Love & Hip Hop Star Papoose Reveals He Lost Two Family Members to the Coronavirus
Tragedy has hit home for Shamele Mackie better known to the hip-hop world as “Papoose.” The Love & Hip Hop: New York cast member has revealed that he has lost two of his family members to the coronavirus, according to VIBE.
While making a virtual appearance on the television talk show The Real, he mentions that the deadly virus has hit home for him as he lost two family members to COVID-19. Papoose and his wife, fellow rapper and Love & Hip Hop: New York co-star, Reminisce Mackie aka Remy Ma were discussing how they’ve adjusted to being self-quarantined and the effects of the coronavirus pandemic earlier this week.
“Unfortunately one of my cousins passed away [from] coronavirus,” the 42-year-old rapper stated. “He actually had another condition. He wasn’t feeling well, he went to the emergency room. Long story short, the hospitals are so focused on COVID-19 that people who have issues, they’re not really catering to them, so it was kind of a neglect thing, but you can’t really question God’s plan.”
Remy Ma chimed in that one of her friends lost both parents, partly because of the hospital overcrowding brought on by the virus. She also gave thoughts on why this deadly virus has disproportionately affected the African American and Latino communities.
“If you have any pre-existing conditions, that’s what really exacerbates [the disease] and a lot of people in the African American and Latino community don’t have good healthcare, don’t have a primary care [physician], they don’t even have the sense of going to the doctor,” she said. “I know so many people that walk around with toothaches, headaches, stomach pains…[they won’t go to a hospital] until they can’t take it anymore, because they can’t afford it. They don’t have healthcare to begin with.
“A lot of times people in our community and in our culture, they’re walking around unhealthy to begin with, so when something like this happens, it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. It’s not a coincidence that our community was hit the hardest,” she added. “And black women, they don’t even take our pain seriously. We’re the most misdiagnosed and undiagnosed.”
How This Entrepreneur Created Beauty Products Made With Veggies From Her Garden
The beauty industry can be a lucrative business for the right entrepreneur who knows how to make products that speak to the consumer. With health and wellness becoming more and more popular among Americans, many consumers look for products with natural ingredients and holistic remedies. One entrepreneur decided to make her own products using the vegetables she grew from her garden.
Star Fedd founded Aloe’ Deeki after looking for products to treat her eczema and ovarian cysts that she has suffered from since she was 18 years old. After not finding anything that could treat her delicate skin, she started experimenting with the vegetables that grew right in her backyard.
“I learned to make beauty products from vegetables because of my very sensitive skin. Natural products give your skin what you miss from your diet, and when you use them, there are also fewer side effects. Preservatives in commercial products tend to dry out and damage the skin,” Fedd told BLACK ENTERPRISE.
“A client told me to rub aloe on my face for my dark blotches, and I then decided to make a serum of aloe with other oils that I knew were good for skin. It made a major difference.”
The Georgia-based entrepreneur used her cosmetology background to start creating her products and eventually started to share them with her clients.
“I began making an oil for my clients to take home and use on their scalp,” she explained. “After retailing the oil to them for some time, I created my most beloved product, Aloe’ Deeki Face and Body Oil. It was a hit.”
“I then created a third oil to treat razor bumps, and with now three products that worked unbelievably well, it became easy to take them on the road. I had all the confidence in the world that I needed to start my new line.”
Her line includes a range of natural body oils, hand sanitizers, and face serums.
The special can also be viewed on leading online entertainment, social media and streaming platform, including Complex Networks, Facebook, PEOPLE, TikTok, and YouTube.
The event will include appearances by James, Pharrell Williams, Malala Yousafzai, the Jonas Brothers, Bad Bunny, Yara Shahidi, Ben Platt, Lena Waithe, and H.E.R.
“I wanted to help create a show that looked and felt very different from traditional specials. Something that spoke to kids in a different way. These kids worked so hard to graduate and what is happening to them is truly unfair,” James said in a statement to The Associated Press. “I hope we can give them and their families something cool that makes their accomplishment feel special.”
