaking we collectively acknowledged that this was a pivotal moment in American history.

Recalling the soundless power of the words moves me even as I write this. Obama's concluding anecdote about "Ashley," a young white supporter, and an "elderly black man" finding mutual ground through the spirit of the campaign was all the more dramatic in the teletype. As I realized the rhetorical force of the anecdote, the cultural, generational and gender barriers symbolically and literally broken through the example, a tear blurred my vision. Embarrassed, I quickly wiped it away and kept reading.

"And so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty-one . . ."

As the speech neared its end, I realized that the sound bites I would hear broadcast repeatedly in coming days would inevitably ruin the power of the message delivered, no matter how well excerpted. Suddenly, I counted myself lucky. If the sound had been on, I would not have stayed; I would have gone to my car, continued my journey just listening on the radio. The experience of reading the speech as text was transformative for me. For the first time I could appreciate Obama's presidential poise - and the full promise of his vision - without the distraction of his soaring rhetorical skills. I could see and feel the sincerity of his expressions - and the challenge to all Americans, issued through his measured movements and pointed gestures - without the calculated applause of the audience.

For me, this was Obama, without any hype, at the most critical juncture of his campaign. And even without sound he was magnetic.
James Braxton Peterson is an assistant professor of English and Africana studies at Bucknell University and the founder of Hip Hop Scholars, Inc.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Over the last week, I have been seething about how the media has used de-contextualized clips from Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons to hijack the public perception of Sen. Barack Obama's historic run for the presidency. I was therefore eagerly, if anxiously, awaiting Obama's formal response to this situation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Cause anytime we mention our condition, our history or existence/They calling it reverse racism." -Nas' "N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave & The Master)"
Contrary to the recent flurry of reports regarding the name change of Nas' ninth studio album from , Nas himself confirms a change, but sets the record straight about the record's title. According to AllHipHop.com, Nas will allow the album to be released untitled, claiming that his fans are fully aware of his original naming intentions.

The publicity surrounding the album previously known as Nigger has been ubiquitous- from Nas wearing a Nigger shirt at a high-profile awards show to an audacious and financially incisive divestment threat from former industry-insider-turned-reactionary-politician, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn, N.Y.).

Jeffries threatened to pull $84 million in New York state pension fund money out of an investment in Universal/Vivendi. Thus, despite L.A. Reid's public support for Nas' artistic freedom, there was no way that his bosses were going to allow Nas his first amendment rights at the risk of losing $84 million in a lose/lose public relations conflict.

The pressure on Nas to change the title of his album came from all corners: his label's parent company, political figures, talk show pundits, other rappers and even some hip-hop aficionados. To the extent that any of these entities are interested in a dialogue about the N-word (its past, present and future) their impulse to silence Nas belies a deeper misunderstanding of hip-hop culture and the generations of young and not so young people who subscribe to it.

I don't recall as much controversy surrounding the release of NWA's Niggaz4Life album in the early 1990s or Tupac's Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. released shortly thereafter. For Pac N.I.G.G.A. meant "never-ignorant-getting-goals-accomplished" but for Niggaz With Attitude (NWA), it meant just about the opposite - something more like: "always-ignorant-never-getting-anything-meaningful-done." Yet hip-hop culture always has and continues to embrace these contradictions.

Although I think I understand the insidious business rationale behind the blatant censorship of one of hip-hop's finest artists (i.e. you can be a nigger-rapper but you can not be a rapper who critiques the concept/term "nigger"), I am unsettled by the numerous talking heads who line up to muffle Nas as if he is somehow incapable of critically engaging American history and the etymology of the N-word.

He does this directly in "N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave & The Master)" and more ironically in "Be a Nigger Too." In "N.I.G.G.E.R. . ." Nas directly addresses and acknowledges the history of the term even as he challenges young people to understand that they are both slave and master; "the question and the answer." Through detailed narratives he paints images of inner city living in order to render the socially invisible 'niggers' through his lyrics. Clearly Nas is invested in using his music to engage his audience of listeners in a critical dialogue about the N-word. I cannot imagine how someone (anyone) can listen to these lyrics and somehow think that Nas is condoning the use of the term or licensing anyone in his audience to divorce the N-word from its awful history.

If we are actually interested in young people talking about their use/misuse, understanding/misunderstanding of the term, please know that Randall Kennedy and Dick Gregory will not (and have not) been heard by the hip-hop generation.

The NAACP's ceremonial burial of the N-word will not be heard by the hip-hop generation and Jabari Asim's ,brilliant as it is, will likely not be heard by the hip-hop generation. Nasir Jones will be heard, and I suspect that if his name was an acronym (say, Nigger Against Society) he might have fared better in this free-speech battle by positioning himself as the typical Bad Nigger instead of a thoughtful one.
James Braxton Peterson is an assistant professor of English and Africana studies at Bucknell University and the founder of Hip Hop Scholars, Inc.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Cause anytime we mention our condition, our history or existence/They calling it reverse racism." -Nas' "N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave & The Master)" Contrary to the recent flurry of reports regarding the name change of Nas' ninth studio album from , Nas himself confirms a change, but sets the record straight about the record's title.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For far too many of us the worlds of Shakespeare and Hip-Hop Culture are two ships passing in the night, never to see each other or make contact in any way. Even though these "ships" share the same waters and float among similar waves of oceanic currents, any connection between them is confounded by academic tendencies toward historical compartmentalization or social affinities for rigid distinctions between high and low culture. Thus, few Shakespearian scholars know that Tupac read and embraced Shakespeare or that hip-hop dance guru Renee Harris was so inspired by Romeo and Juliet that he ultimately choreographed and produced Rome and Jules, one of the most intense re-presentations of a Shakespearian narrative in modern times. Films like O, starring Mekhi Phifer and re-visiting Shakespeare's classic reflections on race, manipulation and miscegenation in Othello, or Neal Gaiman's graphic novel Sandman that carefully engages A Midsummer Night's Dream, also serve to deconstruct any rigid canonization of Shakespeare.

The point here is that the Hip-Hop Generation (coined by Bikari Kitwana and referring generally to those born between 1965 and 1984) encounters the work of Shakespeare through the lenses of hip-hop culture-lenses that include the digital information age, postmodernity, and globalization. This generation stands in full appreciation of Shakespeare's artistry but in a context deriving from an inexhaustible reservoir of poetic folk culture in the artistic forms of hip-hop culture, including rap music, graf or visual art, dance and/or kinesthetic movement, fashion/styles of dress and DJ-ing or the art of turntablism. Taken together these hip-hop folk arts bear striking resemblance to the dramatic world realized through the plays of William Shakespeare. The drama of life, the flash and fanfare of the upper class, irony, misdirection, masking and, most importantly, language itself form the cultural currents commonly navigated by Shakespeare and so many of his rapping counterparts in the 20th and 21st centuries. Language, particularly the verbal arts as demonstrated through "graf" writing and rapping itself, has become the central component of hip-hop culture. Through rap music, wordplay, innuendo, prosody and narrative have all become ubiquitous elements of popular culture. This should not be surprising since between Shakespeare's dominance as a playwright and the first recorded rap record, the African American oral and folk traditions thrived through the "Negro" spirituals, the Blues, the Black Sermonic tradition, and the generative poetics of luminaries such as Nikki Giovanni and Gil Scott Heron.

The Q Brothers enter here with the latest installment of a hip-hop generational re-imagining of a Shakespeare classic. Funk It Up is more of a "remix" of Much Ado About Nothing than a "remake." It can be appreciated on its own for its skillful application of rap aesthetics onto Shakespeare's delightful plot, but the true majesty of Funk It Up is its effortless consistency with Much Ado About Nothing. Funk It Up unveils for us how Benedick's dramatic praise for bachelorhood is deeply reflected in the aesthetics of gangsta rap and various misogynistic impulses that remain unchecked in mainstream rap music. His expressed mistrust of women translates seamlessly (and sadly) into the world of hip-hop where men envision most women as groupies, hos, gold diggers or bitches. Since one of the central themes of both plays (men's abiding mistrust of women) hinges on Benedick's character, understanding his resonance with hip-hop culture is central to the connection between these two works.

In Much Ado and in Funk It Up the themes of mistrust between men and women are projected and performed through language, misdirection, lies and sexual innuendo, and are sustained through vernacular references to sexual acts and sexuality. Language operates similarly in both plays and the plot is essentially identical. Funk It Up is a faithful (and especially for the hip-hop generation-a fruitful) remix of Shakespeare's Much Ado.

Yet just as we can appreciate the transcendence of Shakespeare's original by acknowledging concomitant themes in the Q Brothers' Funk It Up, we cannot fully appreciate Funk It Up unless we understand the extent to which it pays homage to hip-hop culture at the same time that it reworks and acknowledges a Shakespearean classic. One will have to watch and listen carefully in order to "catch them all," but the Q Brothers' script is rife with allusions to hip-hop culture. Don John's simultaneous references to Bad Boy (name of the recording home of the late Notorious B.I.G.) and to the TV show Cops is an example of this. The judge's Rappin' Duke reprise will surely inspire laughter as will a blinged-out Lil Jon character portraying a cop. Various other references to or quotes of Run DMC, A Tribe Called Quest and other rap luminaries provide just enough hip-hop "insider trading" to attract hip-hop "heads" with the most discerning ears. But ultimately the most magnetic hip-hop persona in the play is the character of Beatrice, also referred to as Lady B. Only the most well-schooled hip-hop heads will know that the "real" Lady B was one of the first and most successful female rappers to make a record. Hailing from Philadelphia, Lady B is still in the business as a disc jockey for a major urban radio station. Her triumphant real life story in a male-dominated, often misogynistic music industry is an inspirational corollary to Beatrice's character in both plays. Beatrice/Lady B's rhymes are also some of the smartest of all of the Funk It Up rappers/players-she may just have the best line in the whole show. But Funk It Up is rife with lyrical repartee and poetic allusions. Its artistry is implicated in the false gaps between high and low culture while its dramatic brilliance comes to life through hip-hop language that readily mirrors our era even as it pays powerful homage to the Shakespearean one.

James Braxton Peterson is Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University. He previously taught African American Studies at Princeton University and was the founding Media Coordinator for the Harvard University Hip Hop Archive. He is also the founder of Hip Hop Scholars, LLC, an association of hip-hop generational scholars dedicated to researching and developing the cultural and educational potential of hip-hop, urban, and youth cultures.
Back to Funk It Up About Nothin'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For far too many of us the worlds of Shakespeare and Hip-Hop Culture are two ships passing in the night, never to see each other or make contact in any way.

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Studies isn't 'claptrap' and is vital to intellectual diversity

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Studies isn't 'claptrap' and is vital to intellectual diversity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I knew from the moment that Naomi Riley's "Case for Eliminating Black Studies," a disingenuous diatribe against Black Studies, went "viral" that I wanted to avoid the usual kind of knee-jerk reaction to these kinds of flaccid attacks on cultural studies. The all-too-familiar dismissive tone and the requisite squabbles that accompany these attacks are normal fare for what constitute academic discourses in the modern era.

One element that we sometimes obscure in our fiery responses to what many see as a continuous racist attack against Black Studies - is the fact that these "critiques" are contiguous with a range of racialized/racist discourses in the public sphere - more on that in a minute.

As many have pointed out, Riley boldly concedes the fact that she did not read (nor did she care to) any of the dissertations that she mentions in her piece. For many in the scholarly community, this premise undermines and invalidates any of her claims to support the "elimination" of one of the most robust and socio-politically engaged interdisciplinary areas of study in the recent history of the academy.

Yes that's the Black Studies - or more accurately, Africana Studies, African Diaspora Studies, and/or African and African American Studies - or Caribbean Studies, Jamaican Studies, or Black Diaspora Studies, Black Atlantic Studies, etc. Black Studies can be all of these things. To propose the "elimination" of this interdisciplinary field is to also simultaneously discount the single discipline fields when they intersect and interact with Black Studies. These include nearly all of the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, most notably: History, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Linguistics, (Fine) Arts, and Literature.

Clearly, Riley is not at all interested in acknowledging the scope, intellectually diversity, or even a cursory history of Black Studies before she condemns it - (nor is her partner, Jason Riley who defends the piece and offers a gloomy picture for HBCU's - a not so subtle precursor to Naomi Riley's condemnation of Black Studies).

Her opinion blog is inherently prejudiced because she judges an entire discipline, in fact an entire set of disciplines, without reading any more than three dissertation titles (and abstracts - really excerpts of abstracts). The piece is racist because its publication by the CHE and the continuous nature of these kinds of attacks are a part of the institutional biases directed at Area/Interdisciplinary Studies generally. Black Studies units are underfunded, have diminished or nonexistent space, and more often than not have programmatic, as opposed to departmental, status.

Imagine dismissing Irish Studies or British Studies based upon the perceived irrelevance of three dissertation titles - absurd, right? But let's briefly take the subject matter of these dissertations: black women's knowledge of childbirth including the history of black midwifery; black urban housing in the 1970s, and the impact of black Republicanism on civil rights.

Now, I'm not an expert on any of these subjects, but as director of a Black Studies program - the LU iteration of the field is Africana Studies - I can tell you categorically that these topics are in no way irrelevant to Africana Studies in the 21st century. It seems stupid to even have to say this, which is why I couldn't see myself responding to Riley initially.

If Riley had any sense of the maternal mortality rates associated with childbirth especially along the axes of race/nation/class, she might better appreciate the intellectual investment in the literary and cultural histories that research and support the efforts to address these challenges throughout the black diaspora.

Maybe the fact that millions of white folk faced the housing crisis is enough evidence for Riley to discount any study that links housing policies across the historical experiences of black folks in this country. But surely we must consider the fact that this recent housing crisis represents the greatest 'bleed off' of black wealth in the history of the United States. What better way to determine the extent to which our history informs this particular present than to study it? Finally though, her cursory defense of John McWhorter and Clarence Thomas belie the crux of Riley's agenda.

And here's where my response might distinguish itself from the myriad of responses by many of my colleagues - although please note that many more of them, like me initially, decided to deliberately ignore Riley's piece, mostly because its acute prejudice renders it DOA - a casualty of the culture wars from over 2 decades ago. Maybe there is a bigger picture here. There is a concerted, multi-pronged effort by those on the right to rollback certain progressive achievements - women's reproductive rights, voter rights/accessibility, and healthcare for the poor and elderly and public education - especially the humanities.

Now this is my sinister cynical side speaking, but I can't help but think that an effective strategy for justifying the kinds of cuts that some on the right would like to make - to health care, to public education, to women's health, etc - absolutely requires the devaluing of those services; the deliberate attempt to systematically dismiss the role of Black Studies seems to fit neatly into this master plan.
Dr. James B. Peterson is the director of Africana Studies and an associate professor of English at Lehigh University. Follow James on Twitter at @DrJamesPeterson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black Studies isn't 'claptrap' and is vital to intellectual diversity - TheGrio

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I knew from the moment that Naomi Riley's "Case for Eliminating Black Studies," a disingenuous diatribe against Black Studies, went "viral" that I wanted to avoid the usual kind of knee-jerk reaction to these kinds of flaccid attacks on cultural studies.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Life imitates art for Meek Mill and too many Black youth, writes James Braxton Peterson.

# data[].attributes.headline
Is Clarence Thomas being hypocritical on gay marriage?

# data[].attributes.subject
Is Clarence Thomas being hypocritical on gay marriage?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Some say that silence speaks volumes. And in the case of Justice Clarence Thomas, that cliché just might be more applicable than ever this week as the SCOTUS considers the meaning of marriage equality in the 21 st century.

In his usual fashion, Thomas said little or nothing this week in the Supreme Court proceedings. He literally is off the record on marriage equality and the constitutional validity of the Defense of Marriage Act.
theGrio: Interracial relationships in the post-Loving v. Virginia age
Generally, Justice Thomas' silence has been interpreted as his tacit complicity in Justice Antonin Scalia's more regularly vocalized conservative opinions. But in this historical moment where America's referendum on marriage equality centers on the LGBTQ communities, an inherent historical irony regarding race and marriage equality is apparent in (anticipation of) Justice Thomas' decision/vote against marriage equality for the LGBTQ communities.
Clarence and 'Ginni'
Justice Thomas is married to Virginia Lamp Thomas, a conservative lobbyist who was in the news regularly for her work with Liberty Central and (later) Liberty Consulting, two entities that worked hard to block and overturn the Affordable Health Care Act.

Some called for Justice Thomas' resignation based on the apparent conflict of interest between his capacity to rule objectively on the ACA and the fact that his life partner was working so hard to block it and then overturn it.

No such resignation came; but for all of Virginia Thomas' work with Liberty, we can (and should) now wonder if the Thomas' discuss or debate marriage equality in this particular moment.

We can and should wonder if the Thomas' identify the historical context for this particular moment as one that directly affects them - life partners with different racial backgrounds who, as short a time ago as the 1960s, may not have been able to marry if they had lived in the state after which Mrs. Thomas is named.

Maybe there is a natural flaw in my thinking here. Justice Thomas now has a vote that will impact the lives and partnerships of hundreds of thousands of Americans who want to marry whomever they love. He and Virginia must know about the landmark Supreme Court case - Loving Vs. Virginia.

Mildred and Richard Loving (a black woman and a white man) were sentenced to a year in prison for violating anti-miscegenation laws in the 1960s.

Maybe we all think that the way toward progressive action or endorsement from conservative politicians comes via personal experience - a family member who is gay or lesbian for example. The fact that the Thomas' marriage required progressive Supreme Court action must in some way inform their sense of this moment.
theGrio slideshow: Our favorite Loving Day celebrity couples
Maybe, a'la Sen. Rob Portman, this moment of irony will signal Justice Thomas' capacity to be judicious sans ideological inclination. Maybe his silence means thoughtful reflection here as opposed to tacit conservative groupthink. And like I said, maybe my thinking is flawed.

In 1967 the Supreme Court voted unanimously that Virginia's anti-miscegenation law and others of its ilk were unconstitutional. Imagine if this current court voted unanimously to overturn DOMA; or if this court voted unanimously to federalize marriage equality. Unanimous decisions are rare but they send powerful signals - in this case the signal would be that marriage equality is a liberty that should be afforded to all Americans.
James Braxton Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University. He is also the founder of Hip Hop Scholars LLC, an association of hip-hop generation scholars dedicated to researching and developing the cultural and educational potential of hip-hop, urban and youth cultures. You can follow him on Twitter @DrJamesPeterson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Is Clarence Thomas being hypocritical on gay marriage? - TheGrio

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
OPINION - Some say that silence speaks volumes. And in the case of Justice Clarence Thomas, that cliché just might be more applicable than ever this week as the SCOTUS considers the meaning of marriage equality in the 21st century...

# data[].attributes.headline
New Urban League ‘State of Black America’ report puts focus back on jobs

# data[].attributes.subject
New Urban League ‘State of Black America’ report puts focus back on jobs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This week the National Urban League released its 2013 State of Black America report, a comprehensive, data-driven assessment of where black and Latino Americans stand in relation to their white counterparts in the US.

The report documents extraordinary gains in education even as it underscores inequities in employment that continue to be reflected in the income gaps that underwrite so many social factors, effectively detailed in the Equality Index, the National Urban League's comprehensive model that accounts for education, health, civic engagement, social justice, and economics across race, taking into account age, region, and other factors.

The report cites important gains in educational attainment in the last 50 years spurred by Civil Rights activism and legislation as well as Affirmative Action policies. For example, in 2013 there are 3-4 times as many black students enrolled in college as there were in 1963.
Marc Morial provides clarification
While this kind of educational progress is important, the NUL's president, Marc Morial, spoke to theGrio, to provide some clarification and qualification of this data.

"It is important to note that (educational) gains have been made overall in America," said Morial. "There are more high school and college graduates overall because the economy demands a better educated worker."

This progress in the college enrollment data should not obscure the persistent unemployment gaps between whites and blacks.

According to the report, "progress in closing the college enrollment gap is 5 times the progress in closing the unemployment rate gap."
Key factors for fight for equality
Morial sees several factors that account for this pronounced inequality in the progress towards equality:

"1.) The recession of 2008 made a tough problem even worse - spikes in the black unemployment rate were greater than the national rates. 2.) We have to acknowledge the existence of employment discrimination - its tougher for blacks (even with college degrees) to get a job. And 3.) African Americans tend to be more predominantly at the bottom end of the economic pool. There is a higher percentage of (black) people with less education."

The NUL plans on addressing some of these challenges via the "Jobs Rebuild America" initiative which will funnel $70 million dollars (public and private) into America's cities targeting existing and emerging grassroots organizations that provide critical job training and placement for undereducated and long-term unemployed people.

Although NUL's focus is on closing the persistent unemployment gaps, Morial acknowledges that the fight for racial equality still requires emphases on education. He is "excited about the president's proposal for the largest expansion of federal support for early child hood education." According to Morial, "We need to do a lot more in urban communities to support those medical assistant classes online - they need more resources."

TheGrio also reached out to Congressman Chaka Fattah for comments. He declined but directed us to a press release that details new legislation that he and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand plan on introducing. The Urban Jobs Act will connect "at-risk city youth with job opportunities." Again, this effort targets the most critical demographic for long term unemployment, and with the summer right around the corner, the timing of this legislation suggests the now common knowledge that summertime and youth unemployment can have disastrous effects in inner city America.

This report, like so much of the data that we have about inequality in this era of black exceptionalism, reminds us that black success can sometimes render invisible black suffering. According to Morial: "We have a long way to go and a lot of work to do."
James Braxton Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University. He is also the founder of Hip Hop Scholars LLC, an association of hip-hop generation scholars dedicated to researching and developing the cultural and educational potential of hip-hop, urban and youth cultures. You can follow him on Twitter @DrJamesPeterson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
New Urban League 'State of Black America' report puts focus back on jobs - TheGrio

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This week the National Urban League released its 2013 State of Black America report, a comprehensive, data-driven assessment of where black and Latino Americans stand in relation to their white counterparts in the US.

# data[].attributes.headline
Why the Assata Shakur case still strikes a chord

# data[].attributes.subject
Why the Assata Shakur case still strikes a chord

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In "A Song for Assata," rapper, Common asks "I wonder what would happen if that would've been me?" Common wonders aloud what readers of Assata Shakur's gripping autobiography, , must ask themselves as they are confronted with the miscarriages of justice at the core of Shakur's life as a black revolutionary.

Published in 1987, the autobiography chronicles Shakur's emergence as an activist at the center of America's racial conflict. She ultimately affiliated with the Black Panther Party and the black liberation movement in the 1960s. Her case and her bouts with the criminal justice system recall all of the angst and murkiness within which the battles for black freedom were fought in the mid-20th century: brutal prison conditions, falsified evidence, conflicting statements, frenzied media panic, and violent racists posing as officers of the law.

In spite of these at times unlawful and regularly dehumanizing experiences, Assata Shakur has been living in exile with asylum in Cuba since 1984.
'She Who Struggles'
Assata - whose name means "she who struggles," was implicated in the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper on May 2 1973. Today marks 40 years since that day.

While little detail is available as to how Ms. Shakur was ferreted away to freedom from the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey in 1979, the "facts" of her case, or rather, the state's case against her are shaky at best. By her supporters' accounts they are institutionally designed to falsely prosecute and imprison her.

For more info on her case and details of her experiences go here: http://www.assatashakur.org.

As recently as 2005, the U.S. government issued a one million dollar bounty for information leading to her capture and/or extradition from Cuba. Her name, as well as her government name, Joanne Chesimard, has been on the FBI's most wanted list since before most Americans had ever heard of Osama Bin Laden.
'20th Century Escaped Slave'
Assata refers to herself as "a 20th century escaped slave" and her experiences with the criminal justice system and the verve with which the U.S. government prosecuted and persecuted her suggest that this reference is not exaggerated in the slightest.

She has occasionally given interviews and or written from somewhere inside of Cuba, but it is unlikely that our government will ever be able to come to terms with its own role in the violent racial conflicts of its immediate past, and thus unlikely that Assata will ever be able to live freely in her country of origin - these United States.

Assata's status, the government's case against, her and the moment out which all of this emerged, are signal reminders to many of us that not so long ago, members of the Black Panther Party were considered the greatest threat to the United States government; that revolutionary activists like Assata Shakur, were considered this nation's most feared terrorists.

We can only hope that as the fight against terror creeps through the beginnings of a new century, that this nation will fight to uphold the tenets of justice above and beyond its xenophobic and racialized history.
James Braxton Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University. He is also the founder of Hip Hop Scholars LLC, an association of hip-hop generation scholars dedicated to researching and developing the cultural and educational potential of hip-hop, urban and youth cultures. You can follow him on Twitter @DrJamesPeterson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why the Assata Shakur case still strikes a chord - TheGrio

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
OPINION - Assata's status, the government's case against, her and the moment out which all of this emerged, are signal reminders to many of us that not so long ago, members of the Black Panther Party were considered the greatest threat to the United States government...

# data[].attributes.headline
Where is the white liberal outrage on stop-and-frisk?

# data[].attributes.subject
Where is the white liberal outrage on stop-and-frisk?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Growing up as a teenager in Newark, N.J., the summers were often correlated with the dread of enhanced police presence in the city brought on by the infiltration of New Jersey State Troopers.

This practice of state police support in Newark continues to this day. Much like the entire nation, the citizens of Newark accept the appearance of enhanced security without much discussion about privacy and/or civil liberties especially significant given the state's long history of racial profiling and the plethora of police stops casually justified as "driving while black."

What we refer to now as "stop and frisk" has been tactical practice for urban police departments for nearly all of my life. That it has been formalized and institutionalized in the 21 st century only serves to strengthen law enforcement's reliance on it and faulty justifications for it.

Maybe if you've never been profiled; if you've never been stopped for no apparent reason, questioned about your destination, tousled and frisked, searched and put up against a wall or a car; maybe if you're not painfully aware of how many of these kinds of encounters (between police and innocent citizens) have ended in the deaths of too many innocent victims to tally here; maybe if you have no connection to the utter humiliation of being publicly detained by police for no reason, then it might be difficult to comprehend the underpinnings of privilege in the recent discourses on the NSA, Manning, Snowden, and the unchecked access to our digital lives.

The left's outrage directed at the Obama administration in the wake of Edward Snowden's leaking of classified information has been palpable and well documented in both print and television media.

While the discussion has sometimes centered too much on Snowden and not enough on the principles of civil liberties in relationship to national security, I find myself in agreement with those who are suspicious of any government that wants us to simply trust that they will do the right thing regarding our rights.

Yet how can we have a discussion about civil liberties and security, privacy and safety without connecting it to the physical surveillance to which black and brown Americans have been historically subject? In short, why aren't the champions of Snowden, Manning, and others saying anything at all about stop-and-frisk and Stand Your Ground laws/policies. They have been and remain silent on the historical and perpetual encroachment upon the civil liberties - the freedom to walk the streets without being detained or shot - of black and brown citizens of the United States.

The facts are that we live in a surveillance state; we are complicit in this surveillance via our willingness to exchange privacy for (digital) consumption; the government, at least since the Bush era, has voraciously deployed new technologies to enhance its surveillance capabilities; and poor people, women, and people of color - black folks, Latina/Latino Americans, Arab and Muslim Americans, as well as anyone who looks like any of the aforementioned have and will continue to be subject to physical surveillance.

Digital surveillance summons fears about privacy. State-sanctioned physical surveillance produces fears about safety and ultimately fear for one's life. The concept of living in a society that watches you but does not fully acknowledge or recognize your humanity is a reality too many Americans face on a daily basis. Once you add state sanctioned polices designed to normalize racial profiling, the placement of cameras in traffic lights or on street corners, and/or the invasive searching of some who would like to travel by airplane, then the picture of the surveillance state becomes clear.

To speak of digital surveillance and national security without even considering physical surveillance and the humiliation and sometimes murder of innocents is a gross oversight that sadly seems to thrive along class, gender and racial fault lines. (Where were all of the privacy advocates/journalists protesting the proposed trans-vaginal probe laws?) In this context, outrage about the NSA seems hollow to those of us who are sensitive to the ways in which racial profiling undermines the fabric of our communities.

The Zimmerman verdict proved to us that the surveillance tactics of law enforcement can be lethal in the minds (and hands) of would-be vigilantes. And the laws and courts have condoned it. How many times did we hear from Zimmerman's defense team that it is not a crime to follow someone? Following someone is one of the oldest forms of surveillance. Videotaping is also an older form of surveillance.

Being watched, followed, profiled, detained, and searched is physical surveillance. This kind of surveillance has been authored into our laws and most on the left and right are willing to trade the freedoms of poor people and people of color in order to enjoy the veneer of safety in our communities.

Until progressives can have more holistic discussions about the state, surveillance, and civil liberties, the reality of digital surveillance will continue to be disconnected from those of us who live under the threat of physical surveillance every day.
James Braxton Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and an MSNBC contributor. Follow him on Twitter @DrJamesPeterson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Where is the white liberal outrage on stop-and-frisk? - TheGrio

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Growing up as a teenager in Newark, N.J., the summers were often correlated with the dread of enhanced police presence in the city brought on by the infiltration of New Jersey State Troopers. This practice of state police support in Newark continues to this day.

# data[].attributes.headline
How do we keep Nelson Mandela's legacy alive?

# data[].attributes.subject
How do we keep Nelson Mandela's legacy alive?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Nelson Mandela lives. His passing, his home-going, his return to his village, his rest in peace and power only represents another chapter in the life of the 20th century's greatest global leader.

His legacy will endure in much the same way that he endured the oppressive forces of racism, inequality, violence and 27 years of imprisonment.

The challenge for all of us is to discover what we are prepared to do to honor the legacy and life of an individual whose commitment to humanity transcends the era in which we all live. And by honor here, I mean take up the mantle of pursuing social justice - by any means necessary.

This is a moment in which we are charged with rallying around the principles of equity, democracy, and radical activism. We are charged with ensuring that generations beyond this moment will continue to be inspired by the examples established by Mandela - that leadership knows how and when to follow and how and when to be unpopular; that resistance can not always be non-violent; and that perseverance is the cornerstone of revolution.

Many will answer this call to articulate how we might best honor Mandela's awesome legacy and I only offer the following as a handful of suggestions that I hope will contribute to the chorus of accolades, celebrations, and commemorations.

Freedom Day should become an international holiday. April 27th 2014 marks the 20-year anniversary of the South African celebration of its inaugural non-racial democratic elections held in 1994. Over 19 million of South Africa's nearly 23 million citizens voted in the election that resulted in the nation's first democratically elected president. Freedom Day is a day for reflection dedicated to those who gave their lives for the struggle to liberate humanity from the strictures of oppression and inequality. It is also a day for people to strategize and prepare to address the social challenges of the current moment. It will also, now and forever more, be the day that we celebrate the life and the impact of Mandela.

In the spirit of reconciliation and absolute fairness, we have to revise our zealous perceptions of those we label as "terrorists." One of the many things that Gandhi, King and Mandela have in common is that their oppressive governments labeled them as terrorists. Too often, governments terrorize their own citizens and those who resist are labeled as terrorists.

We live in a world where allies and enemies are interchangeable subject positions; where economic forces over determine human existence. It is in this environment that we must remember that Mandela distinguished himself from Gandhi and King by engaging in a "just war," violent revolutionary resistance, when no other options were available. Mandela was more practical than moral, and when he concluded that non-violent tactics were being met with obstinate violence, he proceeded accordingly even as he remained committed to the preservation of human life.

And finally, I would build on an important suggestion made by Jonathan Alter on MSNBC, in commemoration of Mandela. In honor of the long arc of Mandela's prison narrative, some 27 years in three different prisons, we need to end mass incarceration and dismantle the prison-industrial complex in the United States.

In the spirit of forgiveness, we need to end mandatory minimums and the persistent sentencing disparities. Roll back the privatization of our prison system. Investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of sexual assault in the prison system. Abolish capital punishment. Let's build a penal system that can embrace the capacity for human redemption; return to the principles of rehabilitation for all non-violent substance abusers; liberate all political prisoners; close Guatanamo Bay; and commit ourselves to erecting and enhancing those institutions that stand between two million American citizens and a jail cell.

These suggestions may seem radical to some - a secular international holiday, rethinking the meaning of "terrorism," dismantling the prison-industrial complex - but not once you place them in the context of the South African revolutions to upend and overturn the Apartheid regime; or within the context of the searing legacy of Madiba Nelson Mandela.

In that context, no social justice feat is unattainable; nothing is impossible.
James Braxton Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and an MSNBC contributor. Follow him on Twitter @DrJamesPeterson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How do we keep Nelson Mandela's legacy alive? - TheGrio

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nelson Mandela lives. His passing, his home-going, his return to his village, his rest in peace and power only represents another chapter in the life of the 20th century's greatest global leader. His legacy will endure in much the same way that he endured the oppressive forces of racism, inequality, violence and 27 years of imprisonment.

# data[].attributes.headline
Amiri Baraka dead: The legendary author and activist was Newark's 'quintessential figure'

# data[].attributes.subject
Amiri Baraka dead: The legendary author and activist was Newark's 'quintessential figure'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Lost in the political obscurity of Chris Christie and "Traffic-Gate" was the passing of one of our great literary, political, and cultural figures - Amiri Baraka.

Yesterday, Newark New Jersey lost a son. We lost a friend, a father, a husband, an uncle, a leader. His impact on Newark, and how we have all benefitted from his political activism and artistry have yet to be collectively realized.

We will remember Amiri Baraka for so many reasons but certain contributions stand out amongst the many others.

1) He was a keynote speaker and organizer of the 1972 Gary Convention, a black political convention, hosted by Mayor Richard Hatcher, one of the first black mayors of a major city. The Gary Convention was considered controversial for many reasons. It excluded whites; it worked deliberately to establish a national black political agenda, including: proper political representation, community control of schools and national health insurance. It was a progressive political movement built around getting black candidates elected to office - what today's progressives argue is lacking in the Occupy movement.

2) He was one of the leading organizers of The Black and Puerto Rican convention in Newark in 1969 - responsible for supporting the political careers of Ken Gibson, Sharpe James, and others. This convention was a grassroots-organized effort between blacks and Puerto Ricans to put people in office. The convention led directly to the election of Ken Gibson, Newark's first black mayor. Newark's first Latino mayor, Louis Quintana was quoted as saying: "we're going to remember him always for his contributions to Newark, New Jersey and America." Baraka's political leadership empowered blacks and Puerto Ricans to organize collaboratively in order to achieve equal representation in Newark city government.

3) Baraka's consistent challenge to poets and artists was that their work be engaged in political activism. He was never rapping just to rap or make money. Baraka's art was designed to exhort people to political action.

4) Baraka was a literary virtuoso; a poet, novelist, essayist and playwright. He wrote Blues People, Dutchman, The System of Dante's Hell, The Slave and Somebody Blew Up America.

He was a leader in the Black Arts Movement, establishing the celebration of Kwanzaa in Newark, NJ. He was the "architect" of the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School in Harlem. He believed that artists had to be engaged in the community; he wanted art that would "help with the liberation of black people." His was a life of political work and artistry that nearly always invited controversy and criticism.

He was the antithesis of artists and athletes who refuse to be political for material concerns. Yet he did not ultimately think of himself as some kind of righteous revolutionary, above reproach. In fact he distanced himself from some of his more controversial comments made about MLK, his homophobic comments about gays, and some of his attacks directed at whites in general. He made mistakes, he grew; he progressed and he evolved politically.

