• News

by Jeroslyn JoVonn

November 8, 2022

17-Year-Old Girl Jumps From Moving Car After Lyft Driver’s ‘Suspicious Behavior’

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A 17-year-old girl in North Carolina was left injured with scars all over her face after jumping out of a moving Lyft ride due to the driver’s “suspicious behavior.”

Eziya Bowden ordered a ride to get home from work, but said as soon as she entered the car, the driver asked inappropriate questions, WBTV reported.

“‘How many boys flirted with you?’ He said that right away,” Bowden recalled.

“‘Oh, you just look good. I would date you if you weren’t so young.'”

She said the driver started spraying something that made her feel dizzy and warm. The teen believed the driver was attempting to drug her.

“When I got in his car, it did smell like cigarettes, so when he sprayed one time, it was already like, ‘Oh, it no longer smelled like that,'” she explained.

“But for you to keep spraying it, then roll your windows up, like, I know it’s not about me being nervous or anything.”

The driver’s questionable behavior eventually prompted the teen to make the potentially life-threatening decision to jump out of the moving car.

“I was very scared, but then again…I’d rather get out of this car than fall asleep in a car with this man I don’t really know,” Bowden said.

She blacked out once she jumped out of the vehicle. Bowden, miles away from home, became emotional and started crying.

“I just looked down at the ground, I looked behind me and I just jumped out,” she said.

“He didn’t stop when he noticed the door was open or he heard me crying or anything.”

Bowden said the driver eventually stopped and pretended to be a concerned bystander who called the police. She ended up in the emergency room with scars that only remind her of the terrifying experience.

Lyft has since condemned the driver’s “deeply concerning” behavior and has revoked his access to the platform.

“I don’t think that’s stopping him from anything else. It doesn’t really bring peace to me at all. As young girls, or even women, we have to be very aware and safe of our surroundings,” Bowden said.

“Cancel your ride and wait. Wait for somebody ’cause honestly, I would’ve waited for my friend.”

Lyft refunded her for the ride but the teen is too traumatized to use another ride-share app anytime soon. Police haven’t filed any charges against the driver.

• Diversity, Equality, Inclusion

by Derek Major

November 8, 2022

Black Twitter Employees Share Concerns About Future Work Culture After Elon Musk Terminates Black Employee Resource Group

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Last Friday, new Twitter owner Elon Musk announced he was laying off half of the company’s 7,500 employees—9% of whom are Black.

An outlet spoke with two Black employees, referred to as Cam and Bailey (to protect their identities), about their thoughts on the future of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at the social media site.

According to the pair, employees were initially excited about the Tesla founder taking over the company, but that quickly changed.

“From afar, we were thinking—this could mean great improvements from an engineering and product perspective because he’s known in the industry as having skills in that arena. But the closer we got to him, the more we realized that his personal ideologies are so far away from ours,” the pair said in an interview.

Bailey predicted that under Musk, Twitter would be a less inclusive company. Yahoo News reported that Musk had terminated Blackbird, the Employee Resource Group (ERG) for Black employees at Twitter, founded by Shavone Charles. Musk also got rid of the Women’s ERG at Twitter.

https://twitter.com/isadwatson/status/1588524126385291264

Bailey took the elimination of the ERGs as a clear indication of a shift in the company, and it completely changed how minority and female employees view the company.

“I was a Twitter user before I was an employee,” Cam told Essence, adding that work culture has taken a dark turn.

“At the time, the work felt important.”

If Musk’s other company Tesla is any indication of Twitter’s future, there may be an uptick in racial discrimination lawsuits in the company’s future. Earlier this year, a judge gave a former Tesla employee $15 million in damages over racial abuse.

Additionally, in a class-action lawsuit against Tesla filed by California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) in February, three former plant workers recalled instances where Black workers were called the N-word on the assembly line, forced to work in a segregated area of the factory called “the plantation,” and even being terminated after being called “monkeys” by a manager. The state of California also threatened to sue the e-car giant.

Last year, Melvin Berry was awarded more than $1 million after the company failed to stop his supervisors from calling him the N-word. Berry also claimed when he confronted a supervisor about his frequent use of the N-word, he was forced to work longer hours with heavier equipment. A federal court also ordered Tesla to pay $137 million to Owen Diaz, a former Black employee who accused the automaker of ignoring racial abuse he faced while working there.

Many, like Cam and Bailey, believe that under Musk’s leadership, Black Twitter will die, the platform will become racist and segregated, and safeguards protecting people against hate speech will be weakened.

