Singer Rihanna versus Dutch publication, Jackie magazine

It all started when Jackie, a small (at least by American standards, with about 60,000 readers) Dutch fashion magazine decided to refer to Bajan singer Rihanna as a “niggabitch” in the headline of an article aimed at instructing young Dutch women on how to dress like her. The reference lit a fuse that, thanks to the magic and reach of social media, ignited a firestorm of outrage during the past week, eventually setting off the powder keg of Rihanna herself, whose angry response via Twitter concluded with an F-bomb dropped directly on the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Eva Hoeke. After initially releasing a weak non-apology—swearing no racist or malicious intent on the part of she and the writer of the article, describing it as a “joke” and asserting that the offending term is an acceptable use of American slang—Hoeke was forced to resign, ending her eight-year tenure at Jackie. Which is totally fine by me, and most sensible people in Holland, America and most of the world.

I’m only bothering to make note of this to make two points: One, the reason Hoeke deserved to lose her job is not racism, whether conscious or latent, but incompetence. Two, Jackie‘s use of a racist slur against Rihanna, a globally popular singer and performer, is just the latest evidence of the fact that racism remains one of America’s biggest exports—if only because, like an infestation of insects in a shipment of fruit, it’s part of what you get when you import American pop culture, which remains in high demand in Holland and around the world.

If Hoeke and her editorial team had just checked, using basic journalism fundamentals, she would have found that in no way would public use of the term “niggabitch” be received as a joke by Rihanna or any other Black person (or most people of any race). Nor would they have found evidence (outside of the music lyrics they apparently used for their “research” of Black American culture) that the term is acceptable slang that is widely used in a non-derogatory manner. This kind of sloppy journalism is not limited to Dutch fashion magazines. There are countless examples, though relatively few as inflammatory as Jackie‘s, of White-run media outlets lowering journalistic standards when it comes to reporting on Black people and culture. Even in 2011, too often, attempts at gaining an accurate understanding of Black people, communities and culture stops at a White editor or writer asking the one or two Black acquaintances they may have—or worse, going by images and stereotypes promoted as factual by popular culture, including in articles published by other White-run media outlets with only a passing familiarity with Black people and culture. For a recent example, you only have to go back to last week’s outrage in response to Forbes Contributor Gene Marks’ “If I Were A Poor Black Child.”

My second point is one that most purveyors of American popular culture, which in many parts of the world is nearly synonymous with Black American culture, are fully aware of but rarely interested in addressing or being held accountable for: Many if not most people in countries outside of the United States form their perception of Black Americans based on what they see and hear in music, videos and other expressions of popular culture, which has been defined primarily by hip-hop and urban culture for the better part of three decades. Don’t believe it? Ask the African Americans who are confronted with these expectations when they travel abroad. Then know all about Russians who think nothing of calling a Black tourist “nigga” because they’ve learned that’s what Black Americans call each other; the inebriated Greek dude who doesn’t understand why it’s not okay to grab the rear end of a Black woman he doesn’t know—or the Dutch fashion magazine editor who thinks it cool and funny to describe the fashion choices of a popular, young Black female singer as “niggabitch”—although Rihanna’s wardrobe is no more risque than that of Lady Gaga‘s or, for that matter, Madonna‘s at the peak of her popularity as an international recording star and performer.

The editor-in-chief of Jackie got exactly what she deserved for her gross lapse in editorial judgement. (Never mind that, to my knowledge, she never really apologized to Rihanna.) But what about the Black artists who routinely use the terms “nigga” and “bitch” (okay, not usually combined, though unfortunately, that may change) in not just their art, but in their day-to-day conversation via both traditional and social media, the primary means of the worldwide circulation of all culture?

As a journalist, I abhor censorship. And as a lover of the creative arts (and the father of a rap artist whose lyrics aren’t always for the faint of heart), I believe in the freedom of artistic expression. And I must note that, from what I could gather from responses on blogs and in social media to Jackie‘s racist slur against Rihanna, the overwhelming majority of Dutch people thought that the magazine’s use of the term was both obviously offensive and inexcusable. In fact, most Black travelers report that overtly racist behavior against Black Americans is the exception, not the rule, in most of the countries they visit. All I’m saying is that as African Americans, and particularly as artists, performers and media influencers, we need to be more conscious of the images and values we are using to define and represent our culture and people—and our women in particular, in the case of Rihanna. Otherwise, it may be increasingly difficult for our outrage to be taken as anything other than hypocritical when the N-word comes home to roost in the future.

Bryant Terry

Activist Bryant Terry wants to improve people’s lives through food. So for the past decade he has been advocating for a fairer food system—one in which low-income communities and people of color have access to fresh, healthy, local food—and then showing people what to do with that food once they get it.

BlackEnterprise.com talked with Terry,  author of Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African American Cuisine (Da Capo Press; $18.95) about his passion for activism and how food access is directly linked to poverty and racism.

BlackEnterprise.com: A lot of people have no idea what a food justice activist is.