The hip-hop generation owes Amiri Baraka a debt in aesthetics and its artists need to acknowledge any shame associated with not marrying progressive politics with those aesthetics - and by progressive political aesthetics I mean poetry and music fused and formed for the people - popular culture - "let's organize and let's move" music; "I want poems that kill" music. Listen to him describe the roots of rap in 32 seconds here.

Amiri Baraka was a giant who remained true to his Newark roots. He was a political activist, poet, scholar, and more; and he was all of these things simultaneously and seamlessly. Is there anyone else that we can situate in the artistic, social, and political categories across and through which Amiri Baraka made his incredible impact on our lives?? There has been a lot of chatter recently on what constitutes a public intellectual or who are the black public intellectuals of the moment. Reflections on Baraka's life and work will hopefully provide some deeper context to these discussions.

I am a black scholar from Newark, NJ. I walk in a path that Amiri Baraka has paved for me, and for so many others. In 2004 I was invited to share the stage with him at Malcolm X Shabazz High School. At the time Baraka was 70 years old. He was still putting in the work - with no bodyguards, no handlers, no green room, no car service, no checks - just Amiri Baraka speaking to an auditorium filled with black kids; just Amiri Baraka filling the room with black art. Lines from "Wise Why's, Y'z" will always resonate with me: "At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean there's a railroad made of human bones" he said. "Black Ivory."

It was an honor to be on that stage with him; it was the last time that I saw him in person. On the occasion of his passing please remember that we have yet to acknowledge Baraka's full impact on black political life; his contributions were not and have not been duly or fully recognized. And remember this: Amiri Baraka is Newark's quintessential figure - a political leader for the ages and a poet for eternity.
James Braxton Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and an MSNBC contributor. Follow him on Twitter @DrJamesPeterson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Amiri Baraka dead: The legendary author and activist was Newark's 'quintessential figure' - TheGrio

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lost in the political obscurity of Chris Christie and "Traffic-Gate" was the passing of one of our great literary, political, and cultural figures - Amiri Baraka. Yesterday, Newark New Jersey lost a son. We lost a friend, a father, a husband, an uncle, a leader.

# data[].attributes.headline
On Harvard, the Supreme Court and affirmative action

# data[].attributes.subject
On Harvard, the Supreme Court and affirmative action

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Being a black undergraduate student at an elite (predominantly white) institution, is like being trapped in a black and white television with only two channels: 1) The stereotype threat channel, where students of color are constantly wary of confirming some negative stereotype; and 2) the threatening stereotype channel, where students of color constantly wrestle with the majority culture's perception of them as angry or threatening.

I wish I could say that I was shocked by what I heard, but given what was going on at my own campus -- we too had an #ItooAMLehigh campaign this year -- and what I have experienced for most of my academic and adult life, racial discrimination and racial discomfort on college campuses is as normalized as ignorant and culturally insensitive mascots in college and professional sports. What was different (both at Harvard and at my own institution) was the steely resolve of the students.

Those student leaders with whom I spoke in the fall of 2013 will help prepare Harvard's largest incoming class of black students in the fall of 2014 -- some 165-170 students. They have their work cut out for them. In the current socio-political environment, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the state of Michigan's ban on affirmative action, the stereotypical double-bind of being black at a predominantly white institution will be more pronounced than ever. Students will feel the stigma of race more than the sense of access that admission to an elite institution provides; they will often be put on the defensive about being at Harvard rather than challenged to do their best academic work. Given the pall of suspicion that affirmative action policies project onto students of color - and those of us in the professional world - we should wonder that the policy still has any proponents left to defend it.

Yet it does. And this is largely because we know that careful consideration of race - the history of racism as well as the persistence of institutionalized racial discrimination - can inform admissions and hiring decisions in ways that reflect the demographics of our society as well as the spirit of equality and equal access that is allegedly so fundamental to our American ethos. Affirmative action works. The visible success of it, especially in this current moment - black president, black attorney general - sometimes works against our capacity to continue the necessary struggle.

This is how Harvard's largest incoming class of black students is connected to the Supreme Court's decision to promote the dismantling of race-based affirmative action. Their success and publicly proclaimed access signal accomplishments that as a society we have yet to achieve. In " More Beautiful and More Terrible," the most formative research and writing done on this subject, Princeton Professor Imani Perry argues that "[t]he fashion in which the society has become open for some people of color, like a bottleneck, means that, while some have access, most don't."

The opponents of affirmative action interpret the access won by an arbitrarily determined, exceptional few somehow represents victory over centuries of racism and the tangible residue of racist ideologies instilled in America's most revered institutions. At best, these small victories are symbolic -- at worst, they function as a mirage for real racial equality. And sadly, in the hands of some, they become the subtext for reversing the outcomes of the long-fought war against racial injustice in America.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
On Harvard, the Supreme Court and affirmative action

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Being a black undergraduate student at an elite (predominantly white) institution, is like being trapped in a black and white television with only two channels: 1) The stereotype threat channel, where students of color are constantly wary of confirming some negative stereotype; and 2) the threatening stereotype channel, where students of color constantly wrestle with the majority culture's perception of them as angry or threatening.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The fight to end poverty and create more jobs is front and center at the National Urban League's annual conference. NBC News' Perry Bacon reports, and Dr. James Peterson and Republican strategist Rev. Joe Watkins discusses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In Jackson, Mississippi, the family of a woman brutally murdered last month is getting ready to take legal action, claiming police violated protocols. Joy Reid talks with Ebony.com's Jamilah Lemieux, Dr. James Peterson, and Salon's Joan Walsh about policing and the racial divide in America.

# data[].attributes.headline
OPINION: Michael Brown and Our 'John Henry' Daze

# data[].attributes.subject
OPINION: Michael Brown and Our 'John Henry' Daze

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Once again we are at the mercy of our careening criminal justice system. Remember waiting for the Rodney King decision? More recently we've done the pins and needles drill for the Zimmerman decision, and the Dunn decision. In these contemporary times, awaiting a decision from a court, or a jury, has become a regular occurrence. In the twenty-first century, it's as though we wait on justice.

On the brink of the decision from the grand jury, we are once again, waiting. For several weeks, we've been hungry for a decision from the St. Louis County grand jury reviewing evidence in the shooting death of Michael Brown.

Law enforcement and the business community are taking steps to prepare themselves for what they anticipate will be an eruption of unrest in response to the decision, because there are only two options (although there are a few outcomes possible if there is an indictment).

Option 1: the grand jury will come back with a decision NOT to indict Officer Darren Wilson.

Option 2: the grand jury will come back with a decision to indict Officer Darren Wilson. But according to all indicators at this time, this is not a likely outcome.

This hasn't been your average grand jury process. For starters, unlike most grand jury proceedings, where the jury is for the most part, providing a pro forma approval of the prosecution's evidence in a case, this grand jury is allegedly seeing all of the evidence available at this time, and taking it into account when making its decision. In fact, Officer Darren Wilson - who shot and killed Brown - was allowed to tell his side of the story directly to this group, according to reports; plus, his testimony was several hours in length, insiders say.

For reasons such as this, if true, this grand jury seems to be very similar to a trial. And in a trial, both sides of a story are presented.

This has many of us wondering: Who told Michael Brown's side of the story to the grand jury? Did anyone?

That's not the only occurrence that has people believing that the county prosecutor is reluctant to indict Darren Wilson for the murder, or manslaughter, of Michael Brown. Another pernicious indicator is the persistent leaking and seemingly timed release of certain pieces of information to the media.

First, there was the leaking of the convenience store video allegedly showing Michael Brown engaging in a "strong-armed" robbery of a pack of cigars. More recently, a video of Wilson going to the hospital - allegedly for medical treatment from wounds received in his infamous "scuffle" with Brown - was released. This is perfect timing for the coming grand jury indictment, almost like a justification suggesting that the scuffle, which allegedly took place just seconds before Brown lay dead in the street, might have been truly life threatening for Wilson.

Audio recordings of the 911 dispatch from that day were also recently released, which have injected confusion into an already confusing and frustrating situation for many: another young person of color shot and killed by police; another mother's pain on international display; another community in turmoil as a result. Every new round of leaks, or release of information that is extraneous to the grand jury, sparks relentless debates and speculation that only cloud what should be a pure search for truth.

It is difficult to discern meaning from all of this, and the grand jury and other leaks are not helping bring clarity to a tragic situation. Ferguson has become a flashpoint for America's racial complex in the 21st century - a collision of militant law enforcement, institutional bias, and the ways that racial fears still haunt too many of our communities.

The community of Ferguson is a collective case study of what social scientists have defined as "John Henryism." Coined by Sherman James and others in the early 1980s, "John Henryism" alludes to the black folk hero who battled the steam engine to his death, but in this sense, it refers to the intense coping mechanisms that black folk develop in response to persistent psychological stressors -- like the kind of stress produced by the violent institutional racism that Brown's killing appears to be evidence of to the communities most often impacted by accidental police shootings.

These are John Henry days for Ferguson. The grand jury's decision will be one more part to a long story that for many is the endless contest of collective human will versus the dehumanizing machinery of our criminal justice system.

We can only hope that the machinery of our justice system will have the opportunity to work towards a trial where some semblance of justice might be found.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
OPINION: Michael Brown and Our 'John Henry' Daze

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Once again we are at the mercy of our careening criminal justice system. Remember waiting for the Rodney King decision? More recently we've done the pins and needles drill for the Zimmerman decision, and the Dunn decision. In these contemporary times, awaiting a decision from a court, or a jury, has become a regular occurrence.

# data[].attributes.headline
 Calls for overhaul of grand jury process

# data[].attributes.subject
 Calls for overhaul of grand jury process

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Calls for overhaul of grand jury process

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lawmakers around the country are calling for reforms after a grand jury chose not to charge an NYPD cop seen putting Eric Garner in an apparent chokehold. Ari Melber and Dr. James Peterson discuss.

# data[].attributes.headline
Gangsta rap is dead – and Suge Knight’s arrest has buried it

# data[].attributes.subject
Gangsta rap is dead – and Suge Knight’s arrest has buried it

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
angsta rap is dead. In fact, it's been dead for a good while now. But nothing signals the demise of the genre and its influence on American popular culture more than the recent alleged vehicular homicide involving Marion "Suge" Knight.

In the early to mid-1990s, Knight was one of the most feared figures in the music industry. I remember being part of the Philadelphia media core that had an opportunity to interview him on one of his rare trips to the City of Brotherly Love. In the moments preceding what would be his fairly understated entrance into the room where we were interviewing him, you could smell the fear in the atmosphere. The local journalists had read the stories and heard the rumours. Knight was not to be "fucked with" and the quiet understated nature of the ensuing group interview reflected his intimidating stature in the world of pop culture.

But that was the mid-90s. In the new millennium, gangsta rap has been displaced (and in some ways erased) by the kind of affective rap popularised by artists like Drake and Macklemore. And the most popular figure from Compton, California, is not Ice Cube, Dr Dre, Knight or even The Game; it's Kendrick Lamar. Compton is not the Compton that Dre, Cube, Knight and others put on the proverbial map of American inner-city decline and danger. Today the city, lead by an innovative 32-year-old mayor Aja Brown, has declining crime and unemployment rates, complemented by a resurgence in business interests and investments.

What drew Lamar, Cube, Dre, Knight and others to Compton during the week of the killing was the production of a commercial for a feature-length film, Straight Outta Compton. The film chronicles the early days of NWA and the heyday of the kind of art-reflects-art-reflects-reality ethos that dominated that period in hip-hop. Early buzz indicates it will be a major contribution to the biopic subgenre in hip-hop film - but its very production also signals the outdated and outmoded ways of being - in the hip-hop world at least - signalled by the likes of former mogul Knight.

While his thuggish ways distinguished him in the world of gangsta rap - helping to produce millions of record sales and generating media attention that in turn produced more record sales - since the unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, hip-hop culture and the music industry that continues to profit from it has changed. It has moved on from the sensibility that unchecked violence in the music has no consequences in reality. It has; and it always did - and whenever this kind of behaviour emerges or when people stumble from the tightrope between hood life and the life of a rap artist, the results can be fatal.

Knight will have his day in court. He will likely have a very good lawyer. Early reports on the incident in question suggest Knight was allegedly involved in some kind of scuffle with several men outside a fast food restaurant. The deceased, Terry Carter, was an activist who many say was involved in providing support and direction for young men trying to avoid or emerge from lives of crime and gang violence. Cle "Bone" Sloan, who was also allegedly struck by Knight and is expected to survive, is the reformed gang member-turned filmmaker behind the powerful HBO documentary Bastards of the Party.

The activist work of Knight's alleged victims, much like the film Straight Outta Compton, or the emergence of an artist like Lamar, or the revitalisation efforts in Compton, put into bold relief the fact that hip- hop, much like urban America broadly construed, has moved on from its ultra-violent past.

That's not to say that drugs, violent crime or gangsterism has been completely eradicated either in our communities or in the music of hip-hop, but we have certainly moved on from the unchecked celebration of it, and some of the very same folks who were bangin' in the 90s are helping to save young people in the streets today. It's a shame that even as they engage in that work, hip-hop's past can come back to run them down.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gangsta rap is dead - and Suge Knight's arrest has buried it | James Peterson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
angsta rap is dead. In fact, it's been dead for a good while now. But nothing signals the demise of the genre and its influence on American popular culture more than the recent alleged vehicular homicide involving Marion "Suge" Knight. In the early to mid-1990s, Knight was one of the most feared figures in the music industry.

# data[].attributes.headline
Op-Ed: ‘Suge’ Knight and the lurid legacy of gangsta rap

# data[].attributes.subject
Op-Ed: ‘Suge’ Knight and the lurid legacy of gangsta rap

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When I read about former rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight's latest brush with the law - charges of vehicular assault that killed one man and wounded another - I was appalled but unsurprised. Knight has been in the spotlight in this sort of way for years. At 49, he's still a bad-boy figure whose life has long imitated the mean-street art of gangsta rap that he helped to cultivate in his hometown of Compton in the early '90s. He creates drama.

The second thing I felt was almost opposite: a familiar angst that a black public figure/celebrity had been charged with something that would reflect badly on all black people. I don't know Knight, but it doesn't matter: His murder charges had me once again staggering under the burden of representation.

This burden has been with black people a long time, as long as there's been racial injustice reflected by media that deliberately render black people as savages and subhumans. Maybe those renderings are less deliberate these days - sometimes it's just news reporting sorry facts - but because we're still living with injustice, the black criminal narrative still has the power to oppress. So when someone of note does something that evokes that narrative, we cringe.

Knight is especially cringe-worthy because his notability is built on the kinds of black images that to many black people are part of the problem. And those images aren't limited to Compton; they apply to any black neighborhood - Inglewood, South Central, even Ladera Heights. It's telling that a scene involving Knight's character in the upcoming N.W.A biopic "Straight Outta Compton" was shot not in Compton but in very middle-class Leimert Park. That scene might have been true to life, but a merchant I know in Leimert wrung his hands about an association he knows many people will make - that Leimert Park is Compton. It's never the other way around.

Some people say the good news is that Knight doesn't carry nearly the cultural weight he used to. James Braxton Peterson, of the Guardian newspaper, said the latest imbroglio only points to how hip-hop, at least, has moved past the whole gangsta rap aesthetic to something more sophisticated and literate; N.W.A has given way to Macklemore and Drake. The reflective stylings of Kendrick Lamar, currently Compton's best-known rapper, are a far cry from the scowls and growling delivery of Ice Cube and crew.

But I disagree about the moving on. Maybe N.W.A and its gold-chain-wearing ilk are no longer king, but the more lurid legacy of gangsta rap, including the profligate use of the N-word and the glorification of a certain kind of black life in the 'hood, is very much alive. Such sentiments have become so embedded in modern hip-hop that they simply don't raise eyebrows anymore.

Not long ago I wrote about being in a trendy boutique in Larchmont Village and feeling assaulted by the obscenity-laced hip-hop that played as atmosphere music. No one seemed to take any notice of it but me. And I usually don't notice it, which is exactly what startled me when the lyrics - delivered in a monotone that was almost soothing - broke through my consciousness. In the last 20 years, "nigga" and "bitch" have gone from being in your face to background noise, suitable Muzak even in overwhelmingly white places like Larchmont. This kind of racial progress I can do without.

Similarly, what Knight represents has not gone away. The black archetypes that he freely embodied and from which he profited so handsomely - thug, hustler, criminal, materialist, all-around dangerous fellow - still hold sway not just in popular culture but in politics. The elephant in the room in all the arguments against taxing the 1% to help the rest of us, and in the arguments for law and order, is still the predatory, almost pathological Negro who is the eternal outsider and deserves to be.

In the age of Obama, which is touted as being racially enlightened, blacks must still fight that perception; they have to disprove the negative, even Obama himself. Knight's history of criminal entanglements reinforces what I call the essentialist view of black people, especially black men: No matter how much success they achieve, their true nature doesn't change. You can take the man out of Compton, et cetera.

As for "Straight Outta Compton," due out this summer, I'm uneasy. It might be brilliant, but so far it's garnered attention mostly for a controversial casting call issued last year that ranked aspiring female extras by skin color and hair texture - "A" girls were required to be slim Beyonce types, "D" girls dark and heavyset. That crude continuum of black folks is Hollywood for sure, but it's often our view as well. Knight may be finished, but in the public's racial imagination, alas, he's still a star.
Erin Aubry Kaplan is a contributing writer to Opinion. Her second book, "I Heart Obama," is scheduled to be published in 2016.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Op-Ed: 'Suge' Knight and the lurid legacy of gangsta rap

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When I read about former rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight's latest brush with the law - charges of vehicular assault that killed one man and wounded another - I was appalled but unsurprised. Knight has been in the spotlight in this sort of way for years.

# data[].attributes.headline
150 years after the assassination, when will we recover from Lincoln’s death?

# data[].attributes.subject
150 years after the assassination, when will we recover from Lincoln’s death?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How long does it take a nation to recover from the assassination of its president? 50 years? 100 years? 150?

At the time of his assassination, President Abraham Lincoln was directly engaged in what could be considered the second-greatest political challenge of his presidency: the reunification of the United States in the immediate aftermath of a Civil War that had claimed more than 700,000 lives.

No American family was left untouched by the carnage. The plans for Reconstruction were doomed from the start. Confederate sympathizers were defeated, angry and busy developing new systems of restriction and oppression for the recently manumitted Africans in America, even as they wrestled with the destruction of infrastructure across huge swaths of the South.

Into that mix add an actor, John Wilkes Booth, known for his dramatic flair, who was a Confederate sympathizer - meaning he did not want slavery to end. Stir in a group of co-conspirators hell-bent on anarchy. Especially if anarchy could somehow return the South to its pre-Civil War form.

Although historians have teased out the complexities of the Civil War - regionalism, states' rights versus federalism, paradigmatic shifts in the economy - slavery and its requisite dehumanization of black folks were both central to ideological battles during the war and a sticking point in the immediate aftermath of General Robert E. Lee's surrender to the Union.

One of Lincoln's prerogatives before, during and for the bit of time he lived after the Civil War was to challenge the nation to acknowledge black humanity.

He didn't quite frame it that way, but Lincoln wanted black lives to matter as a matter of national policy. He was willing to stake his legacy on the point, and we could argue that his life was taken at least in part because of his commitment to an early iteration of today's "black lives matter" movement. I am fully aware that both Lincoln historians and the architects and activists of the movement will read this assertion as blasphemy.

So, how long does it take for a nation to recover from the assassination of one of its presidents? The question may be unanswerable.

But to the extent that Lincoln as president was invested in pressing our nation to grasp the humanity of black folks - and given the fact that the GOP's "Southern strategy" to gain the votes of disgruntled white Southerners still exists, combined with the withering effects of mass incarceration of people of color - Lincoln's work remains unfinished some 150 years later.

It remains unclear whether or not the United States has or ever will recover from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The emergence of neo-liberalism, our permanent war footing and the slow rollback of the civil rights agenda of the 1960s suggest that the Kennedy brand of presidential leadership would have been critical to strengthening America's commitment to social justice in the era of globalization.

Will America ever recover from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., by some accounts one of the greatest Americans who ever lived?

Though we, as a nation, have done our due diligence to memorialize Lincoln, Kennedy and King, their absences seem eerily pronounced in the 21 st century. For so many of the social justice issues that these leaders were deeply invested in continue to plague our great nation.

The permanence of our nation's greatest challenges: war and institutional racism becomes less and less debatable as the centuries go by. The United States has been at war - hot, cold or clandestine - since the Kennedy administration. And thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court and a host of state legislatures, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act have been systematically sapped of their legal and political strength.

In an 1858 "Fragment on Democracy," Lincoln stated: "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master . . ." He claimed this dialectic frame as the very "idea of democracy" - the idea being that being a "master" can be as dehumanizing as being a "slave." As long as men and women were conscripted in bondage, the United States could not be all that it posited itself to be.

American slavery emptied the concept of liberty of any absolute meaning. The concept of U.S. freedom instead relied exclusively on the notion of not being in bondage or its direct analogy of not being black/African/Negro/African-American.

In the 21 st century, we have arrived at a moment when looking back is sometimes better than looking forward. Too often our contemporary politicos cite the great leaders of bygone eras without any inclination to model their courage or their incisive interventions into the American project. Lincoln's life and legacy unfortunately fall victim to such appropriations.

We would be better served at this 150th commemoration of Lincoln's assassination to come to terms with the significance of his actual political work as opposed to reveling in our celebratory fascination of time stamps and political platitudes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
150 years after the assassination, when will we recover from Lincoln's death?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How long does it take a nation to recover from the assassination of its president? 50 years? 100 years? 150? At the time of his assassination, President Abraham Lincoln was directly engaged in what could be considered the second-greatest political challenge of his presidency: the reunification of the United States in the immediate aftermath of a Civil War that had claimed more than 700,000 lives.

# data[].attributes.headline
Roll over, rock’n’roll – rap music is here to stay

# data[].attributes.subject
Roll over, rock’n’roll – rap music is here to stay

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
hat was once anecdote has become quantified theorem: rap is the most influential form of American music of the last 50 years. According to a new study called The Evolution of Popular Music: 1960-2010, we can now mathematically prove that hip-hop carried more clout than rock.

For someone like me, a nerd - I mean a scholar who has studied, taught and written about rap music for the last 20 years - this moment presents something of a vindication.

I can remember vividly the chuckles and outright laughter that I received as a budding Ivy League scholar when explaining why I wanted to study hip hop music. In the early 1990s - which, according to Matthias Mauch et al's study was the very moment rap music established its indelible impact on popular music - I was often challenged by academicians on the limited impact that rap music could make.

Some doubted the viability of studying something that was for many - even in the 1990s - simply a fad, a form of music that wasn't really music. But I knew then what I know now: rap music is here to stay.

In the Golden Era, songs about fighting power structures could be as popular as songs that degraded women

The qualitative evidence of this fact has been obvious to me for at least 20 of the last 40 years. But this study does more than just vindicate those of us who study rap music in the academy: it also validates the extraordinary cultural influence of what Bakari Kitwana has defined as the hip-hop generation: those of us born between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s who have been wrestling with the rise of neoliberalism, the consequences of the prison-industrial complex and the withering effects of globalisation in the post-civil rights era. That struggle has, to some extent at least, has been articulated through rap music itself.

The key piece of information "discovered" by Mauch et al is that there were three major influential shifts in popular music in that 50-year period. One, in 1964, related to the decline of popular jazz/blues forms and the rise of rock music; one in 1983, reflected the emergence of pop/stadium rock; the final, most pronounced shift came in 1991, with the popular emergence of rap music. This final shift falls within the period known to scholars of hip-hop culture as the Golden Era.

Tupac Shakur in 1992.

The Golden Era was the moment where Public Enemy and the Native Tongues clique - which included A Tribe Called Quest, The Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah and De La Soul - were making music that was nearly as popular as that made by NWA (Niggaz With Attitude), Ice-T, the Wu-Tang Clan and eventually Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube.

It was a moment of relative diversity within hip-hop music. Songs about fighting oppressive power structures could be as popular as songs that deliberately degraded women. Rap music met the information age, producing some of the form's most potent results.

In many ways rap music was made for visual consumption. So while video killed the pop radio music star, it simultaneously gave birth to the rap star. Rappers relied (and continue to rely on) visual communication to appeal to audiences hungry for narratives that represent urban black experiences.

Several rap legends - major figures in the music and culture such as Nas, Lauryn Hill, Biggie Smalls, and Tupac Shakur - emerged during the early days of the Golden Era when video ruled the waves.

Rap could pay, which produced the kind of formulaic musical mass production that all too often characterises pop culture

The Golden Era of rap also represents a marked shift in the music's lyrical content. At the end of the 1980s Public Enemy, one of hip-hop's most political rap groups, was signed to Def Jam, a mainstream major label. The subsequent album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, was (and is still) considered a hip-hop classic.

At the dawn of the next decade, however, NWA had supplanted Public Enemy with a brand of hip-hop that featured gangster narratives of materialism and misogyny. The lyrical landscape of rap music had altered irrevocably.

The Golden Era also signalled the music industry's somewhat late acknowledgement of the economic viability of rap music. Rap, it turned out, could pay - which in turn produced the kind of formulaic musical mass production that all too often characterises pop culture.

But don't give up hope. A quick listen to Kendrick Lamar's recent masterpiece To Pimp A Butterfly proves Mauch's thesis that "[t]he rise of rap and related genres appears ... to be the single most important event that has shaped the musical structure of the American charts."

To Pimp A Butterfly is a cornucopia of black musical styles and sounds. It references jazz as readily as it does funk, spoken word and black soul music. It puts into bold relief many of the reasons why rap music matters so much to so many of us. Rap music is a living, breathing repository of black musical genius. And as such, its cultural and musical prominence is here to stay.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Roll over, rock'n'roll - rap music is here to stay | James Braxton Peterson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
hat was once anecdote has become quantified theorem: rap is the most influential form of American music of the last 50 years. According to a new study called The Evolution of Popular Music: 1960-2010, we can now mathematically prove that hip-hop carried more clout than rock.

# data[].attributes.headline
America’s mass incarceration system: Freedom’s next frontier

# data[].attributes.subject
America’s mass incarceration system: Freedom’s next frontier

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As the nation examines details about how a minor traffic stop of a young black woman in a Texas town ended in her death in a jail cell three days later, major questions again focus on the racial bias of the U.S. judicial system. This was the topic President Barack Obama tackled head-on in his speech to the NAACP national convention last week.

Obama delivered the equivalent of a Hail Mary completion when he called for sweeping judicial reform of the nation's mass-incarceration policies. He laid out the tragic costs in lost opportunity of America's carceral state. It marked a progressive turn for this president.

The consternation and hesitation this gifted orator often displays when weighing in on issues of race and violence was absent. Fresh off his soaring eulogy for state Senator Clementa Pinckney in Charleston, South Carolina, and his new Iranian nuclear agreement, President Obama exuded some of the luster that candidate Obama deployed so effortlessly what seems like a lifetime ago.

The president's " mass incarceration" speech was remarkable, for two simple reasons. First, he used the term "mass incarceration." This may seem like a low bar for such an urgent policy issue, but it has been set by the obstacle-ridden legislative government, within which the Obama administration has had to operate.

Second, he eloquently explained the opportunity costs of America's incarceration sickness. For the $80 billion a year that the United States spends on mass imprisonment, Obama explained (and many have now cited) the nation could instead fund such vital initiatives as pre-kindergarten for all children ages 3 to 4, forgive tuition costs for all U.S. public universities or double the salary of every public high school teacher in the nation.

The president's focus on the opportunity costs in relation to public education was no mistake. It makes both policy-making and political sense. Many policy analysts have detailed the prison pipeline that, in too many cases, originates in U.S. public school systems.

One consequence of applying a zero-tolerance "crime fighting" approach to school discipline is that black and Latino students are more likely to be suspended and expelled. According to a 2009-2010 nationwide study, black students are three times more likely to be suspended than their white counterparts. Students more likely to be suspended and expelled are also more likely to drop out of school. Nearly 70 percent of all inmates in the United States, - a population that already features overrepresentation of black and Latino folks - have not graduated from high school.

This erudite critique of mass incarceration from the president is vital. To overhaul the U.S. criminal-justice system and root out the diseases of racial, gender and class discrimination, a majority of American citizens and lawmakers must understand the dire costs of the nation's current approach. Pushing these costs into the public debate requires the full complement of political leadership - local, regional and national.

That said, it is still difficult to fully appreciate the timing of one of this president's most important - and most progressive - speeches.

Why did it take Obama so long to make the speech? The answer is complex and unsettling. The complexity reflects the fact that this is precisely the moment when his intervention may be most effective. And this is unsettling - for progressives particularly - because Obama's measured approach to key political issues on the left may prove strategically sound.

One reason it took so long is that Obama is a pragmatist. Throughout his years in the White House, he has proven to be a measured political strategist. He has demonstrated that he is far more interested in what can get done, given the political or legislative circumstances, than in fighting unwinnable ideological battles.

In addition, throughout Obama's presidency, moving forward on a progressive agenda - particularly aspects that address the nation's inherent racial problems - has required at least two governing predicates. First, a quantifiable rationale, usually economic, that shows the practice of institutional racism as too costly for American society. Second, a groundswell of activist energy or public outcry must "push" him so that speaking directly about race becomes his only option.

This pattern was repeated here. Though Obama's call for criminal-justice reform is based on the rampant institutional bias, the president emphasized the economic costs.

The $80-billion narrative resonates because it hinges on the principle of why opportunity costs matter. It's not just that the nation spends way too much on locking people up - it's that these resources could be invested in educating some of those same folks and transforming them from a drag on the economy to an asset.

The economics of mass incarceration, as Obama laid it out, don't make sense. From a simple human-resources perspective, how can we account for the losses to this system over the past 30 years? At the height, more than 2 million people have been housed in America's prison system. If the United States is 5 percent of the world's population and accounts for 25 percent of the world's prison population, then it would seem that Americans are far more criminal than the citizens of virtually every other nation.

Obama's most counterintuitive point - that 2014 marks the first year that both mass incarceration and crime have declined nationally - only underscores the absurdity of what we pay to warehouse human beings for nonviolent drug offenses.

Again, the opportunity costs matter. The destruction of American families, the absence of treatment and rehabilitation for substance abusers, and the under-education of millions of Americans, many of whom are not violent criminals, continue to produce deleterious outcomes, especially in communities like Ferguson, Missouri, Cleveland, Ohio, Baltimore, Maryland, and Charleston, South Carolina.

The practical rationale for addressing this deeply racialized problem presents the type of racial issue that this president clearly feels most comfortable addressing. It was painful watching Obama equivocate about the eruption of violence in Ferguson last year. But when he promotes his My Brother's Keeper initiative, Obama's level of comfort is palpable. Though My Brother's Keeper is about race, it is also very much about confronting certain economic realities: Structural racism is expensive.

Obama is also standing on the shoulders of civil rights activists and community organizers who have demanded change in - and in some cases the abolition of - the "prison industrial complex." A national groundswell for criminal-justice reform has stitched together a broad range of initiatives, deeply troubling issues and activists' organized responses.

Black Lives Matter is wrestling directly with what many regard as state-sanctioned killing of unarmed men and women of color, including the death of Eric Gardner, killed roughly a year ago on Staten Island.

At the same time, drug policy groups and their many law enforcement partners are working together to end the war on drugs, which may rank with Prohibition as one of the greatest policy failures of the 20 th century. Over the past 40 years, federal and state governments have spent more than $1 trillion on the war on drugs. Yet over the past 20-plus years, national rates of drug use and drug abuse have remained roughly the same.

Community leaders and activists have also challenged the stop-and-frisk policies that emerged as a byproduct of the war on drugs. They have raised serious questions about racial profiling, sentencing disparities and hiring practices throughout the criminal justice system.

The combined efforts of leaders, scholars and activists, at all levels, are projecting a powerful message. The hegemonic era of law and order without common sense is finally coming to an end. The president's mass-incarceration speech and his unprecedented visit to a federal prison last week are welcome signals that criminal-justice reform is both possible and practical.

Even for the president's critics on the left, the mass-incarceration speech is hard not to like. Some may insist, "too little, way too late." Others may argue that the speech, which reads as if Obama brought in former Attorney General Eric Holder and Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, as consultants, is another case where this president is leading from behind.

Consider that criminal-justice reform is a direct shout-out to Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator Corey Booker (D-N.Y.). Many others have proposed it as well.

Former President Bill Clinton has also weighed in, expressing regret for his own "tough on crime" policies. He apologized to the NAACP convention the day after Obama's speech. Clinton acknowledged that his 1994 crime bill worsened the effects of mass incarceration for too many families, especially in black and brown communities.

Yet even though Obama is late, he is welcome at the end-mass-incarceration party. In this last quarter of his presidency, Obama is increasingly showing signs that he is taking cues from his left. He has spoken directly and powerfully about race. He has described the structural and systemic nature of racism in our nation. He has used his executive powers to back up some of what he says, and he is also talking about policies that could help move forward aspects of his more progressive agenda.

These are positions that the president's critics on the left have been pushing him to embrace since he took office. Although this Obama may have been a long time coming, his arrival is surely a victory for those who have been calling for criminal-justice reform.

For the victims of this system locked in prison cells, this moment when a substantive national conversation is unfolding and when policy changes are in process is more than welcome. For them, it is a lifeline.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
America's mass incarceration system: Freedom's next frontier

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As the nation examines details about how a minor traffic stop of a young black woman in a Texas town ended in her death in a jail cell three days later, major questions again focus on the racial bias of the U.S. judicial system.

# data[].attributes.headline
What we haven’t learned about race relations: From Watts in ’65 to Ferguson

# data[].attributes.subject
What we haven’t learned about race relations: From Watts in ’65 to Ferguson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Watts uprising was a harbinger of things to come.

Ignited 50 years ago on Aug. 11, 1965, the Watts rebellion still challenges all Americans to consider whether the nation has made the progress that has been easily symbolized but rarely realized in the movement for equal justice under the law. With Ferguson, Missouri, locked down in its second state of emergency on the anniversary of a white police officer killing Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, the possibility of progress over a half-century arc remains in doubt.

Serious reflection on the rebellion, the biggest U.S. black uprising since the era of slavery, should rightly disrupt the joyous commemorations of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and other Great Society advances. Because it forces the nation to wrestle with continuing civil rights problems and examine the terrible legacy of police brutality in black communities. The systemic concentrated poverty and police oppression that triggered the rebellion still marks the United States - from Ferguson to Baltimore, Maryland.

Revisiting the Watts uprising also expands the accepted geography of the civil-rights movement. Nostalgia often limits commemorations to the South, almost exclusively east of the Mississippi River. Yet the West Coast was where some of the most radical elements took shape. Consider the Black Panthers, U.S. Organization, the origins of Kwanzaa, the emergence of gangsta rap and the L.A. Rebellion film movement - a groundbreaking group of powerful black moviemakers including Charles Burnett - just to name a few.

The Watts uprising, like so many of the racial incidents today, started with a minor traffic stop. On Aug. 11, 1965, a white cop in Watts pulled over a 21-year-old black man, Marquett Frye for suspected drunk-driving. It was near Frye's house so a neighbor went to get his mother, who walked over to see what was happening. It all escalated from there.

In a sense, as Tim Watkins, president of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, recently explained, it looks pre-ordained. Prior to this traffic stop, folks in Watts had already had enough of police mistreatment and brutality. So when police arrested Frye, his mother, Rena Price, took issue with how officers were handling it, members of the surrounding community were ready to take issue with how the officers were handling Price. Six days, 34 deaths, 1,000 injuries and nearly 4,000 arrests later, "calm" was restored to Los Angeles.