“Not all ideas should have a platform because not all ideas are created equal. Some ideas are more fleshed out and thoughtful than others. Some ideas have more logic than others. Some ideas have more research than others. And those are the ideas that rose to the surface in the prior regime,” Bailey said.

• Fashion & Beauty

by Jeroslyn JoVonn

November 8, 2022

Ralph Lauren Taps Rapper Polo G Whose Name was Inspired by the Brand for Fortnite Partnership

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Ralph Lauren and Fortnite have teamed up for a partnership, and who better to help unveil the collaboration than rapper Polo G?

On Thursday, Nov. 3, Ralph Lauren hosted a Twitch Livestream in New York to commemorate its first-ever metaverse capsule in partnership with Epic Games and Fortnite, People reported. The live stream came one month after Ralph Lauren announced a collaboration with a Polo Stadium collection of digital apparel and accessories for the Fortnite Item Shop.

 

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The digital collection pays homage to Ralph Lauren’s heritage ’90s style and will be sold in the metaverse, with a physical collection sold exclusively on ralphlauren.com. Polo G, 23, was tapped to perform at the live stream event and fulfilled one of his lifelong dreams of working with the popular clothing brand.

“It’s always been my dream to collaborate with them considering my rap name is inspired by the brand,” Polo G said.

“I also know how big of a name Fortnite is in the gaming world, so that’s just a bonus.”

 

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Polo G aims to perfect his Fortnite skills to fall in with his song “Fortnite” from his Hall of Fame 2.0 album.

“I play Fortnite here and there—I’m not that good so I gotta practice more,” he said.

Polo G thinks the new digital collection is “pretty cool.” But he’s still a fan of the iconic Ralph Lauren logo he grew up wearing.

“My first real memory of wearing RL [Ralph lauren] was in the 8th grade,” he shared.

“I wore it throughout the school year, but for my luncheon, I wore this white and orange striped one [shirt] with a navy blue horse that was my favorite Polo shirt.”

Last month, Polo G got dapper for Ralph Lauren’s star-studded SS23 runway show in California.

“I loved the sneakers and the music, the entire vibe of the show was dope, too,” he said of the event. “You just felt important even being there.”

• Celebrity News

by Jeroslyn JoVonn

November 8, 2022

Kanye West Sued for Unauthorized Use of Rapper KRS-One Diss Track Sample on ‘Donda’ Album

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Ye, formerly Kanye West, is being sued for sampling a song from a hip-hop legend to boost sales for his Stem Player and Donda album.

The lawsuit was filed by a company that owns the rights to rapper KRS-One’s infamous diss track South Bronx from his group, Boogie Down Productions, TMZ reports. Kanye sampled the song on his Andre 3000-assisted track, Life of the Party, but allegedly released the track without receiving official permission to do so.

Drake originally leaked the song before his reunion with Kanye as part of J Prince‘s Free Larry Hoover concert in Los Angeles last December. Kanye and his business partner, Alex Klein, were reported as selling around 11,000 Stem Players within the first 24 hours of the song’s release and earned around $2.2 million.

However, according to the suit, Kanye asked for permission to license South Bronx…but the sides never reached an agreement. The rap/fashion mogul is accused of moving forward with the sample and releasing the track without approval from the owners.

The company that owns the song is now looking to block further use of the song and wants Kanye and his partner to fork over all profits generated from the track.

Kanye continues catching L’s after losing multimillion-dollar deals with a series of companies because of his controversial remarks against the Jewish community. Since being labeled anti-Semitic, Kanye’s net worth has dropped from billionaire to $400 million, according to Forbes.

In addition to losing his massive deal with Adidas, Kanye is also on the outs with Balenciaga and Gap. CNN reports that his attempt to sell White Lives Matter T-shirts was blocked by two Black men who trademarked the slogan to keep Kanye or anyone else from profiting off the terminology.

The Anti-Defamation League categorizes the term as a “hate slogan” used by white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. The phrase is described as a racist response to the Black Lives Matter movement.

• Education

by Stacy Jackson

November 8, 2022

Howard Dropout Partners With GoFundMe To Raise Money for HBCU Students

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A college dropout is not allowing excuses to keep him from giving back to the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) community.

Once a student at Howard University, 48-year-old Hassan Abdus-Sabur spent the last several years raising money for students at HBCUs even though he dropped out two years after enrolling in the Washington D.C. university.

According to The Washington Post, Abdus-Sabur gained the attention of GoFundMe representatives after raising over $100,000 since 2020. He was honored as a GoFundMe Hero and is collaborating with the company’s GoFindYou initiative to get $500 textbook grants for HBCU students.

