Ferguson Response is so pleased to host #BlackPodcastWeek 2017 – our yearly celebration of Black Podcasts & Podcasters. This third annual week of Black Podcast Love is our way to show our appreciation to all the Black Podcasters who put out amazing content all year long.
With a different podcast focus each day, this week allows everyone to get some shine culminating in a Sunday March 26 Twitter Chat at 7:00 PM ET where Black Podcasters will discuss their work & the good, bad & ugly parts to podcasting while Black.
BLACK PODCAST WEEK SCHEDULE:
MON 3/20 – Women Led Podcasts
TUE 3/21 – Comics/TV/Movie Podcasts
WED 3/22 – Sports/Pop Culture Podcasts
THU 3/23 – News/Politics/Social Justice Podcasts
FRI 3/24 – New Podcasts (launched in the last year)
Ferguson Response & American’s United Again hosted a Live #BlackPodcastWeek Twitter Chat on Friday April 1st. We welcomed a wide variety of Black Podcasters to join us for a lively & informative discussion about Podcasting – check out the Storify of the chat below:
There are often really good undiscovered podcasts out there, ready for their listeners. Some of these podcasts may be owned by businesses that want to reach a wider audience while others use private podcasting to gain a collective following. With so many podcasts available, we decided to highlight some of our favorites. We started last year as a way to highlight & give some shine to as many amazing Black Podcasters as possible, this year we hope to expand the reach and get more people listening to Black Podcasts.
This year the fun begins Monday March 28 and runs through Friday April 1st. Co-hosted by Americans United Again – this week long celebration of Black Podcasting is for EVERYONE. Be sure to use #BlackPodcastWeek for all of your tweets & posts!
We have added some additional categories and most exciting of all a LIVE Twitter Chaton Friday April 1st 9PM ET where your favorite Black Podcasters will be discussing podcasting, blackness and more!
Participate each day by tagging your favorite Black Podcasts in each category:
Spread the word via social media and join us on April 1st 9PM ET for:
Last month I created the hashtag #SlaveryWithASmile in response to Scholastic publishing the children’s book “A Birthday Cake for George Washington”. This book infuriated me and was also condemned by educators, librarians, authors and parents as a false representation of the realities of slavery in this children’s picture book.
Creating hashtags like this one is a great way to provoke discussions and start conversations about social justice issues. Moreover, in recent years, social media has become a fantastic tool for educating others about societal issues in an engaging way.
With this in mind, I have been flooded with positive feedback from people keen to hear more about my campaign on Instagram as a result of the hashtag #SlaveryWithASmile. Since starting this social networking campaign, my following has grown dramatically, and I am now able to reach more people than ever before.
Consequently, if you are considering launching an Instagram hashtag to support a cause that you are passionate about I would strongly recommend uniting your followers around a particular issue that interests you all. From here, your Instagram account can grow, and your engagement should increase.
Accordingly, if you would like to learn more about how to grow your Instagram following, you might want to get nitreo. Instagram boosting tools have soared in popularity recently and can be used to increase your follower count to ensure that your message reaches a wide audience.
Going back to the actual roots of my campaign though, in a blog post on this site I said:
This topic is not a new one. Academics, educators, writers & publishers have discussed how to tell the stories of Black people with nuance & truth for decades. But this disturbing push to depict #SlaveryWithASmile and portray the lives of slaves & their interactions with their owners without including the truth & barbaric truths of slavery is getting out of control.
Four days after creating the #SlaveryWithASmile hashtag, and seeing it trend on Instagram, Scholastic elected to pull the book from shelves and issued a statement which included the following admission:
…we believe that, without more historical background on the evils of slavery than this book for younger children can provide, the book may give a false impression of the reality of the lives of slaves and therefore should be withdrawn.
After hosting a full episode of the FRN Podcast on the topic, I began participating in a series of conference calls with a group of amazing Women including Edi Campbell, Alison Criner Brown, Debbie Reese, Atena Danner, Roni Dean-Burren and more. Our conversations were focused on how to bring additional attention to the issue of quality options for children of color in children’s literature.