“It’s been a hard few months for all of us, but I especially really feel for the senior class of 2020,” James said Wednesday in a quote provided to ESPN. “The end of high school and graduation was one of the best memories of my life. It’s not fair. Every graduating senior needs to know how much we feel for them, and hopefully, this can help, even a little. This class is going to be special because they know in a real way how to persevere.”
According to the XQ Institute, “The #GraduateTogether partners are committed to supporting the needs of students in school and beyond in order to make sure that all students succeed. That means meeting the real-time and long-term needs of our students and graduates. To help meet the needs of vulnerable youth during this time, philanthropic and corporate giving will be directed to:
DonorsChoose, a nonprofit which gives public school teachers working in high-needs communities the opportunity to request the materials and resources their students need to keep learning.
America’s Food Fund, a nonprofit focused on funding hunger-relief organizations and ensuring students who rely on school-lunch programs still have safe, consistent access to meals during COVID-19.”
Jacksonville Jaguars Backup Quarterback Joshua Dobbs Doubles as a NASA Rocket Scientist
They always say, don’t quit your day job! Well, according to USA Today, Jaguars backup quarterback Joshua Dobbs actually can since he is also a certified rocket scientist.
The Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback spends part of the NFL offseason working at The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Dobbs graduated with honors from the University of Tennessee with a degree in aerospace engineering.
For almost three weeks in February, the four-year veteran put his degree to practice. With assistance from the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), Dobbs took part in an externship program at NASA mixing it up with engineers and receiving a crash course in space travel.
The program, which takes place at the Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida, is in part the brainchild of NASA Deputy Director of Engineering Scott Colloredo, who runs a department of more than 600 employees and contractors. Colloredo, who also graduated from the University of Tennessee, reached out to Dobbs on LinkedIn last year to tell him about the aerospace externship.
“The fact that in his spare time he had the interest and the ability to come work for NASA, we’re very impressed with him,” Colloredo told USA Today. “It was pretty unique. But let’s face it: Josh, his approach and the way he’s going about parallel activity between the NFL and becoming an aerospace technologist, that’s pretty unique.”
“It felt like every part of Kennedy Space Center kind of wanted to show me what was going on,” Dobbs said. “Every single day was different, so I got a chance to learn kind of the ins and outs, everything that goes on, and how everything comes together to support the rocket on launch day.”
Dobbs excelled in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) curriculum at the university and decided that studying aerospace engineering would be “a major and degree field that I enjoyed, that I was passionate about and would challenge me.”
“Whether you’re on a football field or down there, it’s a team,” Dobbs said. “At the end of the day for us, we’re trying to win football games, trying to win a Super Bowl. For them, at the end of the day, they’re trying to send a rocket to the moon. So everyone has their big goal.”
About Damn Time! Venture Capitalist Arlan Hamilton’s New Book is Filled with Crisis-Busting Advice
Arlan Hamilton, the Silicon Valley-based maverick and founder of Backstage Capital, couldn’t have known when she cut her deal with Penguin Random House that her first book would be released in the midst of a pandemic.
It’s available next week, on Cinco de Mayo, unlike the many other books slated for release during the weeks that COVID-19 has dominated our lives that have been postponed. But, in many ways, Hamilton’s book debut—a combination memoir and how-to—couldn’t have been better timed. Because if anyone has proven she knows how to advance, thrive, and remain resilient during a crisis, it’s this intrepid woman who hasn’t allowed fame, the skeptics, or haters to alter her path, her voice, or her mission.
About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into Your Greatest Advantage, takes its title from Hamilton’s headline-grabbing 2018 launch of a $36 million fund to be exclusively earmarked for black women’s businesses. “They like to call it a diversity fund,” Hamilton said, announcing the fund at the 2018 United State of Women conference. “I call it the about damn time fund.”