 

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“We see a lot of stories of Black joy that get overshadowed by grief and trauma,” GoFundMe communications director Leigh Lehman said.

She acknowledged that fundraising efforts centered on painful subjects are ones that “aim to raise money to start small businesses, pay for Black and Brown children to see movies such as Black Panther, and ‘fund the next generation of HBCU scholars.'”

A recent report from the GoFindYou fundraiser page showed that more than $22,000 has been raised toward a $75,000 goal. Lehman shared that the company is on a mission to attract potential donors to contribute to the initiative.

The Washington Post reported that Abdus-Sabur regrets the decision he made at 19 years old to leave the HBCU. His pride and lack of maturity, he said, led him down a path of least resistance.

“I could blame it on finances,” Abdus-Sabur said. “But I could have gotten a job, I could have stayed in D.C., I could have finished out the time I had left.”

“I don’t get to wear the Howard alumni hat,” he said. “…That’s such a bitter pill because I love that place. It gave me so much, just in the time I was there.”

Abdus-Sabur currently works for a Newark council member since launching his own non-profit in 2020 to manage the distributions of the funds that are raised. The HBCU Scholarship Bike Ride GoFundMe, a fundraiser that started as a bike ride for a student short on funds named Marbella, has raised more than $64,000 and helped two other students who are set to graduate in 2024.

The fundraising expert said he will graduate from Rutgers University in 2024.

• Celebrity News

by Cedric 'BIG CED' Thornton

November 8, 2022

Kevin Hart Reveals He and His Mother Were Robbed at Gunpoint in Philadelphia

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Kevin Hart did not grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth, but the comedian says his mother was tough as nails.

According to Complex, Hart appeared on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast hosted by fellow Philadelphian rapper Gillie Da King and his cousin, Wallo267. During the discussion, Hart revealed that he and his mother were robbed when he was a kid in Philadelphia.

“Me and my mom got robbed. Wanna hear the crazy part? We were coming from a laundromat,” Hart said.

“We got the shopping cart, I’m talking folded clothes, right, my mom got the cart. I got my book bag, I used to go to the laundromat [to] do [my] homework. My mom [was] just carrying this little orange fanny pack, [when a] dude came out, he said, ‘Get that shit up, b**ch.’ And my Mom was like, ‘No.'”

The comedian said his mother was defiant. Instead of complying with the thief, who was also holding a gun in his hand, she insisted on not giving up her purse.

“I swear to God. Hand on the Bible, my mom said, ‘No.'”

“He said, ‘You think I’m f**king playing with you? Get that S**t up.’ My mom was like, ‘It’s nothing in it, and no.'”

“I’m just standing there, I’m looking…I’m shocked that I’m looking at a gun. He snatched it off, he [went] through [the purse]. My mom had a bunch of tokens in there, right? Guy get[s] mad, he throw[s] it at my mom. ‘You broke, b**ch.’ He called my mama a broke b**ch.”

Hart joked that his mom still made him push the shopping cart after the incident. Hart never went up that street again.

“The rest of my life I took the longest way to get to the laundromat. What once was a five-minute walk took me 30 minutes.”

Hart doesn’t have to worry about walking with his mother on that street anymore. According to TechCrunch, his Hartbeat Ventures received its first institutional investment from J.P. Morgan. The announcement was made last month at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference.

The newly formed venture capital firm will focus on lifestyle, media, and technology. A portion of the fund will go toward supporting minority and underrepresented founders.

• News

by Atiya Jordan

November 8, 2022

Washington Man Who Called Stores in Four States Threatening To Kill Black People Pleads Guilty

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A Washington man, who was taken into custody in July for repeatedly calling grocery stores in Buffalo, NY threatening to shoot Black people, has reportedly pleaded guilty.

According to NBC News, prosecutors confirmed that the defendant, Joey David George, submitted his guilty plea to a hate crime on Monday, Nov. 7.

On July 22, George was arrested on charges of two counts of interstate threats only two months after a mass shooter entered a Buffalo supermarket and opened fire on Black customers, BLACK ENTERPRISE previously reported. At the time, a federal complaint said George planned to use assault rifles and other weapons to kill Black people at the supermarket.

In his plea agreement, George admitted to making “interstate threats and committing a hate crime for interference with a federally protected activity,” according to a release by the U.S. Department of Justice.

He also confessed to making threatening calls from at or near his home in Lynnwood, WA to grocery stores in Buffalo, restaurants in California and Connecticut, and a cannabis dispensary in Maryland.