The author of “A Birthday Cake for George Washington” has repeatedly tried to portray #SlaveryWithASmile as a personal attack on her or one specific title. In reality our issues with “A Birthday Cake for George Washington” were never solely about the content of one book. We continue to question Scholastic about how this book made it through their publishing process in the first place. However, just because this was one bad publishing experience, it doesn’t mean that everyone will face the same thing. In fact, most authors and books are able to swiftly get to the publishing stage, regardless of the comparison you may have made between the self publishing vs traditional publishing route. When people don’t agree on certain aspects, it makes it harder to approve publishing or to even get it published in the first place. Hopefully, the particular issue we have with Scholastic will be resolved soon. We also have larger demands for Scholastic regarding their commitment to providing quality books for ALL children. The pulling of one book did not quiet our need for answers and action on the part of Scholastic.
To that end, we are pleased to announce the launch of #StepUpScholastic – a campaign for teachers, parents, and students to tell Scholastic to publish and distribute children’s books that reflect and affirm the identity, history, and lives of ALL children in our schools. Scholastic must increase the representation of people of color and Native Americans to match their audiences.
The goals of the campaign are simple, encourage children & adults to critique current offerings from Scholastic and ensure that Scholastic hears their voices in this call for substantive change. How can you engage with the #StepUpScholastic Campaign?
UPDATE 1/25: We successfully delivered over 1,000 gallons of water to Flint on Sunday 1/24. We also made direct contact with an amazing (Black Female) local organizer who we will be supporting and working with moving forward.
In addition to the water deliver, we were able to work with local organizers to translate their specific demands, pay for copies of the demands to be distributed locally and provide financial support for the local organizer. We also help in research of methods such as water filtration units installed in homes, to see if they could offer assistance after taking a moment to consider Water Filter Way’s articles and other resources on the matter. Please continue to donate & share the link so we can help this amazing woman do what is needed to make real change for her community in Flint.
The Flint Water Crisis has left those most in need of help with little support. Current mechanisms have left Public Housing & jail/prison inmates out of the donation cycle.
Ferguson Response is headed to Flint with members of BLM-Kalamazoo and needs help renting a truck & securing water for folks in need.
Our efforts will solely focus on deliver to Public Housing in Flint and in gaining access to inmates to give them clean water. Inmates in Flint are STILL 100% on contaminated water with no filters – they are forgotten and this needs to change. Please donate today.
I woke up this monday morning feeling so blessed and privileged to have been present in body and mind at the historic #MLKNow event. My soul was touched deeper than ever before as i connected with powerful radical words that resonated from our past, delivered by new voices heard as fresh as when first spoken.
The Riverside Church in Harlem is a true spiritual place, it’s a building that on entering you can feel without touching. It was here in this space that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr gave his speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence.” – A speech that most agree guaranteed his ‘murder’ warrant \ MLK looked over the mountain and beyond the walls of the US and connected US State oppression to other lands, and outlined a plan for economic divestment that offered a strategy to limit the powers of corporate America in more ways than the bus boycott previously had. Riverside has a strong activist history and provides a safe space where the Black radical voice can speak freely, in a way that almost seems protected by its looming walls that saw the moral titans of past and present prophetic resistance. Animated by its long tradition of community, it is a space so strong in its identity and proud of its heritage that 60 years later the beneficiaries of MLK’s legacy could safely regroup and reclaim the message in the tone that MLK had intended.
Last year we saw the book A Fine Dessert released to large acclaim. This children’s book about a dessert – Blackberry Fool – as made by 4 different families in 4 different eras includes a slave woman & her daughter making the dessert for the slave owner.
You can read a few pieces about this critically acclaimed piece of children’s literature here & here & the author’s response to criticism of her portrayal of #SlaveryWithASmile here.