By then, Hamilton was already a Silicon Valley legend with a counter-white-bro-culture profile. The fund was intended to be distributed $1 million at a time, advancing not only black female founders, but testing Hamilton’s long-held core investment strategy—publicly stated often—that given what chronically marginalized and underfunded founders managed to do, imagine what they could achieve if their seed funding was rightsized.
As a black, gay, female founder herself, Hamilton unabashedly embodies the intersection of everything venture capitalists—and tech, broadly—has traditionally misunderstood, overlooked, and underestimated. The Dallas-born-and-bred daughter of a single mom cut her teeth as a music industry tour manager for a Norwegian rock band that she roped in through a cold call.
She appeared in Silicon Valley at the height of the tech boom with grand ideas about investing in people like herself but with zero connections, no experience in finance, and—forget MIT or Stanford—no college degree at all.
Thanks to food stamps, the kindnesses of a few fast-made friends, and a fake-it-till-you-make-it-and-become-it mentality, Hamilton was able to survive in an environment that still causes many of her better prepared and positioned women and minority peers to give up.
An angel investor’s $25,000 check offered a breakthrough and, although the It’s About Damn Time Fund has hit significant snags, she has persisted, never once backing off of her outspoken stance on the outsized potential for marginalized businesses, if just given the same chances their white counterparts get.
Hamilton’s new book’s press release echoes data she often shares in interviews, that Backstage Capital has invested about $5 million so far, in chunks of $25,000 to $100,000, to about 100 business. There have been no exits to date, but in a July 2019 interview with Bloomberg Studio’s Emily Chang, Hamilton said those companies have generated “tens of millions” across the portfolio. “If we reach the end of 2020 and we have not seen some sort of interesting exit, we should be concerned,” she added.
Endorsed by big names like Fair Fight’s Stacey Abrams and Shark Tank entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Hamilton’s book is packed with lessons in cultivating independence, self-confidence, courage, and tenacity.
A class cut-up, Hamilton writes about how her curiosity often landed her in the principal’s office as a child. “We’d be told something in the class and it wouldn’t make sense to me,” she recounted to Bloomberg’s Chang. “I was always asking why … I never broke out of that. I still speak up when I want to know more.”
Hamilton speaks up plenty in her new book. Here are eight of her tips to help entrepreneurs and all marginalized, underestimated people, stay resilient in times of crisis:
Don’t just day dream: Keep your mind active while isolated
School yourself: Learn something new that inspires you or enhances your skill set.
Build (or amp) your side-hustle: Secure as many income streams as you can.
Stay flexible and nimble: Be prepared to pivot as needed and as the new normal becomes clearer.
Be unquenchably curious: Seek opportunities to connect and learn about other people’s lives and successes.
Don’t assume: Ask others what they are looking for during this time.
Collaborate: Seek meaningful, productive partnerships that will benefit both parties. It’s important to ask yourself how we can come together in this time of need.
Be well: Reflect on what you need to stay optimistic and allow yourself to mourn what could have/should have been.
Although very few details have been released, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Detective Chris Edwards said young Rodgerick–who was in quarantine–did nothing wrong.
“He was in the process of finishing his dinner,” Detective Chris Edwards of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department told WRTV6 in Indianapolis. “He was in his own living room when a bullet passed through one of the windows of his house and struck him. He wasn’t out doing things he wasn’t supposed to be doing. He was eating dinner in his own home and did absolutely nothing to bring this upon himself.”
Detectives have said several shots were fired in that area. One of those was the stray bullet that went through a window and struck Payne. They believe the person who was the intended target may hold the key to finding Payne’s killer.
“We believe there are people out there who absolutely know the details about what happened. We need those people to come forward,” Edwards said. “At least the person who was getting shot at. We don’t care why they were getting shot at, but that person knows who was shooting at them and they know why it happened. We really need those people to come forward and speak to us.”
“If we don’t want things like this to keep happening in our communities, people need to step up and do the right thing,” Edwards said. “This was a child, eight years old.”