In his calls to Buffalo, George “told the staff at the store to ‘take him seriously,’ and ordered the store to clear out the customers, as he was ‘nearby’ and ‘preparing to shoot all Black customers,'” the U.S. Department of Justice reported.

George was identified after law enforcement traced the phone number.

In addition, George telephoned a restaurant in San Bruno, CA. in May. He allegedly threatened to shoot Black and Hispanic customers and staff. He confessed to law enforcement that he made the threat to “strike fear in the Bay Area Black community.”

On Sept. 11, 2021, George telephoned a dispensary in Rockville, MD, and used racial slurs as he threatened to shoot and kill Black patrons at the establishment. The dispensary closed its doors and employed extra security. They reported more than $50,000 in lost revenue.

On the same day, George also allegedly called a Denny’s restaurant in Enfield, CT, and threatened Black patrons at the restaurant.

George agreed to pay restitution to the affected businesses.

• News

by Atiya Jordan

November 8, 2022

Utah Sheriff’s Office To Hold Diversity Training After Deputy Twirls Lasso Pursuing Black Man

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The Grand County Sheriff’s Office in Utah will commit to sensitivity and diversity training following backlash over a white deputy’s decision to use a lasso rope while searching for a Black male suspect in July.

According to Jeanetta Williams, the head of the NAACP’s Salt Lake branch, the commitment was locked in last week by Sheriff Steven White, KSL-TV reported.

“It wasn’t a situation where, ‘We’re just not going to do anything. We’re just going to ignore it, and hope that it will go away,’” said Williams, who contacted the sheriff following the deputy’s actions. 

On July 10, Deputy Amanda Edwards’ bodycam footage revealed her on-foot pursuit of a Black homeless man wanted for stealing sunglasses from a gift shop on Moab’s Main Street, BLACK ENTERPRISE previously reported.

The video shows Edwards jumping on trash cans, looking over a fence, running around a parking lot, and passing homes and shops during her pursuit. She was also whistling the tune of “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega while twirling the rope in the air in front of her.

Edwards did not find the man.

In response, the deputy was suspended for two days without pay, according to disciplinary documents, per KSL-TV. She was also placed on a 90-day corrective action plan that “appears to order 18 hours of training on topics including standards of conduct, use of force, and defensive tactics, the records show.”

The event induced a public outcry in the Black community.

“If you don’t know that you, as a white woman, picking up a rope to go after a Black man, is the wrong damn thing to do, you should be fired,” said Mario Mathis, an organizer with Black Lives Matter.

“This isn’t a rodeo, and this is no way to apprehend a human being,” Williams also said at the time.

It is unclear whether the training will be held before White’s retirement in January.

• Politics

by Derek Major

November 8, 2022

105-Year-Old Black Woman Who First Voted in 1964 Casts Early Ballot in Georgia

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Ida Simmons needed her walker and the help of her 81-year-old son, but the 105-year-old Georgia native was determined to take part in early voting for the 2022 midterm elections.

NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal stated that there is a phrase he would never use to describe the women who bore his children.

In the latest episode of Shaq‘s podcast, 2 Lies and 1 Truth, he revealed that he feels “women are the strongest beings on this planet,” and gave credit to the mothers of his children.

He honored the two women who gave birth to his six children, and explained why he won’t “ever use the term baby mamas.”

“Their moms did a great job of planning activities. You know you women need a lot more credit and a lot more respect because you guys do really all the work. That’s why women are the strongest beings on this planet. You guys have to do so much.”

“That’s why I don’t ever use the term ‘baby mamas.’ I don’t have baby mamas. I have two beautiful gorgeous women that definitely took care of me and put up with my BS. And did a great [JOB] of raising six babies.”

He also mentions that he finds that term offensive and degrading.

“That’s why I don’t want to degrade them by saying, baby mamas. They’re two beautiful Black women that did a tremendous job.”

The entrepreneurial giant had previously talked about financing his friends’ educations so they were able to earn their master’s degrees, during an appearance on the Be Better Off Show in September.

During the discussion, he said that at an early business meeting, he met with people who overlooked him, and just conversed with his accountants and attorneys. They assumed he didn’t know the nuances of business.

That meeting prompted him to obtain his master’s degree at the University of Phoenix, which is known for their online classes. He preferred to attend in person and was told by the institution that in-person classes were only for classes with 15 or more students. After being told that, he paid for 15 of his friends to join the class, and they earned their master’s degrees as well.