Whenever a community feels under siege by those sworn to protect and serve it, the possibility for civil resistance arises. But when being under siege is just another symptom of being under-served; when the full set of basic civic services - access to healthcare, building grocery stores rather than liquor stores, public transportation - when these needs are not being met, then you have a cauldron for revolutionary actions.

Watts is a relatively small neighborhood, slightly more than 2 square miles in South-Central Los Angeles. Its slight physical geography, however, will never match its cultural and conceptual hold on the national imagination. The Watts uprising is America's permanent and prescient reminder of what happens when the nation socially and civically ignores entire communities.

Its enduring legacy encompasses African-Americans' black revolutionary history and also today's Black Lives Matter movement. Watts is a touchstone - a municipal "canary in the mine" - foretelling the current unrest in American cities like Ferguson, Baltimore and North Charleston, South Carolina.

When police stops turn violent, the black community does now what it did in response to police brutality 50 years ago - we protest. And protest ain't always pretty. But one way or another, people who feel oppressed will fight the state powers and this can lead to confrontations that too often end in unarmed young black men lying dead in the street.

A return to black progressives' radical roots in the West is welcome. But there are also substantive payoffs in commemorating the 1965 Watts uprising along with other major civil rights advances. Doing so effectively highlights the work yet to be done. In addition, it helps in revealing the sustained efforts to erode the gains of these significant civil-right achievements.

The nation celebrated 60 years of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling Brown vs. Board of Education in 2014 - even as some U.S. school districts are more racially segregated than they were 40 years ago. This summer we are celebrating 50 years of the Voting Rights Act. But, just two years ago, the Supreme Court altered the legislation, removing the federal oversight formulas that successfully held state and local discriminatory disenfranchisement practices at bay for decades. These historical and commemorative ironies abound, but our reflections on Watts may escape this conundrum.

The Watts uprising clearly foreshadowed things to come. In the summer of 1967, Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit, Michigan, erupted. Other cities followed a similar course of events. National and civic leaders were increasingly confused and afraid.

President Lyndon B. Johnson convened the Kerner Commission to find out what was happening in America's cities and why. The commission, chaired by then-Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, was a who's who of contemporary politics, including New York Mayor John Lindsay, Senator Edward Brooke (R-Mass.), Senator Fred R. Harris (D-Okla.), Roy Wilkins, NAACP executive director and I.W. Abel, president and co-founder of the United Steelworkers of America. The panel's mandate was essentially to figure out how to ensure that similar outbreaks of violence would not occur again.

The commission's report, released February 29, 1968, suggested that blacks in America lived in a kind of apartheid state, their lives constricted by law enforcement - sometimes brutally so. This, in some ways and in some places, remains true today. The Kerner report also argued that the United States was moving toward a segregated nation. There is plenty of evidence today that this is still the case.

Revisiting Watts with these historic benchmarks in mind should force Americans to confront these facts. And maybe demand a new Kerner Commission.

We are now less than two years from the 50 th anniversary of the creation of the Kerner Commission and one year out from the Ferguson uprising. Not enough has changed.

This commemorative moment, however, is more historical present than historical past. Fifty years ago, the Watts rebellion demonstrated that eventually people will violently reject the brutality produced by state-sanctioned violence. This sadly remains all too familiar in many American communities today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What we haven't learned about race relations: From Watts in '65 to Ferguson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Watts uprising was a harbinger of things to come. Ignited 50 years ago on Aug. 11, 1965, the Watts rebellion still challenges all Americans to consider whether the nation has made the progress that has been easily symbolized but rarely realized in the movement for equal justice under the law.

# data[].attributes.headline
Op-Ed: 25 years after Rodney King, video still isn’t enough to stop police brutality

# data[].attributes.subject
Op-Ed: 25 years after Rodney King, video still isn’t enough to stop police brutality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The rapper KRS-One famously posed this question to law enforcement: "Who protects us from you?" Exactly 25 years after Los Angeles police officers beat up Rodney King near a 210 Freeway offramp, the answer is the same as ever: The camera does, but only to a point.

On March 3, 1991, George Holliday, armed with an analog video camera, recorded King's brutal treatment at the hands of at least four members of the LAPD. Local news aired the video that night, and soon CNN and other networks began to broadcast it across the nation. At once, America bore witness to what black folks have known since Reconstruction: "Law enforcement" has a much crueler meaning for citizens of a darker hue. Outrage bubbled beneath the surface of this national witnessing, and this outrage erupted when the criminal trial against the officers ended in acquittal.

We all watched the same video, yet 12 jurors (10 white and two people of color) could not agree that King's rights had been criminally abrogated. The ensuing 1992 Los Angeles riots, one of the 20th century's most destructive insurrections, resulted in 50 deaths, some 2000 injured and more than $1 billion in property damage. But that insurrection should not be remembered simply as an impulsive response to the King verdict; it was a reflection of the ongoing repression of black liberty.

Twenty-five years later, it is difficult to convey the potency of the Holliday video - seeing it now in its grainy glory belies the vivid influence it had on our collective conscience. I was an undergraduate in the South when the video first circulated. The clip radicalized me politically and existentially; it made me understand that any encounter that I might have with law enforcement could end in death. I remain resolute in this belief.

Many of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement were not yet born when Holliday began recording, but they too are intimately connected to that watershed moment. The Holliday video, its viral circulation and even the subsequent outrage in the streets of L.A. foretold our moment in protest.

Cellphone footage of Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y. - who died after a police officer put him in a chokehold - and Walter Scott in North Charleston, S.C. - shot in the back after a traffic stop - recalls Holliday's visual document. We can all be George Hollidays now: Our cameras are smaller, better, faster. For the foreseeable future, we'll wonder if the intermittent onslaught of snuff videos will dull our senses, make us numb, but the power of the camera (in the hands of civilians) in the ongoing struggle for equal justice under the law is unquestionable.

In the contemporary moment, not only can everyone with a smartphone become a George Holliday, but they can also become their own PR firm. Savvy activists like those associated with Black Lives Matter can distribute documentary evidence to more viewers than your favorite cable news station ever could. In many instances, the Hollidays of today use their capacity to circulate content via social media to pressure networks and news outlets to cover the stories (and atrocities) that matter to the movement.

Yet today, just like 25 years ago, video evidence isn't enough; the U.S. criminal justice system resists indicting, much less convicting its own. The cops who beat up Rodney King were initially acquitted; the cop who put Eric Garner in a chokehold was not even indicted; the cop who shot Walter Scott in the back is out on bail, awaiting trial. There's a vast gulf between awareness and substantive change.

Fully aware of that gulf, Black Lives Matter activists have begun an aggressive campaign to disassociate the movement from the establishment - whether that's the Democratic Party, the black church or well-known civil rights activists. The establishment - even the establishment on the left - has for too long been invested in the kind of incremental progress that was championed by civil rights leaders. Black Lives Matter activists triumphantly embrace a radical politics of the present. We need change now, they say. And they mean it.

This decisiveness, which makes many uncomfortable with the project , might be the only possibility for both sustaining the movement and for making actual progress in eradicating the racial biases in our criminal justice system. A quarter-century from now, no one should have to explain that a video galvanized many, and changed little.
James Peterson is the director of Africana studies at Lehigh University, an MSNBC contributor and the host of the podcast "The Remix" at the Philadelphia NPR affiliate WHYY.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Op-Ed: 25 years after Rodney King, video still isn't enough to stop police brutality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The rapper KRS-One famously posed this question to law enforcement: "Who protects us from you?" Exactly 25 years after Los Angeles police officers beat up Rodney King near a 210 Freeway offramp, the answer is the same as ever: The camera does, but only to a point.

# data[].attributes.headline
What Rodney King's Death Symbolizes for the Black Community

# data[].attributes.subject
What Rodney King's Death Symbolizes for the Black Community

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
King was emblematic of the violence too many black folk suffer at the hands of those charged with protecting us, says James Braxton Peterson.

Death seems to be the new black this year. On Saturday I spent some time reflecting on the 1996 murder of Tupac Amaru Shakur-Saturday would have been his 41st birthday. On Father's Day, I spent time with my dad, but thought of so many who no longer have theirs. I thought about how this Father's Day feels for Tracy Martin, whose son was so needlessly murdered just a few months ago. I thought about the presence of death in the black community. It seems so pervasive-more so this year than ever before in my life, and I grew up in Newark, N.J.

But as my dad, my family and I were headed to church for Father's Day services, news broke that Rodney King had died. I got that sinking feeling-with which I am now all too familiar-I get when my Twitter timeline scrolls the passing of a life that matters to me, to the black community. And the usual process unfolded. People wondered if TMZ's early report was reliable; was Huff Post any more reliable if they just picked up the link? Eventually, some trustworthy source makes it official, and the digital outpouring of sadness begins.

But none of the social-media tactics we deploy at these times provides any more meaning to the complexities of yet another black death. By "black death" I mean those lives lost that are also writ large across the black canvas of the public sphere-people like Whitney Houston, Donna Summer, Chuck Brown, Erica Kennedy. But Rodney King's passing means something more: it will be registered somewhere within the Mount Rushmore of black mortality mostly because his life was emblematic of the violence that too many black folk suffer at the hands of those who are charged with protecting us.

Mind you, pundits will always debate the "validity" of the Rodney King tape that millions of Americans saw multiple times throughout the early 1990s. People will wonder if racial epithets were used while members of the LAPD beat King to the brink of death. The arbiters of state-sanctioned violence against black men will always rationalize: he was high on drugs, he was speeding, he was aggressive, he was ... a black man.

What I will always remember most is King's sense of panic once he realized the LAPD was in pursuit mode on that fateful night. That's why he sped up and fled. That panic he felt-being on parole, just days away from a job interview, an opportunity to keep his life on track and out of the annals of history-that panic is an unforgettable component of our lives. Black and brown men experience that dreaded sense of panic every day. We wonder if this stop, or this cop, is the one that will alter our life path irrevocably. Although Rodney King escaped death that night, his life was irrevocably altered; his history became inextricably linked with the violent history of police brutality, racial profiling, and racialized injustice.

Not ironically, the very day King's death was reported (today), the National Action Network and the NAACP organized a silent march to protest and contest the latest iteration of institutional racism-the "stop and frisk" policy. There were some calls for the march to switch themes and honor King, but the organizers knew well (as should we all) that any effort to end "stop and frisk" is an important thread in the fabric of battling institutionalized injustice that defined Rodney King's life. As a community we are still engaged in the good fight, even as one of our most unlikely heroes was called home.

And finally, I am glad that his name is King-just as I am glad that Trayvon Martin 's surname is Martin. Not that we are prone to forget these critical moments of violence and injustice, or when one of our heroes passes away, but nomenclature has always been a fundamental part of the black cultural experience. Names like Martin, Luther, and King ring bells in black America. This King is no different. May he rest in the peace he was denied here on earth and in the power of our collective will to end the kind of state-inflicted violence that determined his life.

Death seems to be the new black this year. On Saturday I spent some time reflecting on the 1996 murder of Tupac Amaru Shakur-Saturday would have been his 41st birthday. On Father's Day, I spent time with my dad, but thought of so many who no longer have theirs. I thought about how this Father's Day feels for Tracy Martin, whose son was so needlessly murdered just a few months ago. I thought about the presence of death in the black community. It seems so pervasive-more so this year than ever before in my life, and I grew up in Newark, N.J.

But as my dad, my family and I were headed to church for Father's Day services, news broke that Rodney King had died. I got that sinking feeling-with which I am now all too familiar-I get when my Twitter timeline scrolls the passing of a life that matters to me, to the black community. And the usual process unfolded. People wondered if TMZ's early report was reliable; was Huff Post any more reliable if they just picked up the link? Eventually, some trustworthy source makes it official, and the digital outpouring of sadness begins.

But none of the social-media tactics we deploy at these times provides any more meaning to the complexities of yet another black death. By "black death" I mean those lives lost that are also writ large across the black canvas of the public sphere-people like Whitney Houston, Donna Summer, Chuck Brown, Erica Kennedy. But Rodney King's passing means something more: it will be registered somewhere within the Mount Rushmore of black mortality mostly because his life was emblematic of the violence that too many black folk suffer at the hands of those who are charged with protecting us.

Mind you, pundits will always debate the "validity" of the Rodney King tape that millions of Americans saw multiple times throughout the early 1990s. People will wonder if racial epithets were used while members of the LAPD beat King to the brink of death. The arbiters of state-sanctioned violence against black men will always rationalize: he was high on drugs, he was speeding, he was aggressive, he was ... a black man.

What I will always remember most is King's sense of panic once he realized the LAPD was in pursuit mode on that fateful night. That's why he sped up and fled. That panic he felt-being on parole, just days away from a job interview, an opportunity to keep his life on track and out of the annals of history-that panic is an unforgettable component of our lives. Black and brown men experience that dreaded sense of panic every day. We wonder if this stop, or this cop, is the one that will alter our life path irrevocably. Although Rodney King escaped death that night, his life was irrevocably altered; his history became inextricably linked with the violent history of police brutality, racial profiling, and racialized injustice.

Not ironically, the very day King's death was reported (today), the National Action Network and the NAACP organized a silent march to protest and contest the latest iteration of institutional racism-the "stop and frisk" policy. There were some calls for the march to switch themes and honor King, but the organizers knew well (as should we all) that any effort to end "stop and frisk" is an important thread in the fabric of battling institutionalized injustice that defined Rodney King's life. As a community we are still engaged in the good fight, even as one of our most unlikely heroes was called home.

And finally, I am glad that his name is King-just as I am glad that Trayvon Martin 's surname is Martin. Not that we are prone to forget these critical moments of violence and injustice, or when one of our heroes passes away, but nomenclature has always been a fundamental part of the black cultural experience. Names like Martin, Luther, and King ring bells in black America. This King is no different. May he rest in the peace he was denied here on earth and in the power of our collective will to end the kind of state-inflicted violence that determined his life.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Rodney King's Death Symbolizes for the Black Community

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
King was emblematic of the violence too many black folk suffer at the hands of those charged with protecting us, says James Braxton Peterson. Death seems to be the new black this year. On Saturday I spent some time reflecting on the 1996 murder of Tupac Amaru Shakur-Saturday would have been his 41st birthday.

# data[].attributes.headline
Mitt Romney’s 47 Percent Not Who GOP Wants You to Think They Are

# data[].attributes.subject
Mitt Romney’s 47 Percent Not Who GOP Wants You to Think They Are

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mitt Romney can't seem to move beyond his unfortunate "47 percent" comment, in which he dismissed the so-called 47 percent of Americans who don't pay federal income tax as victims who feel entitled to government handouts for food, shelter, and a reasonably humane standard of living. Barack Obama is citing the comment in campaign advertisements. And it's almost certain to come up at the first of the presidential debates next week.

But the 47 percent argument was a mainstay among conservative media long before Romney made it famous. This faux doctrine divides America into the "makers" and the "takers," the "strivers" and the "moochers." It has been rolled out in conservative media as a clarion call to conservatives (rich and poor) to rally to the Republican side in order to shrink America's allegedly overblown government, to reduce the $16 trillion debt. In this narrative, tax cuts and the radical restructuring (if not destruction) of the social safety net is the only way forward. Any compromise, any balance between raising revenue via taxes and reducing expenditures on everything from defense to Medicare, is anathema to those on the right. The government can't be trusted. The 47 percent will always have their hand out for government entitlements.

The sentiment appears to be widely held. In a recent USA Today/Gallup Poll, 53 percent of those polled said Romney's comments make no difference to them at all in the presidential election. Is the established social contract of America-that we will honor our elderly, assist those in need, and fight the permanent poverty that is a systemic byproduct of our flawed version of capitalism-now null and void?

A key component of the argument is a basic misunderstanding of who comprises that 47 percent. Romney implied that these folks are lazy and undeserving, always looking for a handout. For too many Americans, the archetypal image of a "taker" is the black welfare queen, or the undocumented Hispanic child who attends public school.

In reality, the "takers" are auto workers, low-level government workers, and women who have been bold enough to fight for affordable health care. They are teachers who serve our most impoverished communities and nonwhite college students who "exploit" nearly nonexistent affirmative-action policies to better themselves through education.

Watch how Mitt Romney defends himself against critics of his 47 percent comment. You won't hear the truth. What you'll get are code words and allusions to "takers," a nifty little political trick he'll continue to exploit right up to Election Day.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mitt Romney's 47 Percent Not Who GOP Wants You to Think They Are

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mitt Romney can't seem to move beyond his unfortunate "47 percent" comment, in which he dismissed the so-called 47 percent of Americans who don't pay federal income tax as victims who feel entitled to government handouts for food, shelter, and a reasonably humane standard of living.

# data[].attributes.headline
Behind Electoral Geography, the Secessionists’ Delusion

# data[].attributes.subject
Behind Electoral Geography, the Secessionists’ Delusion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The GOP has plenty of geography, but lost the demography to back its ideology. By James Braxton Peterson.

Since the election, lots of United States maps have circulated on social media and throughout the Internet. One image is a collection of three U.S. maps, one showing slave states in 1859, another showing racial segregation in 1950, and the third showing red and blue states in the 2012 presidential election. You can look at them and the cartograms that actually define their electoral meaning, but you don't have to be a professional cartographer to come to certain conclusions about the residue of American slavery and racism in 21st-century geopolitical terms.

In 1859, the South and a number of Western states were either proslavery or "open" to slavery. This same collection of states was legally open to and/or required by statute to be racially segregated. And it just so happens that these are the states that house the largest concentration of Republican voters and the highest number of those citizens that have signed petitions for secession.

The secessionists might be a non-story if 1) they didn't enjoy this particularly mapped-out history; 2) if they didn't represent the very states that rely more on federal support than most more densely populated "blue" states; and 3) if their anger didn't code so readily as racial separatism and traditional American discrimination.

Most Americans who vote can appreciate the pain of electoral defeat. The last four presidential elections surely underscore these emotions, but the cries of outrage and the absurd machinery of excuse-making in the aftermath of this president's reelection is beginning to distinguish itself in this brief history. Romney accuses President Obama of satiating the "takers," lawmakers in some states have threatened to jail federal officials who would establish the state exchanges necessary to implement the Affordable Care Act, Ohio lawmakers immediately pursued legislation that will defund Planned Parenthood and otherwise limit women's reproductive rights, and nearly 700,000 people have signed these silly petitions to secede from the Union.

Some say let them go! Dana Milbank refers to them as the " Confederacy of Takers," and many in the social-media universe have spoken out against these carto-phobes, suggesting the progressive oases in these states-like Austin, Texas, should secede from their states. But consider the historical map behind these movements. History suggests that too many red states are the bastions of traditional American notions about race and racism. They have plenty of geography, but they no longer have the demography to support their ideologies. Mitt Romney's campaign was the pinnacle of a party whose support resides in America's not-too-distant past. And really this is not even a political party or movement. It's more of a movement based upon the racialized affect of people in this country who simply cannot handle the fact that our president is black-again. The racial animus in the public sphere supports this dreary conclusion; but the overwhelming disconnect between the secessionists and their reliance on this federal government's support defies any kind of policy-oriented logic.

Granted, 700,000 people is nowhere close to a majority, even of those who hate our current president. But the maps that inform the secessionists, the mandate-deniers, and other anti-federalists suggest that geography is as much destiny for these ideologies as demography is destiny for political parties in these United States.

Since the election, lots of United States maps have circulated on social media and throughout the Internet. One image is a collection of three U.S. maps, one showing slave states in 1859, another showing racial segregation in 1950, and the third showing red and blue states in the 2012 presidential election. You can look at them and the cartograms that actually define their electoral meaning, but you don't have to be a professional cartographer to come to certain conclusions about the residue of American slavery and racism in 21st-century geopolitical terms.

In 1859, the South and a number of Western states were either proslavery or "open" to slavery. This same collection of states was legally open to and/or required by statute to be racially segregated. And it just so happens that these are the states that house the largest concentration of Republican voters and the highest number of those citizens that have signed petitions for secession.

The secessionists might be a non-story if 1) they didn't enjoy this particularly mapped-out history; 2) if they didn't represent the very states that rely more on federal support than most more densely populated "blue" states; and 3) if their anger didn't code so readily as racial separatism and traditional American discrimination.

Most Americans who vote can appreciate the pain of electoral defeat. The last four presidential elections surely underscore these emotions, but the cries of outrage and the absurd machinery of excuse-making in the aftermath of this president's reelection is beginning to distinguish itself in this brief history. Romney accuses President Obama of satiating the "takers," lawmakers in some states have threatened to jail federal officials who would establish the state exchanges necessary to implement the Affordable Care Act, Ohio lawmakers immediately pursued legislation that will defund Planned Parenthood and otherwise limit women's reproductive rights, and nearly 700,000 people have signed these silly petitions to secede from the Union.

Some say let them go! Dana Milbank refers to them as the " Confederacy of Takers," and many in the social-media universe have spoken out against these carto-phobes, suggesting the progressive oases in these states-like Austin, Texas, should secede from their states. But consider the historical map behind these movements. History suggests that too many red states are the bastions of traditional American notions about race and racism. They have plenty of geography, but they no longer have the demography to support their ideologies. Mitt Romney's campaign was the pinnacle of a party whose support resides in America's not-too-distant past. And really this is not even a political party or movement. It's more of a movement based upon the racialized affect of people in this country who simply cannot handle the fact that our president is black-again. The racial animus in the public sphere supports this dreary conclusion; but the overwhelming disconnect between the secessionists and their reliance on this federal government's support defies any kind of policy-oriented logic.

Granted, 700,000 people is nowhere close to a majority, even of those who hate our current president. But the maps that inform the secessionists, the mandate-deniers, and other anti-federalists suggest that geography is as much destiny for these ideologies as demography is destiny for political parties in these United States.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Behind Electoral Geography, the Secessionists' Delusion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The GOP has plenty of geography, but lost the demography to back its ideology. By James Braxton Peterson. Since the election, lots of United States maps have circulated on social media and throughout the Internet. One image is a collection of three U.S.

# data[].attributes.headline
Colin Powell Can Support Obama Because He’s Black

# data[].attributes.subject
Colin Powell Can Support Obama Because He’s Black

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
So what if the general endorsed the president based on race? Identity politics don't deserve their bad rap.

On Thursday night former New Hampshire governor John Sununu suggested-no, he plainly stated -that Gen. Colin Powell endorsed President Obama for a second term because both he and the president are black. Yes! Mr. Sununu, you are right. General Powell was quite articulate in his assessment of the issues that inform his reendorsement of Barack Obama. He cited Romney's weakness for shifting his positions, especially on foreign policy, and the absence of arithmetic in Gov. Mitt Romney's economic plan, among others. Although General Powell has legitimate, policy-oriented reasons for supporting President Obama, let us, for the sake of argument, take Sununu's comments to heart and consider what, if anything, is wrong with identity-based voting.

For most of the history of this country, race has not been a fundamental factor in the selection of the President of the United States. There have been a handful of candidates who made it to the national electoral platform, including Shirley Chisolm, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, but we haven't had many chances to really test Sununu's theory on either side of the black-white racial divide when it comes to presidential politics. In fact, what Sununu's comments actually put into bold relief is the fact that race-based presidential endorsements may be going on all around us-and may have been going on all throughout America's history.

Jon Stewart joked about this on The Daily Show this week, but Romney's doppelgänger strategy in the third and final debate may have given some voters the façade of a simple choice between two men who have the same views and differ only in terms of their race (my friends on the left love this idea). If you believe in the more moderate iteration of Mitt Romney and you are just more comfortable voting for someone who looks like you, then so be it. Never mind that he is among the most elite of the 1 percent class or that his religion may be different from that of many Americans; it is race that will fundamentally inform too many voting decisions this election season.

If you ask a 50-something black person about Sununu's comments, the person will rail about racism on the right and the litany of racialized commentary coming from the right over the course of the presidential-primary process. If you ask a 75-plus African-American about Sununu's assertion that General Powell endorsed Obama because Obama is black, their response would be something more akin to "So what?" or "And what if he did?" For many older black folk-and by older, I mean those old enough to have had firsthand experience with the vestiges of Jim Crow segregation-President Obama's symbolic capital occasionally trumps the political issues we spend so much time debating these days.

Many of the black folks who routinely vote Democratic hold Powell (the first black secretary of state) in very high esteem. They are not blind to his role in the whole WMD fiasco or to his decision to leave the administration after his first term. They don't agree politically with everything Powell believes in, but he reminds all of us of what the Republican Party was before the religious right, neocon, and Tea Party takeovers.

But all of this is not why Governor Sununu is right. Some black people do vote for some black candidates because they are black; some white people vote for some white candidates because they are white; some women vote for women candidates because they are women. Sometimes identity politics matter. But Sununu's comments are right for another reason too-the human-race reason. What the post-Bush-administration Powell shares with Obama is an incredible capacity to communicate his humanity, and it is their communion in the human race that matters most in this endorsement.

On Thursday night former New Hampshire governor John Sununu suggested-no, he plainly stated -that Gen. Colin Powell endorsed President Obama for a second term because both he and the president are black. Yes! Mr. Sununu, you are right. General Powell was quite articulate in his assessment of the issues that inform his reendorsement of Barack Obama. He cited Romney's weakness for shifting his positions, especially on foreign policy, and the absence of arithmetic in Gov. Mitt Romney's economic plan, among others. Although General Powell has legitimate, policy-oriented reasons for supporting President Obama, let us, for the sake of argument, take Sununu's comments to heart and consider what, if anything, is wrong with identity-based voting.

For most of the history of this country, race has not been a fundamental factor in the selection of the President of the United States. There have been a handful of candidates who made it to the national electoral platform, including Shirley Chisolm, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, but we haven't had many chances to really test Sununu's theory on either side of the black-white racial divide when it comes to presidential politics. In fact, what Sununu's comments actually put into bold relief is the fact that race-based presidential endorsements may be going on all around us-and may have been going on all throughout America's history.

Jon Stewart joked about this on The Daily Show this week, but Romney's doppelgänger strategy in the third and final debate may have given some voters the façade of a simple choice between two men who have the same views and differ only in terms of their race (my friends on the left love this idea). If you believe in the more moderate iteration of Mitt Romney and you are just more comfortable voting for someone who looks like you, then so be it. Never mind that he is among the most elite of the 1 percent class or that his religion may be different from that of many Americans; it is race that will fundamentally inform too many voting decisions this election season.

If you ask a 50-something black person about Sununu's comments, the person will rail about racism on the right and the litany of racialized commentary coming from the right over the course of the presidential-primary process. If you ask a 75-plus African-American about Sununu's assertion that General Powell endorsed Obama because Obama is black, their response would be something more akin to "So what?" or "And what if he did?" For many older black folk-and by older, I mean those old enough to have had firsthand experience with the vestiges of Jim Crow segregation-President Obama's symbolic capital occasionally trumps the political issues we spend so much time debating these days.

Many of the black folks who routinely vote Democratic hold Powell (the first black secretary of state) in very high esteem. They are not blind to his role in the whole WMD fiasco or to his decision to leave the administration after his first term. They don't agree politically with everything Powell believes in, but he reminds all of us of what the Republican Party was before the religious right, neocon, and Tea Party takeovers.

But all of this is not why Governor Sununu is right. Some black people do vote for some black candidates because they are black; some white people vote for some white candidates because they are white; some women vote for women candidates because they are women. Sometimes identity politics matter. But Sununu's comments are right for another reason too-the human-race reason. What the post-Bush-administration Powell shares with Obama is an incredible capacity to communicate his humanity, and it is their communion in the human race that matters most in this endorsement.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Colin Powell Can Support Obama Because He's Black

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
So what if the general endorsed the president based on race? Identity politics don't deserve their bad rap. On Thursday night former New Hampshire governor John Sununu suggested-no, he plainly stated -that Gen. Colin Powell endorsed President Obama for a second term because both he and the president are black.

# data[].attributes.headline
Antifa Needs a New Way to Fight the Alt-Right

# data[].attributes.subject
Antifa Needs a New Way to Fight the Alt-Right

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Antifa Needs a New Way to Fight the Alt-Right

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Antifa protesters fought the alt-right in the Charlottesville violence. The leftist movement should rethink its approach.

# data[].attributes.headline
 Confessions of a Black identity ‘extremist’

# data[].attributes.subject
 Confessions of a Black identity ‘extremist’

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In full acknowledgment of the FBI's leaked recent statement that a "black identity extremist" movement presents a domestic threat to national security, I do hereby humbly admit to being a Black identity extremist.

I believe in the original Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Program with some slight adjustments for gender inclusivity. I do not believe in violence of any sort save for that enacted in self-defense. I also believe that we could radically alter the common sense gun debate if Black folks legally armed themselves and joined the NRA.

I celebrate Kwanzaa and I have done so for my entire life. I believe in the Nguza Saba, the seven principles of Kwanzaa: Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith. I celebrate and practice these principles with family and with my community on an ongoing basis.

I direct an Africana Studies program at an elite institution in the state of Pennsylvania. I hire and work with faculty who research, teach, and write about Black people throughout the African Diaspora. I believe that this research writing and teaching is beneficial to people from all backgrounds and that it is impossible to understand the history and culture of America without a deep and abiding understanding of the history and culture of Black people in America.

I believe that the Abolition movement against America's "peculiar institution" of chattel slavery in the 19th century and the Civil Rights movement of the 20th Century are the blueprints for social justice movements all over the world. Black peoples' efforts to resist tyranny and oppression and their capacity to survive systemic anti-Black violence are amongst the most extraordinary feats in the history of humanity.

I believe that humanity originated on the continent of Africa and that African civilizations were the first human civilizations. I believe that the rape and plunder of the African continent, in terms of both human and material resources, is the greatest most consistently sustained form of globalized, organized crime in the history of this world. Our willful ignorance of these histories is the second greatest crime.

I believe that Identity Politics are and will continue to be a permanent feature of our body politic. Those that argue or suggest that people of color should dispense with these political instruments often refuse to acknowledge the extent to which white identity politics distort and diminish our national political experiment. Inclusive identity politics are but one solution to the current iteration of white solidarity politics that regularly play in the anti-Black "sandboxes" of white nationalism and white supremacy.

I believe in the power of Black arts and Black culture. I am an ardent fan of Public Enemy, Lauryn Hill, Blackstar (aka Mos Def/Yaasin Bey and Talib Kweli), Queen Latifah, X-Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers, Lupe Fiasco, Rapsody, and Kendrick Lamar. I believe that Solange's album, "A Seat at the Table" is better than all of Beyonce's albums combined. I never dress up for Halloween, but I plan on attending the premier of Marvel/Disney's Black Panther film in some any kind of attire that signals the excitement that the Black community has surrounding this important superhero film.

I believe that being married to and being the life partner of a Black woman is both a privilege and a political statement in a nation that routinely dismisses Black families and Black fathers/husbands as absent and/or invisible. I believe that raising two Black children in and through an array of anti-black institutions - especially media and schools - is as important a political act as I will ever have the fortune to pursue.

I believe that BLACK LIVES MATTER and that activists' various efforts to sustain a movement around equity, racial justice and human dignity for the Black community in this nation and abroad is the most important movement of my lifetime.

Maybe you believe some of these things too. If so, you may be a Black identity extremist - and, apparently, a threat to our nation's security.
Dr. James Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and an associate professor of English at Lehigh University, and is a contributor of MSNBC. Follow him on Twitter @DrJamesPeterson.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Confessions of a Black identity 'extremist' - TheGrio

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In full acknowledgment of the FBI's leaked recent statement that a "black identity extremist" movement presents a domestic threat to national security, I do hereby humbly admit to being a Black identity extremist. I believe in the original Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Program with some slight adjustments for gender inclusivity.

# data[].attributes.headline
Commentary: Martin Luther King Jr. Tried to Warn Us About Donald Trump

# data[].attributes.subject
Commentary: Martin Luther King Jr. Tried to Warn Us About Donald Trump

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
martin luther king jr day federal holiday

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Commentary: Martin Luther King Jr. Tried to Warn Us About Donald Trump

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday, is a good time to look at the truth: King tried to warn us about Donald Trump.

# data[].attributes.headline
Commentary: Black Panther Wants to Save Us From Donald Trump

# data[].attributes.subject
Commentary: Black Panther Wants to Save Us From Donald Trump

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Commentary: Black Panther Wants to Save Us From Donald Trump

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Black Panther movie, which is being released during Black History Month, is a perfect rejection of Donald Trump's presidency.

# data[].attributes.headline
What Black Panther Means to My Black Son

# data[].attributes.subject
What Black Panther Means to My Black Son

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How to Raise a Boy is a weeklong series centered around this urgent question in the era of Parkland, President Trump, and #MeToo. Here, a father talks to his teenage son, James, and his three friends - Zuri, Adrian, and Jordan - who just saw Black Panther.

Jordan: This is my third time seeing it - I've been waiting for something like this for so long. Comic books have been very important to me, so to see that but also have a chance to be empowered. I have so much joy watching this movie.

Zuri: To bring together Africa, the continent, and black America, was genius.

James (son): My thing was, you come in the theater, you see all these black faces, all these dashikis, these African necklaces, people painting their faces. We know this is for us.

Adrian: The moment where the main villain, Killmonger, meets his end, I will truly never forget. Ever. He's about to die, and the main hero, T'Challa, offers to save him. But he'll be in prison. And he says, let me die. And bury me in the ocean, because his ancestors prefer death over bondage.

James (father): You know what he's talking about there, about enslaved Africans jumping off ships during middle passage?

Zuri: Yeah ... the thing that really resonated with me was with T'Challa and Shuri (his sister), after he's crowned king. They do that handshake, with the chest bump. You see the joy, the pride.

Jordan: The film says more about black masculinity when you look at the female characters. The female general, they showed her as powerful but also when she was less a machine - she was a human being with feelings and cares. What I took is that hypermasculinity is not needed. You can let other people be strong, and be strong as well.

Zuri: What about that scene when Nakia and T'Challa are walking in the town? He says, "If you weren't so stubborn, you'd make a great queen. And she says, "I would make a great queen because I am stubborn." I know historically people have said that the black family is messed up for a lot of them being matriarchal, but you see how that's such a strength.

Adrian: With Marvel being so big and well-known, it makes it that much better. It gives little black kids something else to be for Halloween, for example. Like not having to worry about wearing some crazy wig or being a little white princess. You can be someone who looks like you, and you don't have to be an athlete.

James (father): Anything about the movie you didn't like?

James (son): I'll say it right now: I liked Black Panther, the character, the comics, just the idea, from the beginning. This dude in this suit running around, all these flashy abilities. When he stepped on the stage in Civil War and scratched Captain America's shield - the impervious shield of whiteness - I was like, yo, I'm wearing Black Panther everything. And then when I heard there was going to be a movie, I was like, Please don't mess this up. I got my dashiki on, I got my African medallion on, I walked into the theater, sat down, boom. Even in the first scene, I was just shook. I heard people talk about like, "Oh the acting wasn't this or that." Nah. That movie was great.

Jordan: The second time I saw the movie I realized that I think Ryan [Coogler, the director] was trying to do was make a modern day Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Killmonger was aggressive and impulsive. T'Challa was more held back. But I feel like Ryan was saying you need to have both. Sometimes even though you want to be moderate and peaceful, you still need to do more.

James (father): Do you care what your white friends think? Have you talked to any of them?

Jordan: I did. Obviously, the major themes were not lost on them: nationalism, seclusion. But, at the end of the day, the emotional connection wasn't there. One of my friends went as far as to say, "Oh, it wasn't as great as I thought it was going to be." I was mad - I held myself back. I was thinking, You're never really going to understand.