Valeisha Butterfield Jones Joins The Recording Academy as First-Ever Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer
Valeisha Butterfield Jones sits at the intersections of technology, politics, and entertainment. And she is a leading lady across industries as a businesswoman. As a woman of power, she has led global diversity and inclusion efforts as the former head of Women and Black Community Engagement at Google. Now, Butterfield Jones is taking her talents and wealth of knowledge to the Recording Academy as its first-ever chief diversity and inclusion officer.
Today the Recording Academy announced that Butterfield Jones will be joining the organization per the recommendation of the Academy’s Diversity & Inclusion Taskforce. As Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, Butterfield Jones will design, build, and implement world-class programs and industry standards focused on inclusion, belonging, and representation for underrepresented communities and creators. She will also implement her inclusion practices across all areas of the Recording Academy, including internal and external programs, organizational and staff culture, membership, awards, and related initiatives.
In her role, Butterfield Jones will report directly to Academy Chair and Interim President/CEO Harvey Mason Jr. effective May 11.
In a statement released by the Recording Academy, Mason Jr. said, “We are thrilled to welcome Valeisha Butterfield Jones into the Recording Academy family. Valeisha has been a force in driving systemic change and enhancing equal opportunities for underrepresented groups across entertainment, technology and politics. I’m excited to work with her to continue evolving the Recording Academy as an organization that represents our music community and a place where all voices are welcomed, supported and nurtured. We are so fortunate to have Valeisha’s leadership in this crucial area.”
Butterfield Jones also shared her excitement about joining the team, “The Recording Academy has an opportunity and responsibility to ensure that diversity and inclusion is embedded in its core values. I’m deeply honored to join the Academy as we enter a new chapter of transformational growth, leadership and change.”
She added, “During this unprecedented time in world history, together we will double-down on our focus to drive systemic change and equitable outcomes for underrepresented communities and creators.”
Butterfield Jones is a champion for access and inclusion and our hat is off to her for blazing pathways for others.
Report Shows Coronavirus Kills More Americans In One Month Than Seasonal Flu Killed In One Year
The COVID-19, or novel coronavirus, pandemic, has become the public health crisis of our generation, with the U.S confirming more than a million cases of the virus. The virus has been notoriously hard to treat and is extremely contagious, far more dangerous than the flu.
In a report by the News Atlantis, data shows it took 12 months and 61 million infections for the H1N1 swine flu to kill 12,500 Americans between 2009 and 2010. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that the more common seasonal flu killed 34,200 Americans during the 2018–2019 flu season. As of right now, the current death toll for the coronavirus in the United States is estimated to be over 60,000.
Despite the severity of the viral outbreak which has killed tens of thousands of Americans, some on the right still argue that the pandemic will end up being no more serious than a bad flu season. Fox News commentator Bill Bennett said that “we’re going to have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu.”
The seasonal flu kills 0.1% of people infected, but the novel coronavirus has already killed 0.1% of the entire population of the state of New York. Imagine the entire country getting hit as badly as New York state: 0.1% of the U.S. population is 330,000 people.
While there are 1.07 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States—that’s 0.3% of the U.S. population—former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb has noted that anywhere between 1% and 5% of Americans may have actually already been infected with the virus.
The seasonal flu, by contrast, is even less deadly when you take into account that it has a much higher infection rate: the common flu infected 12% of the American population last year.
In U.S., experts suggest to me rate is lower. My informal survey of thought leaders in this area puts estimate anywhere from 1-5%. Ultimately we must confirm this with serology studies (which are underway). But it falls short of the 50-70% needed to achieve “herd” immunity 8/n
— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) April 8, 2020
HistoryMakers Announces Its 2020 Digital Archives Awardees
HistoryMakers is the nation’s largest database for black stories. The national nonprofit research and educational institution committed to preserving and making widely accessible the untold personal stories of both well-known and unsung African Americans. As a part of that mission, the organization houses The HistoryMakers Digital Archive program, which recently announced its 2020 Awardees who will be contributing the archive.
The HistoryMakers Digital Archivesis an online database of thousands of African Americans from a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. Unlike other resources, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive provides high-quality video content, fully searchable transcripts, and unique content from individuals whose life stories would have been lost were it not for The HistoryMakers.
