Why The 'Race Card' Is Played

Hit musical featuring cotton picking white people singing slave songs closes amid protests. The world’s biggest jazz festival was forced to end the run of one of its most popular shows after protesters objected to the musical that featured white people picking cotton while a white woman warbled organic, gluten-free, kale-wrapped negro spirituals. Ain’t that good news? Scheduled for five shows, the musical  SLĀV was such a surprise runaway hit at Canada’s Montreal Jazz Festival that producers of the festival added 11 additional shows due to overwhelming demand for the $60-90 tickets. Produced by acclaimed white man Robert Lepage, the theatrical extravaganza featured the dingo-like vocal stylings of Betty Bonifassi performing “many eras of black music including slave songs, work songs, railroad songs, field songs, prisoners’ songs, laments and lullabies.”

Black man who #BBQBecky called police about will run for office Just call this a classic case of  becoming the change  after a man who had the cops called on him by a white woman for grilling in an Oakland park, announces that he’s now running for city council. Kenzie Smith  was nominated by an Oakland council member for a seat on Oakland’s Park and Recreation Advisory Committee. Smith made headlines after  Jennifer Schulte,  aka #BBQBecky called 911 to report he was using a charcoal grill.

Why are memes of black people reacting so popular online? The online popularity of images of black people – particularly women and femme gay men – is a fact of internet life and, in recent months, an increasingly controversial one. Racist caricature and impersonation are widely accepted tools of white supremacy, but it’s when minstrelsy’s 19th-century traditional tools of boot polish and a wig are replaced with 21st-century equivalents that the confusion begins. Are gifs being used to disseminate racist stereotypes in cyberspace? Was the “black marching band dances to Fleetwood Mac” meme an example of “digital blackface”, as suggested in a recent high-traffic Twitter thread? Is there something problematic about white people using brown-skinned emojis? And what about the Black Lives Matter Facebook fundraising page that was revealed to be run by two unaffiliated white men in Australia? Was this the latest iteration of digital blackface in action? Or just a run-of-the-mill money

Massive Protest Against Gun Violence Closes Chicago Highway A massive rally against gun violence clogged a major highway in Chicago on Saturday. Organized by the coalition ChicagoStrong , t housands of protesters  streamed onto the Dan Ryan Expressway late in the morning, shutting  all five northbound lanes of the route.

White Liberal Woman Doesn’t Understand Why African-American Men Would Be NRA, Tea Party Members Liberal feminist and author Kimberley Johnson is a contributor at the Huffington Post. One look at her Twitter feed and it becomes abundantly clear she is planted firmly on the far left of the political spectrum. She's a big fan of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and regularly calls President Trump a white supremacist. This week, Johnson tweeted that she was "confused" after seeing an affluent African-American man driving a BMW with NRA and Tea Party bumper stickers.  "It was pretty evident that she made an assumption about a black man in a BMW based on bumper stickers he had on his car," Noir said, inviting Johnson to come on his show for a discussion.  "It bothered me because it prejudged me as somebody who can't believe a certain thing simply due to my race." 

Woman calls cops on black Oregon lawmaker campaigning in her district While campaigning in her district, the cops were called on a black lawmaker as she was meeting voters door to door. Rep. Janelle Bynum represents the 51st District in the Oregon House of Representatives, which encompasses Clackamas County, where she was canvassing a neighborhood when the police were called Tuesday. The Democrat was 1.5 miles away from her own home at the time, she said. Bynum told ABC News that upon being approached by the officer, she was in disbelief and just “wanted to know why I had triggered suspicion.” The officer mentioned that the caller was suspicious because she was spending a lot of time typing at the end of driveways, Bynum said. “She is not in any business or has any badge or anything," the caller stated on the 911 call, adding that “she spends more time at the end of the driveway when people aren’t home.”

Black homeownership is stuck near 30-year lows In many way, African-Americans have regained the ground lost during the financial crisis. Many are finding jobs and getting raises. But the holy grail of homeownership remains elusive. Forty-three percent of blacks owned homes in 2017, according to an annual report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of  Harvard University . In contrast, 72 percent of whites did, a gap that has mostly widened during the past three decades. "The overall frustration is, I am a working citizen. I pay my taxes. I'm doing a job to help kids," said Tillery, whose nonprofit helps children with disabilities. "It's better for me to own a home. I'm 42. I don't want to continue renting." There aren't many homes in the area that fall into her price range of $200,000 or less. When she sees a listing she can afford, she either loses out to a buyer who will pay more or waive contingencies or learns that the p