Adrian: My little brother is 8. He saw the movie, and and the amount of excitement in his voice when he called me .... To grow up with these types of icons - I can't even imagine what type of pride he's going to have for himself. I'm jealous. Jealous that he'll have such a powerful world to imagine and think through at such a young age.

Jordan: My younger brother is 13, 14. For him, the biggest influential person is Donald Glover. And his music. I followed (Childish Gambino) too when I was 13, but back then it was nerdy, niche. And you're black, you're nerdy, it's kind of hush, hush. But Glover rose like crazy. And now black representation is better than ever ... And to what Adrian said, my younger brother didn't call me about Black Panther. What makes that so important in my mind is that this is normal to him.

*A version of this article appears in the March 5, 2018 issue of New York Magazine.

What Should I Teach My Sons?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Black Panther Means to My Black Son

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How to Raise a Boy is a weeklong series centered around this urgent question in the era of Parkland, President Trump, and #MeToo. Here, a father talks to his teenage son, James, and his three friends - Zuri, Adrian, and Jordan - who just saw Black Panther.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
GRAND ABYSS HOTEL, a Boom Studios graphic novel releasing this week, is an instant classic. Written by Marcos Prior, illustrated by David Rubin, translated by Andrea Rosenberg and lettered by Deron Bennett, GRAND ABYSS HOTEL (GAH), dissects the political malaise of our current moment and offers up an intellectual portrait of the 21st Century"s global zeitgeist. It is not often that graphic novels "" or comics "" will delve deeply and formally into the intellectual world of Critical Theory, but somehow GAH does. And it takes this deep dive with the intentionality of an Olympic athlete and the articulative aplomb of an emeritus professor.

GRAND ABYSS will expand readers" vocabularies "" intellectual, theoretical, visual and otherwise. It"s not without fault "" nothing is, but there is nothing else like this book on anyone"s comic book shelf at the moment. It will remind more experienced readers of V FOR VENDETTA and at times, (sometimes deliberately so), it will look a bit like WATCHMEN, but GRAND ABYSS is a classic graphic novel of our making. It represents an extension of the discourses of Critical Theory visually applied to the politics of populism in a dystopic future version of our world that is reflected in nightmarish, utterly credible ways.

The prologue to the graphic novel, "Room 307"" finds a mysterious figure lifting weights in a workout that appears to be both routine and of an intense purpose. As he grunts his way through his workout, a series of talking head screen-shot panels and text boxes inform readers of this world"s current state of affairs. "Health care cuts,"" tax cuts for the rich, slashing school budgets, increasing public utility costs, the dismantling of organized labor, and the rise of "bittercoin"" give readers a foreboding sense of familiarity with GAH"s world. It"s a quick world-build done in the talking head style that has become familiar with these kinds of groundbreaking political works in the graphic novel form.

And yet somehow GAH distinguishes itself from its classic predecessors. The mysterious figure becomes the "animator"" and the masked face of the revolution. He almost singlehandedly transforms a protest into what the government considers a violent (and fiery) act of terrorism. As bad as GAH"s government is, they are not wrong here. And that"s one of the elusive points of the graphic novel "" the remarkably subtle dissolution of our accepted political binaries "" right-left, conservative-liberal, democracy-dictatorship. These models cannot hold in a world where neo-liberal market ideologies displace politics and governance itself.

This review is already in the weeds. The title, "Grand Abyss Hotel"" is a crafty play on a phrase "" "Grand Hotel Abyss"" used by Georg Lukacs in 1962 to express his disappointment and disillusionment with the renown Frankfurt School of critical theorists. The Frankfurt School (https://www.iep.utm.edu/frankfur/) originally consisted of a group of German Jewish intellectuals who established the early tenets of Critical Theory (CT). CT focused on philosophical critiques of capitalism and a deliberate embrace of social liberation.

But the school"s critics "" like Georg Lukacs "" believed that its members were more talk (or thought) than action. The "Grand Hotel Abyss"" became an architectural figure for the privileged space that Frankfurt School thought leaders occupied as they thought about revolution and watched the erosion of liberty in the face of capitalism, populism, and fascism.

This is heady stuff for a comic book, even a graphic novel produced in Europe and translated into English. But do not mistake this review"s enthusiasm for the intellectual force of this work for an absence of aesthetic (visual) excellence in the work. David Rubin"s artwork is absolutely stunning and rendered in such exquisite detail that at times the book churns along with images sans any text. These are some of the most captivating reading experiences to be had in any genre. Sometimes these series of wordless panels will compel readers to engage in such a way that they might lose their place on the page and in the book.

Some of you may not have heard of Deron Bennett, one of the most gifted letterers in the comic book industry. Here his gifts are on full display as the variation and font/articulation in lettering becomes yet another extraordinary tool of storytelling in this vividly crafted bleak version of our future. GRAND ABYSS HOTEL isn"t for everybody. Its allusions are thick and its lexicon will force you to use your mind and the dictionary. Do you know ("˜off top") what a plebiscitary democracy is? It's not for everybody. But it is about everyone "" all of us in this world and in this time. And it asks the question that "" if we are lucky "" we might have to answer for our grandchildren someday. What did you do . . . when the world was burning down? 5/5

[yasr_overall_rating size="large"]

(W) Marcos Prior (A/CA) David Rubin

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
GRAND ABYSS HOTEL, a Boom Studios graphic novel releasing this week, is an instant classic. Written by Marcos Prior, illustrated by David Rubin, translated by Andrea Rosenberg and lettered by Deron Bennett, GRAND ABYSS HOTEL (GAH), dissects the political malaise of our current moment and offers up an intellectual portrait of the 21st Century"s global zeitgeist.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Most scholars would agree that the golden age for Russian literature started at some point in the 1830s. For the next several decades, names like Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dotoyevsky became internationally recognized. Even now, in the new millennium, Russia is still considered to be one of the world"s most well-read nations. Writer, Richard Douek and artist, Alex Cormack are making a compelling case for ROAD OF BONES (IDW) to be situated within this storied tradition.

In general, when anyone mentions Siberia we automatically think of vast icy geographical locales and gulags. If the thought of living in Siberia or being a prisoner in a Siberian gulag summons a sense of fear in you then you might want to avoid reading ROAD OF BONES. Initially set in a Siberian Gulag, of both real and surreal horrors, ROAD OF BONES chronicles the epic escape of three prisoners who must now contend with the deadly conditions of the Siberian landscape. Grigori, Sergei, and Roman form a tentative partnership borne out of their survival instincts and an opportunity provided by a brief but bloody prison riot. For a gruesome primer on the horrifically violent and sadistic conditions of the gulag, see ROAD OF BONES #1.

At the start of ROAD OF BONES #2 (out this week), our three Russian escapees have been slogging through Siberia for weeks. Food is low and their trust in each other and in their plans for escape are wavering in the icy winds of Siberia"s deadly climate. Douek has a deep sense of the dramatic tones of traditional Russian literature and they are on full display here as Grigori, Roman, and Sergei begin to direct their desperation at each other. Alex Cormack"s artwork is a clinic for how to make facial expressions pop on the comic book page. When you arrive at the final panel of ROAD BONES #2 you will be a believer.

At this point, it is almost impossible to contemplate where the ROAD OF BONES will lead and/or ultimately end up. But what is clear, is that the horrors for these three protagonists are only beginning. Like much of the best horror comics, film, tv, etc., ROAD OF BONES obscures what might be the most terrifying aspects of its world. In the first issue, readers will be immediately terrified by the inhumane nature of the gulag"s guards, but by the end of ROAD OF BONES #2 the sadistic gulag guards are a distant memory. The horrors that Sergei, Roman and Grigori must face now are of their own making or, maybe the most terrific horrors ahead of them don"t have faces at all. 4/5!

[yasr_overall_rating size="large"]

(W) Rich Douek (A/CA) Alex Cormack

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Most scholars would agree that the golden age for Russian literature started at some point in the 1830s. For the next several decades, names like Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dotoyevsky became internationally recognized. Even now, in the new millennium, Russia is still considered to be one of the world"s most well-read nations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What"s the difference between garbage and trash? If you don"t know the answer to this critical question you might not have been reading Zoe Quinn and Robbi Rodriguez"s GODDESS MODE on DC/Vertigo Comics. GODDESS MODE"s main character, Cassandra Price is a junior artificial intelligence support assistant (AISA) for Azoth, an omnipotent networked application/program that has nearly wiped out disease, provides clean air and open access to all human knowledge while simultaneously connecting every human being on the planet. If this sounds scary to you given that our real world is ruled by Facebook, Google, and Amazon, then you might be one of the ideal readers of this fascinating series.

In the world of video games, "God Mode"" is the term used to describe the cheat codes for a game that allow the player to be all-powerful and/or invincible. Playing a game in "God mode"" isn"t just cheating; it"s a way for the player to experience the game from a completely different point of view. "God mode"" provides a user experience that is distinct from regular game play and in some ways reveals the essence of the game from a creator"s viewpoint. Quinn"s GODDESS MODE is a powerful play on this concept as the main character wrestles with what it means to create and/or destroy a world and the various ways in which innovations in technology "" and in this case magic as well "" might facilitate one world"s end or another world"s completely new beginning.

GODDESS MODE blurs the distinction between magic and technology. At least early on in the series. Cassandra argues that magic is "just nanotech, tricking our brains into sensing things that aren"t there."" While this might be true, Cassandra"s experiences inside of Azoth require her to use her magical powers to fight daemons and figure out some way to re-integrate Psyche "" the all-knowing artificial intelligence that polices Azoth and terrorizes both the real and the virtual worlds of the GODDESS MODE universe.

Cassandra doesn"t fight these battles alone. She is joined by an incredible cast of unforgettable characters "" mostly women "" and all badass. They are "oracles,"" but not exactly in the traditional mythological sense. GODDESS MODE proffers a new mythology "" one that is entrenched in our tech-dominated reality but also fully enmeshed in a fantastic world where technology and magic are inextricably linked. Issue #6 is the culmination of the series" first story arc. Many questions are answered here (no spoilers of course), but readers will find themselves wanting more of this world "" even if its fantasies continue to look more and more like our realities. 4.5/5!

[yasr_overall_rating size="large"]

(W) Zoe Quinn (A/CA) Robbi Rodriguez

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What"s the difference between garbage and trash? If you don"t know the answer to this critical question you might not have been reading Zoe Quinn and Robbi Rodriguez"s GODDESS MODE on DC/Vertigo Comics.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The CRIMSON LOTUS TPB collects issues 1-5 of the mystical Dark Horse series written by John Arcudi with astounding visual art by Mindy Lee (colored by Michelle Madsen). The lotus is a revered plant/flower across several Eastern cultures, including Buddhism and Hinduism. The lotus has developed an alluring mythology over the millennia. Much of its allure derives from its uncanny presentation in the natural world. The lotus is often rooted in the muck or muddy waters. It blooms, submerges itself and re-blooms on a daily cycle. It is almost like a little phoenix flower, collapsing into the mud and re-emerging in full pristine bloom, all in a day"s work.

CRIMSON LOTUS takes the cyclical and mystical nature of the plant in its title and maps out a world where ancient Chinese artifacts, Russian mysticism and Japanese empire all collide. In the opening scenes of the TPB (issue #1), readers witness an origin story of the titular figure of the book. A young Miryoku almost witnesses the brutal murder and mangling of her father "" a soldier who is charged with guarding an ancient artifact. His failure marks the birth (or bloom, if you will) of Crimson Lotus and Miryoku"s motivation for becoming a master of magic"s dark arts. It"s an epic opening to the series and it provides readers with an imposing visual sense of this magical world.

Thirty years later, the Crimson Lotus is on the offensive and out for revenge on an epic scale. While Agents Baolu and Dai each have a good turn at playing the protagonist of CRIMSON LOTUS, soon enough Agent Shengli emerges as the central character. Shengli is an expert undercover operative who is best equipped to confront the mystical challenges that the Crimson Lotus presents. Shengli has been developing her skills in the mystical arts and she is the only agent who can compete with Crimson Lotus" arcane prowess. The battles between Shengli and Crimson Lotus are cinematic and (at times) they are so well choreographed on the page that the book feels animated.

CRIMSON LOTUS is an international mystical mystery but it also shows brilliant flashes of horror. The way that the Russian mystic disposes of Miryoku"s father is an early, if gruesome example. But throughout these collected issues, elements of horror are seamlessly woven into the fabric of the story. Maybe the thought of masked monkeys doesn"t seem to be very horrifying to you, but somehow Mindy Lee"s depiction of masked monkeys is one of the scariest elements of a comic that has all sorts of horrifying monsters and gruesome moments in it. In its TPD form, CRIMSON LOTUS is a stunning story of horror, mystery, and an epic desire for revenge that "" like the lotus itself "" seems to re-bloom and re-bloom. 4/5

[yasr_overall_rating size="large"]

(W) John Arcudi (A) Mindy Lee, Michelle Madsen (CA) Tonci Zonjic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The CRIMSON LOTUS TPB collects issues 1-5 of the mystical Dark Horse series written by John Arcudi with astounding visual art by Mindy Lee (colored by Michelle Madsen). The lotus is a revered plant/flower across several Eastern cultures, including Buddhism and Hinduism. The lotus has developed an alluring mythology over the millennia.

# data[].attributes.headline
Every DC Character in the Harley Quinn Animated Series Comic-Con Trailer

# data[].attributes.subject
Every DC Character in the Harley Quinn Animated Series Comic-Con Trailer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Although fan excitement is usually measured by the viewers a trailer receives, number of characters crammed into the footage might also be a good metric. If so, then the response to the Comic-Con International trailer for DC Universe's Harley Quinn animated series is off the charts. Even the trigger warning for explicit language, adult themes and violence is an implicit shout-out to fans -- especially those who understand that cartoons aren't just for kids. If that warning wasn't enough, give the trailer just a few seconds. Voiced by Kaley Cuoco, Harley announces herself with "It's me, dickhead." The dickhead in question is, of course, none other than The Joker.

The series will chronicle Harley's pursuit of supervillain cred in the form of membership in the Legion of Doom. And from the trailer it looks like her squad features some of the quirkier characters in the DC Universe. Here is an exhaustive (if not fully complete) list of characters that appear in the frenetically paced footage.

RELATED: Harley Quinn's Katey Cuoco Teases Animated Series With New Art

A Special Class of Villain

The first snapshot of Harley Quinn's aspirations comes fairly early on in the trailer. From left, these are the legendary DC villains that Harley sees as her role models. Penguin, Scarecrow and The Riddler almost need no introduction; they've established their bona fides through their confrontations with Batman across comics, animated and live-action television, film and video games. The mysterious robot in the background is either Superman foe Brainiac or the more-obscure Cyborg villain Grid. Lastly, is Aquaman's longtime nemesis Black Manta, and the Scarlet Speedster's opposite number, Reverse Flash.

Hello, Puddin'!

It's Harley's break-up with The Joker that sets her on her path to join the Legion of Doom, so of course "Mistah J" plays a prominent role in the trailer. "It's me, dickhead," she deadpans, setting the tone for their rocky relationship in the animated series.

DC's Sea King

Speaking of Aquaman, the king of Atlantis makes a couple of cameos in the trailer, confirming that the scope of Harley Quinn's aspirations is not limited to the world of the land dwellers.

Harley's Squad

From the looks of the trailer, Harley will work closely with several under-used characters. Her immediate team seems to be comprised of the classic Batman villain Clayface, and Doctor Psycho, one of the original members of the Secret Society of Super Villains.

The Proof is in the Poison

It wouldn't be a Harley Quinn adult animated series without the presence of Poison Ivy, whose modern relationship (and, yes, romance) with Harley Quinn has become a favorite with fans and creators alike.

Have You Seen These DC Villains?

Figuring out all of the characters in this little trailer is complicated. King Shark, whose profile has raised in recent years because of his appearance on The CW's The Flash, will have a role in Harley Quinn. The identity of the cigarette-flicking mouse is anybody's guess. The mysterious women with them may be Kuasa, the older sister of Vixen.

A Different Sy-Borg

Sy Borgman worked with the U.S. government to thwart Russian terrorists. Eventually he connected with Harley and, at least for some time, lived with her. This version of the character is ready for more comic relief in the series.

Give the Commissioner a Hand

It's Gotham City, so of course Commissioner James Gordon has a role to play in Harley Quinn. However, it's unlikely anyone expected to see Batman's longtime ally enjoying a game of poker, and a laugh, with Clayface.

Luthor Doesn't Seem Like a Fist-Bump Guy

Perhaps just as unexpected is the first-bump shared between Lex Luthor, arguably the premier supervillain in the DC Universe, and KGBeast, who is only now, three decades after his debut, beginning to earn some degree of respect.

The Guy Who Started It All

The age-old debate is whether Gotham City's cast of colorful rogues would even exist if it weren't for the presence of Batman. Does the Caped Crusader merely fight them, or does he also attract them? The question may never be satisfyingly answered, but in the meantime we can enjoy such colorful criminals as The Joker, Scarecrow, The Riddler and Kite Man.

Kite Man, Hell, Yeah!

Yes, Kite-Man, the old-school Batman villain who's been the butt of countless jokes since his introduction in 1960. However, in recent years the character has enjoyed something of a resurgence with prominent roles in the DC Rebirth era of comics, and in The LEGO Batman Movie.

Villains Galore

In another glimpse of Harley's desired affinity group, several more well-known supervillains pay a visit to Atlantis to see Aquaman take a heel to the face: Black Manta, Captain Cold, Two-Face, Cheetah, Calendar Man (in his more traditional garb), and, of course, Poison Ivy.
Premiering in October on DC Universe, Harley Quinn stars Kaley Cuoco, Lake Bell, Diedrich Bader, Alan Tudyk, Rahul Kohli, Christopher Meloni, Tony Hale, Ron Funches, Wanda Sykes, Natalie Morales, Jim Rash, Giancarlo Esposito, Jason Alexander and J.B. Smoove.
KEEP READING: Harley Quinn Takes a Shot At Deadpool in First Teaser for Animated Series
About The Author

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Every DC Character in the Harley Quinn Animated Series Comic-Con Trailer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Although fan excitement is usually measured by the viewers a trailer receives, number of characters crammed into the footage might also be a good metric. If so, then the response to the Comic-Con International trailer for DC Universe's Harley Quinn animated series is off the charts.

# data[].attributes.headline
Trust Us, Jim Carrey, Fans DON'T Want Sonic the Hedgehog With Human Teeth

# data[].attributes.subject
Trust Us, Jim Carrey, Fans DON'T Want Sonic the Hedgehog With Human Teeth

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Jim Carrey's recent comments about fan influence on the creative process of redesigning Sonic the Hedgehog entirely miss the point.

The influence of fans might be annoying for creators but it can be empowering for the fanbase. Jim Carrey's recent comments at the Television Critics Association about the influence of fans on the creative process miss the mark. The criticism to the trailer for the Sonic the Hedgehog film that went viral were justifiable, pointing out that the toothy smile of the CGI Sonic was a deal-breaker.

"I don't quite know how I feel about the audience being in on the creation of it while it's happening," Carrey said. "So, we'll have to see what that entails, because sometimes you find that the collective consciousness decides it wants something, and then when it get [sic] it, it goes, 'Okay. I just wanted it. I didn't care about it. It just jumped on whatever bandwagon' or whatever."

Continue scrolling to keep reading Click the button below to start this article in quick view.

Carrey uses the term "collective consciousness" to describe fans' ability to persuade creatives. This is even more complex when they are in the midst of the creative process. It's an ironic phrase to use, though. Collective consciousness usually signals shared beliefs or ideas and, obviously, creatives and fans didn't share the same idea about what Sonic should look like on film.

RELATED: Sonic The Hedgehog Producer Promises 'Fans Will Be Pleased' With Redesign

A smart redesign should take greater cues from the games. So far, it seems as if the Sonic cartoons have had more influence on the VFX of the movie. But Carrey is probably right in some ways too. Maybe this is a collective Frankenstein's monster in the making. Ultimately, there is no easy pathway to appeasing fans when adapting beloved characters with a deep legacy across multiple media platforms.

SOME RULES FOR ADAPTATION

Let's review some of the basic rules of adaptation. The source material rules everything that follows it. Moreover, a good adaptation understands the source material. The best adaptations understand what the original means to fans. An adapted version might eventually supplant the original but its ability to do so often relies on how well it interprets its source.

Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the most enduring and beloved characters in the entire stable of Sega's intellectual properties. First introduced on the Sega Genesis platform in 1991, Sonic has become a brand/industry all his own. Today, Sonic has hundreds of millions of impressions earned across games, toys, comics, and animated series.

Original fans of the Sega Genesis were gaming in the early 1990s. That's almost thirty years ago. But Sonic has aged well and continues to reinvent himself. He plays in a world of animation, comics, and games that now caters to the children of Sega gamers circa 1991. This means that how a film adapts the Sonic character must satisfy vastly different audiences. Age is just a number here.

What appeals to 90s-era gamers might not appeal to the viewers of the animated series and vice versa. Most of the engaged audience for Sonic probably didn't experience Sonic's adventures during the Sega Genesis' original run -- and that's okay. It all just underscores how hard it is to satisfy everybody when you're adapting a beloved character.

BACK TO THE MASK

Adaptations are tough: Rarely do the creators of an adaptation satisfy all sectors of a specific fanbase and Sonic is no different. Everybody hated Sonic's human teeth in the trailer but many fans also have deeper anxiety about the overuse of CGI and VFX in general. This is even truer when the main character is computer-generated. It's understandable why some of this confounds Jim Carrey. But Carrey might refer to an earlier adaptation in his acting career for a better sense of what's at stake, and maybe he will appreciate why the look of a beloved character really matters.

RELATED: Sonic Co-Creator Yuji Naka Reacts To Movie's Last Minute Design Change

wasn't a perfect adaptation from the original comic. But it used just enough special effects to capture the spirit of the comic, and Carrey's performance helped to bring it all home for the comic book audience. This kind of achievement will be much tougher for Sonic as it's aimed at a bigger audience. Plus, Sonic the Hedgehog has many more versions of its titular character across almost every media platform. Surely Jim Carrey can appreciate fans who want creatives to get it right.

FOR SONIC, NOSTALGIA MATTERS

As scary as all of this might seem to creative folks, the redesign decision is a strange form of justice for the world of fandom. For the fans, a character isn't so much a piece of property -- they're an old friend. Fans invest in characters over the long haul. And yet, fans also understand that in the current environment, everything is about the dollar. No one is making a Sonic the Hedgehog movie to appease the gamers who made Sonic famous.

But that doesn't erase the deep feelings of nostalgia, and here is where Carrey misses the point. The shared experiences of the fans should matter to anyone who chooses to adapt a legacy character. Legacies are built over time. In this case, the legacy of Sonic is built over hundreds of thousands of gaming hours. That time matters, collectively. It's the reason why Carrey was paid whatever he was paid to play Dr. Robotnik/Dr. Eggman in the film. It is the reason why there is a Sonic the Hedgehog film at all.

KEEP READING: Sega Consoles: What You Need to Know About the Retro Gaming Giant
About The Author

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trust Us, Jim Carrey, Fans DON'T Want Sonic the Hedgehog With Human Teeth

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Jim Carrey's recent comments about fan influence on the creative process of redesigning Sonic the Hedgehog entirely miss the point. The influence of fans might be annoying for creators but it can be empowering for the fanbase. Jim Carrey's recent comments at the Television Critics Association about the influence of fans on the creative process miss the mark.

# data[].attributes.headline
Saint Seiya: Where to Start With the Classic Anime Epic

# data[].attributes.subject
Saint Seiya: Where to Start With the Classic Anime Epic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Netflix's Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac remake brings a forgotten anime gem to a whole new audience, but it's not the best starting point.

Saint Seiya is one of the most beloved manga/anime series that you have never heard of. And that's OK. The original manga series was created by Masami Kurumada in 1986 and has sold more than 34 million copies in Japan, but it was not published in the United States until 2004. If you are a manga fan, and you can appreciate how manga is adapted to anime, then starting with the first volume of the manga, Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac, is as good a place to jump into the franchise as anywhere else.

But no matter where you begin with Saint Seiya, there will always be some confusion about beginnings and endings. And some of this confusion is rooted in the core conceit of the series itself.

Continue scrolling to keep reading Click the button below to start this article in quick view.

RELATED: Netflix Debuts Trailer for Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac Anime

THE PREMISE

In the world of Saint Seiya, there is a recurring Holy War. Every 200 years or so, the Holy War begins anew with new incarnations of saints, gods and goddesses. Thus, the Seiya you encounter in the new, computer-generated Netflix series is a modern-day protagonist.

But Tenma, the protagonist from the 2009 Lost Canvas anime series (also available on Netflix) is fighting the Holy War in the 18 th century.

MASH-UP MATTERS

Saint Seiya is a glorious mash-up of manga/anime tropes within the pantheon of ancient Greek mythology. The main character, who goes by various names, becomes the Pegasus Saint. As a saint -- basically, a guardian warrior -- the character who wields the Pegasus "cosmo," leads a group of bronze saints to protect the goddess Athena. There are silver saints, who are far more powerful than the bronze saints while the gold saints are more powerful still. Depending on what version of the story you are reading or watching, the saints fight each other, specters or gods hellbent on destroying the earth.

The anime series were more popular in Europe and in Latin America than they ever were in the United States. The anime version of the series came to the US in 2003 on the Cartoon Network but it was sanitized for a young American audience to become less violent. The 20th-century production of the series couldn't compete with its glossy competitors in the 21st. That original version of the anime didn't last, which is probably why most of the American audience will encounter Saint Seiya via the 2019 Netflix offering.

SEIYA SHOULD BE SERIOUS

The 2019 Netflix version of Saint Seiya is not a good place to start. In fact, of all the various versions -- manga, anime, or full-length film -- the most recent version of The Knights of the Zodiac is probably the weakest. And this is not simply because the creators shifted the gender of Shun, a beloved queer-coded character in the original anime series.

RELATED: Rebuild Film Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Gets New Teaser Trailer

The new series is CGI, which for many purists is an automatic deal-breaker. But the central problem of the updated version is in tone. Throughout each version of Saint Seiya from the 1980s into the 21st century, there is always some form of comic relief but the overall tone of the series is serious. The battles are epic. And in some versions -- e.g. The Lost Canvas -- long-form battles are the essence of the series.

The 2019 Netflix version of this well-loved IP simply isn't serious enough. Seiya seems wholly inappropriate as the lead character. His 2019 tweeny cynicism always seems out of step with what Saint Seiya has been about. Earlier versions of Saint Seiya embrace a certain gravitas. These earlier versions are more like the earliest versions of G-Force or Voltron; they are both epic and intricate.

The 2019 version of this series is more like Jimmy Neutron. (No offense to Jimmy Neutron or his fans.) But Saint Seiya is more drama and tragedy than comedy. And it is not clear that these current creators have figured that out as of yet.

BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING

The best place to start with Saint Seiya is, obviously, at the beginning. The manga version published in the US is easier to find than any of the earliest anime versions as there seem to be some licensing issues with the original anime series at the moment.

But manga might not be your thing and, if it isn't, then the 2009's Saint Seiya: Lost Canvas is also a great place to begin your love affair with these classic anime stories. These 26 episodes serve as a prequel to the original and they are produced in a more traditional anime style with the dramatic intensity that any Saint Seiya series requires.

For those who prefer CG anime then consider starting with Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary from 2014. This feature-length film is set in the present and it is also fairly faithful to the original manga version of the story. Somehow the CGI in Legend of Sanctuary is more appropriate for Saint Seiya than that in the 2019 Netflix series.

Again, tone matters. Saint Seiya is an extraordinary amalgamation of Greek mythology and epic anime-style warfare. It works best when its creatives appreciate the weight of the original versions of the story.

KEEP READING: Princess Mononoke: Quentin Tarantino Almost Wrote English Dub
About The Author

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Saint Seiya: Where to Start With the Classic Anime Epic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Netflix's Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac remake brings a forgotten anime gem to a whole new audience, but it's not the best starting point. Saint Seiya is one of the most beloved manga/anime series that you have never heard of. And that's OK.

# data[].attributes.headline
HBO's Watchmen Will Go Head to Head With The Walking Dead

# data[].attributes.subject
HBO's Watchmen Will Go Head to Head With The Walking Dead

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Walking Dead has ruled the Sunday night primetime slot for years, but now it will have a challenger in the form of HBO's Watchmen.

Who will be watching Watchmen on HBO this fall? If airtime is any indication, the cable network is hoping that millions of us will. And if there is such a thing as a pole position for the waning days of appointment television, it would be Sundays at 9 p.m. Setting aside NFL Sunday Night Football, that has been the most-watched time slot for your favorite prestige television dramas. From The Sopranos to Game of Thrones and Westworld, HBO has ruled Sundays at 9 p.m. more often than not.

But AMC's The Walking Dead has dominated the Sunday primetime for years. Game of Thrones didn't directly compete with the cable juggernaut, as each series aired new episodes during the other's off-season. Yet, The Walking Dead has not sustained its high level of success in recent years. Season 9 saw some of its lowest ratings, bringing in about 4.5 million viewers per episode. Just for context, please note that any other TV show -- streaming or otherwise -- would kill for these numbers. The Walking Dead is vulnerable to a worthy challenger for the coveted 9 p.m. Sunday time slot. Premiering at exactly that time on Oct. 20 on HBO, Watchmen will go head-to-head with The Walking Dead this fall.

Continue scrolling to keep reading Click the button below to start this article in quick view.

RELATED: Zack Snyder's Watchmen Should Have Come Out in 2019

HBO's Watchmen series, adapted by Damon Lindelof, stars Regina King, Jeremy Irons, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jean Smart, Don Johnson, Sara Vickers and Louis Gossett Jr., among many others. It's an ensemble cast with significant star power. Lindelof has been clear that his adaptation is not a reboot. This iteration of Watchmen takes place 30 or more years after the events that took place in Alan Moore's classic graphic series. The show should remain committed to the canonical themes established by the original, but Watchmen is a tricky intellectual property.

Alan Moore has never really invested himself in the film adaptations (or in this case television) or the many attempts to rehash the world of Watchmen in comics. But there are plenty of capable writers, directors and producers who can (and will) work with the source material to adapt it for television. What the creators have to do is nearly impossible. The nostalgia that Watchmen readers have for the original is rooted in the experience of reading the original in the mid-to-late 1980s.

RELATED: HBO 'Coming Soon' Promo Features New Watchmen, Westworld Footage

For these readers, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen was a radical reordering of the superhero comic book genre. The stories were dark, revisionist and complex. But the boon of the Watchmen graphic novel was that it deconstructed the very concept of being a superhero. It also re-envisioned what a superhero comic book could be. And it did these things such that the reading of every other work in the superhero genre after had to be considered in relation to it. Will HBO's version of Watchmen be able to achieve these feats within the superhero television genre? Probably not. But it might not have to. For comic-to-TV fans, even the possibility that HBO's Watchmen might redeem the intellectual property from the movie hell in which it has been languishing is enough to pique interest.

Meanwhile, The Walking Dead is probably looking at its swan song. Viewers' waning interest in the series might be the result of many factors. It is entering its 10th season. That is a long time for any TV show. But it has also shed more than a few major characters who were well-liked by viewing audiences. There is also the fact that the entire concept of "appointment TV" is in flux. Just a few years ago, appointment TV was pronounced dead. But with Netflix shifting some of its content to the serial format, it is clear that show bingeing is not as dominant as the streamers and cordcutters initially thought.

RELATED: HBO's Watchmen Gets Official Release Date

When you look at the viewership numbers for The Walking Dead, the decline seems to start after the brutal introduction of Negan. For the avid readers of The Walking Dead comic, the brutal murders executed by Negan were expected. But for the majority of the TV viewers the mangling of Glen on screen was too much. And that is saying a lot for a show that is as about as violent as television can be.

HBO's Watchmen will likely have its own fair share of brutality and violence. The question will be whether or not comic-to-TV fans are ready to put The Walking Dead to bed and gear up for a new attempt at adapting a timeless classic. Tick tock. Only time will tell.

Developed by Damon Lindelof, HBO's Watchmen stars Jeremy Irons, Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Louis Gossett Jr., Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Tom Mison, James Wolk, Adelaide Clemens, Andrew Howard, Frances Fisher, Jacob Ming-Trent, Sara Vickers, Dylan Schombing, Lily Rose Smith and Adelynn Spoon. The series will premiere Oct. 20.
About The Author

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
HBO's Watchmen Will Go Head to Head With The Walking Dead

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Walking Dead has ruled the Sunday night primetime slot for years, but now it will have a challenger in the form of HBO's Watchmen. Who will be watching Watchmen on HBO this fall? If airtime is any indication, the cable network is hoping that millions of us will.

# data[].attributes.headline
X-Men: Are the Children of the Vault Humanity's Next Evolution?

# data[].attributes.subject
X-Men: Are the Children of the Vault Humanity's Next Evolution?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
With the return of the Children of the Vault, the X-Men could find themselves replaced as the next evolution of humanity.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for X-Men #1, by Jonathan Hickman, Leinil Francis Yu, Gerry Alanguilan, Sunny Gho, VC's Clayton Cowles and Tom Muller, on sale now.
Sabertooth isn't afraid of much. Even though he's one of the most vicious mutants in the Marvel Universe, Los Ninos De La Camara, or the Children of the Vault, had him running scared in 2008's X-Men #190, by Mike Carey and Chris Bachalo. As he described them, "They're not mutants. But they're not human either."

While the Children of the Vault have rarely been mentioned since "Supernovas," the story arc that introduced them, ended, one of these characters made their sudden return in X-Men #1. Now, we're taking a closer look at the Children of the Vault to see what their return could mean for the X-Men's future.

Continue scrolling to keep reading Click the button below to start this article in quick view.

RELATED: X-Men Just Revealed [SPOILER} Might Not Be a Mutant

WHO ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE VAULT?

Shortly after the events of M-Day brought the few hundred mutants who were left in the world to the X-Mansion, Sabretooth showed up looking for safe haven. When asked about why he needed help, Sabretooth told the X-Men that he was hired to kill a group of elite scientists. After realizing that the last victim on the contract is the man who hired him, Victor Creed investigates. He discovers that these scientists were able to construct a space where time could accelerate beyond its natural pace.

The Children of the Vault were humans who existed in this accelerated-time space, and they were able to advance and evolve as a species over the course of some 6000 years. Although the scientists devised a way for them to remain hidden in a vault on a ship (The Conquistador), strategically positioned on international waters, Sabretooth's meddling and the events of M-Day saw them released from the Vault prematurely.

The Children of the Vault are an entire race of post-humans who are theoretically meant to claim Earth after both mutants and humans no longer exist on the planet. But in the "Supernovas" storyline only five of them are in action - Aguja, Perro, Fuego, Serafina, and their leader - Sangre. While their names and their Spanish language skills hint that they're potentially of Latinx descent, their culture, technology and powers have evolved dramatically over the 6,000 years they've lived through.

The Next Evolution?

While they haven't made too many appearances since their first encounter with Sabretooth and the X-Men, Marvel's main mutant team discovered a girl who appears to be Serafina when she was being held by Project: Orchis. While she disappeared as soon as they freed her, her very presence brings forth ideas about post-humanity that have already appeared throughout Hickman's X-Men tenure.

Hickman hasn't been shy about expressing his love for Mike Carey's work on the X-Men, and Carey's Children of the Vault storyline is thematically consistent with Hickman's vision for the X-Men.