This year’s awardees are forces to be reckoned with. Each of the storytellers and historians highlight and explore complex issues within the community—both past and present. Each of the projects adds diverse stories to the archives ranging from self-preservation within black civil rights movements to the history of African American gay and lesbian politics—and so much more in the categories of Academic Research, Digital Humanities, and Creative Studies.
Meet the 2020 Awardees.
Academic Research Awardees
Paula Austin, Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies, Boston University
Project Title: A History of Black (un)Rest
Project Description: This second book project aims to examine practices of “self-care” in Black (and people of color) activist and organizing communities from early civil rights through the Black Power era. The project seeks to identify discourses and artifacts of ways in which individuals and groups theorized, articulated, and practiced self-sustainability and care in struggles for economic, racial, and gender equity and justice. It will examine early racial and economic justice movements like black laundresses who mobilized for pay equity in post Reconstruction Atlanta, Ida B. Wells and early NAACP’s anti-lynching campaigns, through movements of the Black Power era, inclusive of an array of organizations from the 1950s through the 1990s.
Simon Balto, Assistant Professor of African American History, University of Iowa
Project Title: I Am a Revolutionary: The Political Life and Legacy of Fred Hampton
Project Description: I Am a Revolutionary is a biography of the life and political afterlife of Fred Hampton, the brilliant organizer and leader of the Illinois Black Panther Party, who was murdered by the FBI and the Chicago Police Department in 1969 at the age of twenty-one. The book explores Hampton’s maturation from child of the Great Migration to youth organizer to his emergence as one of the leading lights of the Black Left in the United States, and also examines the enduring nature of his memory and legacy. In so doing, it winds through the larger ecosystems of post-World War II-era Chicago and America, the long Black freedom struggle in the United States, and the nature and necessity of interracial solidarity and struggle.
Gillian Bayne, Associate Professor of Science Education, Lehman College (CUNY)
Project Title: African American Scientists: Strengthening a New Wave of Hope and Inspiration in Youth
Project Description: The African American Scientists: Strengthening a New Wave of Hope and Inspiration in Youth research project analyzes uncovered motivating factors that can facilitate and support the achievement of vulnerable youth in science through examining select dimensions of interviews housed in
The ScienceMakers Digital Archive. The project qualitatively examines intersections of scientists’ professional and personal identities; expectations, persistence and enhancement of self-efficacy; personal and family histories; and moments that reveal inspiration. Emergent themes detailing scientists’ means of support, culture, and impactful experiences are utilized creatively in the development of curricular tools that embed the African American scientists’ lived experiences into culturally responsive pedagogical resources. Through engaging in activities that underscore the sociocultural influences in science teaching and learning, and examining individual “case studies” of select ScienceMakers in this manner, a prototype is forged, providing for a holistic and realistic interpretation of the experiences had and contributions made by African American scientists.
Kevin Quin, Ph.D. Student, Cornell University
Project Title: Queer Visions of the Black Past: A History of African American Gay and Lesbian Politics, 1970-1989
Project Description: This dissertation examines how changing attitudes toward gender and sexuality shaped the scope and direction of black activism in postwar urban America. Centering the lives and experiences of black gays and lesbians, this project investigates how a vanguard of black queer and feminist activists developed and mobilized a unique political practice in their individual and collective efforts at contesting sexual discrimination and antiblack racism while advocating for better housing, education, and employment opportunities in their communities. Using archival research and oral histories, this project illuminates how black queer activists used a diverse range of political strategies from grassroots activism to cultural production to forge new paradigms for understanding the relationship between race and sexuality. The project builds on and extends historical scholarship that has examined the gendered and sexual dimensions of black nationalist politics by examining how black queer advocates of black power challenged the forms of sexism and homophobia that undergirded prevailing expressions of black nationalism.