Terry: The work I do is responding to the health crisis among Americans. And much of this is connected to what we’re eating. I started off as a grassroots activist, working in communities, specifically with young people that were being impacted by the overconsumption of fast food, packaged foods, and processed food. We needed to empower them to make, select, and prepare fresh healthy food but at the same time we had to empower them to take charge in bringing more options for getting this food in their neighborhood. But I wanted to make a wider impact. For me, cookbook writing is a form of activism; through my books I hope to move people to change their habits, their attitude, their politics.

What led you to tackle these issues?

I always go back to my childhood in Memphis, Tennessee, having grown up with grandparents who came from rural Mississippi and had backyard gardens. So I felt like young people living in concrete jungles were missing something. But it also came from a political awakening. I was looking back at the work the Black Panthers were doing—their free breakfast for children, their grocery giveaway—and they were directly responding to the same issues: malnutrition, the impact of institutional racism, and trying to empower low-income communities of color.

How do you make the average person understand that they should care about this?

Personally I can say that I don’t care how healthful or environmentally responsible or ethical or humane the food is, if it doesn’t taste good then I don’t really care about it. And this is coming from someone who does this work. People want to have delicious food. The food that we buy in the supermarket is typically shipped across the country, sitting in trucks and in refrigerators and in warehouses sometimes days, week, months. If you use food that’s local, from your farmer’s market or better yet food that you grew at home, it’s going to be so much more flavorful.

Do you think people are getting the message?

There is more research showing that vegetarian diets are helpful as ways of controlling a number of illnesses. Then you have people like Oprah Winfrey doing a vegan diet. So it’s moving from the margins closer to the mainstream. I don’t think it’s as scary as it once was. And I don’t think that everybody feels like it’s a white hippie diet.

You’ve said before that African American food has been vilified.

Some people actually think that African American cuisine consists of fried chicken, red velvet cake, and macaroni and cheese. Yeah those are the kinds of food we ate on holidays. But the food we ate at home on a daily basis, the kind of food that I’m promoting—fresh black-eyed peas and butter beans and collard greens—are the types of food that any physician who’s in tune to diet will tell you that everyone should be eating. And these are the types of food that we ate traditionally; these are country cooking.

Terry, along with other food industry professionals, will be profiled on BlackEnterprise.com throughout this month, in conjunction with Black Enterprise magazine’s November 2011 “A Passion for Food” issue.

Check out the latest features on industry heavyweights, including Marcus Samuelsson and The Neelys, on newsstands now.

Is Michael Arrington Racist?

After watching the video clip, where he states, “I don’t know a single Black entrepreneur,” and reading his blog post, “Racism: the Game,” I truly don’t believe that Michael Arrington is a racist based upon those two slices of information. What I do believe is that whether he thinks he was bamboozled or hoodwinked into the CNN interview, it is clear that he was stating how he truly felt—right, wrong or indifferent. The reality is that Arrington is not alone in his sentiment. He may be the most outspoken but, definitely not alone.

My NewME Accelerator Experience

Why am I jumping into the conversation? First, let me provide you some context of who I am. I’m a 39-year-old mechanical engineer from Detroit and co-founder of a startup called Gokit (the startup world would call me a non-technical founder because I don’t code.) I was one of the 11 startup founders in the NewME Accelerator this past summer, which was the first minority led tech accelerator. I had a very eye-opening experience living in Silicon Valley. For anyone in the tech startup space spending time in Silicon Valley is imperative if you have the opportunity. It provides you a contextual understanding of the startup ecosystem: veteran entrepreneurs, angel investors, startups, events and venture capitalists (VCs).

During the nine-week program, I had the opportunity to be immersed in the startup culture spending time at Facebook with their platform developer, Mitch Kapor, a mentor who commercialized the spreadsheet at Lotus, and much more. I found that there are some very good people in Silicon Valley that see talent and are willing to provide information for those who get access.

The reality of Silicon Valley hit me the first week of the program when I heard two terms/phrases that embodied my trip and the obstacles that many African American founders face in launching successful startups: “meritocracy” and “pattern matching.”

Let’s first start by defining both terms:

• Meritocracy is defined as opportunity being determined purely based upon talent, merit, credentials, and education alone.
• Pattern Matching is a selection criteria based upon built in basis, meaning that I select people that look and are like me.

In the U.S. it’s pretty safe to say we don’t live in a meritocracy and Silicon Valley and the startup space is not exempt from that. I will go on the record and say that Silicon Valley is absolutely diverse in terms of an ethnic perspective, but there is a total void of an African American presence.

Our experience is captured in CNN’s Black In America 4: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley. This documentary is groundbreaking. Think about this point; when way the last time you saw a group of African Americans on primetime TV and they were not athletes or entertainers?

Is Silicon Valley Diverse?

Is Silicon Valley unique in the sense of this issue on diversity? According to data in the CB Insights, a report on startups that focuses on gender and race, the answer is absolutely no. The reason that I make this statement is that the report covers New York (Silicon Alley) and Boston, and the issues are the same in those markets. Currently, there is a huge demographic that is totally excluded from the startup space in terms of representation, this group is African American founders, which make up 1% of VC backed startups nationally.