RELATED: Marauders: Did a Classic X-Man Just Eat Someone?

The Children of the Vault are immensely powerful. Over the course of their introduction in the X-universe, they hunt Sabretooth like a dog, make an entire city block, possess and enhance the powers of Northstar and Aurora, and nearly wipe out all of the X-Men.

With an introduction like that, it's clear the Children of the Vault represent a legitimate path of humanity's evolution. Since mutants have always represented the most visible species that could replace humanity, evolution will always be a thematic undercurrent of the X-Men. However, the conditions that govern the next evolution of humanity have changed over time - in our reality and in worlds of the X-Men.

While Powers of X introduced different man-machine hybrids that represent what humanity could evolve into in the far future, the Children of the Vault represent a similar idea in the present-day Marvel Universe. If the X-Men are built around the idea that mutants are the final evolution of humanity, the Children of the Vault pose an existential threat to mutants' place in Marvel's future that Hickman will undoubtedly explore in his ongoing stories.

KEEP READING: X-Men: A Familiar Red Gem Could Mean the End of Mutant Life
About The Author

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
X-Men: Are the Children of the Vault Humanity's Next Evolution?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With the return of the Children of the Vault, the X-Men could find themselves replaced as the next evolution of humanity. Warning: This article contains spoilers for X-Men #1, by Jonathan Hickman, Leinil Francis Yu, Gerry Alanguilan, Sunny Gho, VC's Clayton Cowles and Tom Muller, on sale now.

# data[].attributes.headline
Marauders: [SPOILER] Can't Enter X-Men Island - and That Should Worry You

# data[].attributes.subject
Marauders: [SPOILER] Can't Enter X-Men Island - and That Should Worry You

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An iconic X-Man can't enter the shores of Krakoa like the rest of Marvel's mutants, and that could spell big trouble for the team.

Warning: The following article contains spoilers for #1, by Gerry Duggan, Matteo Lolli, Federico Blee, VC's Cory Petit and Tom Muller, on sale now.
Kitty Pryde has been a mutant for almost as long as most modern readers have been reading X-Men comics. When she debuted in Chris Claremont and John Byrne's iconic Uncanny X-Men run in 1980, she was created by John Byrne and Chris Claremont in 1980, Pryde was a new and wholly unique focal point who was younger than any of the team's other members.

While her unique teenage perspective gave young readers an entryway into the book, Kitty's teeny-bopper wit and ever-changing fashion styles influenced the overall tone of the X-Men in ways that continue to reverberate through the contemporary X-Men books. While she's since grown into a fierce young woman and a capable leader in her own right, her young, enterprising spirit has remained a core part of her character.

Continue scrolling to keep reading Click the button below to start this article in quick view.

However, in Marauders #1, Kitty -- or as she's now known, Kate -- hit a wall, literally. While House of X left portals to the island mutant homeland Krakoa open all over the world, Pyrde can't enter the portals, like her teammates, and she even breaks her nose when she tries to.

RELATED: Marauders Brings a Classic Villain into the House of X

Since the portals should theoretically allow any mutant to enter freely, her denied access suggests that she may not actually be a mutant. That could even mean that she may be an unwitting sleeper agent as part of the secret conspiracy against the X-Men that's been building for over a year.

However, none of the other X-Men seem tpp terribly disturbed by this phenomenon. While the problem is allegedly being discussed by the Krakoan leadership team, the sense of urgency that readers might feel about the situation is not shared by her colleagues within the story itself.

Despite all that, Kate is still the leader of the newest X-Men team, the Marauders. Named after the mutant assassins who struck fear into the hearts of the X-Men, the new Marauders, led by Kate, are a sea-faring group of some of fan-favorite X-Men who will be navigating the world to save mutants from the most resistant trenches of persecution. These pockets of persecution remain on an Earth where a good few nations still don't fully recognize the sovereignty of Krakoa.

While Storm, Bishop, Pyro, Iceman and their benefactor Emma Frost have an essential mission in building and maintaining Krakoa's status, Kate can only travel to the island by boat.

RELATED: X-Men Editor Says Marauders is the Most Important Dawn of X Title

The irony inherent in this team's name might be an echo of the ironic fact that the team's leader can walk through anything except for the doorways to her home land. She is an exile of sorts and this underscores the role that the Marauders must play in the Dawn of X saga of stories. They have to operate - in some ways - outside of the law and beyond the political arrangements established by Xavier, Moira, and Magneto.

While one theory about Kitty's powers suggest that she is a member of a non-mutant superhuman race called the Neo, it is almost inconceivable that Kate is not or never has been a mutant.

If Kitty is still a mutant, there could be another reason that she can't travel through Krakoa's portals. Krakoa, after all, is sentient. Maybe it's not letting her in to ensure that she remains one of the X-Men's chief representatives to a world that needs Pyrde out on the open seas, doing all that she can to gather those who have been left behind. On the other hand, Krakoa may be operating at the urging of a Charles Xavier with something he doesn't want her to find on Krakoa.

Thanks to a lifetime of experiences, Kate has been evolved from a 13-year-old junior X-Man in psychedelic roller-skating gear into a wizened veteran of both political and physical combat. As the leader of the Marauders, she seems set to play a major role in the world of Krakoa, even if it takes her a while to get there.

KEEP READING: Marauders Reveals Wolverine's Shopping List and Its Perfect
About The Author

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Marauders: [SPOILER] Can't Enter X-Men Island - and That Should Worry You

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An iconic X-Man can't enter the shores of Krakoa like the rest of Marvel's mutants, and that could spell big trouble for the team. Warning: The following article contains spoilers for #1, by Gerry Duggan, Matteo Lolli, Federico Blee, VC's Cory Petit and Tom Muller, on sale now.

# data[].attributes.headline
Excalibur: If Apocalypse Is a Good Guy Now... Then Why Is [SPOILER] Back?

# data[].attributes.subject
Excalibur: If Apocalypse Is a Good Guy Now... Then Why Is [SPOILER] Back?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Even though Apocalypse has seemingly joined the X-Men on Krakoa, an old group of his devotees has resurfaced in a way that it never has before.

WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Excalibur #1 by Tini Howard, Marcus To and Erick Arciniega, on sale now.
The Clan Akkaba is one of the oldest groups in the Marvel Universe, and now, it got a new lease on life as a coven in the epilogue to Excalibur #1. Furthermore, the appearance of the Coven Akkaba has heightened all of our concerns about Apocalypse -- or A as he insists to be called in this issue - and his alignment with Charles Xavier's vision for the future.

For the moment, Apocalypse has effortlessly assumed a leadership role on the new Excalibur team, and he seems to be working with the X-Men's best interests in mind. However, the return of Akkaba adds a layer of mystery and distinction to the series right at the outset. After the issue put Apocalypse at the center or the newly-revealed world of mutant magic, Marianna Stern kills her covenmates and joins the Coven Akkaba at the end of the issue.

Continue scrolling to keep reading Click the button below to start this article in quick view.

RELATED: Excalibur Gives a Major House of X Mutant a Perfect Codename

While Apocalypse's presence in Excalibur may have initially been puzzling, the series is about the fusion of magic and mutants. As a newly-revealed core figure at the intersection of those interests, Apocalypse and the mysterious Clan (no Coven) Akkaba seem positioned to have the perfect backstory for this new era of Excalibur.

Over 5000 years ago, Apocalypse was born in a small village called Akkaba, which was massacred by a scavenger named Baal. The raider took Apocalypse in, named him En Sabah Nur and raised him by the strict codes of his own tribe - the Sandstormers. They were devout believers in the "survival of the fittest" ethos, long before Charles Darwin introduced the concept to the rest of the world.

As Apocalypse lived through the ensuing years, he escaped death many times, had many children and figured out how to perpetually sustain his life. Apocalypse 's descendants founded the Clan Akkaba and dedicated themselves to carrying out the designs of Apocalypse whenever he would rest/hibernate in order to restore his vitality. Clan Akkaba worshiped Apocalypse, especially embracing his 'survival of the fittest' ethos. Several members of the Clan embodied some of Apocalypse 's extraordinary abilities used them when they fought Dracula and various mutant vampires in the Victorian era.

RELATED: Excalibur Writer Promises Apocalypse Has Big Secret Plans

As of now, it is unclear what the current relationship is between Coven Akkaba and Apocalypse or if they're even working towards the same goals. Apocalypse seemed to enthusiastically accept Xavier's invitation to join the X-Men on the mutant nation Krakoa, and his presence on its ruling Quiet Council suggests that he is in alignment with Xavier and the other political leaders of Krakoa. Consider how much Moira MacTaggert's own experience with Apocalypse informed how she, Charles Xavier and Magneto established Krakoa, it looks like Xavier's ideology is converging with Apocalypse's long-stated goals, not diverging from them.

While a vague notion of "survival of the fittest" is still guiding Krakoa, Apocalypse may have finally, truly become a team player for Krakoa in Excalibur. That's only underscored by Apocalypse's renewed interest in magic, which fits in seamlessly with Otherworld, Arthurian legends and the medieval magic that's the cornerstone of the Excalibur franchise. Still, just because Apocalypse has decided to throw in his lot with Xavier, there's no reason to assume that all of his descendants have (or will) follow suit. If the Coven Akkaba has a vision of the world, it wouldn't be the first time that Apocalypse has found himself fighting the people he was once allied with.

KEEP READING: X-Men: Mutant Power Levels Explained, From Alpha to Omega
About The Author

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Excalibur: If Apocalypse Is a Good Guy Now... Then Why Is [SPOILER] Back?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Even though Apocalypse has seemingly joined the X-Men on Krakoa, an old group of his devotees has resurfaced in a way that it never has before. WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Excalibur #1 by Tini Howard, Marcus To and Erick Arciniega, on sale now.

# data[].attributes.headline
Apocalip-lock: The X-Men's Greatest Enemy Now Wants a Big, Sexy Mutant Orgy

# data[].attributes.subject
Apocalip-lock: The X-Men's Greatest Enemy Now Wants a Big, Sexy Mutant Orgy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Excalibur #1 finds Apocalypse in a celebratory mood -- and he wants all of mutantkind to feel the love. (Literally.)

WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Excalibur #1 by Tini Howard and Marcus To, on sale now.
"The children that come from tonight's unions will be the most powerful generation of mutants the world has ever seen." And with these words, the old Apocalypse returns to the brand-new pages of Excalibur #1. Apocalypse, or simply the Krakoan letter for "A," as he now prefers to be called, looks on in delight as his fellow mutants celebrate the birth of their first sovereign nation. But it is not the birth of the world's first mutant nation that has A all hot and bothered in Exaclibur #1. It's the prospect of all of the mutant offspring that will surely result from this first night's Dionysian celebrations.

Continue scrolling to keep reading Click the button below to start this article in quick view.

Apocalypse's obsession with mutant mating is not so new. During the Age of X events, A was invested in a certain kind of free love ethos amongst mutants. Apocalypse figured the most important way to rebel against Nate Grey's loveless Age of X utopia was to champion romance and familial happiness.

RELATED: Excalibur Just Brought an Omega-Level Wild Card Into the X-Men

Producing more and more mutants is not an unintended consequence of Apocalypse's affinity for mutants cohabitating. A has always been a proponent for situations that are conducive to expanding the mutant population and enhancing their capacity for existence and dominance. These ideas are no longer so far removed from Xavier's vision itself.

The Dawn of X event is unfolding because of the convergence of ideologies amongst the world's most powerful mutants: Apocalypse, Magneto, Moira and Professor Xavier. Moira's mutant ability to reincarnate herself essentially allowed her to explore all of the timelines wherein mutants become extinct. Dawn of X is the one chance that mutant populations might survive in perpetuity. But all of this, Dawn of X is only possible because ideas that seemed more radical in previous iterations of the X-Men worlds are now more palatable. The meek will not inherit this earth, so the mutant populous is now prepared to make itself fit for survival. In this sense, the Dawn of X is more A then X.

Apocalypse's interest in the mutant revelry he sees unfolding in Excalibur #1 is not as simple as whatever voyeuristic pleasure he gets from the moment. He has lived longer than almost any other mutant -- except for Moira, maybe. And his semi-immortal existence has afforded him the kind of Darwinian perspective that Xavier has only recently come to through the eyes and the lives of Moira McTaggert.

According to the logic of mutation and the events that unfolded during the Powers of X and House of X miniseries there are various ways that mutant genetics can combine and interface to create super-powered mutants. Apocalypse seems to have his eye on all of the genetic possibilities as much as on the partying itself.

RELATED: X-Men Theory: Excalibur's Invader Has Been Coming For Years

The future for mutants is not certain. Each and every future that has been revealed to readers is post-apocalyptic. The only way that mutants will survive is by adopting some of the tenets of some of the X-Men's most powerful foes and you can count Apocalypse as one of these. And, keep in mind that his ideas about the future of mutants may not be in total alignment with Prof X and company.

From A's perspective, it is the X-Men and Professor X who have finally come around to his way of seeing the world. They have finally come to understand that humans will relentlessly persecute mutants and eventually the alliance between humans and machines will eradicate mutant kind. Apocalypse has known this since -- well, since the beginning of time, almost. Seeing him look upon the Krakoan celebrations, it makes sense that he would take a moment to witness the consummation of his greatest plans for mutant kind.

KEEP READING: Excalibur: If Apocalypse Is a Good Guy Now... Then Why Is [SPOILER] Back?
About The Author

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Apocalip-lock: The X-Men's Greatest Enemy Now Wants a Big, Sexy Mutant Orgy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Excalibur #1 finds Apocalypse in a celebratory mood -- and he wants all of mutantkind to feel the love. (Literally.) WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Excalibur #1 by Tini Howard and Marcus To, on sale now. "The children that come from tonight's unions will be the most powerful generation of mutants the world has ever seen."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Marvel"s "Gwenpool: Strikes Back"" is a genre defying epiphany of what meta means in the world of comic book creation. Gwendolyn Poole is Gwenpool, a near reject from the Marvel universe who validates her existence in the Marvel comic book universe via the first issue of "Gwenpool: Strikes Back."" Panels and pages are malleable tools for Gwen"s narration.

# data[].attributes.headline
ADVANCE REVIEW: Count Crowley: Reluctant Midnight Monster Hunter #1

# data[].attributes.subject
ADVANCE REVIEW: Count Crowley: Reluctant Midnight Monster Hunter #1

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Count Crowley: Reluctant Midnight Monster Hunter is one of the most distinct comic titles to come along in a while. And its title "" quirky and descriptive "" is but one indicator of how unique (and uniquely good) this book actually is. Generally speaking, comic books that are auditioning for other media platforms (e.g.

film/television) are not great comic books. Count Crowley doesn"t fall into this category. But it reads like the better (and darker) situation comedies of the contemporary moment. Written by David Dastmalchian with distinctive visuals provided by Lukas Ketner and Lauren Affe, Dark Horse Comics has once again proven its undeniable penchant for producing some of the most original stories in comics "" or in any medium.

Maybe it"s the fact that the first couple of times that readers encounter Count Crowley"s protagonist, Jerri Butler, she"s either swigging whiskey from the bottle or chugging wine from a box, but you will love her. Jerri is instantly authentic. And although who Count Crowley is remains a mystery through this first issue, it is clear who the star of the show (and the comic book) really is.

Jerri is Count Crowley "" at least since the original person who plays Count Crowley on the TV show within the comic book series has disappeared. And she is reluctant. The circumstances that lead her to the lead role as host of a TV show that premiers corny horror movies are part of the comedy that animates the series. Comics that are about TV shows aren"t necessarily new, but Count Crowley"s comedic pace and its subtle self-awareness as a noir, faux horror, dark comedy miniseries is irresistible.

But genre definitions don"t matter so much for this Dark Horse gem. Count Crowley is gruesome when it wants to be horrific, hilarious when it wants to be comedic, and cunning when it wants to be dark. It"s not the comic"s fault that you will experience it as if it is already fully realized in another medium. That"s just the consequence of a deliberately well-crafted and visually compelling story.

All of that said, Count Crowley still remains a mystery. What happened to the original Count Crowley? Why is the host of a TV show about whack horror movies doubling as a monster hunter? What happened to Jerri and her brother in Cleveland? These questions and many more will be answered in the months to come in Count Crowley: Reluctant Midnight Monster Hunter.
SCORE: 4.5/5
Writer:Â David Dastmalchian
Artist:Â Lukas Ketner

Letterer:Â Frank Cvetkovic

Cover Artist:Â Lukas Ketner
Tune in to our interview with David HERE
Follow David on Twitter:Â @Dastmalchian
Instagram:Â@dastmalchian
Website:Â daviddastmalchian.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
ADVANCE REVIEW: Count Crowley: Reluctant Midnight Monster Hunter #1

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Count Crowley: Reluctant Midnight Monster Hunter is one of the most distinct comic titles to come along in a while. And its title "" quirky and descriptive "" is but one indicator of how unique (and uniquely good) this book actually is. Generally speaking, comic books that are auditioning for other media platforms (e.g.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The YA world of fantasy and graphic novels might not be ready for Daniel Barnes and D.J. Kirkland"s BLACK MAGE. Published by Oni Press and out this week, BLACK MAGE follows the experiences of Tom Token as he integrates an historically all-white magical institution "" St. Ivory Academy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Every so often a reader will encounter or read an issue of a comic book that will compel them to read any and everything related to that series. You will have to know the story and understand the world inhabited by those characters. This is what reading "Heartthrob: Season Three"" #1 is like. Chris Sebela, Robert Wilson IV, and company have cooked up a comic classic with this series, published by Oni-Lion Forge. Main characters, Cassie and Mercer/Forsythe are a couple of criminal heart transplant donor/recipients whose connection may be more than anatomical.

Heartthrob: Season Three #1 opens with Cassie incarcerated in a facility for the mentally ill. Sebela and Wilson"s visual articulation of the mundane nature of her routine will give readers a glimpse of the madness that institutions sometimes make worse. Wilson"s art (with Nick Filardi"s colors) is distinct and at times cinematic. Wilson"s visual style in Heartthrob is reminiscent of the animation styles of FX"s classic comedy series, ARCHER. Heartthrob isn"t really about its jokes, of which there are a few in issue #1. The series has a great sense of humor, but Cassie"s dilemma at the start of "season three"" is complex.

Most of the story in this issue is a conversation between Cassie, who received her heart from Mercer who is real, alive and now going by Forsythe. The irony of the recipient of an organ transplant talking with the donor is an intriguing conceit, well executed here. Again, if you haven"t read the backstory and/or the previous issues of this series, this issue will force you to go to either your LCS or comixology to get up to speed.

The imagery and the allusions make the story more than a complex conversation between two existentially linked characters. The landscaped maze that Cassie and Forsythe navigate as they talk gives readers some sense of the labyrinthine nature of Cassie"s predicament. Her criminal behavior may or may not be of her own volition, but the decisions she must make going forward will have to be "" if that"s even possible at this point.

About a third of the way through the issue, Cassie passes some of her monotonous institutional time by reading Octavia Butler"s WILD SEED. Yet another one of Octavia Butler"s classics that will soon be adapted, WILD SEED features an immortal character who is essentially a body snatcher. No more spoilers here, but reading Cassie while she is reading Octavia Butler"s WILD SEED, will hopefully inspire every reader of this issue to do the same.
SCORE: 4.5/5

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Every so often a reader will encounter or read an issue of a comic book that will compel them to read any and everything related to that series. You will have to know the story and understand the world inhabited by those characters. This is what reading "Heartthrob: Season Three"" #1 is like.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the recently relaunched Marvel mutant universe, the EXCALIBUR title is an outlier of sorts. In some ways, EXCALIBUR has always been an outlier in the X-universe. The title has always centered around the United Kingdom and various aspects of British folklore. It has tended to keep its distance from the core of the X-world happenings. For some readers, this might place the most recent iteration of EXCALIBUR near the bottom of the list of revamped X-titles.

House of X and Powers of X together generated immense excitement amongst fans and critics. But that level of acclaim invited lots of questions about whether or not J. Hickman (and all of the great talent assembled to execute his vision) would be able to sustain the electric energy from HofX/PofX series into the monthly series. EXCALIBUR #5 proves that some of the best X-stories are still to come.

The first few months/issues of EXCALIBUR set up several key threads in the story line of the series that mature into a stunning conclusion in issue #5. First, Apocalypse, who now goes simply by the Krakoan letter "A,"" is determined to mine and access the true source of mutant magic. The source resides in ancient mutant bones. In order to access them and to carry out plans that readers and teammates don"t quite know until this issue, he wants to access the magical Otherworld, ruled by Morgan Le Fay. Second, Gambit hates that "A"" is his teammate, and in many ways the de facto leader of EXCALIBUR. And lastly, Rogue has been in a magical coma since the first issue. All of these threads are woven together into a climax in EXCALIBUR #5 that will impact the entire X-universe.

Magic, knights, wizards, Excalibur (the sword), and Morgan Le Fay are the kinds of magical story elements/references that have historically made EXCALIBUR a distant cousin to the other X-books. But Tini Howard (writer), Marcus To (artist) and Erick Arciniega (Color Artist), have produced a level of quality in the writing/dialogue and in the imagery that distinguishes this version of EXCALIBUR as the best in the title"s history. Issue #5 has to transition from the Otherworld, to London, to the interior of Rogue"s catatonic mind, guided by one of our favorite telepaths in the form of a canine familiar. The transitions and contrasts in coloring alone will make this issue one of the most interesting things on the shelf this week.

EXCALIBUR #5 is one of those issues where you will be forced to read it because everybody else will be talking about it. You will also want to avoid any spoilers in order to fully appreciated what Tini Howard has in store for some of the most interesting characters in any of the X-books. If you were thinking that once again, EXCALIBUR is just too far adrift from what else is happening in all of the other X-titles, think again. This issue is not one to pass on!
SCORE: 4/5
(W) Tini Howard (A) Marcus To (CA) Mahmud Asrar

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the recently relaunched Marvel mutant universe, the EXCALIBUR title is an outlier of sorts. In some ways, EXCALIBUR has always been an outlier in the X-universe. The title has always centered around the United Kingdom and various aspects of British folklore. It has tended to keep its distance from the core of the X-world happenings.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The opening of HORDE, an eerie graphic novel published by Aftershock this week, reminds me of the unforgettable opening of my favorite Wu-Tang album, the GZA"a Liquid Swords. In each opening the voice of an innocent child establishes the epic nature of the narrative to follow. No need to push this too far, but HORDE is heady like a Wu-Tang record too. It samples just enough gothic imagery, psychological horror and the existential baggage of our lived experiences to force its readers to rethink the ways in which memory and possession operate in our relationships to things and to people.

That child"s voice recounts a terrifying incident. When she was younger, the narrator/protagonist has an encounter with a vase. She somehow makes a historical connection with the vase and, in the process, comes to understand the kind of violent oppression that often accompanies the collection of artifacts from countries and cultures of another era. The whole interaction is mysterious in and of itself, but it also foreshadows some of the central themes of Marguerite Bennett"s compelling story. This is a story that questions our relationships to things in ways that will change readers" understanding of the obsessive materiality that plagues us all.

Created by Marguerite Bennett (writer) and Leila Leiz (artist), HORDE embraces its homophonic partner (hoard) directly with powerful effects "" thematically and visually for the story. Ruby, the terrified little girl from the opening sequence of the graphic novel, is all grown up now and burying her beloved father. As the executor of his estate, she is now charged with meeting with her estranged mother and settling their affairs. Unfortunately, there is a ton of baggage "" literally and figuratively "" between them. Adult Ruby is still unsure of why/how her mother abandoned her so long ago. And Mia (Ruby"s mom), is an extraordinary hoarder of things "" all things material and otherwise.

Things escalate and get complicated quickly as Ruby is trapped in the quagmire of Mia"s horde/hoard. Again, the homophone is played brilliantly here by Bennett and Leiz both. The end result is that readers have to rethink their relationships to things. Why do we keep what we keep? And what exactly is a keepsake when our memories are so imperfect that what we keep loses its original meaning. But that is just the top layer of HORDE. Ultimately, our relationships to things shape our relationship to our own memories, which in turn influences and sometimes determines our relationship to people. You will not be able to read HORDE without thinking about your relationship to all of the above.
SCORE: 4/5
(W) Marguerite Bennett (A/CA) Leila Leiz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The opening of HORDE, an eerie graphic novel published by Aftershock this week, reminds me of the unforgettable opening of my favorite Wu-Tang album, the GZA"a Liquid Swords. In each opening the voice of an innocent child establishes the epic nature of the narrative to follow.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Over the last few years writing comics that feature characters and/or heroes in space has become an intensely competitive sport. Valiant Entertainment"s PSI-LORDS #6 enters the fray this week as it continues to make progress in finding its best narrative footing. Without a doubt, the bar on space stories in comics has been set high in recent times. Written by Fred Van Lente with wavy artwork from Renato Guedes, PSI-LORDS has to distinguish itself in the shadows of contemporary critical darlings like SAGA, Black Science, Vagrant Queen and Wasted Space. The series opens with the protagonists (a team of four), escaping imprisonment. In those early issues, Scion "" their liberator, was a good guy and a budding mentor. And the Starwatchers were their evil captors and the autocratic rulers of the realm (The Gyre) tethered to a nearby Vampire star.

By the time readers have arrived at the opening of "Balance of Power"" (PSI-LORDS #6), things have shifted. Scion is not their mentor but their enemy. And the Starwatchers might still be the bad guys, but our team "" Beacon, Hazard, Artisan, and Tank "" are on trial. Misnamed as the "Astro Friends,"" the four recently liberated heroes are being tried for the murder of one of the Wardens of the Gyre "" prison guards empowered by the Starwatchers to police the prisoners of the planet. Generally speaking, trials have a way of solidifying the dramatic core of any good story. And the event works similarly here for the PSI-LORDS series.

Even though the enemies and allies of the "Astro Friends"" have still yet to be determined, the personalities of the protagonists are starting to emerge in the conflicts of the trial. A flashback for Artisan provides some important backstory on his character and will help readers to come to a better understanding of why he is the way that he is. This flashback bodes well for the series as readers will want (and need) to know more about the "Astro Friends"" in order to stay vested in the book going forward.

The trial unfolds and readers are treated to the various alien species that make up the Wardens of the Gyre. As the necessary battles ensue, our heroes realize that there might actually be a way off of this planet. And this "" the possibility of a way off the Gyre "" is an exciting turn for the heroes of PSI-LORDS. Who knows exactly what lies ahead for Beacon, Hazard, Artisan, and Tank, but getting them out and into space is exactly what this storyline needs.

(W) Fred Van Lente (A) Renato Guedes (CA) Raul Allen

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Over the last few years writing comics that feature characters and/or heroes in space has become an intensely competitive sport. Valiant Entertainment"s PSI-LORDS #6 enters the fray this week as it continues to make progress in finding its best narrative footing. Without a doubt, the bar on space stories in comics has been set high in recent times.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Marvel Action (MA) series of titles published through IDW is designed for younger fans of Marvel (and Disney"s) expansive collection of intellectual properties. But MA"s Black Panther #5, written by Vita Ayala, with beautiful art drawn by Arianna Florean, is one of the most sophisticated takes on the Black Panther world. On the surface, it"s a mundane story about Shuri"s disrespect for an elder in the community. But beneath the surface, Vita Ayala excavates an undeniable tension in the world of Wakanda "" a tension that most other Black Panther writers either do not understand or simply tend to avoid.

Wakanda is a utopian society "" for the most part. Utopian societies can"t really exist, in the sense that no world, nation, state, city, or town can be perfect. But Wakanda is as about a perfect society as there is in comics. Again, this is for the most part. Ta Nehisi Coates and others have explored the inherent flaws in Jack Kirby"s original vision of a technologically advance Black nation that somehow insulated itself from colonial interruptions. These explorations have been vital to our understanding of the worlds of Black Panther and for the character"s enduring legacy as the premier Black hero of the Marvel universe.

Ayala"s plot in MA Black Panther #5 is concerned more with the quotidian experiences of Wakanda"s heroes than it is with the cosmos. It opens in Wakanda"s Great Market and moves to the interior of a medical facility. These scenes and settings suggest a simple story that may or may not involve too much action. There is action in this issue, but the action is not the issue. What"s at issue in MA Black Panther #5 is the immutable tension that underwrites the world of Wakanda. That tension "" the conflict between traditional, non-Western, African culture and the tech-based advanced culture of Wakanda "" is obvious. But it is rarely explored in the ways that Ayala and Florean do here.

The key to Wakanda"s utopian aspirations has been the vibranium source that generates its technological advancements and thereby its capacity to determine its own national destiny. This sense of self-determination is vital for the sense of Blackness that animates all Black Panther books. But this kind of technological advancement also comes at a cost. How are traditional African healers supposed to remain valuable and valued in a culture that can cure people with "healing tubes?"" For all of Shuri"s extraordinary intellectual abilities, it is unclear if she appreciates the simple "" but often overlooked "" conflict between traditional African culture and Wakandan innovation. Good thing the creative team on MA Black Panther is looking right at it.
SCORE: 4.5/5
(W) Vita Ayala (A/CA) Arianna Florean

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Marvel Action (MA) series of titles published through IDW is designed for younger fans of Marvel (and Disney"s) expansive collection of intellectual properties. But MA"s Black Panther #5, written by Vita Ayala, with beautiful art drawn by Arianna Florean, is one of the most sophisticated takes on the Black Panther world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Cullen Bunn is a scribe "" a writer"s writer. You might wonder why you are seeing him credited as the wordsmith on books across every major (and many minor) comic book publishing platforms. Wonder no more. He"s that good. Case in point: Punk Mambo #4 (of 5), out this week from Valiant Comics. There have been more than a few comic books about voodoo "" some of them are quite good (see: Bitter Root). Others, not so much. But Punk Mambo offers a reflective and refreshing take on the well-tread world of Voodoo. Bunn"s synopsis of the main character is insightful. "A Voodoo priestess from the London Punk scene, Punk Mambo is the anarchistic problem child of attitude and rebellion.""

Punk Mambo is a problem. She"s irreverent, rejecting all of the rules of Voodoo"s complicated practices. But she also believes in her craft. And she remains committed to the duality of Voodoo culture "" life and death, the visible and the invisible, pain and healing. This is an important ideology in her quest to save Voodoo from the autocratic clutches of Azaire. Azaire is Punk Mambo"s perfect nemesis. Having absolutely no magic or innate magical powers himself, he is a unique villain in the Punk Mambo world with ambitions of dominating that world by capturing and controlling all of the Voodoo gods.

Punk Mambo #4 finds our protagonist on the run and in recovery. With her partner, Josef"s help, she figures out the most efficient way to restore her strength. And make no mistake, she is a powerful figure with the ability to summon otherworldly entities from the deep dark recesses of the Voodoo spirit realm. Azaire"s minions "" the Tonton Macoute "" know this all too well. She has taken out a few of them along the way.

The Tonton Macoute are some of the spookiest looking figures in the Punk Mambo world. And they were pretty spooky figures in the real world too. Serving as the special ops unit of notorious Haitian dictator, "Papa Doc"" Duvalier, the Tonton Macoute take their name (Uncle Gunnysack) from the Haitian mythological figure who kidnapped children and ate them. Adam Gorham"s rendering of them in Punk Mambo is just one example of his stellar art work in this exceptionally cool and well-researched miniseries.

Reading Punk Mambo gives us the sense that there are an unlimited number of ways to write about and reconstruct the worlds that comic books might reflect on the page. That sense of expansiveness and the uncanny otherworldliness of Punk Mambo can (and should) be credited to the written craftsmanship of one of the comic world"s most valuable scribes, Cullen Bunn. 4.5/5

[yasr_overall_rating size="large"]

(W) Cullen Bunn (A) Adam Gorham (CA) Cris Delara

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Cullen Bunn is a scribe "" a writer"s writer. You might wonder why you are seeing him credited as the wordsmith on books across every major (and many minor) comic book publishing platforms. Wonder no more. He"s that good. Case in point: Punk Mambo #4 (of 5), out this week from Valiant Comics.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Amanda McKee (aka Livewire"s) current storyline finds her enmeshed in the political world. In Livewire #11 (Valiant) Amanda continues what is shaping up to be a labyrinthine path towards some semblance of redemption "" for herself and for psiots across the Valiant superhero universe. For those who haven"t been following the exploits of one of the most intriguing and original superheroes of the current era of comics, here is a quick recap.

Amanda Mckee is Livewire, a psiot with the extraordinary ability to manipulate modern technology with her mind. Her abilities include psionic control of both hardware and software and in a world that "" much like our own "" is dominated by technology, Livewire is at times, and in certain contexts, omnipotent. In her recent past, under duress and rattled by persecution from the federal government and any human with an axe to grind against psiots, Livewire caused a nationwide blackout. As you might imagine, a blackout of this size and scope, directly and indirectly caused hundreds, if not thousands of fatalities and billions of dollars in destruction and collateral damage. In short, Amanda Mckee is one of the most feared and wanted terrorists in the world.

But now she has human allies in the political and media world. Councilman Wright and his accomplice/partner Gwen have an agenda that is still unknown to readers, but in the short term, they seem to want to help Livewire and psiots in general. We learn at the outset of Livewire #11 that Councilman Wright has decided to sue the United States" for the wrongful and unlawful persecution of psiots. In the Valiant superhero universe, it is painfully clear that the civil rights of psiots have been systematically violated. But the notion of civil rights for super human beings has been a time-honored (and relatively weighty) question for superhero comics readers since "" well, since the actual Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th Century in America.

One of the most exciting things about Vita Ayala"s writing/plot for this book is that it is almost impossible to anticipate where it will go next. How will Livewire ever be considered a hero given the terror she has inflicted on her world? What is the secret agenda of Gwen and Councilman Wright? And given her abilities, what"s to stop Livewire from simply imposing her will on her tech-controlled world and reshaping it into whatever she wants it to be. As Livewire"s path to redemption continues, readers and fans will simply have to keep reading to figure it all out.

(W) Vita Ayala (A) Tana Ford (CA) Tula Lotay

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Amanda McKee (aka Livewire"s) current storyline finds her enmeshed in the political world. In Livewire #11 (Valiant) Amanda continues what is shaping up to be a labyrinthine path towards some semblance of redemption "" for herself and for psiots across the Valiant superhero universe.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the preface to their magical graphic novel, MOONCAKES (Lion Forge/Roar), Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker write a letter directly to their readers. In it they are clear about the identity of the main characters of their story. They are (both) Chinese American and they are queer. One is a witch and the other is werewolf and they are both coming of age. They are also falling in love with each other. The upfront and direct letter to readers is powerful and to the point. But most of all, it is courageous. Xu and Walker stake a claim "" at the outset of their engaging and altogether compelling work "" at a time when claiming identities is too often dismissed as simply being political or worse: being politically correct. MOONCAKES slips the yoke of political pejoratives and goes about the business of telling great stories in a world that is so vivid that readers will feel it in their chests.

The magic of MOONCAKES is manifold. But its best manifestation is the seamless ways that magic is woven into the fabric of the narrative. It is almost unremarkable when Nova walks a customer into the witchcraft room in the back of the bookstore operated by her grandmothers. It"s an amazing microcosm for the entire graphic novel. Black Cat Books serves as the readers" first point of entry into a magical and beautifully queer world. Queerness, in its most profound and nuanced sense, is convention in the world of MOONCAKES. But it still is what it is. If that makes sense. Nova, a powerful witch with a hearing challenge; her grandmothers who are raising her and her ghost parents who come to visit during the holidays; and Tam her nonbinary werewolf would-be lover, are all who they are without pretense or too much pomp.