Digital Humanities Awardees
Denise McLane-Davison, Associate Professor of Social Work, Morgan State University
Project Title: Mapping Black Thought and Resistance: Digital Storytelling Through Primary Data Resources of The HistoryMakers Digital Archive and the National Association of Black Social Workers, Inc. (NABSW) National Repository at Morgan State University
Project Description: Mapping Black Thought and Resistance applies the use of Black spatial and public humanities techniques for curating and reconstructing Black intellectual identity research through the historic preservation practices of the National Association of Black Social Workers, Inc’s National Repository at Morgan State University. The HistoryMakers Digital Archive provides accessible use of the largest collection of oral histories by Black thought leaders whose contributions have shaped remarkable American and African Diaspora events. Mapping Black Thought and Resistance advance pedagogical and epistemological stances of intergenerational knowledge through Black storytelling cultural traditions by repurposing the use of complex technology to create corrective narratives and representation of Black experiences towards self-determination and liberation. Working with a transdisciplinary team of Morgan State University faculty, staff, and students, as well as, external content experts, the overall goal is to produce an interactive ARcGis StoryMap of the Black Social Work Movement (1968-1978) and Hashtag Syllabus.
Julian Chambliss, Professor of English, Michigan State University; Justin Wigard, Ph.D. Student, Michigan State University; and Zack Kruse, Ph.D. Student, Michigan State University
Project Title: The Michigan State University Comics Open Educational Resource
Project Description: What do comics tell us about community, culture, and identity? The Graphic Possibilities Research Workshop (GPRW) group at Michigan State University (MSU) believes The HistoryMakers database can be a vital tool to understand how black imagination has shaped modern culture. While Michigan State University has been home to several avenues of comics scholarship for many years (the MSU Comic Art Collection, a minor in comic art and graphic novels, the long-running MSU Comics Forum, and the Graphic Narratives Network), most recently, the GPRW has centralized critical questions concerning identity and representation in comics through digital means. To this end, over the past year the GPRW at MSU has developed a collaborative Comics Library Guide as an Open Educational Resource (OER) centered around the Comic Art Collection, a collection of over 300,000 items including American and international comic books and comic strips, along with “several thousand books and periodicals about comics.” This Comics OER will serve as an introduction to working with the Comic Art Collection, but more importantly, it is a public-facing, foundational resource that serves students, educators, and scholars invested in Comics and Popular Culture Studies. In this latter capacity, the OER will include a number of videos and resources from The HistoryMakers, including, but not limited to interviews with readers and creators of comic books and graphic narratives.
Creative Studies Awardees
Yunina Barbour-Payne, Ph.D. Student, University of Texas at Austin
Project Title: One of a few: Performing Black Experiences in America’s Appalachia
Project Description: This project proposes a devised theater and dance performance focusing on Black experiences in the Appalachian region, foregrounding the role of Black Appalachians (Affrilachian) and African Americans in resisting discrimination in the U.S. at large. One of a few: Performing Black Experiences in America’s Appalachia is committed to stimulating discourse around identity, activism and artistic practice. The performance process carefully considers the role of archives in dramaturgical approaches to Affrilachian performance. During rehearsal, director Yunina Barbour-Payne will draw from The History Makers Digital Archive interviews based in the Appalachian region to foster spaces for cultural exchange. The process will involve exposure to Black Acting Methods, Affrilachian art forms and advocate for theater-making as a tool for activism in and outside the rehearsal room.
Catherine Valdez, MFA Student, University of Michigan
Project Title: Dinner at My Body
Project Description: Dinner at My Body is a hybrid poetry and graphic short story collection that explores the relationship between self-image and food in Black communities. Using personal anecdotes, interviews, and archival sources as anchoring documents, this creative work demonstrates the many ways in which discussions surrounding food and food production impact self-narratives. Food exists as a mode of celebration, an act of labor, insecurity, frustration, a political-tool, an item of scientific inquiry, tradition, rite, a religious experience, an item of mockery, joy, a racially and ethnically coded object, an entry point from which to think of one’s own body, and more. Jointly, image and verse paint an honest and intimate portrait of body-food.