Most importantly I suggest watching author DJ Older’s thoughts on the book & the depiction of slavery in kid-lit:
Now in 2016 we have another entry in the #SlaveryWithASmile genre with Scholastic’s new book “A Birthday Cake for George Washington”. This books release was accompanied with a pre-emptive explanation of the language & imagery used to tell the story of one of George Washington’s slave cook Hercules. You can read that piece written by Black editor Andrea Davis Pinkney here.
Of course many of us have had more to say about this book, it’s subject matter and the general subject of depicting #SlaveryWithASmile
This topic is not a new one. Academics, educators, writers & publishers have discussed how to tell the stories of Black people with nuance & truth for decades. But this disturbing push to depict #SlaveryWithASmile and portray the lives of slaves & their interactions with their owners without including the truth & barbaric truths of slavery is getting out of control.
A week from today I will be sitting down for an in depth discussion about #SlaveryWithASmile on Ferguson Response Podcast. I will be joined by some amazing women Roni Dean Burren, Edi Campell & Mikki Kendall. I look forward to this enlightening & honest conversation about how our past as Black people us portrayed in literature.
NOTE: I have reached out & invited both the author & editor of A Birthday Cake for George Washington to join us – neither have responded to the invitation.
I do not much care for Blaxplaining the way the world works. I get emotionally exhausted trying to answer “why” questions that have no answer just to show empathy with you showing empathy with me. Blaxplaining makes my intestines itch.
I point out obvious things. Signs in the sky that indicate changing weather.
But I don’t often explain why the weather has changed.
I’m making an exception today, because there’s a darkening in the skies and, in the present context of 150 white men overtaking a federal building, I’m going to try and Blaxplain how this unrest sits with us with hope that some of you, who often read my words but don’t comment, don’t share and don’t “like” them (literally or figuratively) can explain to me what you think comes next.
In August of 2014, in a small suburb of St. Louis called ?#?Ferguson? , our nation sent The National Guard along with militarized police to squelch the protests of a few scores (that later grew to be hundreds) of citizens who were appalled at the grizzly murder of ?#?MikeBrown?. These protesters were largely Black, unarmed civilians. There was some property damage. Luckily for some store owners they have insurance from somewhere similar to this Commercial Insurance Broker Toronto company or somewhere more local to them. The media continually called it rioting.
Dozens were arrested. Beaten. Pepper Sprayed. Shot with rubber bullets. And whilst some managed to defend themselves with the most powerful stun gun they could get, more were unable to do anything against the onslaught.
Some months later we pointed out how in a town in ––New Hampshire, I believe –– I dunno, someplace that just sounded really white, large groups of white unarmed civilians overturned cars, burned property, took to the streets over…pumpkins. The media called them revelers. The police were called but they didn’t bring their tanks.
It was whitesplained to us that this was different –– because it wasn’t a hot-button issue and likelihood of severe damage or loss of life was minimal. The Ferguson protests went on for DAYS, we were told – THATS why it had to come to the boiling point that it did.
We didn’t accept that. But we knew it would become the company line. Drawn in the blood on the pavement. Never to be crossed.
So then…Baltimore. ?#?FreddieGray? was given a “rough ride” that severed his spine. And the city went nuts. Students were beaten, corralled into a mall. The police leaked a false rumor about a “Purge” that they were supposedly defending against and so militarized police were called in. Again too, the National Guard. We saw images. Stark, powerful images –– of a man thrown by his dreadlocks to the ground, pepper sprayed in the face for literally doing NOTHING. We saw a gleeful cop flash a Kool-Aid smile to the camera as he tackled this Black man,like a big game hunter after he’d just sniped a lion with a scope on a high-powered rifle from 300 yards away. But no. Can’t be that. We cry for lions. We mourn fallen lions. (?#?RIPCecil?)
To that end, we are pleased to announce the launch of #StepUpScholastic – a campaign for teachers, parents, and students to tell Scholastic to publish and distribute children’s books that reflect and affirm the identity, history, and lives of ALL children in our schools. Scholastic must increase the representation of people of color and Native Americans to match their audiences.
he Flint Water Crisis has left those most in need of help with little support. Current mechanisms have left Public Housing & jail/prison inmates out of the donation cycle.