The cast of Mooncakes is almost all women. The interiority of this world is articulated through the intimate relationships between women "" in bookstores, in bedrooms, and in mystical realms where magic is the lingua franca. There is a tenderness in this story that is irresistible. It channels an intense sincerity about magic and a vivid depiction of the extraordinary realm of witches and mystical beings. Somehow the collaborative relationship between Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker inspires each important relationship in this novel "" infusing each interaction with an abiding sense of joy and the immense potential of human relationships.

In some comics these days, [insert your favorite category here] identity is incidental. In others, identity is so intentional that it feels inauthentic. In MOONCAKES, the identity of each character is organic and feels intrinsic to the story in ways that most novels (graphic or otherwise) only dream of achieving. MOONCAKES is all about the magic of witches and werewolves, but it is a bit of magic in its own right too.
SCORE: 4/5
(W) Suzanne Walker (A/CA) Wendy Xu

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the preface to their magical graphic novel, MOONCAKES (Lion Forge/Roar), Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker write a letter directly to their readers. In it they are clear about the identity of the main characters of their story. They are (both) Chinese American and they are queer.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
InÂ

the earliest issues of GHOSTED IN LA (Boom! Box), the story at times felt like it was haunting itself. Daphne, a rising first-year college student, leaves her quiet town of Missoula, Montana to attend school in Los Angeles. Her bestie, Kristi sends her off with a terrible tongue lashing. She accuses Daphne of only going to LA in order to follow her boyfriend Ronnie. Soon after Daphne follows Ronnie to LA, Ronnie shares with her that he is gay. Ronnie"s story is backgrounded early on, but at times in the first few issues it feels like his is the more important or significant story of GHOSTED IN LA. At the start of this series it seems like Ronnie is a plot device to get Daphne out to LA and to ghost her there. But by the time we arrive at issue #6 it is clear that Ronnie is also a protagonist of the story and his life in LA is just as important to this series as Daphne"s is.

The only way that Daphne is able to cope with her standoffish roommate and the fact that her boyfriend is not really her boyfriend anymore is to make new friends. And as luck would have it, she happens upon a classic LA housing complex inhabited by the ghostly undead. Sina Grace"s script is more complex than it seems. And Siobhan Keenan"s artwork is similarly fun and breezy until it is dark and gothic. Somehow GHOSTED IN LA captures the sunny brightness of southern California and the grimy darkness of a seedy LA on a smoggy night. The tensions between the light and the dark are always taut in this series. The contrast reflects the tensions in the relationships of the story. Daphne and Kristi, Daphne and Ronnie, or Daphne and her college roommate. None of these relationships are working. In each relationship the clash or the conflict dominates each interaction.

But GHOSTED IN LA #6 has a different feel from the first few issues. The human relationships are starting to take a backseat and a more compelling view of this series is emerging in the developing relationships between humans and specters/ghosts. The ghosts were already more interesting characters than the humans in this story. They have back stories that reach back into history and wrestle with issues of intimate relationships in different eras and with different sets of rules. They also pose an impossible question: what if our most compelling intimate relationships are with ephemeral memories of a bygone past? Maybe we all need to be ghosted.

The relationship between Daphne and Zola "" a rock star who Daphne idolized before she became a ghost "" is far more interesting and intimate than any other relationship that Daphne has had up to this point. The same might be said for Ronnie"s relationship with Bernard, a ghost who live a closeted life and now sees some of his missed aspirations in (and through) the life of Ronnie. Somehow the human relationships in GHOSTED IN LA are better when the humans are relating to ghosts. In this world, human intimacy is stymied by humans. But at least there are a few ghosts hanging around to make life more intimate and more interesting.

(W) Sina Grace (A/CA) Siobhan Keenan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
InÂ the earliest issues of GHOSTED IN LA (Boom! Box), the story at times felt like it was haunting itself. Daphne, a rising first-year college student, leaves her quiet town of Missoula, Montana to attend school in Los Angeles. Her bestie, Kristi sends her off with a terrible tongue lashing.

# data[].attributes.headline
Review: Fax From Sarajevo: A Story of Survival

# data[].attributes.subject
Review: Fax From Sarajevo: A Story of Survival

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Joe Kubert is one of the legends in the world of comics and he earned his place amongst the pantheon of comics legends in a variety of ways. He was (and remains) one of the most influential artists of the comics genre and the school that he founded, The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, has produced some of the most popular contemporary comic book artists. And yet, amongst his extraordinary contributions to this literary art form that so many of us love, Kubert"s FAX FROM SARAJEVO: A Story of Survival (Dark Horse), is singular in its significance to the industry and fandom of comics as well as to history itself.

FAX FROM SARAJEVO is an historical account of an epistolary exchange between Ervin Rustemagic and Joe and Muriel Kubert, during the Siege of Sarajevo which began in April of 1992 and lasted until February of 1996, over 1400 days. The communication between the Kuberts, Ervin Rustemagic, and other friends chronicles the brutal genocide that took place as Serbian forces targeted civilians and terrorized the population of Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The history of this region of Europe is complex and the complicated emergence of nationalist ideologies in the latter part of the 20th century became kindling for a fiery mix of war and genocide.

But FAX FROM SARAJEVO remains laser focused on the humanity of the civilian victims of this global tragedy. Ervin, his wife, and their two young children are trapped in a hellscape where women are kidnapped for rape camps, snipers target children and mortar shells and grenades rain from the skies like snow in the winters of Eastern Europe. The most effective way for Ervin to communicate with the Kuberts and his other friends and colleagues in the world of comics is through faxes. Many of these missives are printed in their original entirety in this harrowing narrative that will haunt readers well beyond the time spent engrossed in its pages.

Ervin is desperate to get his family out of Sarajevo and the Kuberts exhaust all options to aid him in what seems to be an impossible feat: getting out of the city alive. Joe Kubert"s art and testimonial styled writing is gripping. He proves, through the form of comics, the immeasurable power of comics and graphic and/or sequential art storytelling. More often than not the industry of comics is viewed as a low stakes art form. Fantasy, superheroes and science fiction dominate comics" content. But one of the many gifts that Kubert has left to us all is FAX FROM SARAJEVO. Comics literally save lives in this graphic retelling of genocidal history. But sadly, you will only need to read it, experience it, to understand just how hollow our global slogans of "never again"" have already become.
SCORE: 5/5
(W) Joe Kubert (A/CA) Joe Kubert
DARK HORSE COMICS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Review: Fax From Sarajevo: A Story of Survival

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Joe Kubert is one of the legends in the world of comics and he earned his place amongst the pantheon of comics legends in a variety of ways. He was (and remains) one of the most influential artists of the comics genre and the school that he founded, The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, has produced some of the most popular contemporary comic book artists.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As the Overton window shifts to center on looting and the burning or destruction of property; as the President chastises governors, calls for looters to be shot or for "vicious dogs" to be trained on protesting American citizens; as the media continues to preclude the immediate history of anti-black police brutality and violence in their current coverage of this insurrection; please remember why we are here.

We are here because Ahmaud Arbery was hunted and murdered like an animal; we are here because Breonna Taylor was murdered while she slept; we are here because Minneapolis police officers murdered George Floyd.

America is burning because black America is dying.

More to the point: Black America is dying slowly. We are dying a slow suffocating death. That is what it means to be black in these United States. That is what it has meant since so many of our ancestors drew their last breaths in the bellies of slave ships crossing the Atlantic. We died on the way here. And those deaths were rarely quick and never merciful.

The slow death is also what Covid-19 offers 13 percent of the entire African American population. One in every 2,000 African Americans have died slowly from Covid-19. We, who only make up 13 percent of this nation's citizens, know the slow death well. It is a part of our history in this nation.

For many of us, the nearly nine-minute video of a smirking police officer knee-choking the last breaths from George Floyd, was a sickening reflection of our lived reality.

Enslavement, murder, theft and destruction, all in the name of anti-black racism and/or white supremacy; all in the name of American capitalism. In this country, death always seems to be black and the data tells us that this feeling-the collective feeling of a slow excruciating death, is, as my mom might say: more than a notion.

Death doesn't come to us all equally. In America, death is disparate and in black America, death is slow.

The black mortal disparity manifests in every socio-medical enclave of our society: cancer, lung disease, kidney disease, heart disease and overall life expectancy.

We have higher infant mortality rates; higher maternal mortality rates; and black children (ages 5-11) have the highest suicide rate. When Rodney King died, I wrote that death was the " new black." I was wrong.

Racially disparate death has been with us since we have been here. And in aggregate, all of this death by whatever means accessible, is slow. Black death is slow in that each excruciating iteration of it eats away at the heart of our collective community.

Natasha McKenna drew her last breath 'in police custody'. Sandra Bland drew her last breath 'in police custody'. McKenna's last breaths were drawn under brutal duress from law enforcement. She was wrestled, beaten and tasered to death. We don't really know or understand exactly how Sandra Bland drew her last breaths. After a traffic stop, she was arrested and later she was found hanged in the Waller County, Texas jail. Her death-"in police custody"-was ruled a suicide.

Breonna Taylor was murdered-shot eight times-in her sleep. Louisville law enforcement officers who shot her used a no-knock warrant to enter her home in the middle of the night in search of someone who was already in "police custody." For most of us, dying in our sleep may seem to be the most merciful way to die. But for Breonna Taylor's family, for her community, for her partner, her death is slow. It is as slow as the machinery of justice for those responsible for her murder who all remain un-charged.

The slow death is what anti-black policing has always delivered in/to our community even when those murders were quick. Police murdered Tamir Rice within seconds of coming onto the scene. They murdered him quickly; but his death was slow. It is slow for his mother, Samaria Rice, who continues to work through the Tamir Rice Afrocentric Cultural Center. His death is slow for his family and for his community. It is, in effect, endless. How many times was the video of the Tamir Rice's murder played in the American media?

Dying a slow endless death is the opposite of immortality. It is an immortal mortality within which our community remains ensnared. We keep dying. We keep protesting. We keep fighting for change. We keep dying.

Some of this endlessness is instantiated by the ways in which black death is transformed into media spectacle. In some ways, America needed the video of George Floyd's slow murder in order to grasp the heinous inhumanity with which black folks are policed on a regular basis.

But the video had a different effect on much of the African-American community. For many of us, the nearly nine-minute video of a smirking police officer knee-choking the last breaths from George Floyd, was a sickening reflection of our lived reality.

America's knee is on our neck. We can't breathe.

The nearly nine-minute video is a marker for the slow genocide of black people in America. That a nearly nine-minute video can encapsulate our anguish-some semblance of our pain-excavates the irony of our endless mortality. They can kill us quickly, but our deaths are slow. The slow death has been creeping into and through our community's entire existence since the beginning of this American experiment.

Dying a slow endless death is the opposite of immortality. It is an immortal mortality within which our community remains ensnared. We keep dying. We keep protesting. We keep fighting for change. We keep dying. We keep fighting for justice, by all means necessary. We keep dying.

This cycle will continue to continue. So far-in this nation's history-our pain, our protest and even our incremental influence on policy and policing have not been enough to unravel the knotted history of white supremacy and American democracy. And we keep dying, slowly.
James Peterson is a writer, educator and consultant. He will author The Citizen's new Color of Coronavirus series, and is a host of "Tonight on WURD," a nightly news program on WURD, Philadelphia's only independently Black-owned radio network. Header photo courtesy Saundi Wilson / Flickr

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
America is burning because black America is dying

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As the Overton window shifts to center on looting and the burning or destruction of property; as the President chastises governors, calls for looters to be shot or for "vicious dogs" to be trained on protesting American citizens; as the media continues to preclude the immediate history of anti-black police brutality and violence in their current coverage of this insurrection; please remember why we are here.

# data[].attributes.headline
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:OUR MOURNFUL UNDERTAKING

# data[].attributes.subject
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:OUR MOURNFUL UNDERTAKING

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The history of Black mourning in America has been punctuated by an ongoing series of Black cultural innovations and syncretic practices transferred from African rituals too sturdy to be erased by the Peculiar Institution.

The second line, popular in New Orleans' funeral processions comes to mind. But Black folk mourn differently. We don't die. We pass on. We mark our transition from the mundane to the afterlife by mourning our losses in dramatically poignant ways. Passing on from this life to the next is always already a preeminent feature of our lived realities.

In Passed On: African American Mourning Stories, A Memorial, Karla FC Holloway argues that "African Americans' particular vulnerability to untimely death in the United States intimately affects how Black culture both represents itself and is represented." Our "particular vulnerability" is more pronounced and more palpable now than it has ever been.

As the largest scale protests in our nation's history center on the untimely extrajudicial killings of unarmed Black people, the focus has shifted from the dramatically disparate mortality rates of Covid-19 in the Black community. Yet the facts of the disparity are inescapable: African Americans have died from Covid-19 at nearly three times the rate of our white counterparts.

Three times the dead means three times the funerals; or for Black folks: three times the homegoing services. We are mourning more in the age of Covid-19. But to mourn now cannot be what it was like to mourn then-in our long history, or in the immediate history preceding the pandemic. There are too many stories in the grand narrative of the Black American experience that reroute us to our particular vulnerability, our untimely deaths.

One of the most mournful public funerals in African-American history happened in Philadelphia in 1871. Octavius V. Catto was murdered in broad daylight. He was shot by a white man who hated him because he was Black. He was shot by a white man who represented many of the white people in Philadelphia who hated Octavius Catto. They hated him because he fought vigorously for this city to expand the sphere of human rights so that it would include Black people. Catto was shot by a white man and then he died in the arms of a police officer; the same police who stood aside while white rioters in Philadelphia intimidated and attacked Black people just for trying to vote.

But Catto made a name for himself on behalf of Black folks and as such we came out for him in a display of public mourning that at the time was unprecedented. People came from all over the region to mourn his passing. And as Dr. Aaron Smith writes: "Catto was eulogized in pulpits throughout the country." Catto was mourned all along Broad Street in Philadelphia on a rainy morning in 1871. He was only 32 when he was murdered.

For Black folks, our particular vulnerability is always already; and our mournful undertaking continues incessantly.

Local religious leaders are wrestling with the weight of this mournful undertaking, even as they embrace the social-distancing that deconstructs some of the most meaningful aspects of ritualistic Black mourning practices.

According to Reverend Joe Watkins, pastor of Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, on Diamond Street in North Philadelphia, "You can't really have a funeral as such because of social distancing. The most you can do is have a wake."

Even these wakes cannot be what they have been. Only a small number of family members are allowed to attend and social-distancing means that the human interaction that mourning often requires is curtailed or nonexistent.

Some of this mourning is refracted through what seems like an endless array of challenges that Black folks must continue to face. But much of it is also reflected in the sad fact that disparate death rates and Black mourning are permanent features of the lived experience in Black America.

Pastor Joe and many of his colleagues wonder how they can communicate comfort through the masks, gloves and space required by social distancing. Funerals, as we know them, "are not being held during this pandemic," he tells me. Gravesite burials, the moment where many pay their last respects to their loved ones, are limited to 10 masked family members who are advised to separate themselves by at least six feet.

One of the most difficult issues to grasp in this pandemic is all of the families who are unable to be with their loved ones as they draw their last breaths. There is no consolation for these families in the coronavirus version of the homegoing service.

In the era of Covid-19, Watkins and other religious leaders rely more on Zoom and Facebook Live to minister to their congregations and comfort the bereaved. Using new technologies for homegoing services is changing the ways in which we grieve and celebrate the lives lost.

No technology can replace face-to-face human interaction or the ways in which grief and the process of public mourning emanates in a particular space. Black people will recover these mournful practices; they have endured for centuries, but how do we comfort the pain for those who must mourn now?

Reverend Charles L. Howard, the University Chaplain at Penn believes that traditional Black mourning practices reflect the "deep communion that we have with the other side." But he is also quick to highlight the pitiful absence of leadership in the collective mourning we need to do as a nation.

We need a mourner-in-chief right now, but instead we have a president who, until this weekend, planned to hold a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Juneteenth.

Tulsa is the site of one of the most brutal white supremacist actions against Black people-killing hundreds of African Americans and razing what was known as Black Wall Street. Juneteenth should be a national holiday-a moment to commemorate the millions of lives lost in the American slave trade and the actual end of the Peculiar Institution.

With over 2 million cases of coronavirus, the death toll for Covid-19 surpassed 114,000 last week. And there seems to be no plan or any indication that our elected leaders will commemorate the many souls lost to the virus.

Reverend Howard laments the loss of intimacy in traditional Black mourning practices. He waxes nostalgic about the many ways that Black folks grieve. For him, the coming together at the wake, at the repast, the pouring of liquor-libation-for those lost, the tagging of someone's name; the makeshift memorials made at the site of the loss of life-these are the substance of our public grief.

"The most-cruel aspects of the moment we're in," he says, "is the greatly decreased ability to come together and hold each other and cry together . . ."

Black traditions of mourning are vital to Black identity. For Reverend Gregory J. Edwards, the founder and senior pastor of The Resurrected Life Community Church in Allentown, Black rituals for mourning are the "salve," the "balm" that we need to heal the wounds of the racially disparate death that continues to dog our community.

Rev. Edwards suggests that the traditional homegoing service signals a certain kind of resistance to the mundane disparities of Black life in America. "We need the ritual of the lament and to stay there in order to [then] get up in the morning."

Dr. Edwards is alluding to scripture here: "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning." And his impassioned words make me think about how some of the joy that comes in our mourning those who pass on will be lost in the social-distancing that this pandemic requires.

If technology is a solution that leaves our leaders-in-grief with critical concerns for our mental and spiritual health in these times, then a turn toward theology may be one way to confront this mournful moment.

"We need the ritual of the lament and to stay there in order to [then] get up in the morning." says Reverend Gregory J. Edwards. He is alluding to scripture here: "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning."

Pastor Greg shifts into sermonic tones as he talks about the possibilities for prophetic lamentation in the Black community. "Prophetic lament allows us to actually ritualize, memorialize, [our grief] in some kind of tangible way."

Edwards' words resonate. He is calling for a collective crying out in grief that directly confronts the disparate conditions that underwrite the mortal inequities in American society.

For Edwards, this kind of prophetic lament begins with the crying out, the collective articulation of our grief and our grievances. "But it must move beyond that, as well," he says.

Prophetic lament might mean ending the current administration's reign in November. It might also take shape as a series of economic blackouts and/or the development of specific economic strategies to sustain the energy of the current uprising. "And I think that that's where genuine hope comes from; you have to be able to lament."

As we wrestle with this process of prophetic lament we should be reminded of Claudia Rankine's somber reflections in the aftermath of the 2015 massacre of nine Black churchgoers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Rankine is clear that "a sustained state of national mourning for Black lives is called for in order to point to the undeniability of their devaluation."

The persistent and systemic devaluing of Black life has been exposed in ways during this pandemic that will render these disparities indelible in our national discourse. And still we will mourn our losses. Some of this mourning is refracted through what seems like an endless array of challenges that Black folks must continue to face. But much of it-nearly all of it, really-is also reflected in the sad fact that disparate death rates and Black mourning are permanent features of the lived experience in Black America.

James Peterson is a writer, educator and consultant, and is host of Tonight on WURD, a nightly news program on WURD, Philadelphia's only independently Black-owned radio network. The Color of Coronavirus series is supported by the Pamela and Ajay Raju Foundation.
Noa Denmon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black mourning during Covid: How do we maintain ritual during the pandemic?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The history of Black mourning in America has been punctuated by an ongoing series of Black cultural innovations and syncretic practices transferred from African rituals too sturdy to be erased by the Peculiar Institution. The second line, popular in New Orleans' funeral processions comes to mind. But Black folk mourn differently.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Justice delayed is justice denied; or so they say.

Juneteenth, a day that should soon be a national holiday, commemorates the unofficial but actual end of slavery in these United States. The official end of slavery in the U.S. was Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation," an executive order issued on September 22, 1862, which did not take effect until January of 1863. This was just a legislative beginning of the end. Even the "Emancipation Proclamation," better referred to as Proclamation 95, had a built-in delay.

Lincoln's Proclamation 95 was not exactly emancipatory either: It legally changed the status of nearly four million enslaved Africans in America, but in reality, the enslaved remained captive under Confederate control. The Confederacy was desperate to defy the Union and maintain a way of life predicated on Black subjugation, unpaid labor, torture, rape and murder. It should make us all wonder why and how mid-20th century confederate monuments are just now being brought down in town squares across America.

In 1863, tens of thousands of enslaved Black people were immediately impacted-liberated-in the Confederate states that were under Union control. Our nation's Civil War was complex and brutal, with over 600,000 fatalities. And slavery could not end until the Civil War did.

In order to ensure that abolition was complete, President Lincoln made the legislative push for the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment which ended legal slavery in the United States on December 6, 1865. Just another delay in the racial justice delayed to Black people in America.

However, as Michelle Alexander, Ava DuVernay and others have pointed out in film and literature, the Thirteenth Amendment's "dirty little secret" was that slavery was still legal for those who were incarcerated. This should make us all wonder why and how in the 21st century, America incarcerates more of its citizens than any other nation on the planet.

Juneteenth is the oldest national commemoration of the end of slavery. It marks the day-June 19, 1865-when Union soldiers brought the good news to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, that the war was over and that Black people were free.

That it took six months and 13 days for this news to reach all of America is a telling microcosm of Black life in the United States. How brutal was the Peculiar Institution for those who labored in it for six months and 13 days after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment? How many died from the brutality of chattel slavery in those six months and 13 days? How many Black families were crushed and decimated during that six-month and 13-day delay? How tragic was it for those who were so close to the finish line of freedom?

Juneteenth represents the enduring legacy of Black folks' fight for liberation. And yet, Juneteenth is also the epitome of American denial. It reflects all of the ways in which racial justice is systemically delayed for Black folks.

This week, Mayor Jim Kenney announced that Juneteenth is now designated as an official holiday for the city of Philadelphia. According to Mayor Kenney: "Now more than ever it's critically important to acknowledge America's original sin of slavery-something we as a nation have never atoned for. The only way to dismantle the institutional racism and inequalities that continue to disenfranchise Black Philadelphians is to look critically at how we got here, and make much-needed changes to the governmental systems that allow inequality to persist."

Juneteenth represents the enduring legacy of Black folks' fight for liberation. And yet, Juneteenth is also the epitome of American denial. It reflects all of the ways in which racial justice is systemically delayed for Black folks.

Given Philadelphia's place in American history-this nation's first capital; the home of the Liberty Bell-it is only befitting that this city's leaders honor the liberation legacy of Philadelphia in a way that leads the nation on issues of racial justice and racial equity.

In 1780, the state of Pennsylvania passed the " Gradual Abolition Act," the first legislation in the United States of America that was passed to emancipate enslaved Black people. But once again, the delay was built into the process of liberation. This act did not immediately free any of the enslaved in the state of Pennsylvania or the city of Philadelphia.

In the late 18th century, 15 percent of Philadelphia households enslaved Black people. The Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 only afforded liberation to the children of those who were enslaved and even then, those children "owed" 28 years of enslaved labor to their mother's "masters" before they were "free."

As revolutionary as the Gradual Abolition Act might have seemed in 1780, it delayed liberation for a generation and a lifetime. Similar to Proclamation 95, the Gradual Abolition Act embodied the delay of justice even for the children it sought to emancipate, but it also provided a glimpse of the marathons for freedom and liberation that lay ahead for Black people in America.

Historically, racial justice for Black America has been on/in constant delay. Juneteenth is our national day for critically commemorating the facts of this fight for freedom. But the fight for liberation is enduring and exhaustive.

It is a series of marathons that requires a relayed approach wherein the batons for freedom are passed from one generation to the next; from one leader to the next; one teacher to the next; one organizer to the next, one activist to the next; one liberator to the next. Our liberation has been delayed, but our liberation relay will run forever.

Juneteenth 2020 marks a critical juncture in our liberation relay. Given the racial health disparities on painful display in this moment of Covid-19; and given the unceasing brutal murders of Black women and men by the state, Juneteenth 2020 will be more widely and publicly celebrated than it ever has been in its 155-year history.

This is a good thing. Happy Juneteenth to ALL. Let Black liberation ring everywhere and know that though this relay has been hard and long our legs for liberation remain strong. And we run ready to pass this baton onto the next series of freedom fighters.
James Peterson is a writer, educator and consultant, and is host of Tonight on WURD, a nightly news program on WURD, Philadelphia's only independently Black-owned radio network. He authors The Citizen's Color of Coronavirus series, which is supported by the Pamela and Ajay Raju Foundation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Juneteenth 2020 marks a critical juncture in the Black fight for liberation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Justice delayed is justice denied; or so they say. Juneteenth, a day that should soon be a national holiday, commemorates the unofficial but actual end of slavery in these United States. The official end of slavery in the U.S. was Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation," an executive order issued on September 22, 1862, which did not take effect until January of 1863.

# data[].attributes.headline
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:BLACK MENTAL HEALTH AFTERSHOCKS

# data[].attributes.subject
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:BLACK MENTAL HEALTH AFTERSHOCKS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In a moment where many Americans are celebrating independence, our nation remains tethered to a rapidly growing pandemic that shows no signs of abating.

Over the last week, the United States consistently set daily records for the number of coronavirus cases. The federal government claims this is because we are testing more. They continue to equivocate about the importance of wearing masks. And the White House's next strategy is to tell us to learn to live with the deadly virus in our midst. Either they are crazy; or we are.

The discourse on disparities in health care has become a feature of our understanding of the many ways that the coronavirus and Covid-19 continue to impact our communities. Now, as the numbers continue to spike, mental health professionals are sounding an alarm. The pandemic will produce mental health "aftershocks" that will result in increased cases of anxiety, depression and possibly suicide.

And much like underlying health conditions and Covid-19 mortality rates, these mental health aftershocks will have a disparate impact on the Black community.

In 1851, Dr. Samuel Cartwright argued that enslaved Black people who fled their oppressive conditions suffered from "drapetomania"-from the Greek terms drapetes (runaway slave) and mania (madness). Based upon this racist pseudo-scientific logic, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Jacobs and Kunta Kinte were all "drapetomaniacs."

Given the ongoing protests for Black liberation in the streets of America, maybe there are more "drapetomaniacs" in this nation than there ever have been. Count me in their number.

The Black community's skepticism of mental health care is informed by the racialized history of American medicine, but it has deleterious consequences for Black Americans who are afflicted with mental health challenges.

"You simply cannot be healthy if you are not mentally healthy," Dr. Eunice Peterson, a board-certified psychiatrist, tells me. "The Black American community has a collective consciousness of the institutional racism and discrimination that exists in our country's health care system because institutions and individuals continue to contribute to the databank."

Like many other mental health professionals of color, Peterson points to the Tuskegee experiment, female sterilization initiatives, and the harvesting of Henrietta Lacks' DNA as notorious examples of how racism infects the interface between Black folks and mental health care.

Dr. Mohammadreza Hojat, a psychologist and researcher at Thomas Jefferson University, argues that there are many hurdles that will impact how the mental health aftershocks from Covid-19 will be addressed overall, but particularly for the African American community.

"Disbelief in the mental health care system is first among them," he says. Other hurdles include the full range of challenges that Black people regularly face in order to access health care-affordability, proximity and/or transportation and the cultural competence of mental health care providers.

Dr. Hojat's recent Inquirer op-ed warns that there will be a drastic uptick in the demand for mental health care. Loneliness, social distancing, the un-mourned loss of life, joblessness, and various issues related to Covid-19 will produce more cases of anxiety, depression and other mental maladies.

But these concerns are only compounding mental health issues that have long existed among Black Americans in large urban centers like Philadelphia, where pockets of concentrated poverty, under-resourced schools, over-policing and the erosion of residential infrastructure cultivate fertile grounds for neighborhood violence. This violence leads to what Drexel University's Healing Hurt People refers to as sustained traumatic stress reactions -there is no "post" for Black communities.

The Black community's skepticism of mental health care is informed by the racialized history of American medicine, but it has deleterious consequences for Black Americans who are afflicted with mental health challenges.

Jamal Ford, a youth resources coordinator for the PA CARE Partnership is deeply concerned about how Black mental health aftershocks from the Covid-19 quake will continue to disparately impact an already vulnerable community. "In the wake of this pandemic, when reporting structures are back to normal, you will see a rise in reported suicide attempts, child abuse and mental illness diagnoses," Ford says.

There may not be a return to normal at all, much less in the reporting structures for mental health concerns. But in order to address the aftershocks, the gap between the Black community and the entire mental health enterprise must be directly addressed.

Ronald Crawford, is a North Philadelphia-based therapist who uses hip-hop to treat trauma in his patients because, he says, " a lot of black men express their identity through hip-hop culture." Crawford tells me that "Black people will suffer in silence" with mental maladies because of the stigma of seeking help and because of the long history of alienation from mental health care informed by an absence of empathy and cultural competence in the fields of counseling, therapy and overall mental health care.

According to Crawford, even when Black folks overcome the history of racism and the community-based stigma of mental health care, they may be receiving the wrong mental health treatment. "Most of the people that are giving Black people therapy are giving them white-people therapy," he says.

For Crawford (and others) this means that they must radically revisit their own professional training in order to make their services relevant for their constituents. Given the fact that "drapetomania" was actually a mental health "thing," the notion that Black therapy must specifically redress historical white supremacy and racism in mental health services resonates with the impending challenges that Black Americans will face in the mental health aftermath of Covid-19. Crawford is not alone in his assessment of the problem of or in his sense of the pathway forward.

The stigma associated with seeking mental health care in the Black community is a thorny mix of historical racism, culturally exclusive therapeutic practices and the intra-communal sense that turning to formal mental health care suggests a particular kind of vulnerability shaped by the very racism (and racist practices) that alienates would-be Black clients and clinicians alike.

One mental health professional still believes that Black folks desire mental health care despite these long standing impediments. "We want the therapy; we just want to sit across from somebody who understands us," they say.

Saleemah McNeil is an experienced family therapist and the lead at the Oshun Family Center in Philadelphia, a center that takes a deliberately African-centered approach to its mental health services. The Association of Black Psychologists ( ABP) has formally adopted an African-entered approach to their work as well. According to them: "Black/African centered psychology recognizes: the Spirit that permeates everything that is; the notion that everything in the universe is interconnected; the value that the collective is the most salient element of existence; and the idea that communal self-knowledge is the key to mental health."

The value placed on the collective and the embrace of communal self-knowledge resonate with the culturally competent innovations needed in this moment. Black mental health care requires some sense of collectivism given the historical alienation of Black people from mainstream/traditional mental health services. And self-knowledge at the community level creates space for mental health professionals to tap into distinct experiences in order to treat mental health challenges over-indexed in the Black community. Still, McNeil is clear on the challenges ahead: "As therapists we are seen as part of the racist system; and there isn't a lot of buy-in from the Black community."

McNeil argues that training in predominantly white institutions has pitfalls for Black mental health care providers who are committed to working in the Black community. "The whole therapy world is a very Eurocentric world," she explains. McNeil recalls that certain ideas were repeatedly referenced in her training: "Black folks are the hardest to get to therapy, the hardest to retain in therapy and the hardest to treat in therapy."

In order to make an intervention in the predominately white world of mental health and therapy, Black service providers will have to continue to explore innovative ways of addressing the mental health needs of their communities.

Mr. Crawford integrates hip-hop into his work in compelling ways that center the culture of his patients. They listen to the music-together sometimes-and Crawford challenges and encourages his clients through value clarification exercises designed to wrestle with the materialism, misogyny, violence and drug use often referenced in the music. This same kind of listening practice allows Crawford to use psycho education to directly confront the glorification of opioids and other drugs in the music and the culture.

This work also requires Crawford to mine the constructive aspects of the music and culture as well. He works with his clients to process the ways in which some contemporary artists wrestle with their own mental health, experiences in therapy and their problems with addiction in some of the most transparent music in the genre. He cites the music of J. Cole, Jay-Z, Logic, and Eminem amongst many others.

Crawford's embrace of hip-hop culture as a methodological approach for building trust with his young Black clientele is an important way of reimagining what therapy can be in the Black community. He admits that even he was wary of seeking therapy or counseling when he needed it most as a young man wrestling with trauma and addiction. His experience mirrors those of many people in the Black community who associate therapy or seeking mental health counseling with signs of personal weakness.

The violence that we experience in our communities, at the hands of law enforcement and the violence of a pandemic that disparately impacts our communities presents yet another challenge during these challenging times.

One basic intervention, McNeil says, is to make going to therapy a more conventional feature of our conversations amongst friends and family across the community. Other mental health professionals believe that certain interventions will be specifically cultural in nature-like drumming, dance, guided meditation and mindfulness practices.

MBK Cares has been hosting online Zoom sessions during quarantine that have provided mental healthcare for over a thousand people-mostly Black men. Community Health Workers certified as peer specialists at the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice at Drexel University use a peer-to-peer counseling model pairing young men who have survived violence-related trauma with their peers who are reeling from their experiences.

BEAM, the Black Emotional And Mental Health collective located in Los Angeles, is mission-committed to enhancing access to mental and emotional healthcare for Black people. They pursue this mission "through education, training, advocacy, and the creative arts." BEAM's offerings include programs designed to reimagine Black masculinity and a communal mental health literacy event called "Black Healing Remixed." Programmatic healthcare efforts like those offered by BEAM, MBK Cares and others suggest that important models for how to center Blackness in mental health care already exist.

Given the current and impending challenges for mental health professionals committed to serving the Black community, access to and affordability of care are also viable concerns for the foreseeable future.

Recently, McNeil initiated a fundraising campaign to provide free mental health care services for the Black community in Philadelphia. The response and the results of her effort have been astounding. Her initial goal was to raise $5,000 to provide free mental health resources to people of color in the Philadelphia area. To date she has raised more than $90,000 and in our interview she speaks candidly about her gratitude for the support. She is also committed to figuring out the most efficient ways to make this initiative sustainable beyond the pandemic moment.

Much like underlying health conditions and Covid-19 mortality rates, mental health aftershocks will have a disparate impact on the Black community.

"This is a time where hopelessness can set in," she explains. Without a robust effort to address mental health in the Black community-in this pandemic moment-the consequences of ignoring these issues will reverberate for generations. But McNeil remains optimistic and resolute. "Oshun Family Center is committed to providing a space of refuge and healing" for the Black community, she says.

Mental health is a less visible but significant underlying condition in the global pandemic.

Black Americans are 20 percent more likely to experience anxiety and depression. Black people are more likely to experience PTSD.

The violence that we experience in our communities, at the hands of law enforcement and the violence of a pandemic that disparately impacts our communities presents yet another challenge during these challenging times.

If escaping brutal oppression for the allure of liberation has been our mental health legacy, then the current moment is not much different than 19th-century America. Historically we might have been able to run away from the brutal conditions of plantation life; but in order to escape the racial trauma that continues to capture our minds, we will have to slip the yoke of enduring stigmas and embrace the culturally relevant innovations in mental health care.
James Peterson is a writer, educator and consultant. The Color of Coronavirus series is supported by the Pamela and Ajay Raju Foundation. Illustration by Noa Denmon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to rethink therapy to address Black trauma in the wake of Covid-19

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a moment where many Americans are celebrating independence, our nation remains tethered to a rapidly growing pandemic that shows no signs of abating. Over the last week, the United States consistently set daily records for the number of coronavirus cases. The federal government claims this is because we are testing more.

# data[].attributes.headline
COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:WHAT’S BEHIND BLACK CONSPIRACISM?

# data[].attributes.subject
COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:WHAT’S BEHIND BLACK CONSPIRACISM?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In a recent viral video on social media, Dr. Stella Immanuel claims to have the cure for the coronavirus: hydroxychloroquine. She also says that we don't need to wear masks.