In The Year 2042 Minorities Become the Majority

Where do we go from here? According to the U.S. Census, by the year 2042 minorities (primarily Blacks and Hispanics) will be the majority of the population. How will this change the mindset of the startup space as we move towards that date? Tristan Walker refers to this point in his recent interview with Laurie Segall of CNN Tech Money.

“[2042 is] the year underrepresented minorities—Blacks and Hispanics—will no longer be the minority. They’ll be the majority, and if that’s the case, we need to start thinking about putting folks—Blacks and Hispanics, among others—in positions of leadership and/or leading companies [toward] that goal and that year… There aren’t very many folks who look like me in positions of leadership all around the Valley, and I think that’s something that needs to be discussed and hopefully changed.”

Herman Cain, a Republican, has been more than vocal about wanting to see President Obama out of office. (Image: File)

They are the very interesting opponents of the Obama administration that we can never seem to forget— Chris Christie and Sarah Palin—yet for this upcoming election, they’re not so prominent on the political scene anymore. However, one very outspoken and unforgetable presidential hopeful remains: former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and radio talk show host Herman Cain.

He’s vying for President Obama’s seat and is known to have some eye-raising, controversial — and to some, even offensive —things to say about race and why Obama should step down.

The Atlanta Post compiled a list of Cain’s most outrageous statements, from the man who proclaimed “I left the Democratic plantation!”

Read more at The Atlanta Post …

Ohio University students launched a poster campaign against racist Halloween costumes (Image: STARS)

Halloween is meant to be fun, but on a college campus things can often go too far. It’s this exact reason that an Ohio University student organization is taking a stand against racist Halloween costumes.

Students Teaching Against Racism (STARS) launched a poster campaign to ignite a conversation about offensive costumes—specifically those depicting various racial and ethnic groups. Each poster, which features an OU student holding up a picture of a racial caricature, reads “We’re a culture, not a costume;” followed by: “This is not who I am, and this is not okay.”

The student-crafted posters went viral, garnering over 50,000 visits to Sarah Williams’ Tumblr account. The group’s president is shocked at the overwhelming amount of attention the posters are receiving, but glad they’ve been able to spark discourse around the topic.

Click here to read more about STARS at BlackEnterprise.com/BENext

(Image: File)

Hip-hop star Kanye West recently debuted his Spring 2012 women’s ready-to-wear collection for DW by Kanye West in Paris to critique and praise alike. Some thought the line “lacked focus” while others praised him for having a front-row filled with top power brokers in the fashion industry.

Several critics raised an eyebrow about the scarcity of black models in a show helmed by a man who’s infamously known for his very public views on racial discrimination (Remember the “Bush doesn’t care about black people” post-Katrina outburst) and other references to inequality throughout his music lyrics.

Check out what the folks at Madame Noire had to say about the issue, taking to task the “Watch the Throne” lyricist on message versus reality and the use of celebrity power to support black representation in the fashion industry.

Read more at Madame Noire …

Nivea apologizes for recent ‘Re-civilized’ NIVEA For Men ad (Image: Press)

Skin care product maker Nivea found itself in hot water this week when the Black blogosphere got a hold of an arguably racist print ad for men’s grooming products that was published in Esquire magazine. The advert features a clean-cut Black man tossing a disembodied African American man’s head with an unkempt Afro and beard– the tagline is “Re-Civilize Yourself.” Clearly the folks at Nivea didn’t realize that grooming, especially when coupled with the insinuation that long kinky hair is “uncivilized” can be a touchy subject for people of color.

Click here to read more about the controversial Nivea ad on BlackEnterprise.com/BENext

Columnist questions notion that white women are 'winning' when it comes to marriage (Image: Thinkstock)

When I saw the title of Andrea Michelle’s Uptown magazine article Why White Women Are Winning, my eyes hit the ceiling. What a silly notion. What, exactly, is the sense in making white women some sort of normative group that black women should compare themselves to? While we do need to examine certain disparities across racial lines from time to time, I don’t think that marriage statistics is one of those issues; furthermore, as there is no proven universal standard white relationship behavior or black relationship behavior, we can’t make a reasoned comparison. Throw in the unique challenges that black women (and men) face in mating that are influenced by centuries of race-based oppression that white daters aren’t contending with and I’m already over this article before I read it.

And then I read it. And I was even more over it.

Read more at Madame Noire …

(Image: Lonnie C. Major)

Hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons has reached a point where he may well fit his definition of success: “The state of needing nothing.” But the founder of Def Jam, Phat Farm and Rush Communications is not resting on his laurels. He’s written a book that is on the New York Times best-seller list, Super Rich: A Guide to Having It All and he has supported Rabbi Marc Schneier’s efforts to improve relations between Jews and Arabs.

Yet, the hip-hop entrepreneur stands by his assertion that Louis Farrakhan is his second father. “He’s a great hero of mine. He has been overlooked by African-Americans.”  He says he is aware of Farrakhan’s rift with the Jewish community. “You can like anyone you want,” he says. “You’re not guilty because you know someone and like them. They don’t have to like your other friends.”

See more at The Root…