Flanked by " America's Frontline Doctors " all in white coats, Dr. Immanuel urgently argues that we could open schools and that no one has to die from Covid-19. These "Frontline Doctors" argue that we have all been duped by "fake science" into a kind of hysteria about Covid-19 that to them is unnecessary and unwarranted.

To date, over 150,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 and there are more than four million cases of diagnosed coronavirus nationwide. Hydroxychloroquine is not an effective treatment or cure for the virus. And wearing masks is one of the most effective means of mitigating the transmission of the virus.

When it comes to rumor and conspiracy, facts are the most potent antidote, but State Senator Anthony Williams believes the path ahead is challenging. "The governor, the mayor, the president, the senator-they are not necessarily listening to us, because they follow Facebook for their news," Williams says. "They don't follow us. They follow Twitter for their information. That's the space we have to begin to dominate and drive out the message."

The challenges of coronavirus are personal and professional for Senator Williams. He is feeling "much stronger" these days, but he is recovering from coronavirus and eager to get back to the important work of making sure that the pandemic is mitigated in a racially equitable way.

It is a strange morphological irony that 'racism' is embedded in the word conspiracism. Much like underlying health conditions, access to coronavirus testing, and Covid-19 mortality rates, conspiracism has a disparate impact on the African American community.

The America's Frontline Doctors' video, made viral by Breitbart's politically conservative website (with help from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram), collected over 14 million views in six hours. Supportive tweets from the 45th President of the United States made matters worse. The president's namesake son had his Twitter account suspended for retweeting the same viral video.

Within a day or so social media platforms had removed the video and various news outlets have since reported on the fact that the video is misinformative and counterfactual. But the damage has already been done.

Conspiracism thrives in the era of coronavirus for a variety of related reasons. First, coronavirus is a global pandemic. Pandemics are literally the subject matter of apocalyptic science fiction in film, novels, television and all things popular culture. Second, at the heart of many conspiracy theories is some form of government malfeasance.

This current administration's mishandling of the pandemic will achieve legendary status in the annals of history. And that is an unfortunate disadvantage in the challenges that conspiracy theories present. "The government has to work with the community to create a bond of trust so constituents trust that elected officials and governmental departments are providing accurate information," says Councilperson-at-Large Isaiah Thomas. When it doesn't, conspiracy theories flourish.

Jesse Walker, author of The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory, agrees. "Elected leaders should be as honest and transparent as possible," he says, but when it comes to "debunking a false conspiracy theory," Walker does not believe in any kind of cure-all. "People just need to learn to ask the same questions they should be asking about any other story. How strong is the evidence for this? What sort of track record does this source have? Basically, hone your media literacy skills and apply them all the time."

It does not feel like (social) media literacy is at a premium during this pandemic. And the fact that there is a viral video about a viral pandemic underscores the speed with which information (and misinformation) can be circulated.

The critical role that contemporary media platforms have and will continue to play in how we process public health information has its highest stakes in the Black community.

It is a strange morphological irony that 'racism' is embedded in the word conspiracism. Much like underlying health conditions, access to coronavirus testing and Covid-19 mortality rates, conspiracism has a disparate impact on the African-American community.

"While engagement with conspiracy theories is high across the board, in the United States, African Americans appear in surveys to be more receptive to conspiracy theories in general," says Professor Rob Brotherton, a psychologist and author of Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories.

"Given that most conspiracy theories allege that authorities and institutions like the government or the medical establishment are not to be trusted, it's entirely understandable that such theories resonate among communities with long histories of being marginalized and mistreated by those very institutions."

Systemic racism is the root cause of the racial disparities evidenced in the impact of the pandemic in the African-American community. And systemic racism underwrites all of the ways in which conspiracies thrive in the African-American community. But the potential for Black people to believe in conspiracy theories related to public health-especially those theories that might preclude people from accurate public health knowledge during a global pandemic that disproportionately impacts African Americans-may have deadly disparate outcomes. If racism wasn't already embedded in the word conspiracism, we would have to revise it for factual accuracy.

There are real conspiratorial reasons why African Americans have an abiding skepticism of the American health care industry. The U.S. government conspired with health officials to develop a treatment for syphilis by secretly studying it in Black men. Medical researchers developed "HeLa" cells from samples taken from Henrietta Lacks in 1951; the modern notion of informed consent did not exist then. These kinds of stories abound in American history and they provide a generative context for Black conspiracism to thrive.

Black conspiracism has evolved over the short span of the pandemic's trajectory in the United States. In the early days, before the virus spread, some in the Black community pointed to the continent of Africa-and its relatively low numbers -as some kind of indicator that Black folks might be more immune to the virus than our white counterparts. This was more rumor than conspiracy, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

Eventually, the Blacks-don't-get-it rumor was supplanted by the demographic data on deaths related to Covid-19. Unfortunately, the timing of an influx of data on racial disparities in coronavirus infection rates and Covid-19 mortality rates almost perfectly coincided with the implosion of the current administration's façade of actually caring about the public health crisis evolving under their watch.

State Senator Anthony Williams, recovering from the virus himself, tells me that some of his Black constituents believe that "the government's trying to kill us. So they created this virus, and of course it's killing black people at a higher rate on purpose."

Black conspiracy theorists seized on the fact that more Black people will die as a result of premature reopenings and general mismanagement of the pandemic in the U.S. Now, Senator Williams tells me that some of his Black constituents believe that "the government's trying to kill us. So they created this virus, and of course it's killing black people at a higher rate on purpose."

The fact of disparate Black death is a compelling corollary for conspiracy theories that the U.S. government is deliberate in its failure to meet the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.

While it is impossible to prove that the U.S. government is deliberately ignoring the public health intelligence on coronavirus because it believes that Black lives don't matter, the consequences are the same for the Black community.

Intentional or not, the federal government's ignorance and public health ineptitude has deadly disparate consequences for the Black community in America. And so, whether or not it's a conspiracy is, in fact, immaterial. The consequences of an unchecked spread of coronavirus are real for Black folks.

A third iteration of Black conspiracism in the age of Covid-19 is bubbling up now as concerns about the vaccine, how it is tested, and who will actually take it begin to substantiate a new skepticism.

As early as late May, only about 25 percent of African Americans surveyed said they were willing to even take a coronavirus vaccine once one is available. This reluctance to be vaccinated is understandable, based upon history and the history of systemic racism. But the conspiracists (some in the Black community) will cultivate that skepticism and transform it into a full-blown conspiracy that the developers of the vaccine, in concert with the government and private industry, will deploy the vaccine (somehow/someway) to the detriment of the African American community.

Senator Williams is worried that the vaccine rollout will mirror the testing rollout in Philadelphia, i.e. "the vaccine rollout will follow your economic status."

Scholars who research conspiracism in the Black community generally agree that "theories about government conspiracies against Blacks are widespread in African American culture," according to Professor Jennifer Crocker.

There are many fact-based reasons for this. But there are at least two inflection points that might help us to better understand why conspiracy theories are widespread in the Black community and how we might confront the specter of conspiracy in ways that work to keep the African-American community informed and vigilant about the real conspiratorial machinations in our midst.

For Professor Crocker and other scholars, system blame -"a specific tendency to make external attributions for the problems facing Black Americans as a group"-is the most likely underlying factor of Black conspiracism.

A new iteration of Black conspiracism is bubbling up now as concerns about the vaccine, how it is tested, and who will actually take it begin to substantiate a new skepticism. As early as late May, only about 25 percent of African Americans surveyed said they were willing to even take a coronavirus vaccine once one is available.

Black folks blame the system, not to absolve themselves of agency or to obscure bad choices/behavior. But to direct their vigilant skepticism toward the systemic nature of white supremacy and anti-Black racism-two ideological and material entities that brutally truncate the value of Black life in real time across all of America's social and corporate institutions.

System blame is how kernels of truth often animate Black conspiracism in ways that make conspiratorial ideas sticky in Black public consciousness. One way-maybe the most effective way to diminish the suasion of Black conspiracism-is to eradicate anti-black racism in the systems through which the American government operates.

If ending the real reasons for Black people to place blame on racist systems of oppression seems too fantastical, the second option or inflection point might be a pathway of lesser resistance.

Read about the King Alfred Plan. You can find a copy here, but it is best read in the context of John A. Williams' classic political novel, The Man Who Cried I Am.

The King Alfred Plan is named after King Alfred the Great, so monikered because of his Eurocentric efforts to foreground the Anglo-Saxons, uplift the English language (over Latin at that time) and to promote Christianity-arguably three pillars of modern white supremacy in America.

In the world of The Man Who Cried I Am, the King Alfred Plan is a plot designed by the CIA, in collaboration with nearly every facet of the American government and American law enforcement, to architect a final solution for the "minority" problem in America. It's worth quoting here at length for readers to appreciate it's ominous and veritable tones.

" Each passing month has brought new intelligence that, despite new laws passed to alleviate the condition of the Minority, the Minority still is not satisfied. Demonstrations and rioting have become a part of the familiar scene.
Troops have been called out in city after city across the land, and our image as a world leader severely damaged. . . . The Minority has adopted an almost military posture to gain its objectives, which are not clear to most Americans. It is expected, therefore, that, when those objectives are denied the Minority, racial war must be considered inevitable. When that Emergency comes, we must expect the total involvement of all 22 million members of the Minority, men, women and children, for once this project is launched, its goal is to terminate, once and for all, the Minority threat to the whole of the American society, and, indeed, the Free World."
In the real world, circa 1967, Williams decided to promote his novel, guerrilla-style, by placing photocopies of the King Alfred Plan in subway trains in New York City. The plan was taken as factual and it spread like a virus. It perfectly encapsulated the politics of the moment and the very real fear of how "the system" might respond to Black civil rights unrest in the streets of America. The plan became required reading for Black social movements and the sense of truth that it conveyed far outweighed the reality of its fictional creation.

The King Alfred Plan reminds us well why Black conspiracism reigns supreme in the contemporary moment. When the lines of fact and fiction are convincingly blurred, the truth of American anti-Black racism remains laid bare for all to see, hear and feel. This truth is too often endured in the lived experiences of African Americans.

Today, there may be no actual King Alfred Plan for the extinction of Black people in America, but the disparate impact of the coronavirus, the government's mismanagement of the pandemic, along with the ongoing and unchecked brutalization of Black people by American law enforcement, combined with the recent martial response to civic unrest by this very same government, all collude to make us feel as if The Plan is already in full effect.

James Peterson is a writer, educator and consultant. The Color of Coronavirus series is supported by the Pamela and Ajay Raju Foundation.
Illustration by Noa Denmon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black conspiracism in the age of Covid-19-and how to fight it

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a recent viral video on social media, Dr. Stella Immanuel claims to have the cure for the coronavirus: hydroxychloroquine. She also says that we don't need to wear masks. Flanked by " America's Frontline Doctors " all in white coats, Dr. Immanuel urgently argues that we could open schools and that no one has to die from Covid-19.

# data[].attributes.headline
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:A MODEL FOR POSSIBILITIES

# data[].attributes.subject
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:A MODEL FOR POSSIBILITIES

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Thinking beyond corona is almost an exercise in futility-an unwinnable debate between the equity deficiencies of the old normal and the limited possibilities of a new one-destined to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Hope for a corona-free future-especially for communities of color disparately devastated by the pandemic -calls for a communal vision designed to directly address the so-called underlying health conditions that have been brought to the surface in the deadliest virus to infect America in over a century.

So much of the news reporting on the coronavirus and Covid-19 centers on the urgency of now: daily death totals, super-spreader events, hotspots and infection rates. Any early prognostications about the mitigation or resolution of the virus have been proven false in spectacular ways.

Our national Covid-19 death toll has topped 200,000. The United States has over 6,000,000 cases of coronavirus. Looking to our immediate past or our immediate future, the coronavirus's grip on America is colder than Charlton Heston's hands on a flintlock long rifle.

From within this set of complex challenges, the Healthy Town Tioga Project (HTTP) emerges as a glimmer of hope and a model for the possibilities of a post-Covid future that embraces equity, a post-Covid future that directly confronts the health disparities highlighted through the nadir of the pandemic.

Led by a Black-owned and -operated investment company, TPP Capital Management Group, HTTP gestures toward a neighborhood utopia right in the heart of North Philadelphia-the Tioga-Nicetown or Nicetown-Tioga section of the city that rarely enters our local Overton window without the requisite narratives of urban blight and economic decline.

"Tioga is a fresh-food desert, 42 percent poverty rate, 18 percent unemployment rate. That's actually before the pandemic," says Hornstein. "43 percent of residents suffer from obesity; 45 percent have high blood pressure; 19 percent have diabetes. So, the social indicators of health are really bad."

Late last month, a six-alarm fire, the largest fire that the city of Philadelphia has seen in at least three years, consumed a block-long building in the industrial section of Tioga. The fire consumed a warehouse on the 3300 block of Stokely Avenue. This particular block is not a part of the Healthy Town Tioga Project development design, but the news story reflects the kind of media coverage of Tioga that residents of Philadelphia have become used to over time. In Philly, Tioga has become synonymous with decline.

Imagine instead a community where a holistic set of sustainable wellness amenities are available in a mixed-income, walkable neighborhood designed to grow its own produce. An urban vertical farm provides groceries for a Reading Terminal-styled farmer's market.

At the heart of this healthy utopia is a culinary center that teaches people how to prepare healthy foods and instructs them in all of the ways that wellness can be achieved through knowing what you put into your body. This is the vision of the Healthy Town Tioga Project.

The history of Tioga tells a complex (and interesting) story that is like so many other neighborhood stories in Philly. What we now know as Tioga was initially settled by, and named after, Kenderton Smith in 1820. Smith was a businessman and lawyer who also served as a colonel in the Pennsylvania Militia; this was the early part of the 19th century when militias actually served a constructive purpose. But in 1854, when the Tioga railroad station was built, the neighborhood was renamed Tioga, an Iroquois word that means "junction" or where a road or path forks.

In the halcyon days of Tioga, the neighborhood was a melting pot of early American immigrants, including Irish, Polish and Jewish families. At this point in our nation's history Black people were enslaved as property and very few-even in the "liberal" north owned any actual property themselves.

This began to change by the 1960s as migration patterns found African Americans drifting away from the oppressively violent racism of the South in order to pursue elusive dreams of liberation in the North. This pursuit drove many African Americans to the City of Brotherly Love and the neighborhood of Tioga. Whether by unfortunate circumstances or intentional anti-development strategies, Tioga began its precipitous decline as African Americans moved in and white flight took flight.

Neighborhood industrial stalwarts like Midvale Steel wavered in the midst of the overall industrial shifts of the Philadelphia economy. Post-industrialism left gaping economic holes across the city and African-American families-mostly first-generation Philadelphians (at that time)-suffered the most in the new manufacturing-challenged economic environment.

Today, Tioga is over 85-percent Black. Jeff Hornstein, executive director of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, cites the community's health care statistics to me from memory: "It's a fresh-food desert, 42 percent poverty rate, 18 percent unemployment rate. That's actually before the pandemic. 43 percent of residents suffer from obesity; 45 percent have high blood pressure; 19 percent have diabetes. So, the social indicators of health are really bad."

Given the bleak reality of our everyday existence, our capacity to imagine a post-Covid-19 future is almost a radical political act. In this sense, the Healthy Town Tioga Project is afrofuturistic because it speculates about the possibilities of a future for a black community that is alive and healthy.

Each of these health indicators represent adverse health conditions under normal circumstances, but in the era of the coronavirus pandemic they are considered comorbidities: Anyone who has these issues/diseases and also contracts coronavirus will be much more likely to die from Covid-19. Even pre-coronavirus, Tioga was not a healthy town.

That's Where the Vision of Healthy Town Tioga Project Comes In

The idea is to upend a neighborhood plagued by economic and health inequities, and innovate in a way that transforms the lives and social outcomes of its citizens. "Jumpstarting this amenity base for the neighborhood and the partnerships TPP has formed (including the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society) is the key. It's comprehensive, but it all revolves around health and wellness," says Hornstein.

Healthy Town Tioga Project is the vision of Anthony Miles, founder of TPP Capital Management, who is simultaneously pragmatic and optimistic about the potential of HTTP. "I call it a dream," he says. It's a dream based on years of planning from within and outside Tioga-but with little so far to show from it.

"One thing about Tioga is they're all planned out, which means they don't need another plan," Miles says. "The City Planning Commission did a plan. The Community Design Collaborative did pro bono work to do a plan. They have more than enough plans. But what they're missing is implementation of those plans."

Under the Healthy Town Tioga Plan, TPP plans to develop 41 vacant pieces of land (within five blocks of Temple University Hospital) into a fully integrated health and wellness neighborhood. (The sites fall within two areas that are federal Opportunity Zones.) It will include retail and commercial spaces, street improvements, a job training center and over 1,400 residences, including housing for seniors, graduate students, health care and food entrepreneurs, as well as condos for middle-income service workers.

HTTP will also directly address health concerns in the area through a 139,000-square-foot health hub including a primary and specialty care clinic, an indoor vertical farm, a food and nutrition library, a community farmers market and a center for culinary medicine.

According to Miles, HTTP is currently securing building permits and will launch the project with 32 multifamily one- and two-bedroom, bi-level condominiums targeting middle-income service workers. Attracting middle-income service workers (health care workers, law enforcement, teachers, firefighters, transit workers and military) to the neighborhood will provide much needed economic stability for the future of the project. The plan is to break ground on these condominiums at the end of this year or early 2021.

This month, TPP's Real Estate Investment Fund launched a $100 million investment campaign for the initial phase of the project, which will be a $1 billion initiative in total, over the next decade.

"The infrastructure is already there," says Miles. "You have Temple University Health System that goes from Broad and Allegheny up to Erie. They have 10,980 people that work there. We saw that as a plus. You have the Broad Street subway stop at Erie and Allegheny; you have the north station with Amtrak. You have all of that great infrastructure [in] the most transit-oriented neighborhood in the whole city."

Our national Covid-19 death toll is approaching 200,000. The United States has over 6,000,000 cases of coronavirus. Looking to our immediate past or our immediate future, the coronavirus's grip on America is colder than Charlton Heston's hands on a flintlock long rifle.

Miles is a Navy veteran turned social impact real estate developer. His bona fides for Healthy Town Tioga Project rest largely on his track record proven through his development work in the Francisville neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Miles grew up there and just over a decade ago he partnered with the Francisville Neighborhood Development Corporation (through the 16th and Ridge Avenue Property Owners Association) to build the multi-family units at The Vineyards at 16th and Ridge).

"He did great work in Francisville," says Hornstein, who used to live in the neighborhood. (Miles sits on the Economy League's Board of Directors.) "He's got a model that uses the private sector to subsidize itself to create workforce housing. And he's got this serious commitment to health and wellness." Which is why, according to Hornstein, important stakeholders, like Independence Blue Cross and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society are committed to the vision of the Healthy Town Tioga Project.

As a social impact developer, TPP acknowledges that it cannot operate in a social or communal vacuum. Investors and stakeholders must also be committed to advancing the social, economic and health outcomes for the citizens of the neighborhoods within which the project has been proposed.

Despite conventional perceptions of real estate development in Philadelphia, a fair number of innovators have assumed the mantle of community-centered initiatives across the city.

Mosaic Development partners, founded in 2008, have invested over $100 million in North and West Philadelphia neighborhoods. Shift Capital has a similarly community-centered focus in its development projects in Kensington.

In this context, Miles' TPP and the Healthy Town Tioga Project are part of a promising trend toward revitalizing Philadelphia in real ways that include the citizens of some of the most challenged Philadelphia neighborhoods.

For those still skeptical of these development projects and the specter of gentrification, Jeff Hornstein sees these challenges differently. "Philadelphia does not have a gentrification problem; we have a jobs and income problem. We don't have an affordable-housing problem per se. We have too many poor people and too much substandard housing, and we have a situation in which developers tend to build new housing rather than rehabbing existing housing."

Pela McFee, a long time Tioga resident and a former leader in the Tioga United community organization is measured but optimistic about the future of her beloved neighborhood.

When McFee isn't spending her time with her family she volunteers at the Tioga Hope Garden on weekends. Tioga Hope Garden never received the full municipal support promised for these kinds of initiatives in the city, but Tioga United and members of the Tioga neighborhood made it into a community green space despite the bureaucratic obstacles that they initially faced.

This kind of "get-it-done" initiative seems to run through the stakeholders and others affiliated with the Healthy Town Tioga Project.

Early on, McFee was invited to be a community spokesperson on behalf of Healthy Town Tioga Project. She explained to me that she "developed a good relationship" with the team at The Partnership Project. "We thought that they would be a good fit for Tioga. But we still put them through the ringer."

The fact that a Philadelphia development project was put "through the ringer" by the community organization most impacted by the proposed plan is, in and of itself, a forward-thinking prospect for Tioga's post-Covid-19 future.

McFee has stepped away from Tioga United for personal reasons not at all related to HTTP, but she still has faith in it and remains invested in the outcomes of the project. "It will be a benefit for our community. We'll have a seat at the table and a piece of the pie," she says.

Healthy Town Tioga Project emerges as a glimmer of hope and a model for the possibilities of a post-Covid future that embraces equity, a post-Covid future that directly confronts the health disparities highlighted through the nadir of the pandemic.

According to Miles, the pandemic has had an impact on HTTP, but that impact may seem counterintuitive. "We've been at this way before the pandemic because we understood what the health disparities were before the pandemic," he says. "The only thing the pandemic did was put a gigantic spotlight on these issues. It also caused everyone to stop with their busy schedules to hear the messaging about how Black people are the most vulnerable population health-wise."

Miles says that conversations with municipal and financial stakeholders are more engaged. "They're listening now; the whole country is listening."

TPP projects a 400-percent "social return" on its investment: For every dollar invested in HTTP, Miles says he estimates $4 will come back to the community in the form of new social amenities and health/wellness resources. For individuals, TPP claims community members will see an annualized benefit of almost $6,000-in a community where the median income is about $17,500.

Miles accounts for this by pointing to a community-based lifestyle that emphasizes proactive engagement with health and wellness through nutrition and amenable access to healthy foods and wellness services.

Of course, the history of development deals are replete with bold promises of economic transformation that never come to fruition. And maybe HTTP seems similarly farfetched to those who have been paying attention to real estate and economic development across the city of Philadelphia. It might be.

But given the bleak reality of our everyday existence-an unchecked pandemic and the recurring specter of brutal racial inequities-our capacity to imagine a post-Covid-19 future is almost a radical political act in itself. In this sense, the Healthy Town Tioga Project is afrofuturistic because it speculates about the possibilities of a future for a Black community that is alive and healthy. Imagine that.

James Peterson is a writer, educator and consultant, and is host of Tonight on WURD, a nightly news program on WURD, Philadelphia's only independently Black-owned radio network. The Color of Coronavirus series is supported by the Pamela and Ajay Raju Foundation.
Illustration by Noa Denmon Healthy Town Tioga Project

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Healthy Town Tioga Project aims to transform a struggling section of North Philadelphia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Thinking beyond corona is almost an exercise in futility-an unwinnable debate between the equity deficiencies of the old normal and the limited possibilities of a new one-destined to repeat the mistakes of the past.

# data[].attributes.headline
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:BEARING WITNESS

# data[].attributes.subject
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:BEARING WITNESS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In March, as the coronavirus hit Philadelphia, photojournalist Raymond Holman, Jr., realized it presented a unique opportunity to tell (and show) the human stories unfolding in our city in the grips of a global pandemic. In particular, he wanted to witness the effects of Covid-19 on Black Philadelphians-who, we'd later learn, have been disproportionately affected by the disease. By the beginning of April, Holman decided to make an intervention, noting that access to healthcare was a critical issue for the African American community in Philadelphia.

What he found on his trips to North Philadelphia was an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty that was both palpable and photographable. He also found heroism, in the doctors and nurses, led by Ala Stanford, of the Black Doctors Covid-19 Consortium.

Every week for the first two months of the pandemic's first wave, the Consortium offered free testing to residents in Black neighborhoods, sometimes setting up in the parking lots of Black churches. To date, the BDCC has administered over 10,000 tests-conducting as many as 350 tests per day in some weeks this past spring. More recently, the consortium has positioned itself within the city's pandemic budget, raising funds on its own and established a trusted healthcare interface with the Black community in Philadelphia.

"I decided to go and see what was going on with a need to also capture images," Holman says. Taking pictures "is something I really need to do. It's burning in my heart all the time. All the time."

A banker-turned-photojournalist in 1989, Holman has shot photos for The Inquirer and Daily News. His photography, focusing on family caregivers of people with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia was exhibited in the African American Museum of Philadelphia in 2008. His photos also appeared in "Committed to the Image," the first exhibit of Black photographers from around the country at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and in a publication called Black Photographers from 1864 to Present.

Holman's approach to photography is evangelical. He defines it as a deep-seated need to tell stories in a visual art form that provides a unique entry point into the human experience. The conditions of Covid-19 forced Holman to initially shoot his subjects from a distance, but as he learned more and as the BDCC continued to lead with bravery and safety, Holman settled in to his more traditional intimate focal points.

For Holman, the unknown health risks and our general ignorance of the pandemic earlier this year did not deter his desire to capture the stories of our community coming together to manage the coronavirus. Holman's (photographic) intervention captures images of fear, anticipation, compassion and anxiety. Together his work celebrates the frontline workers at the critical point of contact with a community struggling to confront the impact of one of the deadliest viruses in this nation's history.

Here, Holman talks about this extraordinary moment in Philly-and his photos that capture the complexities of surviving the coronavirus in the city of brotherly love.

James Peterson: Can you give us a sense of what made you decide to shoot the coronavirus/COVID-19 photos? What drove you to say, "Hey, I need to capture what's going on right now with this pandemic"?

Raymond Holman, Jr.: In mid-March I started hearing about this Covid-19 situation, and it was starting to affect assignments and things I was going to do this year. And then I heard about an organization of Black doctors and nurses who were going to be giving free Covid-19 testing at a church in North Philadelphia. This was the beginning of April.

I decided to go and see what was going on with the need to also capture images. Because my relationship with photography is, it's like a monkey on my back. I need to take pictures. And I don't mean I need to just take pictures. I need to take pictures that are captivating and that soothe my soul.

So, I went to North Philadelphia just to see what the situation was like and just kind of figure out if it was safe being there. I knew hardly anything about Covid-19, and how to approach capturing some images. My first day was really kind of a trial step for me. How could I capture some images that were the style of images I wanted to capture and tell a story at the same time? So, I had an opportunity to speak to a couple of people there who were the creators of this particular consortium.

JP: Yes. That's Dr. Ala Stanford's group, the Black Doctors Covid-19 Consortium.

RH: Right, yeah. I stayed pretty far away, because my tendency when I capture images, I'm pretty close to people normally. But because I didn't understand Covid-19, I didn't know how it traveled from person to person, for the most part I shot with a long lens, a telephoto lens.

And from there, once I got the feeling that I should be capturing this group of people, every time I heard that they were going to a different location I went as a person with the intention of documenting what they were doing, because I thought it was really important that it be documented from the viewpoint of a Black person.

I did it for about four months. It just recently ended maybe a month ago now. But I would go on average three times a week. I would go out wherever they were and I would capture images. I remember-I think the third time I went out I went to a church up in Mt. Airy, Enon Baptist Church. And that particular day they tested 250 people, from what I understand. So, I have a lot of images.

JP: There's an array of extraordinarily vibrant mask photos. And then there are images of caregivers. You capture some of the caregivers moving in and out of the space. Can you talk a little about those categories? You were obviously trying to get the more quotidian images of healthcare workers moving in and out of the space. Is that a fair way to describe those categories?

RH: Yes, it is. For example, there's one image I captured where there's an individual who is leaning backwards prepared to have the swab put in his nostril. Instead of waiting for the swab to actually go into his nostril I decided to capture it at a very far distance from his nostril. So, you only see a really small portion of the swab. And that's actually one of my favorite images. It was creating an image and a feeling of anticipation of the unknown, because Covid-19 is unknown.

The people who were being tested for Covid-19, especially at the beginning when it first started -they had never been tested before, so they had no idea what it was going to feel like to put that swab in your nose.

JP: There are also, all of these striking images of people in masks.

RH: Right. I was at a mosque in Mt. Airy. I saw a guy 100 percent in protection garb from head to toe. I mean, he's wearing this green protective gear. And he's wearing this big mask.

At the time I saw him I said, "Jesus. Jesus Christ. This dude is stone cold protecting himself." And I wanted to capture that image. So, when I put it into Photoshop, I made sure that I added intensity to the colors and contrast, and I did some other things, because I wanted people to be able to see his eyes also. And I wanted to feel as if maybe he was on planet Mars.

JP: He looks like an alien, almost.

JP: Did you have a chance to speak with Dr. Stanford or any of the other healthcare workers while you were doing your work there?

RH: Oh, yeah. I actually developed a really good relationship with some of the people. Matter of fact, I was coming in so frequently that they got accustomed to me being there capturing images that some of the times I didn't show up-when I didn't show up, the next time I did show up they'd say: "Where were you?"

JP: Let's go back to the beginning. How did you become a photographer?

RH: It was a hobby that turned into a career. I actually have a degree in economics, so when I came out of school, I was in banking for ten years. It took me an extraordinarily long time to turn a hobby into a career -about 15 years. It was very hard.

I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. I majored in economics at Lincoln University. I had envisioned myself being in corporate America my entire career. Then I picked up a camera one Christmas holiday and was taking pictures around the Christmas tree. Eventually that step into photography became some sort of inner recognition that I could do photography. So, I started purchasing photography magazines and going to some exhibits. I'm basically a self-taught photographer. There were really no role models in the city that I could approach that were willing to share information on how to turn this hobby into a career.

So, it was very difficult. And I think one reason why I continue to do it is because I recognize how valuable photography is. I recognize the fact that I'm supposed to do photography. I want to have the opportunity to expose photography to young people of color who want to turn it into a career, especially here in Philly because Philadelphia is not friendly to the arts, especially photography particularly. It's a beautiful path.

RH: It's a beautiful path. It's a beautiful path. It can change society. It can change society, man.

JP: So, can you talk us through some of the logistics of the work? Did you wear a mask?

RH:I always wore a mask. We were always outside. I always wore a mask. And I noticed maybe two months ago, two and a half months ago the doctors and nurses started doubling up on masks. When I noticed that they were wearing double masks I started wearing double masks.

RH: I understood by that point that being outside, because of fresh air there's less likelihood of catching Covid-19. By that point I was shooting with a wide-angle lens and shooting with a medium lens-85 millimeter lens. So, I was getting pretty close to some extent, but I was always wanting to tell a story. I would shoot tight, I would shoot wide, and I would shoot at that intermediate length to make sure I was telling the entire story.

For the next stage of this project, I want to start focusing on people who have actually developed Covid-19 and have been able to move through it, move through the process. But what I'm realizing is some people are afraid to let others know they developed Covid-19. They are really afraid.

RH: There's a big story out here about that. And it's not being told in the Black community. It's probably not being told a whole lot in general in the world. But definitely not in the Black community.
Text by James Peterson; photos by Raymond Holman, Jr. A man waits to be tested for Covid-19 at Triumph Baptist Church on W. hunting Park Avenue.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Philly photographer chronicles the Black Doctors Covid-19 Consortium.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In March, as the coronavirus hit Philadelphia, photojournalist Raymond Holman, Jr., realized it presented a unique opportunity to tell (and show) the human stories unfolding in our city in the grips of a global pandemic. In particular, he wanted to witness the effects of Covid-19 on Black Philadelphians-who, we'd later learn, have been disproportionately affected by the disease.

# data[].attributes.headline
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:RACIAL EQUITY RAPID RESPONSE TEAMS

# data[].attributes.subject
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:RACIAL EQUITY RAPID RESPONSE TEAMS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
With over 220,000 mortalities and counting, the only two certainties in the era of the coronavirus are death and our nation's delayed response to the onslaught of the pandemic.

As the impact of the virus struggles to sustain our interest through the malaise of a presidential election cycle, our collective response time to the ceaseless parade of bad political news suffers from communal exhaustion.

Hidden in the mix of this malaise are some of the innovative efforts to address the racial disparities-so oft referenced in this column-and placed permanently on display in the disparate death rates of Covid-19.

In select cities across the nation ( Chicago, Oakland, Boulder, Colo. and others), Racial Equity Rapid Response (RERR) teams have been organized at the municipal level in order to troubleshoot and redress the racial disparities that have exacerbated the outcomes of the coronavirus, especially for Black and Latinx communities.

It sounds slightly oxymoronic that in the 21st century, after four centuries of sluggish, if not non-existent, responses to institutional racism in America, city leaders have decided to dedicate municipal resources to racial equity. But they have; and in some of these cities, on some of these teams, responding to racial inequities is not a drill.

Philadelphia's version of RERRs

This month, the Kenney administration instituted the initial phase of its citywide Racial Equity Strategy. It is comprehensive and, if fully realized, it will represent the kind of structural change that is required if the city of Philadelphia will ever be equitable in terms of race.

Kenney's executive order 1-20 requires all municipal departments to develop "Racial Equity Plans," be open to various assessments of racial equity in their units and departments, and to develop annual workforce diversity, equity and inclusion plans.

The only two certainties in the era of the coronavirus are death and our nation's delayed response to the onslaught of the pandemic.

The goal, according to the strategy, is to "ensure that equity considerations become institutionally engrained and institutional barriers to success are dismantled." If all of this sounds like too much planning and not enough action, note that in order for racial equity to be realized, these kinds of strategic plans are necessary. And as with any municipal/policy plan, the proof will be in the results which will be easy to determine based upon the benchmarks outlined in Mayor Kenney 's executive order.

But, unlike in Chicago, Boulder, and a handful of other cities, Mayor Kenney's strategy is not, by definition, a "rapid response" to the disparities exposed by Covid-19.

The cities that have deployed rapid response teams realize that, in general, government is not built for speed. Even in emergency situations, government is sluggish-bureaucratic and too often ineffective. But the pandemic revealed an uglier and maybe deliberately inept federal response. Some in the Black community came to believe that the federal response was deliberately inept because the government quickly became aware of the disparate death rates from Covid-19 and deemed those more likely to die to be more or less expendable.

Sorry old folks, Black folks and anybody with a "pre-existing" condition; the executive branch of the U.S. government did not find your lives worthy of a national plan to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.

In the pandemic moment, an old political cliché has proven to be priceless. All of the politics that matter are local. When the first wave of the virus crested, it was governors who emerged as the political heroes of the moment-first Governor Gavin Newsom and then Governor Cuomo. Both executives did more for their states than the president was willing to do for our nation. Neither governor was perfect, but the response proved the possibilities for leadership in the pandemic moment and revealed for all the ineptitude in the federal executive office.

Boulder and its community-connector model

Mayors are municipal executives and their work has been critical to the ways that cities have (or have not) managed to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.

Even before Covid-19, there were precursors of what this virus has wrought. Storms and floods, for example, have revealed disparate impact along racial lines in many of our communities.

"We saw in some flooding in 2013 that there really was a lack of equity involved in the response and recovery, that there was not great community engagement in that response and recovery," says Ryan Hanschen, an engagement specialist with the city of Boulder. " So, we had it in the back of our heads that this would be a good idea, and along comes Covid-19."

In the pandemic moment, an old political cliché has proven to be priceless. All of the politics that matter are local.

Hanschen and other leaders in Boulder realized that what is fair is not always the same as what is equal, especially in any given moment. Equality might dictate that everyone gets a mask during a pandemic. Equity would ensure that everyone has (free) healthcare. Equity requires a more in-depth engagement with community. You have to know what people need in order to make their lives equitable.

Boulder's equity response team used a community-connector model in order to launch one of their early programs to address the inequities of the pandemic.

The community connector model deploys members of a municipal community to connect with their neighbors who may not be responsive to local government. It's a model that features equitable outreach in order to produce equitable outcomes. Boulder's connectors are paid for their work and they are armed with vital information that can help citizens afford rent and secure food assistance.

"We've seen remarkable connectors who are able to serve as liaisons and work closely with our Latino communities, with Nepali communities, with some senior communities, different low-income communities, making sure that they were able to share that information," says Hanschen.

The two-way flow of communication worked out well for the city of Boulder. The rapid response equity team identified families in their community who could not afford to purchase masks for themselves. They also identified unemployed women of color who could make masks if they had the appropriate materials.

"So, the city sat down with a local organization and said, 'let's make sure that we can set aside some funding to pay out-of-work Latino women to make the masks in the first place,'" says Hanschen. "And the city was able to commit to the fabric, the time that it took, and the distribution throughout the community."

A couple of thousand masks later, Boulder's community was a little bit healthier and the promise of equity was made more real for those who can be socially invisible in the eyes of their local government.

More importantly, in using the rapid-response racial equity approach, the Boulder government was challenged to think critically and holistically about how the recovery effort in a pandemic is distinct from traditional environmental recovery efforts, which also lag with racial inequities.

"We recognized as we made the shift to recovery that we didn't want this focus on racial equity to go by the wayside," says Hanschen. "This needs to be front and center."

How Chicago has stepped up

Chicago, a city much larger than Boulder and much closer in size and geography to our own beloved city, has its own version of the Racial Equity Rapid Response initiative. It's led by Candace Moore, Chicago's chief diversity officer and the co-lead for Chicago's Racial Equity Rapid Response initiative.

According to Moore, the data drove the formulation of Chicago's Racial Equity Rapid Response team. Chicago's Department of Public Health tracked the coronavirus data by race. "They sounded the alarm and brought it to the mayor's office's attention," she says.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot's administration strategized and quickly formed a team to focus directly on racial disparities and to "do more community connectivity work" in order to scale the city's response to the coronavirus' disparate impact, particularly in the African-American community of Chicago.

If we ever actually arrive at a post-pandemic moment, many critical questions will have to be answered. One will be: "What have we learned?"

The data points that drove the formulation of the team in Chicago were the case infection and mortality rates in the African-American community. By focusing on the communities with the highest mortality rates-Austin, Auburn-Gresham, and South Shore-the RERR team was designed to impact the neighborhoods most afflicted by the virus.

"The key was that we had to assess what infrastructures we had and in what places we had them. We're fortunate here in Chicago that we have a long history of community organizing," Attorney Moore tells me.

The infrastructure that Moore speaks of resides in the people and organizations already present and active in the hardest hit communities. Activists and organizers have the greatest capacity to rapidly respond to racial inequity in general, and certainly in this pandemic moment.

Moore explains that her team deployed an all-means approach, partnering with organizations with credibility in the community: Austin Coming Together, South Shore Works, Latinos Progresando and WestSide United, among others.

Chicago's RERR team communicates in a variety of ways, handing out flyers, organizing virtual calls and town halls, leveraging holidays (Mother's Day and Father's Day) to promote care for seniors in targeted communities.

"Our short-term goal was to flatten the curve, the mortality curve for our Black and brown communities from Covid-19, and to build an infrastructure for continued work together," says Ms. Moore. "So, recognizing that we're just part of the puzzle, we have seen that mortality curve, in particular, flatten across the board, but certainly for African Americans."

One of the promising outcomes for Chicago's RERR team is that its impact has impressed others inside the government. Many municipal colleagues have asked to meet with the RERR team in order to solve persistent problems unrelated to the coronavirus. For Moore, the work of the RERR team is a striking example of what can happen when community organization and government work together to serve the people.

If we ever actually arrive at a post-pandemic moment, many critical questions will have to be answered. One will be: "What have we learned?"

The handful of cities that have deliberately designed multi-faceted teams to address the racial inequities that have existed since the nation's inception are ahead of the learning curve. Racial equity has long been the key to undoing the historic failures of the United States to live up to its Constitutional promises.

It might be that one bright spot in an otherwise dreary (and dreadful) federal response to the pandemic, is the emergence of RERR teams-municipal government in partnership with community organizations working together to solve some of our greatest challenges when it comes to inequality.

Imagine the possibilities.
Illustration by Noa Denmon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cities deploy dedicated teams to combat racial disparities exposed by Covid

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With over 220,000 mortalities and counting, the only two certainties in the era of the coronavirus are death and our nation's delayed response to the onslaught of the pandemic. As the impact of the virus struggles to sustain our interest through the malaise of a presidential election cycle, our collective response time to the ceaseless parade of bad political news suffers from communal exhaustion.

# data[].attributes.headline
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:ENGINES FOR MISERY IN THE RACIAL PANDEMIC

# data[].attributes.subject
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:ENGINES FOR MISERY IN THE RACIAL PANDEMIC

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By now, scholars, health professionals and even some of us regular folk, know more now about Covid-19 than many or any of us did in the first quarter of 2020. But late last month a group of researchers led by Philly native Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff (at Yale University's Center for Policing Equity) published research that should change how all of us see this pandemic and the ways that race shapes and informs it.

We know that coronavirus impacts the Black community more intensely. Black folks are four times more likely to die from Covid-19. Similar disparities exist for Latinx and Asian communities, vis-à-vis their white counterparts.

But what Goff, a Yale professor of African American Studies and Psychology, and his colleagues have uncovered is something that impacts all of us: The racism that underpins outcomes in the pandemic, also drives the spread of the pandemic. In other words, American racism is making the pandemic worse for everyone.

People who are in and out of jail (and those exposed to them); essential workers (and those exposed to them); and people who have more contact with law enforcement (i.e., people who are exposed to police) are all driving the spread of coronavirus, according to the research conducted by Goff and his colleagues, Amelia M. Haviland, Tracey Lloyd, Mikaela Meyer, and Rachel Warren. People of color-Black, Brown, Asian, Indigenous-are much more likely to fall into each of these categories.

"Part of the reason why we did this research in the first place, is to show that when we segment off a group of folks and we treat them in ways that are less than human and we don't provide them with the basic protections against a pandemic we all suffer," says Goff.

Meanwhile, people who are not essential workers, or who do not worry about being over-policed or over-incarcerated sometimes fall into the groups of those who do not know how they have contracted the virus. "These networks-we call it engines for misery-extend beyond the folks that our society has decided are victims that deserve their terrible lot," says Goff.

For those who make all of the right decisions and who have the privilege to social distance, work from home and wear masks, there is still no escaping the ways that racism drives the spread of the virus. "We still see how the systems that disadvantage some portions of our most vulnerable populations gets to all of us."

Most of the messaging around mitigation focuses on social-distancing and mask-wearing. Stay home they tell us. Across the nation now, states and cities are suspending indoor eating and closing gyms and other public gathering places. But there's nothing in the messaging that says "Limit your contact with police" or "Make sure that all low-wage workers have PPE," or "Please monitor if people in your family or community are coming in and out of jail."

These factors are as significant in the spread of the virus as any others.

"Part of the reason why we did this research in the first place, is to show that when we segment off a group of folks and we treat them in ways that are less than human and we don't provide them with the basic protections against a pandemic we all suffer," says Goff.

Building a synthetic city

In this column and elsewhere, the racial lens through which the coronavirus has been viewed tends to focus on a limited set of racial disparities that operate along the coordinates of healthcare, co-morbidities and other health-related inputs and outcomes.

These factors matter in how we think about the pandemic and in how we challenge our elected leaders/officials to systemically address the challenges that many of our most vulnerable communities face.

But Goff and co. have approached the model from a different/distinct perspective and the results of their work should radically change how we address the challenges ahead.

"This is literally the karma of what we've done to ourselves because we've chosen not to protect a segment of the population on which we rely, whose humanity it is uncomfortable to see."

Those challenges are formidable. The U.S. has logged over 12 million cases of coronavirus. We are approaching a daily Covid-19 fatality rate of 2,000. In this third wave of the pandemic, as some struggle with "corona fatigue," and many prepare to navigate a holiday season with/out the familial interaction centered in our holiday experiences, the worst is still on the horizon.

According to modeling used by the researchers, racism is not just an underlying factor in the pandemic; it is the central engine of the virus' spread. In order to arrive at some of the most stunning research conclusions that have been made public with respect to the coronavirus pandemic, Goff et. al conducted their study through a synthetic metropolitan model.

That's because, as Lloyd explains to me, testing and contact tracing is not an exact science in the U.S. "When you look at positive test results, we know that those are only capturing a fraction of all of the real infections that are actually out there," she says. In order to more accurately capture the actual spread of the virus, these researchers used what they call a synthetic city, that more accurately estimates and projects real spread.

Instead of tracking (or projecting) death rates directly, Lloyd says, their team zeroed in on three factors that directly contribute to infection rates: low-wage 'essential' work, police-public contact and what their team refers to as jail and prison "churn."

For each of these variables Black people are over-indexed or over-represented based upon our percentages in the general population. We work more in low-wage, recently-deemed essential jobs; we are much more likely than our white counterparts to have contact with law enforcement; and our families and communities are more readily in close contact with those who are in and out of the jail and prison systems.

The researchers' model design is based upon national averages of infection rates and virus spread. Lloyd tells me that "if we wanted to work this up for Philadelphia, we'd have to know the infection rates inside of the local incarceration facilities, inside of the jail systems and the prisons that are sending people back home to those communities. We'd want to use numbers that are local to Philadelphia on the policing front, and also the labor market as well."

Goff adds that the low-wage essential worker data would likely skew even more disproportionately Black in a city with racial demographics comparable to Philadelphia. "It would be way worse" he says.

The conversation around policing

According to Goff, the focus on these factors reflects the innovative approach to ongoing research at the Center for Policing Equity.

"In the midst of the early parts of Covid, it was clear to us that this was dangerous in terms of how law enforcement might get used, either to enforce social distancing or mask adherence or other sorts of stay-at-home orders and quarantine measures," he says.

Their research team was also mindful of the fact that law enforcement itself might not take the appropriate measures to mitigate the spread of the virus internally. "The result was that there was not enough PPE available to law enforcement."

For Goff, the conversation around policing in the Covid-19 modeling experiment became another way of talking about the need to reduce contact with law enforcement overall. We need to, in fact, "shrink the size" of law enforcement.

"We started doing this work before the Floyd lynching" he says. "It's a public health risk to have law enforcement deployed particularly in areas that are so concentrated, so packed, so blighted by poverty, by disinvestment in education, in green vegetables, in employment, in mental health, and in other services."

But this is not just about funding or defunding the police-an urgent discussion that needs to be happening now at the level of policy and legislation. Sadly, how we allocate resources for vital services and policing has become a political football used to curtail the important work required to become a more equitable society. Instead, politicians have co-opted "defund the police" to shut down the possibility of developing more robust mental health services and diminishing the institutional racism baked into American policing.

Now we must confront the fact that racism itself is our biggest challenge in the greatest public health crisis of our lifetime. Goff makes it plain: "Our failure to protect the most vulnerable is damning all the rest of us."

The tragedy of the trajectory of our national conversation about policing in this moment, is that police-public contact is a statistically potent variable in the spread of the virus. And in the midst of a moment where racism in policing has reached a breaking point, the public health challenges with coronavirus and the spread of the virus through police-public contact has simply not been seriously considered until now.

"These three populations [low-wage workers, law enforcement, and individuals subject to jail/prison churn] were responsible for about 70 percent of the [virus] spread-and that's the conservative estimate," Goff says.

The numbers within the numbers

To be clear, low-wage workers account for about 53 percent and law enforcement/contact and criminal/legal systems "churn" account for about 16 percent of the spread, but the data in these numbers is no less staggering given where we are in the pandemic as of mid-late November 2020.

The numbers within the numbers are similarly revealing: "40 percent of the gap between Black and White (virus infection rates) was driven by the criminal/legal system amongst the people who were not otherwise made vulnerable by the criminal/legal system or their employment," according to Goff.

At this point in the pandemic, it feels to many of us like an unstoppable juggernaut, but Goff assures me it is not. "This is literally the karma of what we've done to ourselves because we've chosen not to protect a segment of the population on which we rely, whose humanity it is uncomfortable to see."

We have known for centuries that American racism is an engine for misery in communities of color especially. For months we have been writing and reporting on the devastatingly disparate outcomes of Covid-19 in the Black community and other vulnerable communities. But now we must confront the fact that racism itself is our biggest challenge in the greatest public health crisis of our lifetime. Goff makes it plain: "Our failure to protect the most vulnerable is damning all the rest of us."
Illustration by Noa Denmon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Racism makes the Covid-19 pandemic worse for everyone

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By now, scholars, health professionals and even some of us regular folk, know more now about Covid-19 than many or any of us did in the first quarter of 2020.

# data[].attributes.headline
I didn’t understand the Vietnam War until I met my father-in-law

# data[].attributes.subject
I didn’t understand the Vietnam War until I met my father-in-law

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This story is part of a WHYY series examining how the United States, four decades later, is still processing the Vietnam War. To learn more about the topic, watch Ken Burns and Lynn Novicks' 10-part documentary "The Vietnam War." WHYY members will have extended on-demand access to the series via WHYY Passport through the end of 2017.
-

I do not remember any of the details from the day I saw Oliver Stone's "Platoon" for the first time. It was 1986. I was 15 years of age. I don't remember the theater, or who accompanied me there; I don't remember what I was wearing or how much the ticket cost. I don't even remember all of the details of the film itself.

However, what I have most readily been able to recall over the years are the memories and feelings I had in response to the film. And in some ways, my memory of those feelings - about "Platoon," about American empire, about the Vietnam War - were for a long time the total substance of my connection to that moment in my life and to that part of world history.

I am young enough to have missed any conscious understanding of the political contexts for the Vietnam War - no evening news segments; no magazine or newspaper clippings; no primary sources for the war itself. I am also young enough that it had not yet been crystallized in our American history books - no brief synopses of the war or denigrating diatribes on the perilous spread of Communism throughout the region. None of this information filtered into my teen years, so Mr. Stone's experiences in the war, filtered through his now classic film, filled in the historical gaps for my teenage mind.

There were plenty of characters in the film with whom I might have identified. Growing up in Newark, N.J., in the '80s also meant that there were even some situations to which I could, at least tangentially, relate. But nothing struck me or stuck with me more than the ultimate plight of Sergeant Gordon Elias, played by Willem Dafoe.

Dafoe was mesmerizing to me as the radical mentor of the younger protagonist, played by Charlie Sheen. He resisted the unrelenting violence of the war, and he paid the ultimate price for his compassion. He was a hero in the film, and he exposed to me for the first time the complexities and the contradictions of war and this great country of ours.

I watched other films later - "Apocalypse Now," "Full Metal Jacket" - but no film set the stage for me in the way that "Platoon" did. Even still, my connection to this moment in history was limited to the screens and the filters through which I had access. I could never truly understand the Vietnam War - its referendum on the human condition in the 20th century - through these films. They were too far away from my experience. The war was too far away from my memorable history - until I married my wife.

Her father - Reginald S. Waller, Sr. - is a retired sergeant major in the United States Marine Corps. He served in the Vietnam War. I come from a military family, myself, but there is no way to explain my trepidation at the early prospect of meeting the man who became my father-in-law.

He has the most serious countenance I have ever seen. He actually reminded me of my paternal grandfather, my namesake. Both men were silent and serious. Dad Waller's silence underscores his seriousness, and vice versa. When he speaks, people listen with respect.

I suspect that some of the seriousness in his soul emerged from his experiences in the war. He has never really spoken very much about them, but sometimes, on certain holiday occasions, maybe after dinner or when the game gets to its blowout stage, he will bend my ear, or allow me to bend his. What I can recall most readily of these classified conversations are the memories and feelings that I have of them. They signal that I have become a part of his family, that I am his son. They make me feel closer to him.

But they also make me feel closer to the war in Vietnam, closer to war itself. In these conversations there is no filter; there is no invention; there is no detectable creative license with the history.

I cannot describe for you his experiences in Vietnam - his stories are parts of my memory that only I can access. They aren't fleeting but they are ephemeral. They are a powerful reminder to me that the history of war is brutal, alarming, and at times surprising in its chronicling of human potential.

His memories, of course, are not mine, but my memories of his relating his most complex experiences are now my very own personal "Platoon." They have supplanted the film and replaced it with Dad Waller's documentation of experiences that transcend memory and can never be forgotten.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I didn't understand the Vietnam War until I met my father-in-law - WHYY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This story is part of a WHYY series examining how the United States, four decades later, is still processing the Vietnam War. To learn more about the topic, watch Ken Burns and Lynn Novicks' 10-part documentary "The Vietnam War." WHYY members will have extended on-demand access to the series via WHYY Passport through the end of 2017.

# data[].attributes.headline
James Braxton Peterson on the Editing Process — Finding the Best Time to Edit

# data[].attributes.subject
James Braxton Peterson on the Editing Process — Finding the Best Time to Edit

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
James Braxton Peterson on the Editing Process — Finding the Best Time to Edit

# data[].attributes.headline
James Braxton Peterson Shares Essential Writing Tips to Persuade Your Audience

# data[].attributes.subject
James Braxton Peterson Shares Essential Writing Tips to Persuade Your Audience

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
James Braxton Peterson Shares Essential Writing Tips to Persuade Your Audience

# data[].attributes.headline
James Braxton Peterson Understands The Necessary Writing Skills

# data[].attributes.subject
James Braxton Peterson Understands The Necessary Writing Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Communication is arguably the most important skill humans have. If a concept or a feeling is well articulated, it can influence or impact a reader. Writing is an essential process and can be taught in a variety of ways. Regardless of how the written language is learned, it can change how information is absorbed and facilitate critical thinking.

The Benefits Of Writing

James Braxton Peterson has been counseling clients from a variety of backgrounds on how to write successfully, as well as publishing his own analysis pieces for the Philadelphia Citizen.

Writing can grant access to high-paying careers, intelligent dialogue, and further education. Literature fellowships are often available on a two-year cycle for students who write poetry or prose. Innovative creative writing programs can prepare individuals to express thoughts and feelings they might never have had access to without the written word.

Many careers involve or require writing. Even jobs that do not focus explicitly on writing will usually require some written language skills to effectively document and communicate with clients and co-workers.

Writing jobs can include:

technical writing

blogging

reporting

columnist

advertising manager

administrative assistant

legal secretary

social workers

case managers, etc.

Learning is often more productive when writing is involved. By taking notes and rewriting what has already been said in a classroom or at a conference, information can be thoroughly understood. Writing about a particular subject is one way to absorb or process the material successfully.

Whether you're journaling or in class, thoughts can be clarified through the writing and note-taking processes.

What Are The Most Important Writing Skills?

Clarity

For those who are just starting, an elaborate vocabulary can seem like a sophisticated way to write. While intricate wording may seem stylish, it should be used sparingly. Concise writing allows the reader to understand what's being said. Since communication is the main reason writing exists, clarity is essential.

Grammar

At first, grammar may seem like nitpicking. As long as the reader understands what is being conveyed, why should grammar matter? Grammar matters because it can disrupt the reader in the process of comprehending what is written. Basic punctuation and grammar rules can boost any piece of writing. Since readers come from all over the world, certain language patterns may not be recognized or easily understood. Proper grammar positions writing for the widest audience possible.

Editing

Once the initial writing piece is finished, the first draft is complete. A first draft is not complete because there are usually several mechanical mistakes and developmental errors. Knowing how to edit can help an individual distinguish between the two issues and revise structure and grammar as needed.

Creativity

Even when writing nonfiction, creativity is important. A creative essay can add the extra gusto necessary to grab the reader's attention. By highlighting the correct details and adding feeling and passion to the story, writing can become relatable. This is true for fiction, essays, poetry, and even certain kinds of reporting.

Structure Knowledge

Depending on the assignment, the structure of a writing piece can be drastically different. A five-paragraph essay, for instance, is entirely different from a thesis paper. When working on writing structure, it helps to know the audience. Writing for a publication is not the same as writing for an employer or writing a letter to a friend or family member.

Vocabulary

It never hurts to have a broad vocabulary. Even if large words aren't necessary for every sentence, all writing can benefit from verbal variety. The easiest way to expand vocabulary is through reading. Any type of reading, including song lyrics, John Steinbeck, newspapers, and blogs, can improve an individual's vernacular.

Patience and Persistence

Patience is a necessary skill when writing, states James Braxton Peterson. It may be difficult at first to know how to start or what to convey. Writing often can help the natural process of thinking in a structured form. By practicing daily, writing will become a familiar process.

Common Tips That Can Improve Writing Skills

Understanding Grammar

Introductory books on grammar and punctuation can dramatically increase writing performance. Updated books can teach the latest styles, but a classic copy of a grammar and spelling guide will do wonders.

Reading Often

Reading often will also help. Regardless of what is read, the exercise will improve vocabulary and reading comprehension. James Braxton Peterson suggests that reading can also lead to new ideas about creativity and structure in addition to informing the writer's approach to subject matter.

A New Perspective

Ask someone for another perspective. Many writers do not know if what they've written makes sense after completing an essay or a prose piece. Some writers feel they have conveyed their message perfectly, while others are unsure. Regardless of confidence, having another pair of eyes on a draft is useful.

Writing skills are a necessary part of everyday life, but they're also a gift. With the proper writing skills, conveying feelings and thoughts can be done artfully. Writing can help bring people together as well as communicate complicated issues. With the right writing skills, almost anything can be effectively communicated to an audience.
If you are interested in even more lifestyle-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
James Braxton Peterson Understands The Necessary Writing Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Communication is arguably the most important skill humans have. If a concept or a feeling is well articulated, it can influence or impact a reader. Writing is an essential process and can be taught in a variety of ways. Regardless of how the written language is learned, it can change how information is absorbed and facilitate critical thinking.

# data[].attributes.headline
James Braxton Peterson Shares Easy Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills

# data[].attributes.subject
James Braxton Peterson Shares Easy Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Anyone can learn to write and to do it well. All it takes is a little time, determination, and practice. This is how expert writers gain the skills necessary for their profession - they are constantly writing and honing their craft. But you don't need to spend hours writing each day to improve. There are plenty of simple steps that you can take to expand your skillset and improve your writing.

As a writer, editor, and content creator, James Braxton Peterson knows the importance of good writing and believes that anyone can advance their writing skills. Hailing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, James is a graduate of Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania. He is actively involved in educational reform and strives to help teachers implement progressive and creative teaching methods. He shares some helpful tips for improving your writing skills.
Back to Basics

James Braxton Peterson from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on How to Improve Your Writing Skills

Above all, to be a good writer, you need strong grammar skills. This is because spelling and grammar are essential when it comes to successfully conveying your ideas. To practice these skills, James Braxton Peterson suggests turning off your spelling and grammar software. Continue writing while paying extra attention to your spelling and grammar. Review your content for any errors then turn the tools back on to see how you did. Were you able to catch all of your spelling mistakes and grammatical errors? Practicing writing without the use of automatic spelling and grammar error detection will help you develop these skills and, ultimately, you'll be less inclined to rely on software, which isn't always reliable.
Start with an Outline
One of the best ways to improve the structure and flow of your content is to start by writing an outline. This will allow you to establish all of your ideas and arrange them in a cohesive manner. James Braxton Peterson reports that this technique is helpful because it allows you to easily move ideas around before you begin elaborating. To start, write down everything that you intend to cover. Then, organize the sections so that they flow logically. Finally, analyze your outline as a whole and determine where improvements can be made. Many great writers start with a clear outline every time they write and by doing the same, you can greatly improve the organization and structure of your work.
Edit, Edit, Edit
James Braxton Peterson from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Editing

Reviewing your work is a great way to improve your writing skills. By analyzing your work, making adjustments, and looking for ways to improve, you can learn a lot. Even if you collaborate with an editor, looking back at your work is helpful. This way you can learn from your mistakes and identify areas where you can focus on improving your skills. James Braxton Peterson notes that one of the most important skills of a great writer is the ability to be concise. This skill is best practiced when reviewing your work. Do you repeat yourself too often? This is a sign that you need to work on being clearer. Try to eliminate unnecessary information, including repetitive words and ideas. If something isn't sitting right, rework it or delete it and try again. Being tough on yourself at this stage is important, as you want to uncover any areas that you can improve on and learn from.
Solicit Feedback
Ask someone to read your work and provide feedback. This is a great way to learn and to see your content from another perspective. Perhaps your writing is clear in your mind but not to other readers. James Braxton Peterson suggests finding someone you can trust to give their honest opinion. Without honesty and tough constructive criticism, you won't know where and how you can improve.
Read
From grammar to structure and style, reading the work of others can help you develop new skills. James Braxton Peterson recommends reading as many different types of material as possible. Different genres and types of writing will offer different learning opportunities. For example, a blog post might demonstrate concise writing while a novel may exhibit more stylistic content. Reading various types of materials will also help you to better understand what separates a good piece of writing from content that doesn't engage the reader. This will help you adapt your style and build the skills necessary to become a talented writer.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
James Braxton Peterson Shares Easy Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Anyone can learn to write and to do it well. All it takes is a little time, determination, and practice. This is how expert writers gain the skills necessary for their profession - they are constantly writing and honing their craft. But you don't need to spend hours writing each day to improve.

# data[].attributes.headline
James Braxton Peterson Shares Easy Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills

# data[].attributes.subject
James Braxton Peterson Shares Easy Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Today, the ability to create engaging, accurate, and well-written content is a highly valuable skill. Every industry in the world requires an aspect of writing and those with strong written communication skills are often highly sought after. Therefore, learning important writing and editing skills can help you stand out among your peers. But, what are the most important skills to learn? From the basics of spelling and grammar to the structure of your writing, there are several writing and editing skills that will allow you to succeed, regardless of the industry you're in.

James Braxton Peterson is a writer, editor, and content creator from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. James has an extensive educational background, with degrees from both Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania. He is a proponent of educational reform and has spent many years training and working with educators to implement new and innovative teaching methods. He shares his insight into the most important writing and editing skills for success in any industry.

James Braxton Peterson from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Important Writing and Editing Skills

Spelling and Grammar
A good writer requires strong grammar skills. From spelling and punctuation to sentence structure, it's important that you learn the basics before focusing on other aspects of writing and editing. Once these important skills are mastered, writing style and other aspects can be focused on. James Braxton Peterson notes that, while there are many spelling and grammar tools available, nothing is as reliable as a good writer.
Vocabulary
A strong vocabulary is also important. A large vocabulary helps writers create clear and concise content and allows them to establish their message in a creative and interesting way. James Braxton Peterson suggests that you make a point of learning one new and interesting word each day. Over time, this will help you build a large vocabulary, allowing you to develop content that is elegant and succinct.
Organization and Structure
All good writers know how to implement structure and organize their writing in a thoughtful and logical manner. Not only does this help the writer organize their thoughts, but proper structure also assists readers in making connections between ideas. As well, content that is well organized allows the audience to follow along without losing interest. During both the writing and editing phase, a writer should be able to evaluate and adjust their content so that it flows naturally into a cohesive whole.
Research
James Braxton Peterson from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Researching Your Topic

Often, writers are required to discuss topics they aren't familiar with or to present information that supports their opinions and ideas. As a result, strong research skills are necessary. In addition to being able to gather accurate and reliable information, writers must also know how to properly convey this information. Ideas must always be attributed to their original creator, therefore a writer must know how to take new information and present it without plagiarizing. James Braxton Peterson suggests that writers who conduct research online do so cautiously. It is important that, when gathering information online, you rely only on websites that are valid and have authority in their field. Anyone can publish content online these days, so finding accurate and reliable information is key when conducting research.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
James Braxton Peterson Reveals Important Writing and Editing Skills for Success in Any Field

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Today, the ability to create engaging, accurate, and well-written content is a highly valuable skill. Every industry in the world requires an aspect of writing and those with strong written communication skills are often highly sought after. Therefore, learning important writing and editing skills can help you stand out among your peers.

# data[].attributes.headline
James Braxton Peterson Shares Essential Writing Tips to Persuade Your Audience

# data[].attributes.subject
James Braxton Peterson Shares Essential Writing Tips to Persuade Your Audience

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Persuasive writing is a powerful tool that can compel readers to resonate with a particular viewpoint or perspective. Writers present an opinion, use logical arguments to support their views, and employ emotional appeals to create a call to action.

James Braxton Peterson, a writer, educational consultant, and scholar from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, offers some tips to help writers present their ideas in a rational and convincing manner.

James Braxton Peterson from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Persuasive Writing

Be Passionate About the Topic
The topic should be relevant to readers and inspire passion. Writers with zero interest in their topic will lose reader interest. This is especially true with persuasive writing. If the argument is clear, true, and authentic, one's writing will achieve the desired effect.
Know Your Audience
Writers must know who their audience is, first and foremost. Every audience has its own nuanced concerns, notes James Braxton Peterson. One should keep the audience in mind when choosing a topic and forming one's arguments. Pinpointing one's audience helps the writer reach that audience and hold their attention.
Perform Research
Research is critical. Writers should research the topic from multiple points of view. Doing so will help the writer anticipate opposing arguments and collect solid evidence to support their argument.
Create a Logical Flow and Outline
Persuasive writing is primarily about making a clear point and addressing counter-arguments from the opposition. Experienced writers frame opposing opinions respectfully and organize their own arguments accordingly. This approach leaves little room for doubt, defensiveness, or unnecessary follow-up questions.

Good persuasive writing should have an organized logical flow, says James Braxton Peterson. Readers must be able to follow each argument easily.

One of the best ways to achieve this logical flow is to set up an outline before composing the first draft. One's thesis statement should be at the top of the outline and will rest within the first paragraph on the draft. Writers use an outline to create a list of main points, subpoints, and supporting evidence. Each point should back up the thesis statement and address counterarguments.
Focus on Your Thesis Statement
James Braxton Peterson from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, says to Focus on the Thesis Statement

A thesis statement is a single sentence that sums up the main argument. The thesis statement should be clear and relatively short. Readers shouldn't have to guess what the writer's agenda is. That's why it's important to let readers know from the beginning what they are reading, as well as the writer's point of view.

The thesis statement is the main argument of the work and the writer is expected to refer back to it regularly throughout the piece. Each point and subpoint should flow from the thesis statement and not venture too far from the main argument.
Get the Reader's Attention Right Away
Use a good hook. This will grab the reader's attention right away. A "hook" can be an interesting fact, piece of supporting evidence, or a story that illustrates or foreshadows the main argument in the thesis statement, notes James Braxton Peterson.
Use as Many Supporting Arguments as Possible
Persuasive writers do their best to support the main argument in their thesis statement. Supporting arguments should employ sound research and logic.

It is not enough to simply state an opinion and expect readers to agree without questions. One should anticipate what, why, and how questions. Each point and subpoint should address those questions with clear, thoughtful research and data.
Be Honest
Write with integrity. Rhetoric should be ethical. According to James Braxton Peterson, writing ethically means that writers have an obligation to not mislead or manipulate their audience. Arguments must be forthright, based in fact, and devoid of fear tactics or misinformation.
Use an Empathetic Voice
If a reader feels more connected with the writer, they will be more likely to believe and agree with them. Writers that use empathy to relate to readers will help readers feel understood.
Repetition is Key
One should reinforce their main point tastefully. Readers should find variations of the thesis statement throughout the persuasive piece, says James Braxton Peterson. Some of the best ways to paraphrase a main point include stories, metaphors, similes, restatements, quotes, and analogies.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
James Braxton Peterson Shares Essential Writing Tips to Persuade Your Audience

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Persuasive writing is a powerful tool that can compel readers to resonate with a particular viewpoint or perspective. Writers present an opinion, use logical arguments to support their views, and employ emotional appeals to create a call to action.

# data[].attributes.headline
James Braxton Peterson on the Editing Process — Finding the Best Time to Edit

# data[].attributes.subject
James Braxton Peterson on the Editing Process — Finding the Best Time to Edit

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It is rare that a first draft is also a final draft. The writing process typically includes many revisions, such as editing, removing unneeded content, or adding clarifying phrases. Editing is the key to making your writing clear and memorable.

James Braxton Peterson is a writer, educational consultant, content creator, and scholar for culture and politics from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of both Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania. Peterson embraces a progressive mindset, analyzing contemporary American culture, politics, race relations, entertainment, and non-traditional approaches to academics.

James Braxton Peterson from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the Editing Process
Getting Started - the First Draft
Firs and foremost, editing should not interrupt creative flow. The first drafts help writers put raw ideas down on paper. Writers that edit while they write restrict their creative thinking, limiting their potential for brilliance and originality.

Momentum is key. For example, one should finish a first draft before editing, because it is much easier to edit after a finished draft than it is trying to sustain the initial enthusiasm through editing interruptions.

When it comes to finding the best time to write and edit, one should consider their schedule. First drafts can require a large amount of uninterrupted time.
Revising for Final Submission
As important as it is to complete a first draft without stopping to edit, you should take extra time to edit before submitting a final product, notes James Braxton Peterson. Readers and editors expect the final piece to be as professional and polished as possible.

Each writer is different. Some writers prefer to do full edits in one sitting while others prefer to take frequent breaks to keep their minds sharp. Finding the best time to edit should take these preferences into consideration.

Even after submitting a final draft to editors, additional edits and revisions are likely, but it is important for your writing to demonstrate the clarity of your ideas and your professionalism. Writers that ensure that their final draft is flawless (by the writer's standards) before submitting helps editors understand the writer's thought process thoroughly. Additionally, self-editing can accelerate the reviewing process and minimize delays.
James Braxton Peterson on Finding the Best Time to Edit
James Braxton Peterson from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the Best Time to Edit

Give the first draft some time and space before you edit - editing should not take place immediately after one completes the first draft.

Giving space between completing and editing a draft allows the writer to have fresh eyes. Furthermore, many writers feel attached to their first draft immediately after completion. Taking time off between the first draft and the editing process helps writers be more objective. It is difficult to make critical changes if the writer feels that nothing needs to be changed. James Braxton Peterson recommends having a friend or colleague read the draft and then asking that person for feedback.

For most people, research shows that the best time for first-draft writing is immediately after waking. The part of the brain that is responsible for creative thinking, the prefrontal cortex, is most active during that time of the day.

By contrast, the analytical part of the brain becomes more active throughout the day. As the analytical part of the brain becomes more active, it is better able to edit thoroughly. It is often best to edit work in the middle or latter part of the day.

Good editing means staying focused. Begin editing in a quiet place at a quiet time of the day to avoid distractions. Set aside short blocks of time - such as 20-minute bursts - to edit the text. Reading the draft aloud helps the writer analyze flow and style.

Ultimately, these are just suggestions. James Braxton Peterson notes that what works for one writer may not work for another. Good writers pay attention to their writing process and establish the best approach and schedule for efficient editing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
James Braxton Peterson on the Editing Process - Finding the Best Time to Edit

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It is rare that a first draft is also a final draft. The writing process typically includes many revisions, such as editing, removing unneeded content, or adding clarifying phrases. Editing is the key to making your writing clear and memorable. James Braxton Peterson is a writer, educational consultant, content creator, and scholar for culture and politics from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.